The book of Alma is filled with cycles of fear, pride, falling, repenting, and peace. Again and again, the nephites and lamanites go through this pattern.
I believe that it all starts with fear.
Fear is the opposite of faith, and its only remedy is the pure love of God. Our faith is measured by our obedience. Thus, to overcome fear and pride, we must exercise our faith by repenting and being obedient. By doing so, we become a pure vessel and move from heart-heartedness to open-heartedness. The pure love of God can then enter us and heal the weakened state our fear caused within us.
We choose what we decide to do with our fear. Do we let it control us and plunge us into the cycle that plagued many Lamanite and Nephite people in the Book of Mormon? Or do we choose to exercise our faith through obedience?
Alma 51 shows us the consequences of letting fear overcome us. After Moroni and his people had worked so hard to be free and to have peace, some Nephites started to be contentious over a political situation. The Nephite dissenters wanted to change some of the laws and replace the chief judge with a king. But the chief judge, Pahoran, was a man who wanted to uphold the liberty of his people and was determined to be faithful to the promise he made to do so. He courageously choose the right, despite the reactions of the people. Many supported him, while others only became angry.
While the bad guy Amalickiah was inciting the hearts of the lamanites against the nephites, Moroni had to deal with those Nephite dissenters who rejoiced in their hearts that the lamanites were coming to battle and refused to take up arms to defend their liberty. Moroni was pretty darn mad. He used his anger to do good, to reach his primary goal: stop those dumb contentions among his own people! He knew that if he didn't fix those contentions, they were toast against those Lamanites.
So he got that all fixed by going to war...Nephite against Nephite. The problem was that while Moroni had to deal with the contention between Nephites, he could not focus so much on preparing the Nephites against the Lamanites. Amalickiah began slaughtering a ton of people. The Nephite-Nephite conflict had weakened them, so that when the opposition came, many were not prepared.
Why was there even a Nephite-Nephite conflict in the first place? Aren't they brothers, united in purpose and religion? Some Nephites had forgotten their purpose and began to want power. They began to want to be better than other people by creating their own laws based on their own way of thinking rather than God's. Fear lead them to pride which lead them to contention which ultimately caused many problems for the Nephites when the opposition arrived.
We can learn a lot from this example. We must remember that we are on the same team as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We must love, support, and uplift each other. Not tear each other down because of our own fears of inadequacy, of a lack of control, of a want of power. When we don't listen to the prophets, when we don't take their counsel and start wanting the power of man over the consent of God, we will fall. This fall will leave us weakened and unprepared for when the opposition hits us. We may even lose our freedom.
That is why we must always look for God's will. We must always take our fear to God rather than letting our fear overtake us. We must choose to obey, even when it may be hard, because it enables the love of God to enter us and free us from the fears that so easily beset us. Perfect love casteth out fear and the only way to tap into that love is through exercising our faith, repenting, and obeying. I know that if we do so, we will be prepared for whatever opposition or battle comes our way.
Love ya!
Rachel
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