A note on the prosperity promise from last week sets the tone or this week’s episode on Alma’s discussion with Corianton
Transcript:
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the add on education network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussion and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio. That’s right. This studio with our friend and this show’s producer, Nate Pyfer.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: The studio.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: The studio. The.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: The actual studio.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: On location. In location.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: At location.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: At location.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Let’s do this, dog.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Dude. It’s good to be. It’s good to be home for a little bit. Home. Where is home? It’s good to be here with you in Utah.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: All my thoughts are shaking. Wait, what is the lyric of that song where my music’s playing?
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Home.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Isn’t that Simon Garfunkel? Or is it just Paul Simon by himself?
[00:01:07] Speaker A: You’re the expert on that.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Escaping home.
Something. We’re just waiting there for me, dude. I don’t even know if that’s the right key, but we’ll know by the time this airs, because, you know, I’m finding that audio.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Just go in and re pitch it. You know, I can do that. I have studio tricks. Jason.
Do it. I’ll sound like Alvin and the chipmunks, but at least it’ll be in the right key.
What are we talking about tonight, dude?
[00:01:39] Speaker A: You know what we’re talking about tonight. We’ve been waiting for this. I don’t know why, but we’ve been waiting for this. This is Alma talking to his son, Corey Anton.
And these are some tender chapters. He devotes some time here to try to help and counsel his son. And I. I don’t know.
There’s power in there. I think that’s why we’ve been waiting for these. There’s some good things to talk about.
Before I get too far down into the Alma Corianton discussion, though, I had some thoughts on the prosperity promise that we brought up last week. And I know it was last week, and last week is over, and today.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: The world is on fire. Yes.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: I guess. I guess the only thing you can do is bring marshmallows to the party.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
That’s one way of looking at it, I guess. Or vote.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So if it’s not too bad, I’m just going to take a minute to go back a week before the world was on fire. If that’s even true.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: What do you mean, if that’s even true?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: What I mean by that is, was the world not on fire a week ago? I mean, that’s probably still on fire.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: It was definitely getting ready to burn down. Yes.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Hey, speaking of, isn’t there a song, watch the world burn? That’s the.
Who is it?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: You listen to a different. You’d listen to a different group of dudes.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: Live? Is it live, the band? Live.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I love the band live.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Cause that’s the world. I know. What is that?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Oh, you’re talking about. You’re talking about collective soul. Collective soul.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: I haven’t heard collective soul.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: That’s gonna be the right key to. I’m calling it right now. I’m gonna look really bad for calling this.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: I haven’t even heard that name for a while.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I did. You gotta remember, not only do I do this for a living, but I didn’t have a lot going on in my outside school life, in high school. And music was, like, one of the only things. So I have a ridiculous catalog just uselessly stored in my brain.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: I got you, boo.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: All right. So going into the prosperity promise.
Sorry for the tangent on this.
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about it a little bit this morning. It is something that’s repeated so often, and as I was going back and reading Helaman’s not Helaman, Alma’s words to Shivlon, I thought, what does it mean to be prosperous? What is the prosperity? What is the root of this? And knowing that they spoke Hebrew and even down into Moroni saying, had we Mormon and Moroni saying, if we had kept the records in Hebrew, there would have been no imperfections, shows that even throughout time, Hebrew was significant to them. I figured that was a good place to start. And I looked up prosper in the Old Testament, and then I looked at the word in Hebrew that they used to translate it there. And it means to push forward, to make rapid, to speed it along its way, and to make it come out, to make it be successful, to make it mighty, to prosper, in a sense, is, I don’t know. As I read it that way, things coming together in a good way, that makes it happen a lot faster than maybe it otherwise would have. And I like that definition. But also knowing that it was translated in English and the translation process, not necessarily going back and looking at the original words and trying to pick the original one, but actually using an english word, I figured maybe there would be some value in understanding the. The english word itself. Right. And so I went to prosper and I looked at its etymology to find out what it means, where it came from. And in that sense, it actually has.
I’m going to read this. So I don’t misquote it, because I like the way that it said it.
Give me here. It is agreeable to one’s wishes.
And I think that’s what we think of most when we think of prospering, because we tend to define in our own imagination, our own wishes, our own mind, what it means to be successful. And we tend to be jaded if it doesn’t work out how we thought it was going to work out. And we look at it and blame God or blame ourselves or whatever, we tend to define our own prosperity. So I kind of like that definition. But then there’s one other way to look at it, and that’s how Alma himself is describing it in the text. So I’m going to take a peek into Alma 38, verse one, and he says, inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments. And I said it was Shiblon. Right?
[00:06:42] Speaker B: You did.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: It is Shiblon. I just threw it off when I saw Helaman in verse one. I say unto you, even as I said unto Helaman, so he said it also to Helaman, but he’s saying it to Shiblon. All right. Sorry. That just threw me for a loop. Inasmuch as ye shall keep the commandments of God, you shall prosper in the land. And inasmuch as ye shall not keep the commandments of God. Now, you would expect opposite if you keep it this. If you don’t keep it the opposite. And he says, ye shall be cut off from his presence. And it’s not you shall not prosper, but you shall be cut off from his presence. So as I’m looking at Alma, it’s almost like he’s defining prospering as being in the presence of God. And so, as I try to find a way to take these three different definitions and merge them into one, what I came up with is this idea that being in the presence of God or prospering is the sense when your will, your imagination, your wishes, are in line with God’s wishes. And it takes me back to the prayer. When Christ says, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, when your will is God’s will, then your will is going to roll forward, and you will prosper inevitably, because God will be done.
And so I see that as the prospering, it happens, because you keep the commandments. As you keep the commandments, you find yourself in line with God, and you find your wishes coming true, because your wishes are in line with his wishes. And the path is pushed forward, and it moves you along, and it’s just all three of those kind of came together and culminated in kind of this beautiful thought.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: It’s awesome. I love that. I’m glad you brought that back up.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry for the tangent. I’m ready to go into Alma 39 now.
Okay, I’m going to try to introduce this the right way.
First off, when I think of what Alma has against Corianton, because he starts right off with a bone to pick with him. And if I were to ask myself the question, what does Alma have against Corianton? I think the obvious answer is he slept with the woman while he was supposed to be doing missionary work and not slept with a woman, as in, he did something appropriate, and it was his wife was with him, he had an affair as a missionary, and that made it really hard to teach the gospel when people were pointing at him and saying, this isn’t good.
And I think that’s the obvious big thing that Alma has against his son. And it’s such a big thing that overshadows what Alma actually lights into him for at the very beginning. So if I go to the very first, it says verse two. Now, this is what I have against thee. Thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom. I’m like, oh, wait. So the first thing that Alma actually kind of accuses him of or brings up against him isn’t the sexual promiscuity. It’s his boasting and his arrogance. And it seems like he’s.
It’s almost like Alma’s actually trying to get to the root cause of it and not necessarily address the symptom.
And sleeping around and committing sexual sin, obviously, is very grave. It’s very problematic. And if you just say, stop sleeping around to stop, you’re trying to stop the symptoms without even getting back down to the root cause. And what is the root cause? And I’m looking at this, and I think it boils down to pride.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: And I think it also boils down to something that we’ve talked a lot about, putting other gods before God.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: That’s exactly right.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Pride and selfishness. Pride and selfishness. And so I think Alma’s really seeing this for how it should be seen, and I think that’s going to really kind of color our discussion today.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Okay, great.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Setting the stage.
I think maybe we should hear what Brosa Smith has to say.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: I haven’t opened this one yet. All right, where are we at?
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Alma 39.
Okay, verses one through three.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Alma 39, verses one through three. Yo, my son, listen up, exclamation.
I gotta tell you something different than what I told your other bro. Don’t you see how your other bro is always steady, faithful, and follows God’s rules? He’s a good role model for you, man.
You didn’t pay attention to what I said like your bro did when we were with the Zoramites. I’m calling you out, dude. You were boasting about how strong and smart you are. That’s not all, man. You did something that really pissed me off.
You left your ministry and went to the land of Saren near the Lamanites borders to be with to be with some labeled Isabel bros. Of Smith. You did it again.
You did it again.
You did it again. Bros. Of Smith.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Chat.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: GPT.
You reminded us all of how intelligent you think Gen Z is. All right, thank you. Chat. GPT.
Book of Mormon for Gen Z.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Thank you, Nate. Sorry, I.
Wow.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: Maybe that’s that’s probably on the Mount Rushmore of chat GPT for Gen Z moments so far.
I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ve had I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know who the other three faces would be on on the Mount Rushmore yet because that one is that’s the George Washington, I think, third Nephi.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Comes in there when when when Christ is like, I am legit.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that’s pretty good. Yeah, that was pretty good, too. But we’ll get there. When we get there.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: We’ll get there. We’ll cross that bridge.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so it basically sums it up. All right, until next week.
[00:12:36] Speaker A: Setting the stage.
Oh, boy. So from here, I mean, there’s a couple different directions we can go on this, Nate, okay? We can talk about pride. We can talk about arrogance and boasting. In fact, it’s kind of interesting, I think.
I guess let’s just go into that and then we’ll take another little tangent afterwards, I think even in here, correct me if I’m wrong, I think Alma even points out seeking riches in context of the sexual sin, which I found kind of interesting because what it really reminded me of was Jacob’s conversation early on in the Book of Mormon when he’s chastising the Nephites for taking on extra wives.
And he says, look at you, Lamanite brothers, who their wickedness is because of their fathers, but they take only one wife and they love their family and they treat their wives well.
But with that, he talked about them seeking after riches and he kind of comes back on it and says, if you want riches, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and then you will find riches. And you won’t find riches because you’re looking for them. You’re looking to establish the kingdom and the Lord will bless you. And I think even this kind of comes back to where we started this with the thoughts from last week of aligning our will with God’s will and not having other gods before God, because it seems like that’s really the heart of the issue for Cory Anton is he’s putting himself as God before God. He’s putting his desires, his self satisfaction.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Well, also, I don’t think that it should be overlooked that what is the closest act that human beings can do that compares to God? It’s the creation of life. Right.
This makes me think so much of some of the Old Testament parallels to this. You have Solomon and David. You have a lot of people that have Samson delight Samson. That’s exactly right. You have, you almost have things that kind of pre set up, I guess, precursor. A lot of these things. Right. And what is it in kind of all of these cases? In a lot of these cases, the people start out on a very righteous path and then see some sort of level of success or blessing or let’s just say prosper in the land, right. There’s some sort of success. And that’s usually when the eyes kind of get taken off the target and it’s almost always kind of aligned with success, riches or whatever. And after that. And so I guess I wonder if that’s worth at least kind of the discussion because you see this in our day so much in, like Hollywood and in, for me, like the music industry, right. It’s like you see kind of a, on any sort of a level, somebody reaches a level of success or fame or power, financially or whatever, and it’s. There is very much a. I got this. I wonder if there is.
It’s almost like its own little mini pride cycle.
It’s, there was a lot of work to achieve a certain level of something. And as soon as you achieve that certain level of something, you think that it’s something that you did. And usually.
Yeah, like, usually infidelity or promiscuity just kind of tags along with that.
I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to see if there’s like a bigger picture because, you know, we’ve seen it through the scriptures. You see it in real life.
Like, what is the, I’m with you that I do think that pride and a certain level of arrogance very much is tied directly in with that. But I guess I’m trying to kind of see the bigger picture of the things that kind of lead up to that, because I, for one, I don’t think that righteous people from day one just go, oh, yeah, and by the way, I’m also just gonna be a dirt bag, you know? Or, oh, hey, by the way. And again, like, I’m not judging anybody.
I have the.
My family line has come into this world through relationships outside of marriage. And thank goodness I’m here, right? You know what I mean? My family, too. I’m not saying that, but I am saying that there is also sometimes a level of I can do whatever I want, and there’s a non repentant. I mean, it’s clearly the reason that we’re reading about Alma chastising Corianton specifically is because it seems like in his arrogance, he’s like, yeah, there’s no problem with me doing this. There’s very much an unrepentant.
Or else I have a hard time thinking that we would even be hearing about this story, right, if our young man had gone and made some mistakes, recognized his mistakes, and was like, oh, hey, you know, like, no.
It reads as if it’s somebody that very much is just like, I’m gonna go do whatever I want. And you’re like, oh, yeah. Like, that’s why. That’s why we’re having this discussion. So, yeah, I mean, is the bigger question, is this more of a pride question than it is even a, you know, a sexual deviancy or not deviancy, but a sexual mistake or something? You see what I’m saying?
[00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: And I think I’m with you, that the.
That the heart of this is arrogance and pride.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: And I really appreciate how Alma’s treating this as a father. And who knows, right outside of the text, how he actually had it? What we have is a record here, and maybe there’s a conversation there that we don’t have privy to. Maybe there was a lot more that went into it. But what we have is all I have to go off of. And as I look at this, it’s not like Alma’s sitting here dwelling on it. It’s not like he’s saying, tell me all of the details and what did you do and what didn’t you do? And trying to make this. This sin a big focus of what he’s talking about, but he’s also not sweeping it under the rug. He’s not saying, look, you messed up. Let’s talk about repentance. Let’s talk about how great it is. And let’s talk about how he’s making sure before he can focus on repentance and the atonement, he’s got to establish first that this was wrong, and he’s got to establish what was wrong about it. Let’s start at the beginning and talk about pride. You were walking a scary path before it even began, and that manifested itself in these actions.
And then he goes talking about root cause.
You’ll notice that Alma is not gonna spend a lot of time talking about why you shouldn’t have sexual relations outside of marriage. He calls it out, but he’s not focusing on all of the negative ramifications and what that leads to and why it was bad. I think Corianton knows it’s bad. I think he knows it’s bad. But he sees that Corianton has questions about the resurrection, about Christ, about salvation. And if he is not built on that rock, on that foundation, and if he doesn’t have God as his goddess, then he’s not anchored in there. And he starts to float off of that and think of himself as God, or think he knows better because he’s boasting about his strength and his might and his intelligence, his wisdom, and he’s starting to rely on himself. And so Alma looks at that and says, the problem is he’s anchored in himself. And I need to fix that and re anchor him into God. I need to help him understand the resurrection. I need to help him understand the atonement. I need to help him understand what it means, like to, and what to me, it takes it back to Joseph Smith. I teach my people correct principles. And when they have a correct understanding, they govern themselves. And Alma’s looking at this saying, he’s made some poor choices, rather than addressing per se, the choices. And it’s not about stopping this sin. It’s let’s fix the foundation and where we went off track and try to cut that pride back and get him to rely on the savior, and then we’ll see a change in the behavior. And subsequently we do. I think it’s important to mention later on when Helaman passes the plates on to his brother Shiblon. Shiblon is going to pass his plates to his brother Corianthan. But Corianthan went up to the land northward to resupply the people, and he wasn’t available. And that little detail in there, I think, to me, validates that what happened with Corianthan and Alma was successful because Corianton was considered worthy to be the next one to carry on that responsibility, to take those plates and to bear it on.
This had a positive impact on Coriandan. He changed his life.
And at the end of the story, he comes out looking not this bragging boastful, but a very humbled person because of what he does. And I think Alma handles that really well. He mentions it at the beginning to kind of chop at the pride a little bit to get him to try to listen, and then he tries to, when he’s listening and understands what he did, tie it back into the foundation, the gospel, and get him to understand what it was.
But then there is also, and I don’t want to glance over this, that the education behind sexual sin. And I think you mentioned this, too, Nate, when you’re talking about what we share with divinity is our ability to create.
And God talks about.
Well, Alma talks about different degrees of sin, and I don’t know that we have a lot of talking about different degrees of sin. Sin, in our mind, sin is sin. If you do it wrong, you do it wrong. But here he says it’s most grievous, and he’s talking it in comparison to murder.
And so when we talk about the ability to create life or the ability to destroy life, and in those cases, sexual sin is right up there with it, because you really can do both with that.
Think about the lives that are ruined.
What happens to a kid that, you know, you might think that it was between you and somebody else or just between you that you messed up, but what happens to a child that’s forced to raise in a home where there is no father? What happens to that person’s life, what happens to the lives of other people around it is a consequence of that. And sometimes there’s some real damaging effects that get swept under the rug.
So it’s.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s intense. I, again, just to make sure, to be very clear, like I come from. I come from a family, not my parents directly, but I come from a family of children being born out of wedlock. And I do believe that God helps sustain people that follow him. And in a lot of cases, again, you turn to God, and I think that he can help us recover from that. But what I will say is some of that hurt and that trauma rings throughout generations and unnecessarily. Right. And I see that.
And again, like, what I would want to say, though, is I also feel blessed, though, that I come from people who also saw that and were the children of that, but were also able to go but Im going to fix this. You know, Im going to do my part to, to minimize the trauma, I guess, as the generations go, and did a very good job of that. And even then, as they would tell you, its like, yeah, but you do still see, you know, you do still see the effects of that and if you can avoid that hurt and that pain, you should.
And people make mistakes and very much can use, like you just said, this whole story of Corianton hopefully does end with him. I read the same way that you do and that there is a positive at the end of this and so the redemption is also baked into this story, too.
So I just, I want to, you know, I know that it’s such a delicate thing to try to like talk about because, yes, like there are sins that do affect a lot more than just one person.
And so we can’t pretend like, oh, it’s no problem, you can just fix it. It’s like, yeah, but also don’t shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t have to. Like yeah, you can go to the hospital and they can make sure you don’t die. But I, you see, I guess I’m just saying that’s where there’s kind of the delicateness of trying to understand this.
But to also be fair, there’s also a bunch of knuckleheads out in the world that just go around thinking that they should be able to do whatever they want and they just leave a wake of sadness and hurt behind them outside of themselves, too. So I also don’t want to glaze over that either.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: And I think it’s significant that you look at Christ’s family tree and you’re also going to find this.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: And to think that it’s going to frustrate things forever. I mean, it’s not, that’s what the atonement’s for. It’s important that we realize the mistake. It’s important that we realize that there was something there, which I think Alma does immediately and calls him to his attention to it. But it’s also counterbalanced with, it’s not the end.
There is redemption to this. And for this reason, was there a God chosen before the world was created?
[00:26:52] Speaker B: And the answer, but the answer is, though, is re anchor yourself.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: I love this. I love the parallels here with David, too, and let me try to break down David’s example and then I’m going to use that to try to break down what we see with Corianthan because I find some really fascinating parallels that I think fit with our day especially. And when talking about David and Bathsheba, you’ve got a guy, the king, who at the time the kings went to war, decided not to go to war. And so you look at the first mistake he makes, and it’s not that he’s out immediately going out and sleeping with Bathsheba.
It’s going to be a series of events that takes him to that position that maybe his initial intent wasn’t where he ended up in the end. Right? And so all of the men in the city are gone. And if all the men in the city are gone, then it’s just him with all of the women of the city.
And now when it’s bedtime and he should be going to bed, he’s up late. He’s up late on his roof, looking across the rooftops. Now, why would he be doing that?
And you have to understand in ancient Israel that once a month women were deemed ritually unclean because of the issue of blood.
And part of the cleansing process of this was that they had to bathe themselves and they had to present themselves and they had to be made clean. So if they’re out bathing on the roof at the end of this process, now, what’s David seeing? He is seeing women that have just finished that time of the month that supposedly aren’t able to have children because they’re not fertile at this stage, that maybe he can sneak something in and nobody’s going to be the wiser. And so he’s out there looking at his options and maybe thinking, maybe I could. But, you know, at what point does he start looking at and say, okay, now I’m going to.
It’s a series of decisions that if he would have just gone to bed, that would have been the end of it. If he would have gone to war, that would have been the end of it. But he keeps entertaining this idea, he keeps nurturing this idea, and it grows up to full blown where now he’s really committed. And now, because he’s committed, he’s got to try to hide this. And this is Adam and Eve seeking to clothe themselves when you’ve got Christ, who’s going to provide a much better covering for us if we rely on him right to the point where he’s killing an innocent man to cover himself up to where he gets there. Now, to take this back to parallels with Corianton, I find it fascinating that Alma and Coriande both had problems and questions with the same thing when they’re talking about the resurrection of the dead and what it means. Alma also didn’t understand it, and he struggled with it, and he didn’t feel like enough was said on the subject.
And so here’s our kernel, right? Here’s our start, our seed. And you have two very different people react in two very different ways. What’s Alma response to? Not understanding and thinking that maybe there’s not enough information that the church hasn’t taught it or the church, maybe he hasn’t given us, or maybe it’s wrong. Right. And his response is, he spent many days fasting and praying and waiting on the Lord to try to fill in that blank for him. And in the meantime, waiting on the Lord does not mean he just checks out and goes and does whatever, because it’s in the Lord’s house now, in the Lord’s court. He’s waiting for the Lord to respond. He is anxiously engaged in serving and going on missions and trying to do the Lord’s will and showing the Lord that he can be trusted with that information to where the Lord’s ready to reveal it to him in his time. And now he gets that information, and he’s blessed, and he’s happy because of it. And he can use that now to keep doing what he’s doing, to keep teaching, to keep pushing, to keep inspiring and to ask even more questions because he has more information.
Now, you look at that, contrast it with Corianthan, who comes across the same difficulties, and he doesn’t know what the answer to it is. And rather than turn to the Lord and say, help me with this, and rather than patiently wait for the Lord, that to him is just proof that it’s wrong.
I know better.
They didn’t even answer this question. I know better than this. And he starts to brag in his own strength. And this is the divergence, I think, that you’ve been highlighting, emphasizing when we anchor in ourselves and put us before God, and we think we know and we’re tired on waiting in the Lord. Cause he doesn’t tell us, he doesn’t make those things known to us. And so we start leaning on our own trust.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: What you’re saying makes so much sense, too. When if our anchor is within ourselves and our own desires first, what is a more immediate response? Wait till you’re married before you have a relationship with somebody else or, hey, this feels good.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: I want it now.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: I want it now.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: The Veronica Veruca salt.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Dude, I want it now. Dude, you’re gonna give me three today. I want the world.
I want the whole world.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: You could even go. You could even go, hallelujah, because they’re singing the same David and Samson.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: That song’s overplayed. Faruka salt doesn’t get nearly enough love from Willy Wonka. The original, the great one, Gene Wilder, rest in peace.
I mean, okay, but now let’s, let’s. Let’s broaden that out, because you, you started this whole thing, I feel, like, on totally the right direction, which is, if we’re anchored in ourselves, what are the things that drive and motivate us? And that’s the quick fix, man. That’s the I want it now ness. And it’s why study after study is proving how cell phones are just corroding our brains, and especially young people that are still just trying to figure out who they are and have very little self awareness and discipline in a lot of cases. And you stick something in front of their face that just flashes more confusing messages in front of their eyeballs all of the time and gives them anything that they want at any given time.
I know we’ve talked about it before, but like Jason, our generation, we knew how to wait in lines. We knew how to stand in line and wait for something.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Call the movie theater and listen to every movie being listed that’s playing.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: That’s what I’m saying. We used to wait, and I can’t imagine that at the time we realized how healthy that was for our brains, but very much. There was an idea of, don’t do this until you get married.
And I think that the messaging is still the same, but what the world will tell you is, even within christian communities, is like, that’s outdated, and you can just repent. It’s almost like, it’s almost like we’re trying to justify the fact that we have just made young adult brains into applesauce through social medias, through screens, through just this idea that you deserve to have everything you want now. And all of this still stems from the most root of root causes, which is me over thee, right? Me, my desires above what God wants me to do. And the craziest part of this, and you sadly see it infecting, I will use that word. A lot of people within our religion, is that it’s not only is it not being rejected, it’s almost being celebrated. It’s almost being celebrated of the idea of, like, the personal empowerment, which, again, at its surface, you go, okay, cool, that makes sense. Like, yeah, we should. We should all be. We should all be doing things to empower ourselves to make good decisions. Yes, I’m with you. But it’s like it always just starts taking a step, a step further and further. Which is? Which is you should be empowering yourself enough to know you shouldn’t have a religious structure tell you what to do. You shouldn’t. You don’t need blank telling you how to live your life, whatever that is. Fill in the blank. Right. It’s like all of these things. We were talking about it, we’ve been talking about it when we were talking about bridging the two great commandments. It’s like there’s always, I feel like it’s so much of the core of a lot of the ways that Satan attacks us within a christian framework is. I want to start with the safest, most obvious. Yeah, we can all agree upon this point and then just start walking it as far as you possibly can towards the edge.
This one, to me, again, you’ve just seen it infect and permeate. Sadly, again, with a lot of young people, you do see so much of this idea of don’t let anybody else tell you what your identity is. That’s all up to you. You get to decide every single aspect of your identity, both psychologically, physiologically, whatever that is, because it’s you making that decision. You should be empowered to have all of those decisions. Instead of, by the way, what we used to read in young men and young women’s, I am a daughter of God. I am a son of God. That’s your identity.
And when that identity defines you, then what naturally follows after all of those things?
Sure.
My whole point is there’s more empowerment in that than anything else that the world can convince you that self empowerment can give you. If your identity is you are a God.
That’s the ultimate self empowerment.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: That’s the thing. That’s the.
God became man so that man could become God. Is there not anything more empowering than that?
[00:37:18] Speaker B: That’s the most empowering thing. But. But what does that require of us? Get outside yourself.
Except that you are being. You aren’t in charge of your identity. Somebody else is. Luckily, that person is God.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: He who loses his life will find it.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: And it goes back to get Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. It really does. Because was not Satan offering the exact same thing. This is how God got his knowledge.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: You want to be like God. I am going to personally empower you.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: To be like God to make that decision yourself, though. That’s what, that’s the pitch to Eve.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: That’s it. And it comes all the way back to replacing goddess with yourself here, let me empower you to be God and God’s offering you to become God. And so it seems like the same thing, but it’s just that one degree of difference that makes all the difference.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Because he is right on some level. Satan, Satan is right on the level that it’s like cool, you are a God, you know what I mean? It’s like this is how God got it. Don’t you want to be like him? Well I mean the fact of the matter is yes. The answer is yes. And we are born to be gods regardless of what we decide our identity is. That doesnt change the fact that we are sons and daughters of God.
And in this case hes literally going put another God before our heavenly father.
And sadly, im lumping both you and I into this too. This is not us lecturing sadly that God wins a lot of the time.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: 100%, which I think is why we.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Have the law of sacrifice and obedience. Sacrifice and obedience, the first two things. But yes, continue.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: And maybe because that’s a sacrifice too.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Obeying is a sacrifice and maybe what.
[00:39:18] Speaker A: We’Re sacrificing is ourselves.
[00:39:20] Speaker B: That’s it. That’s what it is.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: And it’s so ironic because he isn’t the sacrifice, the image of Christ, he was the sacrifice, he was the lamb. But really we sacrifice ourselves too. And isn’t that that come, follow me and be like Christ. And there’s some interesting imagery in that.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: The first ordinance that we perform is dying and being reborn as a disciple of Christ on the journey to become him on the journey, to mirror his life in the journey, to have him eventually see his image in us, that when he sees our face he sees himself.
Yes, you’re right.
That is why obedience and sacrifice, because they’re one in the same, are the first foundational things that we have to understand, which is your will has to die and you have to be willing to sacrifice it. I mean it’s what it comes down to.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: And what if now let’s take a look at Corianton’s journey. How would if his journey been different if when he first starts running into these questions he would have sacrificed time to try to figure it out, to try to search the scriptures? What if he would have just asked his dad, who had been spending all of this time trying to figure it out, what if he would have sacrificed food and fasting and time and on his knees praying and sacrificed all of this to God as a price to pay for admission and relied on God for that answer rather than putting himself first. But at the end of the day, and here’s.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. Because I’m psych. It’s hard to say.
We don’t know. But.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: But at the end of the day, this is the cool thing to me. At the end of the day, does Coriander not get saved?
At the end of the day, does he not find his way back? And that’s the atonement. That’s the thing of the atonement is it can. But Alma cautions us at the very beginning when he says that it’s an unpardonable sin to deny the Holy Ghost. And then he’s going to repeat it three times. It is not easy to get forgiveness. It is not easy. It is not easy. And what is not easy when you willingly turn away from the Lord. And why is it not easy? Because you yourself have made the decision to find something somewhere else. And how does the Lord save somebody who’s not willing to come back? If you know better and you still decide to go find something else, then who’s going to convince you to come back? Why does that sin become so unpardonable? Because the person themselves is not willing to change course, correct or come back. And that comes back to humility, pride.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: I’m going to throw out another reason that it’s.
And this, again, is, I feel like part of the cautionary tale of this is that we believe that part of repenting is to make right the things that have been made wrong.
Again, I brought up that again on one side of my family, that I am here through relationships that were outside of the bonds of marriage. Again, not my parents, but right before them, let’s just say.
But there’s also lives that have been destroyed because of that, too. Within my families, like there is as much as you, there are certain things. It’s why murder is.
We’re gonna have to leave that between God and the person, because how do you make that right?
I can’t help. But also, again, we look at this story of Corianton and it’s high fives all around, right?
[00:42:57] Speaker A: High fives all around.
[00:42:58] Speaker B: The dude got saved.
We also don’t sadly have, or we don’t know the sad potential stories of the lives that were also destroyed and left in his wake, too. Alma the younger himself, part of the whole reason that he was wracked, I’m going to propose, is that he also saw the damage that he had done up to that point, too, in his life. And by the way, you do see this, I think with the sons of Mosiah and him where so much of after their conversion was what? Going out and trying to really atone for the damage that they have done of all of the people. Because we don’t have their stories. We don’t have the stories of the person. You and I, and again, like, I would never name names, but you and I have plenty of people in our lives that we can look back at. I feel the weight of this so many times of friends of mine that I now look back and can see we’re in a really tough part of a stretch of life with their faith, whatever. And very much we’re desperately kind of reaching out to have somebody help give them a crutch for a time. And me, because of my own blinders on and me dealing with my own freaking crap that I stress out about every day.
I didn’t. I missed an opportunity.
I did. I missed. I vividly remember sadly, right, very specific moments when I’m like, I was being given the chance to potentially help save somebody, and I blew it.
Now I feel the guilt and the weight of that, and it’s helped me hopefully realign my priorities in life to where I hopefully don’t miss those chances in the future. I can’t help but think how much worse I would feel if I knew I was actively the one out there destroying people and destroying people’s chance at salvation.
Even after I may have been able to come around and go, okay, now I’ve got it worked out. But again, like, life isn’t that easy. Life isn’t that clean. And there’s a lot of decisions. And I know that even in very legal terms, you see men who have just destroyed the lives of people around them, they find God and then are celebrated as, like, hey, they found God. It’s all great to go. Everything’s honky dory now. Yeah.
Luckily, we now get the stories of some of these people, of lives they destroyed, and they’re like, well, I guess I’m glad that everything’s going great for this person. My life is still destroyed.
It’s like, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, yes, yes, we do need to celebrate redemption. We do need to find redemption in as many places as we possibly can.
We need to plead for forgiveness and redemption. I am constantly reminded of it every time I see how awesome my kids are, and I just go like, oh, my goodness. I need to be the one setting the better example for them. And I blow it all the time. Yes, all of that. The. All of that is true. But my goodness, like, it’s just not that simple.
And, you know, hopefully these stories, if nothing else, are an honest warning of, like, yes, there are degrees in sin. Yes, there are. Some sins are worse than others. I’m sorry. Like, that’s. That’s the fact of the matter. And just because we can be forgiven doesn’t mean that sometimes our actions aren’t. That aren’t out destroying the lives of other people. So even. Even just the concept of, hey, it’s all good, like, no problem. Hey, you know, like, whatever. It’s like, no, you don’t know the other lives that you’re leaving damaged in the wake of your decisions. It’s like, we need to be better.
And we read about it a lot. When we’re talking about the armies of healing, what’s the first thing that. What’s the first thing that we saw before? Even with the armies of healing, we’re always talking like, ah, they’re the mothers. They learn the thing from their eyes. What’s the first thing that talks about? They obeyed the commandments with exactness.
It wasn’t self empowerment. I’m sorry, it wasn’t. You know, it wasn’t. Find your path in discovering who you are. No, it wasn’t. It was. Here’s who you are now. Live up to that.
It’s like, I don’t know, man, I hate to rant on this thing, but I just. I have small and young children that are entering these times of their lives, and I just see so much of the messaging, sadly, within our church at times, and I just reject it completely.
We need to be doing less things to confuse our children.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: They look to us for answers.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: That’s right.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: And if we don’t have the answers or we say, you’ve got to go figure, then what are we doing as parents, why do kids come in to receive guidance?
It’s a world where we need to learn to lean on and trust, but we need to learn and lean and trust in the right sources.
[00:48:23] Speaker B: Yes. And all of this full circle, it’s like, as parents, we need to be anchored in the right place, man. I mean, it’s really what it comes down to.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: And thank goodness Alma was.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, you’re right.
[00:48:41] Speaker A: How could that have gone different for him? And as much as it’s. I mean, something that you point out, as much as it’s easy for us to celebrate Alma, Ammon, Paul, for their mighty missionary work and the things that they were able to do, how did they themselves live with the loss and the damage that they had caused. And how did that eat them away through the rest of their lives?
[00:49:04] Speaker B: You know, what it probably did is it probably was the reason they stayed humble for the rest of their lives. I mean, at the end of the day, it probably was one of the anchors in where they were able to actually stay because I’m with you. I bet you. I bet you that it was something that kept them up at night for the rest of their lives.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: And you look at. It’s hard to see the implications of what Corey Anton did. And it’s easy to say that obviously it had an impact on his life because he committed sin. And one might dismiss the impact that it had on Jezebel’s life because as Roosevelt Smith said, she was anyways, right? I mean, this was already happening, so maybe it wasn’t such a negative impact.
Maybe. But maybe Alma said their missionary work was seriously hindered.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Yes, that’s right.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: Because people looked at it and said, hey, you’re missionary. You come in here telling us that this is what’s going. You’re a bunch of hypocrites. Look what he’s doing. And how many people did not find the truth? How many people used that as an excuse to persecute the church and how. What are the actual ramifications that we’ll never know what kind of impact this had. In my mission, we came into an area where the bishop, with seminary students, was doing inappropriate things in the church and it became public knowledge and he was excommunicated.
And I can tell you, we came face to face with those decisions when we went and knocked on doors and they said, oh, yeah, we know your church, we know your bishop, and we’re having all of these people tell us about what happened and why they weren’t going to listen to our discussion. It had a big impact in the area and in our ability to teach the gospel that you just don’t see right away in the pages as you’re reading the story.
[00:50:53] Speaker B: What’s the. I feel like I’ve left a dark cloud on this discussion.
What’s the light at the end of the tunnel? Dude, put a. I didn’t mean to sidetrack this. I just.
I get passionate about it only because of how I feel so confronted with this on a daily basis at this point. And I try to remember that’s the positive, is that I try to remember that if we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we’re told by God that we need to not fear. And as we see the world on fire. We’re told that we will prosper in the land if we’re anchored in the right place. You know what I mean? It’s like, I know all of these things. My goodness, my six year old is terrified of the second coming right now. I don’t know why. I don’t know whatever got him even talking about the second coming. But honestly, like, every night for, like, the last few months before we go to bed, he’s like, tell me now. Remind me again. You know, I told you already. He’s like, are we gonna have to fight the Nazis? I’m like, no, I think we’ve already fought the Nazis. I don’t think we’re fighting them again. But it’s like there’s. It’s like I’m doing everything I can to not instill more fear into that child when the fact of the matter is, is I’m terrified.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: I think Alma answers that question best, and I think there’s a difference. And I don’t know if self promoting is the right way of even calling this versus bragging, because bragging is what Corey Anthony gets caught in. Bragging is this sin. And bragging is what takes him down here. And Alma’s going in here and telling his own story. And you might look at it and say, well, is he bragging because of his experience and how he got saved? No. No. He’s kind of setting a pattern, and he’s telling us what happened when he was in the gall of bitterness, when he couldn’t see past those own mistakes. And that was putting a dark page on his life. How did he find comfort? And it’s the same thing. The story of Enos will always be one of my favorite stories, as read in the Book of Moses, when he was celebrating the defeat of his enemies and watching the residue of the earth being wiped off with the flood.
And for him, this is like Super Bowl Sunday celebrating, you know, victory. He’s. He’s arrived, and he sees the heaven weep, and he doesn’t get it. And when God changes that perception and he sees them for who they are, it puts things in perspective to where he can’t be comforted either. And he’s in the same story of Alma. This bitterness, this sadness. What about this loss? What about the impact? What about the effect that it has? And all of these people that are hurt because of me or all these people that are hurt because of what happened. And he refused to be comforted.
And the only thing that comforted him was seeing the coming of the Messiah. And the redemption of the world and being able to replace that perception with the perception of Christ, that somehow, as far reaching as those mistakes are, God has a plan to try to reach out even to them. And that the residue is not the residue to God. Never has been, never will be. And he cares down to the sparrow, down to the hair on the head, and is seeking to try to pull it together. And because he is so invested in this, this becomes a very powerful lesson for me when I read how the end of the story goes with Corianton.
When we read about missionaries that make mistakes and what happens when they go and talk to the mission president, they get sent home and that’s the end of the deal.
At the end of this story, what does Alma tell Corianthan to do? He doesn’t tell him, look, buddy, you’ve disqualified yourself. You don’t get to teach anymore. You don’t ever. He tells him to go out and to keep teaching.
And I think that’s interesting when you realize what’s happened and you realize what’s going on and the only consolation you find is in Christ and his work to try to save and redeem. You want to be a part of that work and you want to be an active participant and you want to be like Alma, be like Paul. And Alma knows that he’s been through this. And so what’s the best medicine that he can offer? Corianton? Go out and save the people. Go out and feed my sheep. Because only through that do you find salvation yourself. Only through that does your perception change from darkness to hope.
And so I think that’s one of Satan’s great lies in our own lives. When we falter and we sin and we get consumed with that darkness, we feel like we’re disqualified from anything. And we commit the second sin in refusing to lift up our hand and help and serve because we don’t feel we’re worthy to.
And you know what? We withdraw from that and we pull away from the church and we pull away from helping others because we don’t feel like we can offer help. We don’t feel like we can. That’s for somebody better than me. That’s for somebody who’s righteous, when really that’s Gilead’s balm. That’s the way to help us is being able to dust ourselves up and find a way to get back in the fight, find a way to help people see things and to turn people to christ and not commit the second sin by retiring ourselves from the medicine that we so badly need. To be healed.
[00:56:23] Speaker B: Well said.
I do think that this still also always continues to point back to, and that is, I guess, the way that we can try to atone for the mistakes that we make. You know, not. Not the atonement, but that’s the way that we can try to make right the things that we do wrong. I guess right is to go and try to, you know, save as much as we can other people. And I do think that there is something to be said for the idea that we do still have to live with the memories of the things that we do wrong. But hopefully it’s there to inspire us to, one, not make the same mistake twice, but two, hopefully give us perspective so that when we see opportunities to help somebody around us, we don’t miss those opportunities in the future.
I do hope, though, that in the next life I can put that trust in the Lord when he says that he will remember our sins no more.
I don’t understand that. I can’t conceptualize that.
I don’t know what that means in this life because sadly, we do live with the memories of the things that we’ve blown it doing.
So I don’t know what that exactly means, but I am hoping that in the next life we are spared from just having to remember all of the dumb stuff we’ve done for eternity.
I’m putting my hope in Christ that he can do that, even if I have no idea of how.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: Well, Alma says in verse 29, and now, my son, I desire that you should let these things trouble you no more.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: I know. Good luck.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: And only let your sins trouble you with that trouble which shall bring you down to repentance. Only let it trouble you as far as it takes you to repentance.
But that’s it. You’ve got to learn to let it go.
[00:58:30] Speaker B: Good luck.
[00:58:34] Speaker A: And that you should deny the justice of God. No more.
And it’s interesting when we talk about this verse, for example, 23 23, and thus they are restored into his presence to be judged according to their works.
And how do you get judged by your works if you’re not doing good things right? I think Alma’s saying that like, it’s not just about repenting and stopping, it’s. There’s this engagement process. You’ve got to put out good works. It’s not enough to stop, but you’ve got to. Doctrine covenant says that every man should be anxiously engaged in the good work, and he’s going to call out these works in several places. But verse 31, perhaps. And now, my son, you’re called of God to preach the word unto this people. And now, my son, go thy way. Declare the word with truth and soberness, that thou mayest bring souls unto repentance, that the great plan of mercy may have claim upon them.
I don’t know. The whole thing is beautiful.
It serves to bring him into humility. And when he’s in a humble place now, he’s in the right place to actually take that message out. And that was where it all began.
You were braggadocious. You were bragging. Let’s tear you down a bit to the point where you’re humble.
And now go back and do it again.
[01:00:07] Speaker B: It’s like planting a garden, man. Sometimes you got to till that dirt.
Awesome. Is there anything else you wanted to hit this week?
[01:00:15] Speaker A: One last jewel, man, and I’ll make it quick.
We’ve talked about the power of names in the Old Testament. We’ve talked about the power of names in the Book of Mormon. Correct. We’ve talked about Boaz and Machlon and Chilion. We’ve talked about Moses. We’ve talked about reaching into the Book of Mormon world. Abinadi was a fun discussion. Gideon. We talked about Oneidae.
This one is perhaps one of the funnest here in the Book of Mormon. And I don’t know if you captured this or not, because this one.
Where.
Where does Corianton commit his sexual sin?
In the land of siren. Right now, think like the greek sirens. Yes.
[01:01:02] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say San Francisco, rest in peace.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: No, but Homer’s odyssey was written in 700 bc, so it was before Lehi even leaves Jerusalem.
And we don’t see a lot of greek influence in the old Testament. But in the Book of Mormon, ever since they run into the Mulokites, we do Laconius. Laconia is Sparta. Laconius means somebody from Laconia. It’s a spartan.
And you see these greek names start to pop up in the Book of Mormon. And to me, this is one of the funner ones to hear a story. And really, it comes from the land of Siren, where these beautiful women were singing to try to lure off the men from their quest, their journey, destroy their ships, to go into a side. Yeah. That leads to death and destruction. It’s just kind of interesting, that match. And. And of course, the harlot’s name is Jezebel. Had to be Jezebel. And it’s not Jezebel.
[01:02:06] Speaker B: Right.
[01:02:06] Speaker A: It’s Isabel. Right.
How’s it spelled?
[01:02:10] Speaker B: I think it’s. I think it’s Isabel.
[01:02:12] Speaker A: I think it’s Isabel, right? Yeah, that’s the cool thing. Because if you go back to the hebrew name for Jezebel, Jezebel is the anglic anglicization.
It’s. It’s the more. It’s the english version of Isabel. The original Hebrew was actually Isabel, not Jezebel.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: Right.
[01:02:32] Speaker A: It’s that it was an I vow. And. And Isabel was the queen that gets Ahab to falter. She’s pushing the Baal worship. She’s the one. She is the antagonist in the story of Elijah. Right? And so her name gets known for this whole sexual promiscuity and the power of women to cause the downfall of men. And being connected to the land of siren, where you have this story with the greek, it’s just kind of interesting, all these little connections and pull togethers. And the name Isabel, in Hebrew, in the Canaanites, Semitic, it is Bel is Baalje is Marduk, is Adonai is the Lord, is God.
That’s where that part of the name comes from.
It’s referenced to when Baal went to the underworld. And it’s kind of interesting that in ancient ugaritic beliefs and ancient semitic beliefs, their God that they worship, the sky God, the thunder God, they believed would go down to the spirit world and then come back to the earth. And you see all sorts of references there. But in this sense, because they relied so heavily on the rainfall and God, the windows of heaven opening it and sending rain and how important and powerful that was. It’s not like Egypt where you have the Nile and you have irrigation and you rely on that. It’s not like Babylon, where you have the euphrates. And again, irrigation in the ugaritic, in the Canaanites, in the Israelites mythology, it was all about rainfall and sending rain in their time. And in the summer months when it got hot, they felt that God went down into the underworld and that they were praying that he would come back and rise from the death and whatnot. But Isabel’s name meant God was dead. And so it’s his time in the underworld. But it’s kind of this idea that God is dead. And you have this journey from faith to leaving the church and denying your faith and replacing God with your own God and becoming whatever and falling to the sound of the sirens and God is dead to where you’re destroying your own self and all of these different words.
It just adds.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: It’s awesome.
[01:04:53] Speaker A: Adds complexity to the story.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: No, dude, I’m really glad you brought that stuff up. We love that. We love that. Stuff.
You don’t, we don’t. It’s kind of part of I feel like why we do this thing is for exactly that stuff. Thanks for educating us.
Anything else we can call it?
[01:05:12] Speaker A: Let’s call it stick a fork in it.
[01:05:15] Speaker B: I don’t know if I want to say that.
We appreciate all of you listening. We appreciate you sharing with your friends. We appreciate any questions, comments, feedback, insights that you might have.
We’re just a couple dudes trying to make sense of it all.
At the end of the day, we always want to make sure to be very clear that the opinions expressed on this podcast are of the two dudes that are just trying to figure this out.
Please don’t ever misunderstand us opining for us saying that this is for sure exactly how it is and how it should be interpreted. Because that is the beauty of the scriptures, is that different people can extract so many amazing, beautiful, incredible lessons from these things.
So please continue to do your own study and hopefully, if nothing else, we could just add a little unique perspective and maybe some insight into some of these things and inspire you to really think through a lot of these things on your own. But we appreciate it.
And that is. Oh, you can get ahold of us at the email address hiaweeklydeepdive.com until next week.
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