Ether 14

14:1-31 - The next chapter is like a bad dream, craziness that you just can’t understand or get away from, it’s madness. First thing that’s mentioned is the “curse” on the land, which I don’t really understand, is the land actually cursed in that whatever is hidden is physically removed by a supernatural power? Or is the curse that everyone steals so anything not secured to your person will be taken by someone else? The word “curse” is cross referenced with Helaman 13:20 which says, “And the day shall come that they shall hide up their treasures, because they have set their hearts upon riches; and because they have set their hearts upon their riches, and will hide up their treasures when they shall flee before their enemies; because they will not hide them up unto me, cursed be they and also their treasures; and in that day shall they be smitten, saith the Lord.” There are other verses referenced with this word, but I liked this on the best because it really went to the heart of the matter. Was the land cursed because they were rich? No. Was the land cursed because they shared with each other so that there were no poor among them? No. The land was cursed because the people weren’t interested in the God that granted them their possessions, they were only interested in the possessions themselves, and my guess isn’t that they were interested in the possessions because they were shiny and did cool, helpful things. No, my guess is that they were so consumed with what their possessions meant to other people, where it set them on the social scale, and the status symbol that it gave them to have those things. Having their possessions wasn’t about increased productivity or easing their labors, it was about making other people feel bad, and ignoring God is bad enough but add in there the poor treatment of others and there’s nothing good going to come from that. I don’t really want to go through the details of the battles, I could but it’s staggering and depressing. There are a couple of quick lessons that we can get though, first is that a portion of Coriantumr’s army was destroyed because “there were drunken” and attacked at night. That was a pretty good commentary on the word of wisdom there, the down side of alcohol use. There are secret combinations which murdered one leader and put the other on the throne, only to have that one be murdered, then the new one slain in battle and his brother seek revenge on his killer, it’s crazy, makes no sense. It’s really an interesting scene of human devolution, Lord of the Flies type of stuff. My dad told my daughter once, “read Lord of the Flies and then you’ll see why the kids aren’t in charge,” my rebuttal thought was “read the Book of Mormon and you’ll see why the adults shouldn’t be in charge.” I guess as with anything without the Spirit, it all boils down to who is the most vicious, who is willing to do the worst thing to win, and we surely have both of the worst, Coriantumr, who we’ve already met, and Shiz, who is new. Shiz is the brother of Lib, who is the one who killed the man who killed Gilead, and then became king under the pretense of seeking revenge on his brother Lib’s killer, who is Coriantumr. It’s interesting to watch through the battles because Coriantumr is injured numerous times, but doesn’t die, and he’s injured badly, so much that it takes him a couple of years to recover, but he lives, just like Ether said that he would. Now Shiz is a bad guy, “and he did overthrow many cities, and he did slay both women and children, and he did burn the cities.” There was no possibility for recovery, he meant to kill and then destroy anything else. No one, not even his own people could go back and take over the cities and make them great again, to me that tells me that he’s only after blood, total annihilation was his only goal the whole time. Imagine the scene, I imagine as a woman with my children running for our lives from the army of Shiz stumbling over “the bodies of both men, women, and children… and the scent thereof went forth upon the face of the land, even upon all the face of the land; wherefore the people became troubled by day and by night, because of the scent thereof.” Imagine running for your lives over dead and rotting bodies, so many of them that you couldn’t sleep because of the smell. Sometimes there are smells that wake me up, poop of course, because I’m a mother, food because I’m human, but being woken up by a smell is pretty unheard of for me, so imagine something smelling so bad that it interrupts your sleep, even after a long day in battle, physical combat so strenuous that thousands of your brothers in arms die, and you STILL can’t sleep because it smells so bad, that’s how much carnage there is, it’s sick. I really just struggle with the idea that the women and children are so wicked that even when faced with their certain and horrific slaughter that they still would not turn to God, because logically, why not? They are going to die anyway, what do they have to lose by changing their ways and praying to God? Nothing, not one single thing, people have changed more for less. People have gone into monestaries just to see if that way of life makes them happier, asking for the prophet’s guidance, following it and praying in order to save your children’s lives, I mean, come on! But I guess they had to believe that that would work in the first place, they had to believe that God was capable and willing to save them if they repented and apparently, that wasn’t even on their radar. I just can’t see running for our lives with my children and having any possible way for escape and turning it down. They could say, go into a snake pit and if you kill 12 snakes you can live, and I would still do it as a chance for us to be saved. So isn’t it interesting that turning to God is a prospect worse than death. And yet turning to God is the only way to live, both in this life and in eternity, it’s the ultimate irony.