Alma 43: Moroni Wins Big

Alma and his freshly-lectured sons head out on the missionary trail again.


Focus on the Important Stuff
Verses 2 and 3 offer an awkward segue:

Now we shall say no more concerning their preaching, except that they preached the word, and the truth, according to the spirit of prophecy and revelation; and they preached after the holy order of God by which they were called.

And now I return to an account of the wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites, in the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges. 

So this book is supposed to be invaluable scripture concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ, intended for our day.  But instead of reading the gospel messages that these missionaries are going to teach, we're just going to wade through some lengthy and needlessly detailed descriptions of over-the-top early American warfare.  Because that stuff is way more important, right?


Moroni Enters in Dramatic Slow-Motion
Now, remember way back in chapter 35, when all that stuff was going down?  You know, before the interludes of fatherly wisdom?  So basically, the Lamanites (who have admitted the Zoramites into their ranks) want to kill all the Ammonites.  So the Ammonites have fled the land of Jershon so that the Nephite armies can come in and have an epic battle with the Lamanites, who are going to attack the land of Jershon because they don't realize that the Ammonites have evacuated.  All caught up?  Okay.  Now, as all this impending military doom is looming on the horizon, this guy struts onto the stage:

You can tell he's righteous cuz he's so muscular.

Captain Moroni.  A true warrior for freedom.  A man ahead of his time.  Leader of all the Nephite armies at the tender age of twenty-five.  Perhaps the most popular man-crush in the entire Book of Mormon.  Ready to go head-to-head with the Lamanite leader, Zerahemnah, and kick some ass while looking fabulous and being all principled and stuff.  

What is it that Captain Moroni does that's so awesome?  He has the revolutionary idea that not only should his army have weapons, but they should also have things that protect them against weapons. Zerahemnah is so intimidated by Nephite armor that he pulls out of Jershon without engaging and tries to sneak around to attack the land of Manti instead.

Today's lesson in ancient warfare:  heavy metal armor that restricts the speed and the agility of your army can scare off a much larger enemy force that likes to fight mostly naked.

More Strategic Brilliance
To demonstrate that Moroni is both a gifted general and a pious man of God, his reaction to the Lamanite retreat covers two bases:  he sends out scouts to keep an eye on Zerahemnah's armies and he sends couriers to Alma to get the prophet to ask God where the Lamanites will attack next.  Alma sends back word that the Lamanites will attack Manti.

Let's keep in mind that verse 21 describes the Lamanite numbers to be "so much greater than the Nephites" as we look through Moroni's battle plans:

1. Moroni leaves "a part of his army" in Jershon (verse 25)
2. He prepares the citizens of Manti to defend themselves (verse 26)
3. He divides his army again, concealing some south of the hill Riplah (verse 31)
4. He splits his forces on the west side of the river Sidon in half, placing some in the valley and some closer to Manti (verse 32)

Moroni's army is in four pieces.  When the Lamanites arrive, the soldiers hidden behind the hill Riplah (led by a dude named Lehi) jump out and attack them from the rear.  Despite the fact that they are but one quarter of an outnumbered army, their armor leads them to triumph over the Lamanite hordes.  The Lamanites panic and cross the river Sidon, where another part of Moroni's forces is waiting for them in the valley.  Does Lehi's division cross the river and help fight?  Maybe turn this into a decisive victory?  Nope.  Verse 40 states that Lehi holds his men at the river.

The Lamanites are somehow routed again and flee toward Manti, where the last group of Moroni's troops are waiting.  The Lamanites finally see some success in this third battle, but Moroni turns the tide by reminding his men that they're fighting for a noble cause.  The Lamanites then flee back up the riverbank, where they are surrounded by three pieces of Moroni's army.

There is no way any of that should have worked.  Even as the Lamanites fall into the final trap, verse 51 says that their numbers are still double what the Nephites have, which means that in each of the three battles, the Nephites could have been outnumbered worse than six to one.  That must have been some really incredible armor to keep each Nephite soldier alive while he was fighting off five or six guys at once.

How did Moroni manage to set all this up in time?  The Lamanites retreated from Jershon and simply decided to move around north to Manti.  Somehow, Moroni sent messengers to Alma, waited for Alma to receive revelation, waited for the messengers to return, moved most of his army up to Manti, set a complicated trap that involved shifting his troops around into very specific locations, and organized the city of Manti to defend against the Lamanites (which they never even wound up having to do).  And this all happened before the Lamanites showed up.  What'd they do, stop off in Cancun for a little mid-campaign R&R?

The whole plan also counted on Zerahemnah's army making some very bad decisions.  Each time the army fled, it fled in the wrong direction.  After being beaten by Lehi's men, the Lamanites should have gone north instead of west, because they'd be heading away from Nephite territory and they wouldn't be slowed down by trying to cross a river while running for their lives.  Then, after crossing Sidon and facing the next Nephite attack, the Lamanites turn south, toward their intended target, instead of fleeing north, away from Nephite population centers.  And after Moroni routs them in front of Manti, the Lamanites retreat toward the site of their last defeat.  In this case, it probably would have been smarter to just cross the river immediately instead of just going north to a location which they knew recently contained Nephite forces.

And after all that absurdly improbable success, it's important to point out that none of this is attributed to God's intervention.  The plan is laid out excitedly like it was the cleverest stratagem ever devised.  It's supposed to show how awesome Moroni is, not how awesome God is.  The implication, then, is that the reason it worked is because it was brilliant, not because Moroni had some divine help.

But it wasn't brilliant.  It was idiotic.  It was risky.  But it somehow ended with the Lamanite hordes surrounded by victorious Nephite armies half their size.

Ridiculous.

Preventing Abuse...Or Why Mormonism is Better than America

Less than twenty-four hours after I wrote a post including criticism of God's crude system of justice and punishment, my dad sent out a relevant email to our family.  He's been doing a kind of memoir thing which he emails to all of us as he finishes each section (which is a really cool idea and would be a lot more fun for me if it wasn't so saturated with church doctrine).  This week's installment was a musing on power, its abuses, and how the legal system and the church system both try to combat the abuse of power.  He wrote:

Society at large recognizes the potential damage that can result from the misuse of power.  Its approach is to pass laws and impose penalties to be exacted after the abuse has been discovered, with the hope that this will deter future abuses by those in power.  Perhaps this is the only approach society can really take.  But, sadly it is an approach that doesn't tend toward strengthening character to eliminate the abuses.  It doesn't tend toward improving people to protect and enhance the community.

Alma said that God had to establish heavy punishments to deter sinners.  My dad seems to think that this practice is imperfect and fails to build character.  So he's kind of disagreeing with a chapter of scripture that he probably hasn't read in a few months.  Not that big of a deal, right?  But then he goes on to describe, in several bullet points, what makes the church's approach to avoiding the abuse of power so much better.  And that's when it just got embarrassing.

• In the Church, power is something that is possessed by the Father and the Son.  Those who need it are given authority to use a portion of that power to carry out their calling, but only for a limited time, to accomplish divinely approved purposes, and to be used within the bounds divinely set.

I don't see a difference between that and the organization of the United States society in which he resides:

• In [America], power is something that is possessed by the [people].  Those who need it are given authority to use a portion of that power to carry out [the duties of their offices], but only for a limited time, to accomplish [Constitutionally] approved purposes, and to be used within the bounds [Constitutionally] set.

It's exactly the same. And, notably, both of these are a little too idealistic.  That's how it's supposed to work, sure, but we all know it doesn't work that way as often as it should.

My dad continued:

• Should one begin to exercise control in any degree of unrighteousness, authority is lost.
• All leaders are accountable to a higher authority for their actions. 

When a leader in the church exercises control unrighteously, authority is perhaps officially lost.  But if nobody knows about it, that person is not removed from a position of authority, so everyone still thinks he has power.  If he is perceived to have power and is still free to act as though he has it, doesn't he still kind of have that power?  There are plenty of stories of bishops who have behaved inappropriately or acted inexcusably in their callings who were not officially stripped of their authority.  Abuses of power still happen in the church.  

Additionally, while bishops may be accountable to stake presidents for their actions, stake presidents don't and can't know everything that their bishops do.  A stake president swooping in to save the day and oust a bishop who's overstepping his bounds is possible, but, just like with our legal system, it can only happen after the abuse has already taken place.  How is this any better?  

• Church leaders do not act alone or in secret.  Bishops and presidents have counselors, bishoprics and stake presidencies have councils, all of which provide "safety in numbers" and protection from things going awry by one's misperception of the authority of his or her office or calling.

No.  That is wrong.

First of all, when a bishop asks a teenage girl about her sexual "purity" in a worthiness interview, it is behind closed doors without a parent or another authority figure present.  That seems pretty secret to me.

And secondly, "safety in numbers" is not the same thing as separation of powers.  There may be three guys in a bishopric, but that doesn't create a system of checks and balances.  The bishop is still the only guy with official keys of priesthood authority and his councilors cannot overrule him.  There is no authority in the ward unit of equal power to the bishop and there isn't anything in the ward that isn't under the bishop's purview.  Congress can block a bill the President is trying to push through and vice verse, but the ward council can't override a bishop's veto.  There is no such thing as judicial review in the church.  There are no official checks and no valid balances.

• As another source of protection, members can go to their bishop if they see ward leaders do things they feel are inappropriate; they can go to their stake president should they feel their bishop is out of line; they are free to go to the First Presidency if they feel their stake president is misguided. (And I know from personal experience that members do use all three of these recourses.)

If you see a cop step out of line, you can call the police and report the misuse of power.  If that doesn't work, you can contact your congressman to ask for legislation that will introduce more stringent oversight of police behavior.  And you can always write the President of the United States to let him know what's going on, too.

But, considering that leaders in the church are supposed to have authority from God, criticism of their actions tends to produce a stigma on the critic.  Criticism of elected leaders of the nation is much more welcome (and more prevalent), and because of that, I'd argue that you're more likely to be taken seriously reporting something as a citizen than reporting something as a member of the church.

My dad also mentions (in bullet points that, for brevity's sake, I won't quote) that the church trains people to keep power in the proper perspective by stressing that God has the power, by teaching that the office (as opposed to the man) possesses the authority, and by often demoting leaders rather than having them ascend up a "career path" of greater and greater responsibility.  Those arguments fall flat in my eyes because the general authorities are revered like rock stars and not treated as merely vessels for God's actions.  That treatment diminishes with each lower level of power.  Bishops get a little of it and stake presidents get a little more.  In theory, perhaps this builds character and teaches people to respect the responsible use of power, but in practice, it can backfire just as easily.  How many stories have we all heard about nazi zone leaders who gain a little bit of sway over their missionary peers and use it to make themselves feel strong and important?

There is nothing here that trumps society's legal system.  There is nothing here that preemptively stops the abuse of power.  My dad's original point—that using punishment as a reactionary deterrent is sadly ineffective—is correct.  But that's what Alma says that God does and that's all the church does.  And that's really all the church can do (although they could afford to do it more effectively) because there's no precognition.  There's no divine inspiration flooding in to stop abuse before it happens.  It's just a bunch of people who can't stop what they don't know about.

Alma 42: The Plan of Coercion

Alma has one more chapter of advice to give to his captive audience.


This Oughta Be Good
He begins:

And now, my son, I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your mind, which ye cannot understand—which is concerning the justice of God in the punishment of the sinner; for ye do try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery.

To his credit, Alma finally manages to address an crucial topic (instead of the relatively unimportant minutiae of the Spirit World and the resurrection).  But he seems to be saying here that he's about to demonstrate how God casting sinners down to eternal misery is supposed to be acceptable.

I, for one, am paying very close attention to this explanation, because it covers one of the more barbaric aspects of the Mormon God (or, I should say, the original Book of Mormon God, before Joseph Smith came up with the various degrees of glory) and I'm quite interested to see how this kind of behavior is justified, especially for a benevolent, perfected being.

Reading ahead, I can see that Alma is about to disappoint me in a most monumental fashion.


So Much for Article of Faith Number Two
At several different points in this chapter, Alma pretty much tosses the later Second Article of Faith ("We believe that men will be punished for their own sins and not for Adam's transgression") out the window.  For example, verse 4:

And thus we see, that there was a time granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God.

Whoa.  No man other than Adam had actually done anything to repent of yet.  But God was so disappointed with Adam that you and I and everybody else was born into a system in which we're already assumed to be in debt.  We were born to repent.  I mean, obviously we'd have to sin first, but after what Adam did, that was a foregone conclusion in God's mind.  So much for not being punished for Adam's transgression.  Verse 12 drives home the point:

And now, there was no means to reclaim men from this fallen state, which man had brought upon himself because of his own disobedience;

Alma (on God's behalf) is extrapolating Adam's behavior to include the entirety of the human race.  We didn't bring this fallen state upon ourselves because of our own disobedience.  Only Adam did.  But again, if we weren't being punished for Adam's mistakes, why are we under the onus of repenting for a fallen state?


Primal Wickedness is a State Ripe for Preparation
Verse 10 explains the purpose of our mortal lives following the fall of Adam:

Therefore, as they had become carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature, this probationary state became a state for them to prepare; it became a preparatory state.

So, because some jerk ate a piece of forbidden fruit and made us evil, it's now our responsibility to prepare ourselves to become perfect.  I don't know that being "carnal, sensual, and devilish, by nature" constitutes ideal conditions for that kind of preparation.  Innately wicked and cut off from the presence of he whose guiding had could do the most good, we're hopeless.

It's Justice Because I Just Called It Justice...Also, God.
Remember how Alma set out to demonstrate to Corianton how God condemning billions of people to a state of endless misery was actually an act of justice?  Well, here's a bunch of drivel about the balance between justice and mercy, which sadly constitutes the crux of his argument:

Therefore, according to justice, the plan of redemption could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance of men in this probationary state, yea, this preparatory state; for except it were for these conditions, mercy could not take effect except it should destroy the work of justice.  Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God.

And thus we see that all mankind were fallen, and they were in the grasp of justice; yea, the justice of God, which consigned them forever to be cut off from his presence. 

So much is wrong with this line of reasoning.

First, Alma creates an arbitrary, faceless universal constant called "justice" and indicates that God, who's supposed to be all-powerful and loving, is forced to work inside of it.  But then he calls it "the justice of God," which makes it sound like something that God created rather than a rule he can't bend.  Is justice a construct of God or a constraint for God?  If it's a constraint, why is he not powerful enough to discard it?  If it's a construct, why is he so cruel as to think his children deserve eternal punishment, especially considering what he's put them through?

Second, if mercy is truly merciful, it shouldn't matter whether or not it destroys the work of justice.  The whole point of mercy is that it's offered despite the usual requirements of the situation.  If the mercy is conditional, it's not very merciful and it's definitely not the kind of behavior you should expect from an enlightened, loving god.

Third, Alma was trying to show that God's plan was just.  It sounds like he's trying to say that salvation is merciful and damnation is just.  But that doesn't explain why Corianton is supposed to believe that damnation is just.  If the kid doesn't believe it's right for God to consign some of his children to be eternally cut off from his presence, simply telling him, "it's the justice of God" isn't going to change his mind on the issue.  It certainly hasn't changed mine.  Alma's blundering through a sloppy explanation of the how, but he hasn't done much to allay his son's concerns about the why.

Corianton is probably sitting through this waiting for his dad to take a breath so that he can say, "Okay...and?"


Every Punishment is the ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT
Verse 16, quite simply, boggles my mind:

Now, repentance could not come unto men except there were a punishment, which also was eternal as the life of the soul should be, affixed opposite to the plan of happiness, which was as eternal also as the life of the soul.

The way I'm reading it, this is teaching two things.  First, that you can't repent unless a punishment for your crime exists.  And, second, the punishment should be eternal because that's how long a soul lasts and that's how long a reward for good works lasts.  To which I say, what the hell?

You can't repent of anything unless there's an eternal punishment?  Why should every punishment be eternal?  That's kind of saying that every sin is the worst possible sin.  When you get to Hell, the length of your sentence for breaking the Word of Wisdom will be identical to the sentence that the rapists and child molesters get:  forever.  How is that just?

I guess the point Alma is trying to make here is about balance.  There's a balance between justice and mercy.  And there's apparently a balance between the reward given to those who take advantage of the atonement and the punishment given to those who don't.  But still.  Eternity?  After a certain amount of torture, haven't you done your time for all that swearing and iced tea drinking and spaghetti strap wearing?


God Sells His Children Short
For being created in God's image, we sure don't get much credit.  Look at Alma reason his way through an explanation of our Father in Heaven's moral universe:

Now, how could a man repent except he should sin?  How could he sin if there was no law?  How could there be a law save there was a punishment?

How could a man repent except he should sin?  That's what I was saying earlier!  God's just assuming that we'll need to repent because Adam made us all look bad.  But Alma's kind of approaching the problem backwards.  Instead of saying, how can a man overcome his sin except he should repent, he's saying, how can he repent unless he sins?  Which is totally bizarre to me.

Now, there was a punishment affixed, and a just law given, which brought remorse of conscience unto man.

Oh, that's where remorse comes from?  Because when I do something bad, I don't think, "I'm so remorseful because I've broken the just law that God has given."  I think, "I hurt someone and I'm remorseful because that was a mean thing to do."  A lack of punishment doesn't preclude remorse.

Now, if there was no law given—if a man murdered he should die—would he be afraid he would die if he should murder?

And also, if there was no law given against sin men would not be afraid to sin.

Okay, this rationale works in the human legal system for two reasons.  One, because people are actually scum a lot of the time.  And two, because the laws and punishments are well-documented.  How many murderers are completely appalled that what they did was against the law?  How many don't realize that when you kill someone you run the risk of going to jail?  In contrast, though, God's punishment for murder is very poorly documented and a matter of debate.

Trying to create a fear of something that (thanks to Adam) we're naturally predisposed to do seems like a tactic that should be too barbaric and unsophisticated for an omniscient and loving Father in Heaven.

And if there was no law given, if men sinned what could justice do, or mercy either, for they would have no claim upon the creature?

Okay, maybe if there was no law, there could be no justice (in a criminal sense).  But mercy can exist in a legal vacuum.  You don't need laws to extend mercy.  Mercy could still have a perfectly valid "claim" upon "the creature."  And it's almost a moot point, considering that the "law" is sparingly "given" and most of those living under it have no clue.


God is One Sick Bastard
Verse 26 is supposed to be celebrating God, but it kind of makes him look bad:

And thus God bringeth about his great and eternal purposes, which were prepared from the foundation of the world.  And thus cometh about the salvation and the redemption of men, and also their destruction or misery.

So God's great and eternal purposes include sticking it to the jerks that didn't follow the plan that he erased their memory of.  Because all of this, as Alma says, was planned from the beginning.  So praise God for putting us into a situation in which the majority of us are going to fail and then suffer eternally for it.  Lucifer's plan, in case anyone's wondering, was more merciful.

Looks like we need to update Moses 1:39 to read:  "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man, as well as their destruction and misery."


Participation Optional, Consequences Required
But speaking of us being thrust into a system that will doom many of us, verse 27 presents a kind of disingenuous depiction of that scenario:

Therefore, O my son, whosoever will may come and partake of the waters of life freely; and whosoever will not come the same is not compelled to come; but in the last day it shall be restored unto him according to his deeds. 

This makes it sound like God is issuing a cordial invitation to the Salvation Ball.  But even though it's apparently optional (because whosoever will not come is not compelled to come) the consequences are not optional.  If you don't want to play God's game, you still get to spend an eternity in misery.

There is no good way to opt out of this and there never has been.  Those who wanted to opt out before the plan actually went into action were cast out of Heaven with Lucifer.  If you didn't want to sign up for such a perilous endeavor, you could either suffer permanent punishment for it or go ahead with it anyway and still risk permanent punishment.

It's not "whosoever will come may come."  It's "whosoever hath a concern for self-preservation must come." God doesn't tolerate dissenters.

Alma 41: Afterlife May Be Subject to Change

Alma continues his speechifying to Corianton.

The One Degree of Glory
It's interesting that, as Alma lectures his son about the resurrection and the eternal fates of souls, he describes the afterlife as being binary (and he's not just talking about the Spirit World this time):

And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil.  Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—

He uses hands to illustrate his point.  Hands, quite obviously, tend to come in pairs.  Hands are not subdivided into several smaller hands.  Alma is saying that there are only two destinations for resurrected beings—the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the devil.

However, in Doctrine and Covenants section 76, God lays out an explanation of the three degrees of glory—you know, the three separate places that righteous people can wind up.  God only inhabits one of these places.  So, contrary to what Alma says in this chapter, there are four final destinations for resurrected beings and two of them are neither the kingdom of God nor the kingdom of the devil.  And, of course, this all gets even more confusing when you bring in Doctrine and Covenants section 131, in which Joseph Smith teaches that even the highest degree of glory, the Celestial Kingdom, is also subdivided into three different "heavens or degrees."

The more I think about it, the more I feel like the Plan of Salvation is just one long brutal game of macrocosmic Plinko.

They Aren't Not Entirely Non-Unalterable
Check out verse 8:

Now, the decrees of God are unalterable;

Stop right there!

Please.  Polygamy was very clearly a decree from God that was very publicly altered.  The straightforward, unqualified "thou shalt not kill" decreed by God on Mount Sinai was altered in the fourth chapter of the Book of Mormon when he basically orders Nephi to kill Laban.  Let's not pretend that God hasn't changed his mind about stuff and sent a few mixed signals over the centuries.


It's So Easy a Caveman Could Do It!
Picking up from where I left off in verse 8:

...therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved.

And now, behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. 

Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning the restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness.  Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. 

The first half of this quote makes it sound like attaining salvation is a matter so simple as walking into a room.  The next two verses contradict this imagery by warning Corianton that one more screw-up is a massive risk to his eternal well-being.  The second part sounds like the Mormonism I grew up with.  The first part doesn't.

The way definitely is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved.  Except that the overwhelming majority of the world knows nothing about this way and is therefore not prepared to follow it.  And even though some will walk therein and be saved, most will not—and those who have will need to walk therein by proxy to be saved on other people's behalf.

And the gospel isn't as easy as walking down a path to a destination.  It's more like walking along a tightrope to a destination when the tightrope is over a bottomless pit, the destination is too far distant to be seen, and there's a series of flaming hoops to jump through to get there.  Mormonism teaches people to obsess over their worthiness because any deviation from the "prepared way" could send them tumbling hopelessly into the pit, never to see the light of day again.

Alma 40: Afterlife Guesswork

Poor, wayward Corianton is still being lectured by his father, Alma the Younger, who greatly desires to explain some of the more esoteric aspects of the gospel to put his son's mind at ease.


What's the Deal with that Resurrection?
Alma has perceptively discovered that one of Corianton's main problems is a poor understanding of how the resurrection will work.  This makes perfect sense, because when I gained a sexual appetite and began to lose interest in the church just like Corianton did, I too was baffled by the details of the resurrection more than anything else.

Seriously?  "Son, you don't care about church anymore and I've noticed you like women.  Obviously I need to clear up some details of the resurrection to rekindle your testimony."  Alma might as well have said, "Son, your breathing is shallow and I've noticed you have a gunshot wound to the chest.  Obviously I need to put your big toe in a splint so you'll get better."

But, awkward parenting aside, let's see what important information Alma shares:

• There won't be a resurrection until after the coming of Christ (verse 2)
• We don't know when the resurrection will happen (verse 4)
• We don't know how many resurrections there will be, but it's okay because God knows (verse 5)
• After death, good people's spirits will dwell in a paradise until they are resurrected (verse 12)
• After death, bad people's spirits will dwell in outer darkness until they are resurrected (verse 13)
• At some point in time, souls will be reunited with their bodies and be judged by God (verse 21)
• In the resurrection, everything will be perfectly restored to the way it was (verse 23)
• The wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God (verse 26)

Okay, how much of this crap does Corianton need to know?  Almost none of it.  By Alma's own admission, a lot of this stuff doesn't really matter because God's steady hand is at the helm. But somehow, he thinks it's important to break down all these logistics (which he admits he doesn't fully know) to help his disinterested son decide to reclaim his ministry.  All Corianton really needed to hear (the stuff that's essential to salvation, to borrow a phrase) is the last bit:  "no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God."

But yeah, keep talking in circles about the resurrection.

Binary:  Fun for Counting, Bad for Judging

So let's take a closer look at the explanation of the so-called Spirit World, which is described (but not named) in this chapter:

And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.

And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of the wicked, yea, who are evil—for behold, they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil.

I used to think that Mormonism had the only concept of an afterlife that made any kind of sense or had any semblance of fairness.  It's not just a Heaven and Hell thing, there are degrees of glory and people don't have to fall into black-and-white categories.  Silly Catholic friends, thinking the afterlife is all-or-nothing.  Right?

Wrong.  Somehow I was overlooking my own hypocrisy by overlooking the Spirit World.  What happens to people who aren't exactly righteous but who still have a portion of the Spirit of the Lord?  You know, like, normal people who screw up a lot but are basically decent?  The Spirit World has no Limbo.  It's either righteous or wicked.  No in between.  Just like the other religions I used to criticize.  Sure, this all happens before we actually get judged and sent to our final destinations, but we still have to get sorted into two oversimplified, generalized categories that cannot accurately reflect the breadth of the spectrum of human moral conduct.

And even with the three degrees of glory and the three subdivisions of the Celestial Kingdom, it's only marginally fairer than a simple Heaven-or-Hell scenario.  Or less fair, if you look at it as God imposing a caste system on the afterlife.


Alma Speaks as a Man
Verse 20 is good for a scoff and an eye roll:

Now, my son, I do not say that their resurrection cometh at the resurrection of Christ; but behold, I give it as my opinion, that the souls and the bodies are reunited, of the righteous, at the resurrection of Christ, and his ascension into heaven.

This chapter is rife with weirdly parsed sentences and awkward commas and bizarre repetitions.  It seems like it's filled with intentionally impressive phrases that have intentionally obfuscated meanings.  All this, somehow, is supposed to educate Corianton rather than confuse him further.  And I'm sure it helps that when Alma doesn't know some of this purportedly essential doctrine, he just fills in the blanks with his opinions.  If this is simply his opinion and he knows it, why is he preaching it to his doubting child?  If he's not actually prophesying and he's just blowing smoke, why is it included in the painstakingly compiled scripture for the modern day?