BOM Alma 14

One passage in Alma 14 has really stood out to me for several years now:  Alma 14:21, which describes the treatment of the prophets Alma and Amulek by the apostate people of Ammonihah.

And many such things did they say unto them, gnashing their teeth upon them, and spitting upon them, and saying: How shall we look when we are damned?

In the preceding verse, the record has told us that the mob continually hit Alma and Amulek.  The succeeding verse will describe how the mob mocked them, stripped them of their clothing, starved them, deprived them of water, and kept them bound and confined in prison.

Add to that the mob’s “gnashing” of their teeth upon Alma and Amulek, as related in 14:21, and the mob’s spitting upon them.

Thus, to their sarcastic question “How shall we look when we are damned?” the appropriate and quite accurate answer from Alma and Amulek would surely have been “Pretty much exactly the way you look now.”

They seem like characters right out of Dante’s Hell.

I know people who have abandoned their faith in Mormonism and/or in Christianity and/or in theism and who have, nonetheless, remained decent folks, civil, respectful, and polite.

But I’ve also encountered people — and I know places online where they can be encountered regularly — who’ve become incredibly toxic, incessantly hostile, consumed with hatred and sneering bitterness.  I’m astonished that they can’t seem to see what they’ve become.

Many years ago, I heard an account of the return of the famous LSD guru Dr. Timothy Leary to Harvard, where he had previously been a member of the faculty of psychology, for a debate about the merits of psychedelic drugs.  He, of course, advocated their widespread use and had been using them frequently for many years; his debate adversary (whose identity I don’t think I ever knew) strongly opposed such use.  Supposedly, after Leary delivered his opening remarks, his debate opponent stood up and simply commented, “Tim, you look like hell.”  And, said the person telling me the story, the debate was effectively over at that point.  Because, after years of drug use, Leary did in fact look like hell, and no amount of oratorical cleverness could obscure that obvious and lethal fact.