Alma 13: 30

And may the Lord grant unto you repentance, This is the desire that feeds Alma’s preaching: that he wants his people to receive forgiveness!

that ye may not bring down his wrath upon you, Remember that God’s wrath (at it’s worst) is only justice: He never spitefully punishes.

that ye may not be bound down by the chains of hell,

that ye may not suffer the second death.

I always have a hard time when I come to a verse like this that sounds kind of threatening: “Do this or else…” because I think that understanding this as a threat is so automatic and so wrong. Threatening has never been a godly way to motivate: in fact, we were recently counseled that playing upon guilt is not an appropriate way to motivate in the Church (link).

So if that’s a blatant misunderstanding, what is really being said here? If it’s not a threat, what is it? Some possibilities:

1) A threat in a godly way that we (by our mortal nature) can’t carry out righteously

a. It’s true that we shouldn’t think of God threatening the way that we threaten: filled with hate, wishing nothing but the worst for our foes, almost hoping that the threat will be carried out. God is reticent to punish His children. He says that it “repented” (Gen. 6: 6 footnote a says “The Heb. root means ‘to be sorry,’ ‘moved to pity,’ ‘have compassion.’”) him that he had to use the flood in Noah’s day. Jonah desired that the Lord would destroy Nineveh: after all, he had traveled long and hard to pass on to them the message of their impending doom. But when the Lord forgave the city, He was happy to preserve them (Jonah 3: 10), and Jonah shows his mortality in holding the grudge against them (Jonah 4).

2) A reminder of consequences

a. This may be the case, but there are a million and one consequences in the world that are so wonderful and worth-while. If we were to focus on the negative consequences that we are trying to avoid, would we ever have the positive drive sufficient to “anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of [our] own free will” (D&C 58: 27)? But we should note that this whole sermon has been dedicated to telling the people about the happy consequences of repenting: the ability to direct others “in what manner to look forward to his [God’s] Son for redemption”(v2), entering into the rest of God and helping others to enter into His rest (v6), becoming “high priests forever, after the order of the Son, the Only Begotten of the Father” (v9), “being sanctified by the Holy Ghost” (v12), “being pure and spotless before God” (v12), gaining the ability to “establish peace” (v18), revelations becoming understandable (v23), ministering of angels (v24). Alma is definitely not focusing on only the negative consequences: that was me. I need to be careful not to focus on these verses above all of the promised blessings!

3) An earnest face-off with Alma’s own worst fears

a. Usually, you have to be really close to a person before you are able to talk with them honestly about your fears. In fact, I think most of the time I have a hard time talking with myself honestly about my own fears! Maybe this is a mark of Alma’s consuming desire to help these people that he tells them his fears about what would happen to them if they continue in their current course.

4) The lack of a better way in English to say that Heavenly Father expects full obedience

a. Maybe the Lord felt like this was the only way to convey to us that He wants to be strictly obeyed: see, even I have a hard time conveying that without using negative connotations (like the word ‘strict’). Maybe the Lord decided that we would come through other scriptures to understand His mercy, but that where we have a hard time marrying His desire for obedience with His desire for mercy in our descriptions of Him, having one description reflecting each component, each with the statement that they were intended to represent the same God to us would be more effective than creating a new concept, making a new word, and trying to work from there. This is consistent with the scriptural comment that God speaks to us according to our own language, not His own language: it is so we can understand (2 Ne. 31: 3). It’s also important to note that Christ Himself told the Pharisees that mercy is the more important (Matt. 9: 13) and then told the disciples who wanted to see strict pharisaical obedience trounced upon that their level of obedience is required for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5: 20). I think it tells us a little bit about the tendencies in our times that we rarely hear that verse, even though it’s a part of the Sermon on the Mount!