(November 2003 Entry Continued From)

Overview

Alma 24 speaks of the People of Ammon burying their weapons of war.  I sat down next to a young woman reading her scriptures one time and asked what she was reading.  I asked what about and she said the People of Ammon burying their weapons.  She thought it was pretty neat that more than had been killed had been saved by their actions.

I said, “How can you liken that to yourself.”  She thought for a moment and said she didn’t have any weapons.  I said, “Don’t you?  What ‘weapons’ do people your age use at school?  How do they injure one another all the time?  They may not be physical, but they inflict real pain and suffering.”  She agreed that insults and put downs might qualify as weapons for her age.

I asked if she were to “bury” her weapons, would she be quite different from others?  She agreed that she would be.  But perhaps by burying those weapons, she would be helping others to find the truth.  It would take real courage not to “defend” ourselves.  In fact, in a severe case, it might even cause our social “death”.  And yet we would come to understand what the People of Ammon went through, and why once they had buried their weapons, they would never take them up again.