Amulon Who Was Not Brave

Mosiah 19-24

Mosiah 24:11-12 And Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries; and he put guards over them to watch them, that whosoever should be found calling upon God should be put to death. And Alma and his people did not raise their voices to the Lord their God, but did pour out their hearts to him; and he did know the thoughts of their hearts.

Do you remember how Alma and a bunch of people were happy because they trusted God? Well not everyone was happy. Alma was only one of the priests of Noah. And he wasn’t even the head priest.

The head priest was Amulon. And after Alma had run away, Amulon was left to convince Noah that they had done nothing wrong. Everything was still okay. Great actually. Just like before. Before what? Before Abinadi. That’s what Amulon really wanted. He wanted things to go back to how they were before Abinadi had stood up bravely and told them the truth.

But it was hopeless. Because one person acting bravely is powerful. And that power quickly got out of Amulon’s control. First Alma saw Abinadi being brave and that inspired him to be brave. Then people saw Alma being brave and so they decided to be brave too. And more and more people were being brave. How were they being brave? They were all taking a good look at themselves in a mirror.

They were looking right into their own eyes. And they were seeing a whole body of imperfections. Imperfect nose, eyes, face, and heart. When you look at the mirror and this is what you see, you will probably want to look away. Because it’s embarrassing. But they did not look away. Instead, they were brave and they looked harder and harder and harder. And then

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they saw it. Right there, in the eyes. It was God. God was in them.

This was a problem for Noah and Amulon and the other priests. The people were finding God in their own eyes and so they no longer needed a king like Noah. They didn’t need a king to tell them what to do or what to believe. They had God. And God told them the truth and helped them to be brave.

Amulon tried to show the people that they still needed a king like Noah. But the people wouldn’t listen. They wanted to get rid of the king. And they fought and argued and grew more and more divided. And guess what, this is just what the Lamanties had been hoping would happen. You see, they wanted their lands back. And now that the Nephites were weak because they were fighting with each other, it was a perfect time to go and chase them out. And that’s what they did.

Amulon and Noah and his priests and a few others were so scared they ran into the forest, leaving their wives and children behind. Many of the men who had abandoned their families were ashamed. And the ashamed men turned on King Noah and threw him in a fire and chased all of his priests away. “We have done the most terrible thing,” said the ashamed men. “Maybe it is too late to save our families. Maybe we are returning to our deaths. But we will return home anyway. We should never have left.”

And this is remarkable because it must have been so embarrassing to admit such a large, incomprehensible mistake. But these men had finally decided to be brave. And they were brave. Amulon must have been ashamed and embarrassed too. But he still could not be brave. He could not admit that what he had done was wrong even though it was so so so wrong.

He did not go back. He could not face his wife or his kids or his people. Instead, he started a new city with the other priests and a new family with a Lamanite girl he found and took without even asking if she wanted to marry him. And they ran away into the forest. As you can imagine, the Lamanites did not take kindly to this. It took them a while, but eventually, the Lamanites captured Amulon and his wife and their new kids.

And Amulon just kept telling himself that he was right. That he had done nothing wrong. He was so good at persuading himself, that he actually managed to persuade the Lamanites too. And because the Lamanites believed him, it was a little easier to believe himself all over again.

And so Amulon wanted to become another king like King Noah. He wanted his own priests and his own servants so that they could tell him that there was nothing wrong with him. In other words, he wanted people to subjugate

Subjugate, a definition:

To subjugate is to put other people below you. Standing on them like a ladder. Sitting on them like a chair. Crawling on them like a sandbox. Anything is subjugation that treats other people like things instead of people. And this is bad because people are not things. People are people.

But first, Amulon needed to find people to subjugate. Lucky for Amulon, the Lamanites soon discovered the people of Alma. Remember the people of Alma? Alma was the priest who listened to Abinadi and saw the orange for what it was. And he and a group of people ran into the woods where they lived and loved bigger and better because God was sewing their hearts together. Remember them?

Well, Amulon asked if the Lamanites could make him king over Alma and his heart-knit community. The Lamanites agreed and that was that. Except it wasn’t. Because Alma’s people did not want a king. So they prayed to God. They said, “God, you are our king. We don’t need another person. And we don’t like Amulon stepping on our backs. Please help him to let us go free.”

This made Amulon angry. He told the people to stop praying. But there was nothing he could do because God was inside of them. And so they just kept on praying silently and patiently.

But they quickly learned that Amulon would not let them go because he could not face himself in the mirror. He needed them. He needed to be their king so that he could feel good about himself. It was sad. But he was not going to be brave. He was just another King Noah who could not look in the mirror long enough to see past his imperfections.

He would never be brave enough to stare those imperfections down. To look at them hard and long and honest enough to see that the person he was really trying to control, the person subjugated below them all, was God.

And so God told Alma and his people to run away. And they did. And God led all the righteous Nephites back to where they had come from years and years ago. Back to King Mosiah who lived in a place called Zarahemla. And they were all safe and happy at last. At least for a little while.

Joshua is an award-winning writer and director. His recent book, Ali the Iraqi, was published by BCC press. Sarah is a literature and theology doctoral student studying the Book of Job in the twentieth century.

Artwork by Maddie Baker.