Total loss of Civilization

Today I read Ether 14 which is a very depressing chapter. Ether 14 starts the war among the Jaredites that never ends and culminates in their destruction. I remember as a teenager my Dad once giving a Family Home Evening lesson that consisted of a scripture chain of how you could tell when a civilization was ripe for destruction, as the scriptures always say. I have marked in the set of scriptures that I used to use in seminary and later my mission.

Every time I get to this part of the Book of Mormon I think of those scriptures, for obvious reasons. Today when I read this chapter I was appalled at the sheer blood lust and total disregard for human life that the Jaredites had at this point. As I read the account of Shiz pursuing Coriantumr and how he would just slaughter any and all cities that he came across, for no reason that we are given, I couldn't help think to myself that this is indeed what it means to lose civilization.

Such an idea is totally foreign to me. How can someone just enjoy killing so much that they would randomly kill every woman and children in a city, just because they were there? As a teenager I had never noticed those verses and what was going on at the time of destruction of the Jaredites and I had felt sorry for the loss of life and the fact that they were destroyed.

Now that I am older and can read what was actually going on, I feel only that the Lord was justified in his wiping such evil off the face of the earth. I know we live in a very violent time and that people's emotions are dampened, but how could those men just kill innocent women and children like that? Just yesterday during my lunch break, 3 ladies came in and changed the channel to some show where they were talking about a woman whose husband had tried to kill her and the only reason he failed was someone who heard the commotion called the police. I was not watching it, I was reading a book, but just listening to it all made me sick to my stomach. Apparently they showed really graphic photos because one of the women protested at one point, but these 3 women were watching it quite calmly while eating lunch! I couldn't believe it. And it wasn't even fiction, it was real, it had happened several years ago and they could not only watch it quite calmly, but even eat lunch during it all.

It was quite sad to see. I could not believe that we, as a society, have become so desensitized to violence and have come to value human life and happiness so completely that we can not be disturbed by it when we come face to face with it. It makes me really worried about us as a race and as a civilization. Because we are no different than the Nephites and the Jaredites, once we become fully ripe, we too can and will be swept off the face of this land. It's just sad to me that the technology that makes it so much easier to share the gospel, to keep in touch with old friends and do all these wonderful things, is the same technology that is slowly but surely eating away at us and making us more prone to these types of atrocities.

I do not wish to dwell on such horrible topics so I will not. But the fact of the matter is, as horrible as it is, there are lessons to learn in the downfall of the Jaredites. Pray that we learn them, so they are not repeated. Until tomorrow.