When in scripture God promises that people will be “destroyed,” that can be controversial. Is it a threat? Coercion?
In my personal BoM reading this year, I’ve been struck by Alma the younger’s use of that word. When Mormon is telling Alma the younger’s conversion story in Mosiah 27, Mormon expresses the angel’s message using the term “cast off”:
And now I say unto thee, Alma, go thy way, and seek to destroy the church no more, that their prayers may be answered, and this even if thou wilt of thyself be cast off. (Mosiah 27:16)
But in Alma the younger’s own retelling of his story, he uses a different phrase to express what the angel told him:
And he said unto me: If thou wilt of thyself be destroyed, seek no more to destroy the church of God. (Alma 36:9)
Was Alma to be “Cast off” or “desroyed?” Are these two different concepts being expressed? I suggest no. In scripture, God’s influence is described in terms of sustaining, preserving and protecting. The influence of Satan is entropy, which is disorder and chaos.
When God destroys a person or a society, it is generally a matter of removing His influence (which is to be “cast off” or “cut off”), which then leaves us “exposed to the elements,” so to speak. We are left to fend for ourselves against the forces of entropy.
Another use of destroy is found in the Savior’s instructions to the church on worthiness to take the sacrament, found in 3 Nephi 18:
30 Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out from among you, but ye shall minister unto him and shall pray for him unto the Father, in my name; and if it so be that he repenteth and is baptized in my name, then shall ye receive him, and shall minister unto him of my flesh and blood.
31 But if he repent not he shall not be numbered among my people, that he may not destroy my people, for behold I know my sheep, and they are numbered.
32 Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them.
Here, we read a warning to the church that an unrepentant person can “destroy” Christ’s people. Obviously He does not mean physical destruction, because the surrounding verses talk about continuing to minister to this person. But if we understand destruction in terms of entropy, then what is being said here makes perfect sense. Sin is entropy in the soul, and when people spread entropy (chaos and disorder) to others around them, they facilitate the entropic destruction of those souls.
To be personally destroyed means to be entropic, refusing God’s law, refusing to sustain His ordained servants, and refusing other similar divine sources of order for our souls.
In scripture, the word “destroy” might in some cases be understood as direct physical destruction. But in many (and I would suggest most) other cases, “destroy” simply means that God leaves people to experience the chaos and entropy that they have shown they desire.