21 But Nephi said unto them: O ye fools, ye uncircumcised of heart, ye blind, and ye stiffnecked people, do ye know how long the Lord your God will suffer you that ye shall go on in this your way of sin?
22 O ye ought to begin to howl and mourn, because of the great destruction which at this time doth await you, except ye shall repent.
We are all familiar with the saying: “He who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other” (Harry Emerson Fosdick, Living Under Tension: Sermons on Christianity Today (1941), 111; quoted by Jeffrey R. Holland in “Abide in Me“, General Conference, April 2004). One of the great challenges of life is to be true to our future selves–to make decisions today which will result in positive outcomes tomorrow. It is so easy to trade our future happiness and security for a mess of pottage. (See Genesis 25:29-34).
That’s why prophets so often urge us to consider the future consequences of our actions. Alma was jolted into a greater self-awareness when an angel said, “If thou wilt of thyself be destroyed, seek no more to destroy the church of God” (Alma 36:9). He was alarmed to discover that he was destroying himself by the decisions he was making.
In the passage quoted above, Nephi attempts to give his people a similar jolt: If you want to keep sinning, then you might as well start crying and lamenting right away, because these decisions are leading to inevitable misery unless you repent.
Furthermore, we don’t know how long we have before those consequences kick in. All we can control is what we will choose to do right now. We don’t know how long things will be as they are, and we don’t know at what point the consequences of our current choices will crystallize into our new reality.
Today, I will be true to my future self. I will make choices with an eternal perspective, and I will strive to make decisions which will result in my long-term happiness and in the long-term happiness of the people around me.