In chapter 12, Mormon can no longer hold back his personal point of view. As an abridger up to this point, Mormon has been very restrained. But in abridging the book of Helaman, he repeatedly and emphatically had encountered sobering evidence of the dark side of human nature. As you read Mormon’s words here (which are particularly poignant when you remember what he himself had lived through personally), what characteristics of human nature do you see that should give us all great pause?
After the famine ended, what emotions and problems beset the Nephites (11:26–33)?
How can people, individually and collectively, overcome “unsteadiness” (12:1)?
In what ways today do people “trample under their feet the Holy One” (12:2)?
How can a person increase their speed in becoming less slow to do good, to remember the Lord, and to walk in wisdom’s paths? (12:4–6)
How does it help you to know that you are “less than the dust of the earth”? (12:7; recall also Mosiah 2:25).