As I mentioned two weeks ago, I saw The Oath. And I liked it. It’s a heartfelt movie that gave me a lot to think about. What I like most about it is that it takes the concept of the lone survivor and explores many of its implications. It also raises many big questions, and I’d like to talk about some of them below.

How Would I Feel If My Family Was Killed?

If someone murdered my wife and children, I could seek revenge on the vile culprit. I could even try to find happiness again with another wife. But would those fill the aching hole in my heart? I don’t think so. Moroni is presented not as a vengeful man or one who can’t handle the burden he has to carry. He’s stalwart and doing his best to endure to the end. He does find positive motivations to keep him moving forward, despite the death of everyone he ever loved. But it’s at a terrible price.

I like that he finds solace and comfort at the end of his life by sharing the one thing he is absolutely dedicated to with the woman he comes to love. Being married is all about sharing the most-personal parts of oneself with another. And doing that is what enables two halves to become whole. Having half of oneself ripped away is cruel in the extreme. I’m amazed by the restraint Moroni shows toward his torturers because I can’t imagine how I would react in his shoes.

What Would I Do If My Entire Civilization Ended?

If I witnessed the end of my country, would I just give up and invite death to take me? It would be tempting. But that’s not the path Moroni took. The interesting thing about this story is that it’s not really about triumphing over the forces of evil. It’s mostly about finding consolation in an impossibly bleak situation.

Moroni knows it’s just a matter of time before he, the last of his once-great people, dies. All that matters is that he fulfill the oath he made to his father so that an ancient promise would be kept. Once that is done, there’s no glorious war to win or anything like that. The bad guys have already seemingly won the day. All that’s left is for the forces of good to eke out a small victory by changing just one heart. I suppose that was true of Noah before the great flood, Daniel after the destruction of Jerusalem, and many other prophets through the ages.

How Do You End an Epic Story?

The Book of Mormon tells the epic history of a thousand-year civilization. A story that begins with a prophet foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem in 600 B.C. needs an equally impressive end. And it doesn’t disappoint. Another great people in the Ancient Americas isn’t enslaved like the Jews, but is utterly wiped out by their enemies. Only one man, Moroni, survives to tell the sad tale of their demise.

It reminds me of the final book in The Chronicles of Narnia entitled The Last Battle. In that book, the last king of Narnia suffers the defeat of his entire kingdom and many other terrible disasters. But he fights to the end in true kingly fashion. And his efforts are rewarded by getting to see his ancestors and be worthy of their companionship in heaven.

In general, I think it’s best to get really small when you come to the end of a truly epic story. Most stories, no matter how big they get, start with a small idea. In The Lord of the Rings, its central focus is on the least-powerful, most-insignificant beings making the biggest impact on the world, so of course it returns to the Shire for its conclusion at the end of the trilogy. The Chronicles of Narnia is about a group of children learning to grow up as they witness the creation and decline of a fantastical land. So it’s fitting that, at the end, they get to witness Narnia’s ultimate end and rebirth as something new for them to dwell in eternally.

Of course, those are fictional tales that make no claim of being based on true events. The Oath gives an interesting interpretation of how a thousand-year history might have ended with demonstrations of love, heroism, and personal growth, much like how the story began.

What Does Dying Feel Like?

Dying is sad and scary. It’s something most people don’t care to dwell on because it is one thing that we can’t really understand until we go through it ourselves. And there’s rarely any coming back from it, at least for now. It seems so permanent and shrouded in darkness that it’s hard to figure out. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be a source of dread if we’ve lived a good life.

That is what The Oath has to say about death. It’s not so scary to die when it feels like returning home to the ones you love. I like the hopeful way it portrays a good person meeting his end. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the death of Maximus at the end of Gladiator. In that film, the main character longs to be with his wife and son once more. And he has no chance of doing that in this life after they are both killed. So he has to wait until he fulfills his mission in life before he can return to them in the next life.

I like to think that dying will feel like a warm embrace from unseen loved ones waiting for us on the other side. As long as we’ve lived right, we have nothing to fear from death. That’s easy for me to say as a healthy man, but I trust that when death comes for me, it won’t be something to be feared. My goal is to live like Moroni and other great men who haven’t feared death, not out of recklessness but by being perfectly honest with themselves.

An Oath and a Warning

I feel a lot like Moroni’s father, Mormon. In a way, it’s appropriate that people often refer to people like me as Mormons even though that’s inaccurate. We’re actually members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormon was a prophet who lived to see the decline and destruction of his civilization. And his son had to continue on after him and hide up in the earth the record his father had written so that it could be translated and given to the world many hundreds of years later.

I hope I won’t see the United States of America go the way of the Nephites or the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It’s currently a nation in decline in terms of its trust in God and everything else that has made it special since its beginning. We see the signs all around us. I pray that we will awake from our slumber and not get to the point where we are but a sad memory for others to learn from. That’s an oath worth keeping.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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