Consequences

There are consequences, good or bad, to every choice we make. A realization and an acceptance of consequences will make us freer than we otherwise would be. This may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but an Ensign article by Elder Robert S. Wood of the Seventy explains it better than I can. The article is titled "On the Responsible Self" and appears in the March 2002 Ensign. Elder Wood says:

Perhaps the symbolic nature of the second temptation is the least apparent of the three. But on reflection, this temptation points to a tendency to which we all are subject—the tendency to desire some miraculous delivery from the consequences of our actions; to be borne up, if you will, by angels or divine providence, with little effort on our part.

He then discusses personal responsibility and consequences in the rest of the article. It's good food for thought.

We do all have a tendency to want to be delivered from any negative consequences of our choices, but it is better and more freeing to make choices with positive consequences. Easier said than done, I know, but it is what we must strive for. Repentance and the Atonement make it possible to correct the mistakes we make (and we will make mistakes) and move forward to progress toward better choices.

There are an endless number of choices that we make throughout our lives. Although it is now popular to admonish one another to not judge, we do have to make judgements every day as to which choices we should make. The choices range from simple things such as what to have for breakfast to somewhat more serious choices such as whether or not to write that blog post about some favorite speculation of ours that might (or might not) be a bad influence on others. We also have major choices to make about education, jobs, marriage, and how we live the gospel. Every one of these choices has some kind of consequence. It would be a good thing for us to learn to consider the consequences anytime we make a choice. That will free us by helping us to make choices with positive consequences rather than negative consequences.

Conversion

Thinking about conversion to the gospel and all that it entails gives me an interesting perspective on politics. So much of politics and government seems to involve efforts to force the people to behave in certain ways, to redistribute wealth, to control the economy, to control healthcare, and many other things. Although the ostensible purpose is to create a good life for the people, it really amounts to an effort to grab power and control for the elite few, who think they know better than everyone else what is needed. And wasn't that Satan's plan--to force people to be perfect and to gain power for himself?

Although most people are not likely to be evil at heart, forcing others to behave in certain ways does nothing to create a perfect society. A review of history shows how wrong these plans go. Look at the histories of Russia, China, and Cuba for three examples.

So what does this have to do with conversion? Conversion to the gospel changes people from the inside out, rather than from the outside in as communism, socialism, and Marxism attempt to do. Look at these scriptures from 4 Nephi 1.

2 And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another....
15 And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.
16 And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.
17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.

Does that not describe a truly good society that yet is free? There was no coercion, no resentment, no confiscation of one's goods to give to another. All was shared freely and willingly in love for God and for their fellowmen. That is the ideal and it cannot be forced.

Naturally enough, conversion to the gospel also cannot be forced upon people. It can, however, be spread by teaching and example, by love and patience. And is not this the best way, the only way, to develop a society of equality and justice and kindness and generosity?

As each one of us, individually and from the heart, becomes converted unto the Lord, Zion grows a bit stronger. As our example spreads to those around us, Zion grows a bit stronger still. We must live in a free society in order for this to take place. As He always does, God knows what He is doing. The plans of men, the philosophies of men, cannot replace the plan of God, our Heavenly Father, for all His children.

What About the Desires of Our Hearts?

In the November 1996 Ensign a conference talk by Elder Neal A. Maxwell is reprinted. It is titled "According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts". Elder Maxwell has this to say about desire and its effect on our agency and accountability:

Exemplifying this happy reality are the doctrinal teachings concerning desire, which relates so directly to our moral agency and our individuality. Whether in their conception or expression, our desires profoundly affect the use of our moral agency. Desires thus become real determinants, even when, with pitiful naivete, we do not really want the consequences of our desires.

Desire denotes a real longing or craving. Hence righteous desires are much more than passive preferences or fleeting feelings. Of course our genes, circumstances, and environments matter very much, and they shape us significantly. Yet there remains an inner zone in which we are sovereign, unless we abdicate. In this zone lies the essence of our individuality and our personal accountability.

He also has this to say:

Mostly, brothers and sisters, we become the victims of our own wrong desires. Moreover, we live in an age when many simply refuse to feel responsible for themselves. Thus, a crystal-clear understanding of the doctrines pertaining to desire is so vital because of the spreading effluent oozing out of so many unjustified excuses by so many. This is like a sludge which is sweeping society along toward “the gulf of misery and endless wo” (Hel. 5:12). Feeding that same flow is the selfish philosophy of “no fault,” which is replacing the meek and apologetic “my fault.” We listen with eager ear to hear genuine pleas for forgiveness instead of the ritualistic “Sorry. I hope I can forgive myself.”

Some seek to brush aside conscience, refusing to hear its voice. But that deflection is, in itself, an act of choice, because we so desired. Even when the light of Christ flickers only faintly in the darkness, it flickers nevertheless. If one averts his gaze therefrom, it is because he so desires.

Like it or not, therefore, reality requires that we acknowledge our responsibility for our desires. Brothers and sisters, which do we really desire, God’s plans for us or Satan’s?

Do we recognize our responsibility for our desires, or do we think they just happen and there is nothing we can do about it? I think that often, we do have a tendency to think, "This is just the way I am and I can't change it." That really is not true, though. With God's help, we can change. If we trust Him and rely on Him, we can transform our lives.

Elder Maxwell has this to say:

What we are speaking about is so much more than merely deflecting temptations for which we somehow do not feel responsible. Remember, brothers and sisters, it is our own desires which determine the sizing and the attractiveness of various temptations. We set our thermostats as to temptations.

Thus educating and training our desires clearly requires understanding the truths of the gospel, yet even more is involved. President Brigham Young confirmed, saying, “It is evident that many who understand the truth do not govern themselves by it; consequently, no matter how true and beautiful truth is, you have to take the passions of the people and mould them to the law of God” (in Journal of Discourses, 7:55).

“Do you,” President Young asked, “think that people will obey the truth because it is true, unless they love it? No, they will not” (in Journal of Discourses, 7:55). Thus knowing gospel truths and doctrines is profoundly important, but we must also come to love them. When we love them, they will move us and help our desires and outward works to become more holy.

Each assertion of a righteous desire, each act of service, and each act of worship, however small and incremental, adds to our spiritual momentum. Like Newton’s Second Law, there is a transmitting of acceleration as well as a contagiousness associated with even the small acts of goodness.

And this:

Some of our present desires, therefore, need to be diminished and then finally dissolved. For instance, the biblical counsel “let not thine heart envy sinners” is directed squarely at those with a sad unsettlement of soul (Prov. 23:17). Once again, we must be honest with ourselves about the consequences of our desires, which follow as the night, the day. Similarly faced with life’s so-called “bad breaks,” the natural man desires to wallow in self-pity; therefore this desire must go too.

But dissolution of wrong desires is only part of it. For instance, what is now only a weak desire to be a better spouse, father, or mother needs to become a stronger desire, just as Abraham experienced divine discontent and desired greater happiness and knowledge (see Abr. 1:2).

I like this next statement very much:

It is up to us. Therein lies life’s greatest and most persistent challenge. Thus when people are described as “having lost their desire for sin,” it is they, and they only, who deliberately decided to lose those wrong desires by being willing to “give away all [their] sins” in order to know God (Alma 22:18).

There is much more to the talk, of course, and reading it in its entirety will give you a better idea of the points Elder Maxwell is making. The point I want to make is that we can change. If we do not desire to change, we can change that! What it requires, to start with, is an honest assessment of ourselves and where we are now, and where we wish to go. It requires thinking about the consequences of our desires and deciding which desires are right and can stay and which are wrong and have to go. Not easy, I know, but then we are here to learn and to grow, not to have life easy.

On Relying on the Lord

I am feeling much better these days. Still not 100%, but not dead on my feet anymore!

I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying lately about being humble and obedient. It is a shame that these states of being have gotten such a bad reputation. They conjure up images of being weak doormats, which is far from what they are. Our pride gets in the way and we worry about losing our individual identity, forgetting that we have our agency and also that we are each a unique package of traits and gifts and abilities that will not disappear if we are humble and obedient.

Becoming converted to the gospel and living it all of our lives depends on our humbling ourselves before the Lord and recognizing that His will for us is what is best for us. Our uniqueness means that our service to the Lord will have its own individual stamp and will add something to the building of Zion that no other can add in quite the same way. We do not lose by being humble and obedient--we only gain. We gain faith and strong testimonies and a goodness that comes in no other way. We gain help and comfort and strength and blessings from the Lord. We gain in better relationships and love with other people. We gain knowledge and understanding and wisdom and confidence. We gain a completeness that we can find in no other way.

Becoming humble, obedient, and converted is not something that we come to in an instant. It is an ongoing process of growth and progress. We can help it along with prayer, scripture study, fasting, and service. We help it along, too, in fellowship with others and in developing such virtues as patience, integrity, charity, and so forth. We can allow the Lord to lead us and guide us without holding back parts of ourselves. We can recognize His omnipotence and omniscience and can trust Him completely.

Everyone has issues that they struggle with. That is a part of the testing, trying, and proving of mortal life. Becoming humble, obedient, and trusting the Lord can lead us to the answers we need. Sometimes those answers are slow in coming, but the Lord knows what He is doing. Sometimes we will have to wait until the next life to understand some things because of the mortal limitations we are living under now. This does not mean that there are no answers, just that we have to wait for them.

By putting the Lord first in our lives and relying on Him, we can live up to our potential and be the people that the Lord means for us to be. He does not hold us back--He urges us onward and upward. Not just for this mortal life, but for all eternity.

Considering Viewpoints

One of the things I struggle with is compassion and "tough love." As I consider viewpoints on a variety of topics, I come up against wanting to help people and wanting those same people to learn to help themselves. I see ideas that would immediately relieve suffering, but that would cause serious problems down the road. Case in point: welfare.

If we give people food, money, housing, and so forth, it can give them an opportunity to pull themselves together because they aren't totally caught up in wondering where their next meal is coming from or where they are going to live. However, too many people become dependent on welfare and come to expect these things to just be given to them. They aren't using the reprieve from suffering to improve their education and job skills and to look for jobs, or otherwise improve their lives and their prospects.

Immigration is this sort of problem, too. If we grant illegal immigrants all kinds of privileges and perks, we are rewarding their lawbreaking. National security issues enter into this situation also, something we can't ignore in this day and age. Yet most of us do feel compassion for the poor who want to come to America.

Environmental concerns can cause problems, too. If we rush into solutions that appear to solve the problem in the short term, we may seriously cripple our economy and cause much greater problems in the long run. Yet we do need to be good stewards of this earth.

War also brings into play many considerations and, in the heat of the moment, it is hard to think of long term consequences. Yet we must. Peace--real peace--cannot be bought with the price of genocide and oppression.

Throw into this mix trying to live as God and Jesus Christ would have us to live. We study the scriptures and pray and seek the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Somehow, though, different people come up with different answers as to what is right. My own take on the matter is that while we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, this does not mean giving in to whatever our neighbor wants or allowing our neighbor to lead us astray. There are lines that must be drawn. Waste is waste. Sin is sin. Foolishness is foolishness. These things ought not to be encouraged.

Charity isn't giving things away indiscriminately, but is the judicious use of reasonable help coupled with teaching the recipient how to do better in living their lives. Some would say that it is not our place to tell others how to live. To a point, this is true--each has his own agency and has to make his own decisions. However, you would not buy alcohol for an alcoholic, would you? There are some things that are just wrong and need to not be supported. Truth is not relative. Morality is not relative. And the greatest act of charity that we can perform is to help someone see a better way to live. We cannot force them to choose that way, but we can at least let them know it is there and that they do have a choice.

I also think that in choosing our viewpoints on various topics, we need to be aware that there are those who advocate for one viewpoint or another who have their own agendas. They may be seeking power, fame, or fortune. Be aware of that possibility. It is possible to be led astray by a good speaker/writer. Take the time to do your own research. It seems, too, that it is easy to obsess over some perceived problem to the point where one sees examples of that problem everywhere, even though in reality, the so-called examples are nothing of the kind. We need to use our God-given intelligence, discernment, and judgement in making our decisions about what to believe and what causes to support or disavow.

Ah, judgement. The new bad word. The truth is, though, that we have to use judgement constantly to make decisions. It is true that we should treat people kindly and tactfully, but it is not true that we cannot learn from the mistakes we see others make, and it is not true that we have to embrace wrong things just so we won't hurt someone's feelings. I certainly wouldn't recommend going around criticizing people or being rude, but we do not have to follow their leads.

It is not easy to do the right thing in all situations and to choose the right viewpoints to support, but we have to try. It is how we grow and learn and become better tomorrow than we are today. If we can learn to look down the road and see the consequences of this or that choice, we will be in a better position to make right decisions that won't cause irreparable harm.

Love thy neighbor as thyself is a commandment, but even before that one is to love God with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength. To me, this means to not only love God, but to follow His ways in all things, and to learn what His ways truly are, not just what we want them to be.

Choices

As we learn the gospel, we learn about agency. Agency is the gift our Heavenly Father gave us from the beginning. The question of whether or not we were to have agency, the ability to choose for ourselves, played a central role in the pre-mortal council. There Lucifer, or Satan, offered to be our savior, but his plan included no agency, no choice for us. Jesus, however, offered to be our Savior and included our having the agency to choose for ourselves. Naturally, God chose Jesus for the role of Savior to the world because it was essential to us to be able to make choices. That was the only way our lives could have meaning and the only way that we could progress and grow and learn.

Agency brings consequences, both good and bad, and there is always the risk of making mistakes. The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to repent of any mistakes we make and to reconcile ourselves to God. The plan of salvation makes possible both the possession of agency and the ability to return to our Heavenly Father, through the Atonement.

Mortal life is complicated by myriads of choices, some small, some medium, and some large. We choose what clothes to wear, what books to read, what career to pursue, whom to marry, and whether or not we will have faith in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We choose whether to obey God or to obey Satan. The latter choice is usually disguised as freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without regard to consequences, either to ourselves or to others. It is, nevertheless, choosing to follow Satan.

Our lives are the messy mix of the choices we have made through the years. Repentance and the Atonement allow us to clean up the mess and make progress toward a clean and orderly eternal life. Bringing a wholeness or a completeness to our lives is necessary. We cannot live exemplary lives on the surface and secretly rob banks. If we are to develop any virtue, it must touch every area of our lives.

In our efforts to reconcile every aspect of our lives and create a wholeness, we need some point on which to base our decisions. So do we choose to base our wholly integrated selves on the gospel, or on some philosophy of men? Our choice will have eternal consequences.

We can know, through our study of the gospel and the growth of our faith and testimony, that the correct choice is to base our lives on the gospel. Everything good comes from God. His gospel contains the truth. Therefore, if we base our lives on truth, we will be making the choice that will allow us to become whole and healed and to return to our God.

As we go through the world and live our lives, we learn many things and come in contact with many ideas and theories. Some of these are good and some are bad--some are even evil. How do we know which is which? We turn to the gospel for guidance. Thus we can choose the good and eshew the bad or the evil.

People are going to have some basis for making their choices, even if that base is subconcious. Sometimes we take a liking to some mortal philosophy and accept or reject other things based on whether it fits with that philosophy or not. Is it not better to choose as our basis something we know to be true, something that will lead us toward more truth and goodness and light and knowledge?

Of course, it isn't easy to do this. We want to do the right things and make the right choices, but we can get mixed up and make mistakes. Some of our mistakes come because we don't understand the teachings of the gospel thoroughly. It takes a lifetime to learn it all--an eternal lifetime. We don't always get complete explanations. We have to trust our God, trust that He knows what He is doing. We have to take some things on faith, not knowing the whys and wherefores until later, perhaps not until the next life. The philosophies of men don't give us all the answers, either, but they also do not have the promise that someday they will have the answers.

The gospel teaches us how to make right choices and how to correct our mistakes through repentance and the Atonement. What can the philosophies of men do?