We like feeling free—the more options, the better. Freedom seems almost like an end unto itself. We will even fight wars, kill, and die to maintain freedom.
One of the quickest ways to stir someone up to anger is to convince a person that his or her rights are being taken away or curtailed somehow.
Korihor took this approach. The high priest asked him, “Why do ye go about perverting the ways of the Lord? Why do ye teach this people that there shall be no Christ, to interrupt their rejoicings?
Korihor responds: “Because I do not teach the foolish traditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according to thy words” (Alma 30:22-23).
Korihor turns the question about the existence of God into a debate about power, authority, and oppression. He cannot produce one iota of physical evidence (the burden of science) that there is no God. On the other hand, Alma points out the obvious evidences for the hand of God in all creation. Order, symmetry, predictability, reliability, complexity, beauty—all are evidences of intelligent acting to organize something. We admire art, and the more beautiful it is, the more certain we are of the artist’s skill.
“…ye have the testimony of all…thy brethren…all the holy prophets…The scriptures…and all things…even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator” (Alma 30:44). It is bizarre to hear intelligent people assert that things no human can reproduce in a laboratory are accidental in origin. Accidents are random, and any accident should therefore be easily reproduced.
We are, as Korihor asserts, free to believe what we want. However, we are not free to experience a universe built around our suppositions and prejudices. A person’s disbelief in gravity will not keep him safe if he should choose to walk off a cliff (or fall accidentally). As Joseph Smith taught, truth will cut its own way. The saying, “Ignorance is bliss,” eventually caves in on itself when debts past due or health problems or other things we were unaware of catch up to us. Consequences of ignorance can be far worse than the discomfort of knowing in advance, and so it is usually good to be as informed about the past, present, and possible or inevitable future as we can.
False beliefs might give consolation or an ego boost to the one who possesses them, but there is no place to hide from the truth forever.
Freedom of will, agency, is given to us by God, and we will be held accountable for our choices, and their consequences.
Authority-Averse
Various recent statements by atheists have made me aware of just how little their disbelief in God can be related to science (what can be demonstrated through repeatable experiments), and just how much it can center in emotion—anger over being told what to do.
In a recorded interview with Carl Sagan, he asserted that animals actually do exhibit behaviors similar to humans, and therefore we are not special. He went down the list behaviors often considered unique to humans that animals also practice, and included “religion.” This stunned me, and the host who interviewed him was also incredulous—do apes and dolphins worship gods and build idols and have ceremonies? Carl Sagan responded that they have hierarchies, power structures, just like religions do. “But how is that different from your relationship with your boss?” the interviewer asked. Carl did not even stop to address that valid and salient point. He never answered the interviewer’s question adequately.
For him, the essence of religion power or influence, not about the fundamental answers to life’s big questions, or spiritual experiences, revelations, destiny, afterlife, premortal existence, miracles, faith, the existence of souls, the essence of consciousness, the path to happiness, or any of the other big questions religions of the world attempt to address. For him, the essence of religion was its POWER over people, commandments, not the question of whether God existed. And judging by the tone of his voice and his choice of phrases, he was angry about it, and wanted to bring everyone along with him.
In any case, my assumptions about this philosopher’s objectivity or dispassionate approach crumbled. Grouchy teenage rebellion does not a scientist make.
The atheist worldview derives its appeal from emotional convenience—it is a blank check, a ticket to total freedom from responsibility for our actions (unless we get caught by human authorities). It centers on that convenience, often bolstered by a false presupposition that science has triumphed over all things of a sectarian or religious nature, and explained everything satisfactorily.
(If there is nothing new to learn, why are scientists still churning out new discoveries and machines all the time? Better instruments constantly cause us to revise or completely reject firmly-held ideas. This is especially true of telescopes—astronomy has exploded in the last decade, forcing many to admit that there are basics to existence itself we never knew of before, perhaps undiscovered fundamental forces of nature.)
Salesmanship
Authority is at once vilified in our society, and yet strangely authority it is also embraced.
The movie plot of the oppressed youth striking out against stodgy, repressive, authoritarian, narrow, misguided and often tyrannical authority figures and triumphing through clever resistance to oppressive rules is so overplayed it has become hackneyed. That is fiction; what about real life?
People will pay enormous sums of money for advice—that is the idea behind college, business consulting, and other mentors-for-hire. The beginning of success in real life is the admission that we do not know everything, and need instruction in order to accomplish our objectives and achieve our dreams. We put some faith in an authority figure, and subject ourselves to his or her care, instruction, and correction. We then expect the wisdom he or she imparts to propel us the rest of the way to success, to remove barriers separating us from our goals.
Authority in the form of technical advice is welcome (more so when it works). Those who produce results that heal illness or advance the arts and sciences and communication technologies and other areas of convenience in our lives are hailed, and often rightly so. Technological advances expedite the end of hunger, poverty, disease, ignorance, and general physical misery and ailments in the world.
It is possible to have all our physical needs met, and still feel incomplete. Jesus Christ offers us peace, but “not as the world giveth” (John 14:27). Society often rejects the prophets who teach us how to be happy in favor of something more tangible and accessible to our comprehension. We will go to college to get rich, but not listen to the prophets to find happiness.
Nephi warns us that to depend on human gizmos and knowledge for security or ultimate happiness in the manner embraced in our society today is poisonous: “Yea, cursed is he who putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm” (2Ne. 4:34).
Samuel the Lamanite tells a violent mob:
“…if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil” (Helaman 13:26). No search of the distant past is needed to find examples of this kind of heated rejection of God’s ordained servants, even from inside the Church. The opposite treatment goes to those religious leaders who flatter us, and there are also contemporary examples of what Samuel describes next:
“But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity (viz. Korihor); do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet.
“Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him” (Helaman 13:27-28).
A Purpose of Life
The first and greatest commandment, to love God above all else, can be difficult to keep. One false premise promoted today is that freedom comes from having no God. But we all have gods—everyone worships something. We all trust in, and place our affections on, and pursue SOMETHING. These can be false gods that we worship in place of the real God.
Whatever we love most is our god. Worship means trusting in, obeying, and giving allegiance to someone or something. We trust in weapons, technology, wealth, and rely on human cunning, and turn to drugs or food or almost anything but God to be happy in our society today.
We are free to choose what we trust in and love, but it is impossible NOT to choose:
“And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free.
“He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you” (Helaman 14:30-31). We can choose good or evil; even trying not to vote at all is a vote.
Every moment, we are making decisions, internally as well as externally. Each of these decisions could be classified as tending towards life and goodness, or death and evil, to varying degrees. But the menu has few, if any, neutral options. (Perhaps what we choose to eat for breakfast will not have eternal or
lasting consequences, but choosing whether to eat breakfast or follow a
prompting to fast certainly will.)
With every decision we make, every desire, every feeling, every thought, we display who or what we actually worship. Like a ball poised on the ridge of a roof, we are destined to pause for only a fraction of an instant and roll one way or the other—it is impossible for us to just sit there indefinitely. But we can choose life, and that is good news.
Before the earth was created, we and Jesus Christ lived in the presence of God. We get snippets of the dialogue that came out of the councils that took place when this life was planned for us: “…one among them (Jesus, premortally called Jehovah)…was like unto God, and he said unto those who were with him: We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell;
“And we will prove them now herewith (with what? With the physical materials our bodies and the world are made of), to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them…” (Abraham 3:24-25). That is like a thesis statement behind the creation of the earth—a chance for us to show our loyalties through our choices. We have all sorts of distractions and enticements and allurements around us because the world was designed that way, with multiple options, “enticements,” invitations pulling us in different directions. The point of all the beauty and potential for joy on this earth is not to show that we will hate it all; rather, we are to show that we can be surrounded by things we love, and still love God more.
Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, not because having a beloved son was evil, or because he was supposed to hate Isaac and love God; it was because Abraham needed to demonstrate that he loved God more than Isaac, his most beloved possession.
The Lord confides some of His own priorities to us:
“Wherefore, verily I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; neither any man, nor the children of men; neither Adam, your father, whom I created” (D&C 29:34). What is the point of all these rules? Is it to constrict our worldviews? Is it to restrict joy? Is it to create prudes and nuns and monks and self-righteous hypocrites who profess to hate life? Is it to make many large, impressive worship centers?
No, the main point of the commandments is the spiritual outcomes of our obedience to them. Obedience to the commandments, one way or another, involves our physical bodies. Not committing murder or adultery; paying tithes and offerings; keeping our language wholesome; observing the dietary instructions in the Word of Wisdom; all these commandments involve the physical body. But the outcome the Lord is looking for is the spiritual effects our obedience has. It affects us, and it affects those around us for the better, spiritually.
Intangible qualities of the spirit, like character, willpower, patience, love, forgiveness, humility, faith—these qualities defy measurement on any physical scale. Yet they are the pure, refined products of keeping the commandments. All our Temples will crumble (whether made of stone or flesh), but the sanctification acquired in them, the qualities we acquire in this life, can perpetuate in us forever after we die, and benefit us forever.
The Lord has given us commandments with the long-term view in mind. We are not here to build a permanent empire of worldly convenience and luxury on earth (though neatness and prosperity are general byproducts of obedience to the commandments for our society anyway). We are building ourselves and each other. He will ultimately solve our major complaints in the resurrection, but first we must become spirits who are worthy to inhabit perfected, exalted bodies. In other words, we need to obey the commandments, and focus on whatever rule we need to keep in order to progress towards exaltation until we master that principle, and move on to the next one.
(That is called “repentance.”)
