Sometimes following the promptings of the Spirit is like walking hand in hand through a perfumed garden with your sweetheart. Other times, following the promptings of the Spirit is more like staying atop a bucking bull. Why is obedience so often so difficult?
Elder Packer described his experience as a boy shortly after baptism. He emerged from the water with every intention of never sinning, fully committed to doing what is right, but found himself slipping up anyway. His young heart and mind had erroneously assumed that baptism would perfect him, and that he could leave sin behind easily. He learned instead that repentance is a process that never ends in this life, line-by-line growth. The Atonement covers us between here and perfection.
Even our failures can have silver linings of progress in them. Dismissing a prompting from the Spirit after we receive it, then regretting it when we experience the negative consequences of not heeding that prompting, and recognizing what we neglected, is a sign of spiritual progress and maturing. At least the Spirit could get through to us enough to warn us. Next time we will spend less time hesitating.
We lived with God as His spirit children before this earth was organized. We each chose to come to this earth through physical birth. We Latter-day Saints often take this truth for granted. Was the choice that easy to make? The scriptures indicate that a full third of our Father’s spirit children chose not to trust Him and follow His plan, which included us coming here through physical birth. What deterred so many of God’s children, caused them to choose open rebellion rather than follow His plan for them?
We get only snippets of what happened in the Great Council, but what is certain is that those who chose to follow God’s plan overcame Satan and his accusations against them through their faith in the Savior.
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Rev. 12:10).
Satan’s warped version of the plan would have included no agency, ergo no sin, and thus no need for physical death.
We rejected Satan’s proposal and instead chose Heavenly Father’s original plan, which included coming to earth with no prior memory of our existence or covenants with Him, being saddled with imperfect physical bodies, and turned loose with total freedom of will to sin or be good however we want, eventually to die and face judgment for our choices. Satan’s plan certainly must have seemed reasonable to those who followed him—or at least, less frightening.
Weakness On Display
Who wants to have his or her weakness exposed publicly? No one, but the alternative, covering our sins or propensities to sin, can have dire results: “…when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride…the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn…
“…he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God…
“…they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion…” (D&C 121:37-39). This modern warning to us describes Satan’s fall anciently. It might have begun as a preoccupation with avoiding sin and not having weakness exposed. These good intentions evolved into full-scale war against God, truth, and everybody. Satan’s original plan was to save us all; now he works to destroy. The first sin was unwillingness to have weakness exposed publicly—pride with a self-righteous twist.
Whether having our flaws exposed publicly is comfortable or not, running in the opposite direction constitutes undertaking to cover our sins, a war against truth. That necessarily means embracing pride; humility can accept the uncomfortable truth, but pride cannot look in the mirror or own up to its flaws.
Jesus described Satan premortally:
“He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:44). It takes courage and faith and humility to face the truth, to admit our flaws, or to accept other discomfort. One third of God’s children could not handle it, and rebelled.
The Flesh
Elder David A. Bednar has pointed out the eternal irony that the very things we came to this earth to receive—our bodies—are exactly the means through which Satan tempts us. No physical body is needed in order to sin or rebel. We have the tendency to avoid truth and become proud already. Combine that tendency with a mortal physical body, and veiled memories of our premortal lives, and you have an even more intensified propensity to sin. This multiplies and compounds the ways we can get into trouble—sin begets more sin, and sins then roam through our hearts and minds in packs. King Benjamin warns that the opportunities for sin in this life are innumerable (Mosiah 4:29).
“Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). Staying humble is hard; it is even harder when we are have imperfect, weakened telestial bodies. Why was saddling us with so much temptation (some people more than others) considered a good part of the plan? God does not tempt us, right? But He designed our bodies, and they are susceptible to temptation because of their design. Why?
Freedom Prerequisites
Unless good and evil are legitimate options, there is no real freedom to choose. The choice to be good is not legitimate unless it includes a refusal to be evil.
“…good and evil have come before all men…he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience” (Alma 29:5).
God installed the tree bearing the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, and then instructed Adam and Eve not to eat from it. This was not to tempt them; though it seems contradictory, it preserved their freedom of choice. The presence of the forbidden fruit and serpent who was allowed to entice them preserved their freedom by offering them options. Freedom to act, agency, requires knowledge of good and evil, and the opportunity to choose between them.
“And to bring about his eternal purposes…after he had created our first parents…it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.
“Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other…”
“And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon…
“Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself” (2Ne. 2:15-16, 26-27).
Why talk so much about Adam and Eve? Because their predicament is the same as ours, essentially—we have their options, including sin, staring us in the face; we fall like they did; we need the same Savior they needed. Their path out of the Fall is ours, too.
Although God has provided the opportunity to choose good and evil to preserve our agency, that is not the same thing as endorsing evil as a viable option.
How Weakness is Made Strong
The Lord takes credit for creating our weak flesh, and also offers a solution for this predicament. This happens in Ether 12:27, an oft-quoted scripture in the Church. It is easy for us to be so enamored with the theme of making weakness strong that we breeze blithely through this verse without realizing what Jesus Christ is saying.
“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”
Ether 3:2 clarifies what weakness refers to:
“O Lord, thou hast said that we must be encompassed about by the floods. Now behold, O Lord, and do not be angry with thy servant because of his weakness before thee; for we know that thou art holy and dwellest in the heavens, and that we are unworthy before thee; because of the fall our natures have become evil continually; nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given unto us a commandment that we must call upon thee, that from thee we may receive according to our desires.”
Weakness refers to our mortal tendencies to sin (and the brittle state of our physical bodies).
Who wants to have their flaws pointed out to them by the Lord? We typically characterize Jesus Christ as more friendly and cuddly in our talks and classes. This sounds like a cruel thing to do—“show unto men their weakness.” It is hard to face our true flaws; “who can hear it?” (John 6:60).
Ether 12:27 throws out another point—Jesus gives us our weakness? Hearts that may be tempted, brains that may forget, and toes that may be stubbed? Again, it is not an endorsement for sin; it is just that we need options, good and evil as real potential choices, before we are truly free, before our good choices really are legitimate. We are “enticed” by both, says Lehi, and then choose.
There is another, even more important reason why we have weakness woven into the fabric of our bodies—to engender humility. “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble…”
Humility is probably the least popular virtue to develop among the catalog of virtues—maybe only patience can compete with it in disfavor. Yet the Lord deliberately built flaws into us to engender this virtue. It must be important.
“How great the importance to make these things known unto the children of men” says Lehi. What things?
“Behold, he (Jesus Christ) offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit (i.e. very deep humility); and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered” (2Ne. 2:8, 7). Jesus can save someone who is deeply flawed, yet also deeply humble; someone who is 99.99% perfect, but proud, cannot have the ends of the law answered unto him or her. And so we are saddled with “weakness that” we “may be humble.”
Do we believe that His “grace is sufficient?” Or are we content to rely on the arm of the flesh and man, our own knowledge, willpower, skills, tools, drugs, etc.?
To contradict false accusations, Joseph Smith contributed to a newspaper article about the rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “I only add, that I do not, nor never have, pretended to be any other than a man, ‘subject to passion,’ and liable, without the assisting grace of the Savior, to deviate from that perfect path in which all men are commanded to walk!” (The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, edited by Dean C. Jessee, p. 337). Our fallen natures are the problem; the Savior’s grace is the one viable solution.
“If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours—for charity covereth a multitude of sins” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 193). When we see others’ flaws manifested, we receive the same amount of mercy from the Lord that we show to them (see Matt. 5:7).
Grace can strengthen and change us, enabling us to obey beyond our own abilities. We must offer our whole selves to the Lord before He will change our natures. Otherwise grace would become invasive, tampering, sidestepping our agency. Our humility on its own is not what sanctifies us; He will change us after we invite Him to do so. Humility activates His grace in us.
How Humble
It might be good at this point to define what humility actually is, and is not. Satan is miserable and proud; Jesus is currently humble (see Ether 12:39), and yet He is full of grace, truth, and love. Humility is therefore not a form of holy dreariness, fraught with self-deprecation, slumped shoulders, sagging faces, limp arms, or any of the other things generally thought of as symptoms of humility.
Willlingness is much closer to the kind of humility the Lord asks of us. Think of the sacrament prayer—we partake to show we are willing (ready, prepared, determined, committed, fully intending) to take the name of Christ upon us, keep His commandments, and always remember Him.
Willing describes an internal state, not necessarily our behavior. The sincere attempt to do what is right is just as valuable in the Lord’s eyes as success in our attempts. It is possible (though unlikely) to be completely obedient outwardly, while still having a grudging heart. Even if we fail or stumble in our sincere attempts at following the commandments, the Lord will still give us His Spirit if we maintain our willingness to try (again, again, and again sometimes). (One theme of the Sermon on the Mount is that righteousness must go much deeper than simple outward compliance; it must include our intentions, our hearts.) To change behavior is fairly simple (though usually ineffective in the long run); to change our natures requires a miracle. Jesus created us in the first place; He can upgrade our natures, too, and offers to do it:
“…for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (the last phrase from Ether 12:27).
Genuine humility also includes recognizing our flaws, the truth, that painful look into the mirror.
The short answer to the question, Why is obedience so hard? is that we are not yet fully developed spirits wearing deliberately flawed bodies with evil propensities in them. Induced amnesia veils our eons of life with God from present recall. We have vanity and even ignore the things we have relearned in this brief life, and these also contribute to our tendency to sin. We worship things other than God. He loves us anyway, and works to save us. Some of His work requires our cooperation. It requires us to choose to come unto Christ in humility:
“Behold, I have come unto the world to bring redemption unto the world, to save the world from sin.
“Therefore, whoso repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child, him will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God. Behold, for such I have laid down my life, and have taken it up again; therefore repent, and come unto me ye ends of the earth, and be saved” (3Ne. 9:21-22).
