Freedom to Choose (Lesson 4)

In my post for Lesson 2 of the Gospel Principles manual, I wrote about the  importance of understanding we are all a part of a heavenly family with a Father in Heaven who loves us perfectly.  As spirit children, we improved our talents and abilities in our heavenly home and desired to partake in the life our Father lives and to receive the fullness of joy He has as a perfected being with a body of flesh and bone (see D&C 138:17 & D&C 130:22).  Recognizing our righteous desire, Father wanted to give us the opportunity to acquire the blessings we sought, but He also knew that for our desires to be truly met, we would need to be tested.

 

The idea of testing shouldn’t be new to us.  While we have forgotten our time with Father before our arrival here on earth, we’ve taken plenty of tests.  How well or poorly we’ve done on those tests coincided with our understanding of the course material.  If we studied effectively, the outcome was good; if we didn’t, our poor results or failure to pass reflects our lack of effort.  Gathering all of us together in a grand family council, Father explained that if we wanted to achieve the life He has, we would need to prove to Him our willingness to live His commandments outside His direct influence (Abraham 3:25); to walk by faith and trust that He would always have our best interests in mind despite what might happen along our journey.  As Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, we needed an examination “with real mistakes and with real consequences! His plan include[d] real tests, real dilemmas, real anguish, and real joy” (Ensign, Nov. 1987, 30).  The main component to this test would be our agency (or freedom) to choose.

 

While teaching Jacob about agency and its role in the plan of salvation, Lehi affirmed: “Wherefore, men . . . 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” (2 Nephi 2:27).  Because our agency offers us freedom of choice, some refer to it as “free agency.”  While there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this term, Elder Boyd K. Packer taught that the “phrase ‘free agency’ does not appear in scripture. The only agency spoken of there is moral agency, ‘which,’ the Lord said, ‘I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment’ (D&C 101:78; italics added)” (Ensign, May 1992, 67).

 

God’s definition of agency gives precise meaning for what He intended for our earthly test: 1) a clear choice between opposites, and 2) accountability: do those choices remain within the established guidelines of His law.  Lehi understood this truth.  He instructed Jacob that there “must needs be . . . an opposition in all things. If not so . . . righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad” (2 Nephi 2:11).  Elder D. Todd Christofferson explained: “When we use the term moral agency, we are appropriately emphasizing the accountability that is an essential part of the divine gift of agency. We are moral beings and agents unto ourselves, free to choose but also responsible for our choices” (Ensign, June 2009, 47; emphasis in original).

 

This plan had to excite many of us when it was presented.  As far as our freedom to choose was concerned, it was no different than what we were already used to.  Not everyone was happy with what they heard, however, Lucifer, who is described in the scriptures as a “son of the morning” (D&C 76:26), offered a plan of his own for us to consider.  He stood and proclaimed: “Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor” (Moses 4:1).  While his ultimate goal was to usurp Father’s position, it appears to me that Satan’s main objection to Father’s plan was its reliance on accountability.  I believe Lucifer’s definition of “redemption” had two distinct possibilities.

 

The first definition would manifest in the way we as Church members commonly consider when discussing this pivotal moment in our pre-earth life: we would be forced to make the right choice every time.  The ordinances of baptism, confirmation, priesthood, and the temple would come without question; no opposition or resistance would be tolerated.  Once those cookie-cutter milestones had been completed, we would live out our dreary, milquetoast existence until death where we would be patted on the head and tossed like cord wood onto a pile of “saved” souls.  There would be no need for a “savior” to sacrifice himself for us, so unless some some other way of resurrection was offered, a complete exaltation would not exist.  We would be “redeemed” only in the sense of having incorrect choices removed from the earthly equation, but nothing would be learned nor would any real progress be achieved.

 

The second possible definition of “I will redeem all mankind” has to do with the elimination of rules altogether. Elder Christofferson pointed out that many societies today teach “that truth is relative and that everyone decides for himself or herself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as ‘value judgments’” (Ensign, Nov. 2009, 106).  Korihor epitomized this concept when he brazenly declared to the Nephites that “every man fared . . . according to the management of the creature” prospering “according to his genius” and conquering “according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17).  Taking this blurring of moral boundaries into consideration and the scriptural accounts of those who would justify their actions by arguing against God’s laws, I am left to wonder if Satan’s proposal was one which would eliminate agency and choice by revoking those laws altogether!  Father declared that “no unclean thing” could enter His kingdom (3 Nephi 27:19) which required the need for a Savior and repentance.  Satan possible counter was to say, in effect: “I don’t care what you do.  If you want to live by a code of ethics, so be it.  But if you follow whatever your natural man desires, that’s fine too.  Either way, I’ll save you all.  No Final Judgment will be necessary because I will allow you into the Celestial kingdom regardless of what you’ve done on earth.  I will take away the need for being accountable for your actions!”  Instead of being saved from sin, Lucifer may have proposed to save us in sin (but it wouldn’t be sin because he had repealed the law).  In both cases, Father would be forced to relinquish His throne to Lucifer: “Wherefore give me thine honor!”

 

Whether by coercion or elimination, Lucifer’s ultimate goal was to “to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3).  His rebellion could not be allowed to stand and God “caused that he should be cast down” (ibid).  Still, Lucifer’s flattering words convinced a third of the hosts of Heaven to join him (see Revelation 12:7-9 & D&C 29:36-37).  Satan and his followers continue to rebel against God’s laws and seek to pull us down and cause us to be “miserable like unto [themselves]” (2 Nephi 2:27).  With these to opposites firmly in place, we now have the ability to choose either God’s love or Satan’s misery; Father’s “house of order” (D&C 88:119), or Lucifer’s “great and spacious building” of chaos (1 Nephi 8:26).

 

“Exercising agency in a setting that sometimes includes opposition and hardship is what makes life more than a simple multiple-choice test,” Elder Christofferson declared. “He is not satisfied if our exercise of moral agency is simply a robotic effort at keeping some rules” (Ensign, June 2009, 53).  Life is not a checklist of choices.  The path is called “strait” because it is “strict, narrow and rigorous” with many obstacles to avoid or climb over or squeeze past as it ascends toward Father’s throne.  We don’t just move from one destination to another in a straight line with only the mile markers on the side of the road to show us our progress.

 

Our choices matter!  Obedience to God’s laws does not make us a marionettes manipulated by His hand.  Father didn’t give us His laws simply to keep us from trouble.  He gave them to us to help us understand who we are; to gain insight into the potential we have; and to see ourselves as He sees us.    This is why, as Elder Dallin H. Oaks has said, the “Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become” (Ensign, Nov. 2000, 32; emphasis in original).   As Elder Christofferson explained, Father in Heaven and our Elder Brother want “us to become something, not just do some things” (Ensign, June 2009, 53; emphasis added).

 

There is a reason why Jesus urged His Nephite apostles to use Him as their standard: “Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27).  As we become more like Christ and do His works, we will more readily find “his image in [our] countenances” (Alma 5:14)!  Do we truly want the life Father in Heaven lives and are we committed to do His works to show Him our desire continues to be legitimate?  “That is the choice the Lord puts before us as we face our own promised lands and our own bright futures,” taught President Howard W. Hunter. “We are given the knowledge, the help, the enticement, and the freedom to choose the path of eternal safety and salvation. . . . By divine decree before this world was, the actual choice is and always has been our own” (Ensign, Nov. 1989, lds.org).