Liberty of the Law

In his epistle to the Galatians the apostle Paul teaches something that is so misunderstood. He talks about liberty and bondage in terms of the law. Too many times we get a notion in our heads that the commandments are a bondage, a burden placed upon us that keeps us from doing what we want to do.

But Paul points out that the law is only bondage when we try to live only by the law. In other words, the Galatians had the 613 laws of Moses and they are trying to faithfully live by those laws as if that's all that mattered for salvation. To do that they had to have all 613 memorized and then act only within those laws. That is bondage because every time they went to make a move they had to stop and figure out if the move was in obedience to those 613 laws.

But Paul explains that the law of Moses has been fulfilled and that the purpose of law is to bring us to Christ and then Christ gives the Spirit to us and the Spirit guides us as to what we are to do. That is liberty! Instead of having to constantly refer to memorized laws and try to determine if our intended action is within the law, we rely on the Spirit to tell us whether what we want to do is right or wrong. That is freedom! It is the freedom to enjoy the peace, comfort, guidance, joy, and love the Spirit brings, and to shake off the shackles of worrying about whether everything we eat or drink or do fits within the law.

Happy Independence Day!

I hope you have the best Independence Day ever! It was my favorite holiday growing up because it lasted all day long. This holiday is celebrated big in most of Utah. Sirens have been going off all morning. Air Force jets do a formation fly by and there is a huge parade. I’m not much of a parade person so I’m not going, but it is a long beautiful parade. Tonight on the football field at Brigham Young University (it holds 63,000 people) a sell out crowd will watch the Jonas Brothers and SHeDAISY and a number of Patriotic things including people parachuting out of planes with flags and red, white, and blue will be everywhere. It ends with a half-hour of fireworks that will light the night sky. I do like fireworks so we will find a place on the mountainside where we can watch.

I don’t know what your town does to celebrate this important occasion, but I hope you have a wonderful day and where ever you are celebrate. We can’t take our freedom for granted. Today is a day to thank God that we live in a land of liberty.

Agency--What It Is

Agency is one of the most important principles of the gospel and also one of the most misunderstood. So let’s start with a definition. Agency is the ability to make choices. But Elder Packer explained that all references to agency in the scriptures refer to a specific kind of agency–moral agency. Moral agency is the ability to make choices between good and evil. Frequently in the Church we confuse the principle of moral agency with the principle of freedom. Freedom is the ability to act on the choices we have made. For example, if I am choosing between drinking apple juice and orange juice, I use my non-moral agency but if I am deciding between coffee and milk I am using my moral agency because there is a commandment involved. If I choose grapefruit juice, but there is none available, my freedom is involved. As much as I might want it, I can't have it because there isn't any.
There are several reasons this designation is important. One of the most important is that there is ALWAYS a spiritual consequence when we use our moral agency. There are no spiritual consequences to using our non-moral agency or freedom. The negative consequences of bad moral choices are obvious, but I said ALWAYS a consequence. In King Benjamin’s great speech he tells us that the Lord requires "that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you" (Mosiah 2:24). The immediate blessing that comes from obeying God is increased faith. Faith is a gift of God predicated upon the law of obedience! (See D&C 130:20-21). As we grow in faith, we then are blessed with more spiritual gifts and increased gospel knowledge.
Another reason this designation is important to understand is that agency cannot be taken away from us. (I know you’ve heard that it can, but the person is using the word agency to mean freedom.) Lucifer fought a battle in the pre-mortal world to take away our agency and failed. He is not going to waste time doing that again. Instead he works on taking away our freedom. If he can limit our choices or through peer pressure, addiction, or other means entice us to negative choices, he has us in his grasp. Technically, we still have our agency. We can choose to repent and return to the light. However, as we loose freedom, it becomes more and more difficult to exercise our agency to follow the Lord.
Agency, then, is a mental process. It is the means God has given us to choose our way back to Him and returning to Him is done one little choice at a time.

PS - There is a wonderful autobiography in which Victor Frankl explains how he came to understand these principles while in a Nazi concentration camp. It is short and well worth the read. The title is Man's Search For Meaning.