Bondage and real freedom

I remember a friend of mine once saying something like this: "For a person who puts so many rules and restrictions on yourself, you seem to be a very happy person". She was referring to my LDS faith and lifestyle. After all, in her view, how could anyone be happy when you can't drink any alcohol?

I could get into the difference between "can't" and "choose not to", but that's not the direction I want to go today.

Today's reading for me is in the Book of Mormon. Mosiah, chapters 22-24. It was good for me to just sit down and read. The book of Mormon always entertains and soothes me. The story that I picked up immediately as I started reading is this: how does a person or group of people escape bondage?

The back story super briefly goes like this: A well intentioned group of people heads to the lands of the bad guys to try to build relations and cause peace. They do OK at first, because this people was good at heart. But then the good guys become bad guys over a generation or two, and things get ugly. Enslavement. Bondage. Burdens. Powerlessness. Risk of extermination. You get the idea. Then a few of them remember their God and escape the bad guy camp. They start a good guy camp.

Things are going swimmingly, then an army of the first set of bad guys shows up and is led by a member of the second set of bad guys. All members of the bad guys have one goal: make the good guys pay. What follows is more ugly. That's the surface story.

But after reading, for me the story is about personal enslavement. Being the owner of your own soul; your own spirit and body. The first batch of good guys used a large dose of alcohol to get their guards drunk and sleeping, then they exited stage left, and began a journey back to safety.

So the irony for me here is this: who in these groups was really in bondage? The good guys that were slaves, or the bad guys who had a personal vice? And isn't it interesting that the Lord used the personal bondage of the bad guys to free his people?

It makes me question what the meaning of bondage really is.

Then we underscore the point. In the next chapters, a new group of good and bad guys happen. The army that was looking for group 1 above finds good guy group 2. They enslave them. Abuse and mistreatment.

If I were in that group, there is a chance I could choose to be bitter. I did whatever I did before I had a choice to be better, then I chose the good guys. I left my home and followed good. So here we are, and now life is worse than ever for me. Why doesn't God take care of his people? All my efforts to do well just caused me to have a life that is worse than ever. Is God really there? Why did he allow this? Why should I keep trying?

But once again, this story is only about mistreatment on the surface. Being in physical bondage was their physical condition, but not the condition of their souls. As the story goes, physical loads were heaped on their backs, and the Lord didn't lighten them or take them away, or even free them for a time. Instead, He made those burdens easier to bear. He needed to teach His people that bondage is about what's inside your body, not what's on it.

And I believe it is the same with us. When we can free ourselves from inner bondage, then we are free. Freedom from such things as alcohol come to mind for most of us, but there is much more we can free ourselves from. Pornography, anger, language, dishonesty, backbiting, selfishness - the list could go on forever.

And the more things I can put behind me to whatever degree, the more free I am.

This goes me back to the point of my friend. Freedom and happiness isn't found in doing everything - that's a pathway to enslavements. Freedom is choosing the Lord, finding your greatness, and making the most of who you can become. The Lord provides that sunshine when we hand him a clean inner soul - one that we now own and have title to: one we can give to him because it's now ours to give.

It's a brighter day than we have seen before. On occasion I get glimpses of that brighter day - and I can testify that it's worth seeking. May we seek it with every corner of our being.

When the Lord waxes poetic

Having just returned from a doterra event in the Dominican republic, my eyes have been opened just a bit more. While here in Utah I am surrounded by great people who are LDS, I found there great people as well - most of whom are not LDS. What they know about the church is very limited, and simply knowing Julie and me probably doubles what they believe they know about the church.

These are beautiful, amazing, powerful people to be certain. Some of their leaders would have them believe that Joseph Smith, our first prophet in modern days, was nothing more than a huckster. A fraud.

But what I see in Joseph's writings leaves me floored. What a powerful writer! A man who, if he wrote these things himself, did so with 3rd grade education. I compare this to myself. I have a master's degree, and have written almost daily for 25 years. At first it was home inspection reports, then a number of articles for KSL.com. I've written five books, and now, this blog. I have also further polished my language skills with hundreds of podcasts and more hundreds of videos. Yet for all the skills I've developed, I couldn't come close to writing with the power that I read today. Either this huckster was super insanely good, or he was writing under the direction of the greatest author. I think it's the latter. I testify that it is.

Whether the government is that of the United States, China, or others, there are those who are good men who wish only to serve and lift the people they govern. But the question is always: how far does the government go to do this? Can you mandate success or happiness? While I was in China, I quickly came to understand that they were doing the best they could - I just believe they started with some false assumptions about what governing means.

While reading the Lord's take on the subject, the first verse that struck me was D&C 134:4. First off, the Lord is treading an extremely fine line in defining what is the role of government vs the rights of the individual. To misuse any word on such a subject could cause extreme harm, resulting in either oppression and lives lost, or anarchy, and lives lost. To say that this subject is a mine field is an understatement of global proportion. I'll leave most of that reading to whoever wants to look it up for themselves.

But the end of the verse I found to be powerful and poetic - and precise. All those things, done in the same sentences. "...that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul".

How the clarity and vision of such a statement lifts my soul! Here is the Lord poetically delineating a subject that has been argued in every country, every year, in every college. Here he uses concise words that could not be found so clearly in any of the greatest of schools of learning.

The chapter goes on to explain clearly some other things, like what an organization can do when one of its members errs. Again, the concise clarity, and the correctness of thought, jumps out of the page at me. I hear the Lord's voice speaking directly to me as I read these verses. Men may argue and debate, they may opine and exercise their grey matter. They may illustrate their ability to speak, to think, and to outwit, but in the end, the most gifted of these men cannot hold a candle to the Lord's voice.

And in the end, hopefully we choose to follow the Lord's voice - even when it may differ with the final thoughts of those who claim to be the smartest, most intelligent, or most wise. May we choose the Lord - even when it's unpopular.