Battle for Freedom

It seems that recently I've been blogging only on major holidays. If that's the case, I hope the holidays continue.

When I think about Independence Day, I think about Freedom, how much it's worth, and what price must be paid to obtain it and maintain it. As with many other things, I've started thinking of all of this on a spiritual plane rather than a physical one. You'll remember that on Father's Day, I spoke of God, our Heavenly Father. On this Independence Day, I speak of the war fought for our freedom, a war which began long before people knew that North America existed and which continues even now, long after all of the founding fathers have died. This is the war in which each of us participate. This is the war for which we need to put on the Armor of God.

Satan is the enemy in this war. He uses all sorts of tricks and temptations to try and destroy our freedom. He would like to control us, with the intent of making ourselves and everyone else miserable. Though he can't actually make us do anything against our will, he can and does tempt us to make bad decisions, knowing that if we give in to his temptations enough times, our actions will become habits, and controlling us will become much easier.

But we can fight back! We can make good decisions rather than bad decisions. We can form good habits rather than bad habits. We can choose to follow the path that leads towards happiness rather than the path that leads towards misery. Putting it that way, it almost sounds like an easy choice. Anyone in their right mind would choose happiness over misery. ...So why don't we?

Some people become casualties in this war against evil when they realize that it's not just a choice between happiness and misery, but between hard-earned happiness and easily-obtained misery. Many people take the downhill path because it takes less effort, and perhaps they don't feel strong enough to do otherwise.

But still, there are many people who are willing to fight for freedom and happiness. We owe our wonderful country to such people. These people, Satan cannot overpower. Like I said, he can't force us to do anything. So when people really want happiness, he propels them away from it by telling them that it can be found somewhere else. If you lose your wedding ring in the living room, you're not going to find it by looking in the garden. Similarly, you can't find true happiness by traveling down the path of sin. Satan tries to convince us that we can gain the happiness we seek by having 'fun'. Casinos try this gimmick, offering people thrills and excitement that ultimately only leave their hearts and their wallets empty. But if you're feeling down, what better way to cheer yourself up than with a good thrill? So the cycle continues, a habit forms, and Satan starts to take control.

Many of us, I'm almost daring enough to say 'all of us', already have a bad habit of some kind or another. Satan plays on our bad habits to sway us towards making bad decisions, which deepen our habits and his control over us. Then is there no hope? Of course there's hope, because the power always lies with us. We make the decisions. We can fight against the current, no matter how strong, and we can make the right decision, no matter how difficult it seems. Naturally, Satan would like us to forget about that. In fact, he'd like us to forget, or not realize, that there's even a war going on in the first place. Because if we don't know there is a war, we won't be fighting in it. And if we really fight against Satan, Satan will lose.

There's a quote floating around that says that 'life is not a cruise ship. It's a battleship.' I couldn't agree more. The quote goes on to say that 'if you're not currently getting shot at, be grateful for that.' But our enemy can be very subtle. In light of that, I encourage anyone who's not currently getting shot at to check again. If he's not attacking you openly, he's attacking you secretly. He is always on the attack. Hence the need for the Armor.

So we need to know that there is a war going on over the welfare of our souls, we need to know the enemy's tactics, we need to know a good counter-strategy (choosing the right, keeping the commandments, following the example of our Savior, Jesus Christ), and most importantly, we need to apply the correct counter-strategy.

I've been thinking about a theme for my blog. A popular blog theme is Recent Events, but that doesn't seem to work as well for me. As mentioned earlier, my mind tends towards spiritual things rather than physical things, and I want to develop that by continuing to post spiritual things on my blog. But as implied in the last paragraph, merely knowing about spiritual things isn't enough. We need to bridge the gap and complete the circle. So that may well prove to by the underlying theme of my blog; bridging the gap between the real world, a spiritual perspective, and our daily actions; how our spiritual perspective can affect our real-world decisions. For example:

The real world: The people of the United States are celebrating the victory of the battle for their freedom. A spiritual perspective: We are all fighting for our own freedom. Bridging the gap: We should treat keeping the commandments with the same level of importance as a real, physical war. It is, after all, a matter of life and death; Eternal Life or spiritual death. That's the moral of my blog post today.

Will all of my blog posts be like this one from now on? I'm not sure. I don't want to be preachy, but I do like the idea of applying gospel principles to the real world. Those who have commented seemed to like my Father's Day post. If this post proves popular as well, I'll take that as encouragement. If not, I can try to limit myself to the genre of Recent Events.