Wednesday, March 11, 2015

An Acceptable Offer From the Adversary

In Alma 55, a Nephite named Laman approaches the Lamanites who were guarding Nephite prisoners in the city of Gid. Laman tells them that he had escaped from the Nephites and had brought some Nephite wine with him. When the Lamanite guards express a desire to drink the wine, Laman gives them the same deceptive offer that Satan gives each of us: "You may do according to your desires." (Alma 55:12)

The funny thing is that we've already been made that offer by someone else, and we accepted it, much to the displeasure of Satan who, at that time, was offering an alternate plan. Through our God-given moral agency, we already have the power to "do according to our desires," to essentially do whatever we want to do. That's the level of freedom God gave us when He sent us here.

The implied and untrue undertone of the offer of Laman and Satan is that we may do according to our desires without fear of any consequences. While God gave us the freedom of choice, He also instated consequences for those choices, and frequently warns us of the consequences we'll face if we just do whatever we want. God may not stop us for doing according to our desires, but He won't also protect us from the results of our choices unless we sincerely repent of them.

May favorite part about the offer is that we can accept it without breaking God's commandments. If you have desires to do good, God would want you to act according to those desires. We all have some desires that are good and some desires that are evil, so we may have to be selective in which desires we "do according to," but as long as we choose our better desires to act on, God doesn't have a problem with that.

Satan tries to offer us the kind of freedom that would let us do whatever we want, but the joke's on him. I've already accepted that offer, with God's blessing. Even now, I'm still accepting it. What I want is to be a Paladin. I desire to do good. And I "do according to [those] desires" almost every day.

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