The Future You Picked

The other day, while doing homework, I listened to the Wall-E soundtrack on Youtube. The last song on that soundtrack is called "Down to Earth," and it includes the line "Did you feel you'd been tricked by the future you picked?" According to my interpretation, the line was aimed at the people who went to live in a spaceship called the Axiom, and subsequently missed out on many of the experiences we have on earth, but I think it could also apply to those of us who chose to leave heaven to experience life on earth, and those of us who give up the prospect of returning to heaven to more fully enjoy life on earth.

First, we chose to come here. There weren't many other options, but still, we made the choice, but I don't think we fully understood the ramifications of our choice. We had no experience with pain or difficulty. We knew that earth life would be unpleasant, but I'm not sure we understood the meaning of the word. We agreed to go before we fully understood what our decision meant and what the consequences would be. Of course, we had the advice of our Father and we trusted His judgement that, while unpleasant, this was an experience we needed to have, so we signed up for God-only-knew-what, and here we are.

Do you feel that you had been tricked? Sometimes I think about how hard life is, and I wonder if I really knew what I was getting myself into, or if I still would have gone along with God's plan, had I known all that it would entail. If I knew then how much pain and struggling I would experience on earth, would I have still agreed to go? Maybe not. Maybe I had been tricked. But still, if what God said was true (and what He says always is), this is an experience that I need to have, and when it's over, I'll be grateful it happened. Perhaps I had been tricked, but if not now, at least someday, I'll be glad I was.

However, there are others who are being tricked who aren't going to be so glad when they find out what's really going on. In life, we make countless decisions between good and evil, and Satan always tries to convince us to make evil choices. Usually, his attempts involve a good deal of trickery, trying to convince us that what he wants us to do isn't really a sin and that there won't be any consequences. But of course, there will be. There are consequences to all of our choices, including our sins, and the consequence of sin is suffering, if not now, at least in the future.

Have you been tricked by Satan into choosing a future that takes you away from God? That was a rhetorical question, but the answer is yes. We all have. We've all sinned at least once in our lives, and odds are that we'll be tricked or at least persuaded to commit sin several more times in the future.

The good news is that there's hope. The future we've chosen for ourselves doesn't have to be permanent. We won't be stuck on Earth forever, and we don't have to stay stuck in a life of sin. Through Christ's Atonement, we can still be cleansed from sin and return to live with God. We can choose a new future for ourselves, an eternity of life in heaven with our Heavenly Father, if we're willing to be righteous enough to be worthy to live there. At the end of Wall-E, the captain of the Axiom chose a new future for himself and his ship's passengers, and they returned to the place where they had been and where they again wanted to be. Through the power of the Atonement and the mercy of Jesus Christ, we can do the same.