What COVID Has Taught Me about Liberty

The COVID pandemic has given me a lot of opportunity to contemplate the behavior of myself and my fellow community members. In the United States, we’re at a point where the pandemic has been politicized (I’ve been guilty of this as well).

On one hand, we have liberals who range from {reopening the economy means you care more about money than human lives} to {keep the world in lockdown until we have a vaccine or at least a solid and safe reintegration plan}.

On the other hand, we have conservatives who range from {open the economy and let people who are afraid of the virus or are high-risk stay home} to {the whole pandemic is a government conspiracy and my individual rights have been taken away as a result of the lockdown}.

More and more, I find myself concerned about this two-party political system we’ve built. It encourages people to “choose a side” and then dig in their heels against the “other.” This division is never helpful, and in fact, it’s incredibly harmful. It means we inadvertently generate enmity for people with whom we disagree.

 And we’ll never find solid common ground with someone for whom we have enmity.

The War in Heaven: Our Frist Battle for Liberty

I’ve been thinking a lot the past few days about how our political environment reminds me of the War in Heaven, where we first fought for our agency – our liberty. Satan, “Son of the Morning” (Isaiah 14:12), son of God the Father and brother of Jesus Christ, started on the same “side” as the rest of us. When God the Father presented the plan (we’ll go to Earth to be tested) and explained the problem (we’ll all make mistakes and won’t be able to return to live with Him) He also offered a solution: He would provide for us a Savior as our intermediary between the poor choices we make in this life and our exaltation in the next.

Both Jesus Christ and Satan stepped forward (or were foreordained?) to be that Savior. Christ, of course, offered to be a Savior by sacrifice. He would allow us to have agency, agreed to fulfill the Atonement so we could repent when we fell short, and promised to give all the glory to God (Mosiah 4:2). Although all would have the ability to exercise the Atonement and return to God, some, certainly, would choose not to and would be lost (Bible Dictionary, War in Heaven).

In addition to knowing some souls would inevitably be lost by voting for this proposal, perhaps some spirits worried that the Savior would fail. Under Christ’s proposal, we would all rely solely on Christ for our salvation – for if He failed to complete the Atonement, none of us could return home to God at the end of our mortal journey. This, I imagine, was our first great test of faith. It was likely difficult for many of our spirit brothers and sisters to put the fate of their salvation entirely in the hands of a single individual, Jesus Christ, who would already be under a tremendous amount of pressure to succeed.

As a counter-proposal, Satan suggested we forgo agency altogether in favor of indisputable salvation. Satan wanted to see all of God’s children return home (Mosiah: 1:4). It’s unclear whether his desire to see souls saved was genuine or he was using deceptive strategies to garner support (e.g., maybe he knew spirits would be likely to choose him as the Savior if he promised salvation to all), but we do know that he exhibited pride, even then, as he requested the glory for himself.

Regardless – Satan was not cast out of Heaven for making his suggestion. He was cast out of Heaven because of the division he caused as a result. He was cast out of Heaven for gathering support for his "side,” and engendering enmity for the "other" – those who chose to follow Christ.

This division destroyed Satan and his followers. It will destroy us too.

It's easy to see how both Christ's and Satan's proposals might have seemed appealing to our spirit brothers and sisters. Perhaps, if the spirits who followed Satan had been willing to open their hearts and minds to the idea that there may be a better way than what'd they convinced themselves was the "right way,” they wouldn’t have ended up in damnation.

So it is with us. (Sort of.)

The Battle Continues: Let’s Solve Problems, Not Treat Symptoms

Our two-party political system has us doing this all over again. We believe so confidently that our “way” is the “right” way – on both sides – causing us to band together with like-minded individuals and dig in our heels against the “other.”

We have got to stop doing this. The division it causes will destroy us.

On both sides of the political divide, we have propositions to treat symptoms but that don’t solve the underlying problems. For example: conservatives believe in banning abortions, though such a ban neglects to address the reasons women are getting pregnant and then subsequently terminating the pregnancy; liberals support gun control, though this neglects to address the underlying cultural factors that encourage firearm-related violence.

We’ve been conditioned to treat symptoms instead of problems, in part, because treating the symptom often produces more tangible and immediate results.

This isn't inherently problematic, but it usually results in individuals getting too married to the proposition (that addresses a symptom of the problem), and then falling into this devastating cycle of banding together with others who believe the same way they do and developing enmity for those who think differently. In actuality, the solution to the underlying problem is usually somewhere in-between, but it's nearly impossible to achieve in our current political environment because both sides unrelentingly hold to their "side" and remain unwilling to consider alternative solutions.

If we were motivated to solve underlying problems instead of to uphold our version of the "best way" to address symptoms, we would likely make much more progress in the way of addressing the needs of the members of our country. If we are ever to get to achieve this, we must learn to abandon our static marriage to what we think is the “right way” so we can begin to reject the divisiveness caused by the two-party system. This is how we will begin to identify solutions to important problems, which is ultimately the goal of both sides.

The Law of Consecration: Liberty Is Not an Individual Responsibility

Until very recently, I had assumed that somewhere along the way humanity lost the desire to look out for and support one other.

Now, however, I believe we simply haven’t achieved it yet.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that humans learned to seek out friends and band together against enemies. As we continue to evolve, however, we no longer rely on these segregations for survival. Furthermore, these divisions can be quite harmful for the community as a whole, for the aforementioned reasons. This shift from individual consideration ("what's best for me and mine, as individuals?") to community consideration ("what's best for all of us together, as one community?") is evidence of our evolution as a people.

At the very least, as a spiritual people.

"I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine" the Lord said to the Prophet Joseph Smith (D&C 38:27). Likewise, the prophet Enoch taught, "The Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness, and there was no poor among them" (Moses 7:18).

We often talk about the Law of Consecration as this idea that we're required to give up all of our physical belongings and resources for the greater good of the community (4 Nephi 1:3). But I think this is actually a symptom of the law. The purpose runs much deeper – the Law of Consecration is actually about building a people who actively seek to love and help and support those around them. It’s about building a community that genuinely considers and cares about, at an individual level, the effects of their behavior – the consequences of their actions – on the community as a whole.

When we develop this mindset as individuals (i.e., "I will take care to make choices with consequences that will benefit the members of my community as a whole, not just myself and like-minded people"), we develop a culture where people voluntarily give of their substance for the greater good of the community because the good of the community matters to them.

Indeed, the gospel of Jesus Christ is built to prepare us for this type of mindset and behavior. When we're baptized at age eight, we covenant to “mourn with those that mourn” and “comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:9). Every week following, we renew that covenant when we take the sacrament. In other words, we begin the practice of looking out for the well-being of those around us early in our personal and spiritual development, as children. After we’ve made, and practiced keeping, the baptismal covenant for several years, we are able to receive our endowment in the temple where we covenant to keep the Law of Consecration ("precept upon precept," right?; 2 Nephi 28:30). Following our endowment, we renew this covenant, alongside our baptismal covenant, each week when we take the sacrament.

Did you catch that? When we take the sacrament every week, we renew our covenants to 1.) carry, in part, the emotional burden of our community members, and 2.) remain invested enough in the well-being of the greater community that we’re willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the community as a whole.

And those sacrifices may not necessarily be physical. Perhaps we give up our pride as we begin to consider that we might be wrong about (or our understanding incomplete in) the stance we’ve taken on a political issue. Perhaps we give up our comfort as we agree to a behavior we don’t believe is necessary, but may benefit the other members of our community (like wearing a mask in public during a respiratory-virus pandemic).

Which brings us back to this idea of agency and liberty.

There is No Free Agency

People often refer to the idea of liberty as having “free agency,” but I don’t like the term. There’s no such thing as free. Everything comes at a cost.

In 2003, Elder Uchtdorf gave a BYU devotional titled “On the Wings of Eagles” (check it out, it’s awesome; source). In that devotional, he said: 

“You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay the consequences for your choices.” 

I wish, so much, that we would all take much more care for the way our actions affect those around us – that we considered more carefully the consequences of our actions. I reject this “you do you” attitude that says, “I’m going to do whatever I want – if you don’t like it, don’t join me.” I dislike this because all actions have consequences, and those consequences often shape the community in which we live together. Like a pebble rolling down a snowy hill believes he’s engaged in a harmless recreational activity, until the snow begins sticking to him and he grows in size and momentum and finally ploughs through an unsuspecting city.

Indeed, we should take more care that our actions have consequences that benefit the community as a whole, not harm it. Our agency is solely our own, but our consequences rarely are.

Moreover, consequences aren’t the only price to our agency. There is another price – a cost that Elder Uchtdorf doesn’t mention in his talk: the life of our Savior.

Jesus Christ completed the Atonement for all of us so that we could have our agency and practice it however we like. He won’t police the way we exercise our agency. As President Oaks once said, “God rarely infringes on the agency of any of His children by intervening against some for the relief of others” (Opposition in All things, 2016, source).

Regarding the covenants God has asked us to make, however, it’s clear He expects us to use our agency to benefit the members of our community as a whole – not just ourselves.

We should take care to remember that when we exercise our agency, we have the Savior to thank for that ability. That awareness should guide the decisions we choose to make. We should exercise our agency – always – in a way that’s pleasing to Him – in a way that best supports all of His children, as we’ve covenanted to do.

As dad always says, “Agency is not the right to choose. Agency is the right to choose right.”