Choice and Accountability

So, I got to speak at church yesterday, and I actually kind of liked my talk (still don't like speaking though). So I'm just going to post it. Please appreciate that yes, I do, in fact, write my talks with footnotes.

What I love (and what sometimes drives me crazy) about the gospel is how simple, and yet infinitely deep, it is. In speaking about any topic, we could probably find it well summarized in a sentence or two. In the Young Women pamphlet under Choice and Accountability, it clearly states, “I will choose good over evil and will accept responsibility for my decisions.”[1] 

While this is simple, straightforward, and clear, what gets tricky is that simple is rarely the same thing as easy, especially in the gospel.[2] My favorite example of this is probably when Lehi explains the choice to us—we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life…or…captivity and death.”[3] I think we’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would openly declare his choice to be captivity and death. And yet…

So, if I may, I am going to delve a little deeper into the principles of choice and accountability, and discuss why this principle is still kind of hard to live by; to do so, I have only my own experience, but I trust that you will let the Spirit relay to you the principles that are relevant to your own circumstances.

(As a disclaimer, I am more theoretically- and abstractly-minded, which is probably going to shine through here. So, more than following me completely, I hope that something I say will spark an idea or thought in your mind that will then allow the Spirit to enter in and teach you what is relevant for you.)

Choice arises out of agency, which is “the power to think, choose, and act for ourselves.”[4] In order to even make a choice, though, we must be “enticed by the one or the other.”[5] As Lehi explains, there must be opposition. While the ultimate opposition is between good and evil, choices also arise out of opposing ideas that are not “opposites” in the strictest sense. For example, choosing a major isn’t necessarily between art or science, but your choices oppose one another in the sense that each appeals to you in a different way, and you cannot choose one without excluding the others.

Sometimes this part, before I even really get to the part of actually making the choice, is the hardest, and where I get stuck the most. Sometimes I stay a little longer than I know I should in the “valley of decision.”[6] A lot of times, this happens because of fear, which appears in “divers ways and means”[7] that I think I ought not to go into here. I know sometimes I trick myself into believing that in waiting, I can evade the accountability that is associated with whatever choice I make—because choosing one means I am deliberately not choosing others. Sometimes this means waiting so that ultimately, someone else will make the choice for me, or that eventually, by circumstance, my options will be narrowed down to a pool of one; sometimes I realize I want to be commanded in all things.[8]

I think this is most obvious at the cusp of commitment, and the more serious the decision, the more intense the paralysis. I will spare you from relationship examples, though they are plentiful, and stick with a simpler example. I am experiencing this currently with my program—I am to select a topic which I will devote countless hours to researching and writing about. Right now I have a few ideas in mind, but I don’t know which idea paths will turn out to be duds, and which will be fruitful. So probably the majority of the time when I complain about its being hard, the hard is actually a result of my not being accountable for the fact that I am exerting all of my energy to either stretch myself down all paths, or to stand at the crossroads and choose nothing, rather than choosing one, accepting that there are other paths I might have taken, and then proceed forward, without regret.

The biggest problem in this indecision (which I realized as I was writing this) is that God has no part in it, beyond my wishing that He would just tell me what to do. Sharon G. Larsen explained, “Sometimes we want freedom without consequences, to stay neutral, undecided, uncommitted—it is in this atmosphere we become vulnerable to the influence of Satan.”[9] In these moments, I have forgotten or do not trust in God’s plan and am not relying on the faith which He has previously granted me. If I am honest with myself, I am subscribing to the belief that God has planned for only one way to get through things, and if I make a mistake, Christ will not be there, with His atoning sacrifice, to help me repair or to change. Now don’t get me wrong—there are times and seasons for everything,[10] including waiting[11]; even God, in His command to be not slothful, does not say that we do everything of our own free will, but many things.[12] This is why it is crucial to do things by the Spirit, for He will be the one to gently prod and ask, “How long halt ye between two opinions?”[13] when it is time to decide.

I have already taken up probably half my time talking about this pre-choice stage, but I would like to spend time talking about when we actually choose, as well. There are two, in particular, which my thoughts keep coming back to (probably because they are two of my favorite things to talk about). Again, they are pretty abstract ideas, but I hope that you are paying attention more to the Spirit than the construction of this talk.

Were I to boil down my own struggle in choosing between liberty and eternal life and captivity and death, these are the two things that, for me personally, are the hardest.

The first is love. I firmly believe that love is a choice. I guess there is that part about falling in love, but that’s not what I’m interested in (or qualified to) talk about. I think Marvin J. Ashton summarized best what it means to choose to love. He states, “Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.”[14] I could talk about this for hours and hours, not because I am so capable of loving like this, but because I want so much to be able to—to pick apart what it means to be kind, how to stop judging, how to hope for someone to change and yet still embrace the person they currently are. But I will save those thoughts for another time, and summarize by saying that I think the principle of accountability is an integral part of this choice to love—to love genuinely is to love responsibly. Expecting the best of each other doesn’t mean a pat on the back, a “good luck” for the future, and then we just move on our way. In love, we are to bear one another’s burdens because we realize we are all headed to the same place; we lift up the hands which hang down, even when it might be inconvenient; we love, and we allow others to love us too.

I know that for the time being, we are imperfect; I also know that many of you are much more innately loving than I am, and so you might not have to face this choice as frequently as I do. But, regardless of frequency, we will all have the choice to love presented to us, most likely in small ways—when we are enticed by the one, to blame or to be offended, to hold it against someone for hurting us, but also reminded to by the other to forgive, whether by the light of Christ or by the Spirit—and we must choose our response. I pray that we will have the strength to choose to love. I know that these are the very acts that demonstrate to Heavenly Father that we are choosing to yield to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, to put off the natural man, and to become saints.[15] However small these acts, these are the very ones that “prepare the solid ground on which our edifice of faith is built.”[16] They are slowly teaching and helping us to become more like Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and refining us to become more fitted to live with Them and each other for the eternities.[17]

The last choice is one I find fascinatingly difficult and somewhat counterintuitive. It is to believe in and to believe Christ, to accept Him as my Savior. It is counterintuitive to me because, at least when I think of choice, I think that to choose successfully, I must make these choices on my own. I think I have in my head sometimes this notion that, in the end, I will show Christ what I have done and what I have chosen, and He will, essentially, pass or fail me. But I am learning that this is not His role in our lives. He, better than any other, offers His yoke to us[18]; a subtle but significant nuance in this is that He offers us His yoke, as we rest from ours. When we choose to set aside our own wills, and choose to live in the way He has directed—striving to follow His gospel, living His commandments, making and keeping promises through covenants—we are slowly and steadily progressing towards liberty and eternal life. It may seem strange, and again counterintuitive and even burdensome at first, that this trek towards liberty involves a yoke, but I KNOW that this is where true freedom and joy are found. I know that His yoke is easy—not easy as it is the opposite of hard, but as the opposite of uneasy. It can be, at first, very uncomfortable, as any change is prone to be, but as our relationship with the Savior grows, we will be released from so much of the uneasiness about life—the anxiety, the restlessness, the fear that accompanies us when we try to do things without Him. It can be difficult because the rewards from following Him are often not immediate[19] and because sometimes it is simply hard to hear His voice—but as we make this deliberate choice to follow Him, placing our trust in Him by casting aside our doubts and our fears (which, granted, is no easy task), we show Him that we are willing to be accountable, responsible, for the choice to follow Him, and in this our faith is increased. We choose Him and the work that accompanies the salvation we desire and hope for,[20] deliberately choosing to set aside other things, like fitting in, or receiving others’ approval, or even the comfort of not having all your weakness exposed. Though we are prone to wander, let us be a little better about choosing to give our hearts to Him.[21]

Since I get to pick the hymns, I picked this next one strategically.[22] As we sing it, my prayer is that we each have the strength to make the choices that will lead us back to Heavenly Father, that rather than choosing to see our own path, we choose to let Him lead us forward, not asking for more than one step at a time.

---

[1] http://www.lds.org/young-women/personal-progress/choice-and-accountability?lang=eng

[2] Alma 37:44

[3] 2 Nephi 2:27

[4] Sharon G. Larsen, Agency—A Blessing and a Burden, November 1999 General Conference

[5] 2 Nephi 2:16

[6] Joel 3:14

[7] Mosiah 4:29

[8] D&C 58:26

[9] Sharon G. Larsen, Agency—A Blessing and a Burden, November 1999 General Conference

[10] Ecclesiastes 3:1

[11] Henry B. Eyring, Mountains to Climb, April 2012 General Conference

[12] D&C 58:27

[13] 1 Kings 18:21

[14] Marvin J. Ashton, The Tongue Can Be a Sharp Sword, April 1992 General Conference

[15] Mosiah 3:19

[16] Henry B. Eyring, Mountains to Climb, April 2012 General Conference

[17] Dallin H. Oaks, The Challenge to Become, October 2000 General Conference

[18] Matthew 11:28-30

[19] Neal A. Maxwell, Lest Ye Be Weary and Faint in Your Minds, April 1991 General Conference

[20] Philippians 2:12

[21] Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

[22] Lead, Kindly Light, Hymn 97