Muy buenos dias!
William Shakespeare's play The Life of King Henry V
includes a nighttime scene in the camp of English soldiers
at Agincourt just before their battle with the French army.
In the dim light and partially disguised,
King Henry wanders unrecognized among his soldiers.
He talks with them, trying to gauge
the morale of his badly outnumbered troops,
and because they do not realize who he is,
they're candid in their comments.
In one exchange they philosophize about who bears
responsibility for what happens to men in battle--the king
or each individual soldier.
At one point King Henry declares,
"Methinks I could not die any where
so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just."
Michael Williams retorts, "That's more than we know."
HIS COMPANION AGREES: "Ay, or more than we
should seek after; for we know enough,
if we know we are the king's subjects:
if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king
wipes the crime of it out of us."
Williams adds, "If the cause be not good, the king
himself hath a heavy reckoning to make."
Not surprisingly, King Henry disagrees:
"Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's
soul is his own."
Shakespeare does not attempt to resolve
this debate in the play, and in one form or another
it's a debate that continues down to our time:
who bears responsibility for what happens in our lives?
When things turn bad, there's a tendency
to blame others or even God.
Sometimes a sense of entitlement arises,
and individuals or groups try to shift responsibility
for their welfare to other people or to governments.
In spiritual matters, some suppose
that men and women need not strive
for personal righteousness, because God loves and saves us
just as we are.
But God intends that His children
should act according to the moral agency He has given them,
"that every man may be accountable for his own sins
in the day of judgment."
It is His plan and His will that we
have the principal decision-making role
in our own life's drama.
God will not live our lives for us,
nor control us as if we were His puppets, as Lucifer once
proposed to do.
Nor will His prophets accept the role of puppet master
in God's place.
Brigham Young stated: "I do not wish any Latter-day Saint
in this world, nor in heaven, to be satisfied with anything
I do, unless the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the spirit of revelation, makes them satisfied.
I wish them to know for themselves
and understand for themselves."
So God does not save us just as we are.
First, because just as we are, we're unclean,
and "no unclean thing can dwell ... in his presence;
for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name,
and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man [of
Holiness]."
And second, God will not act to make us
something we do not choose by our actions to become.
Truly He loves us, and because He loves us,
He neither compels nor abandons us.
Rather, He helps us and guides us.
Indeed, the real manifestation of God's love
is His commandments.
We should, and we do, rejoice in the God-ordained plan that
permits us to make choices, to act for ourselves
and experience the consequences--or,
as the scriptures express it, to "taste the bitter,
that [we] may know to prize the good."
We're forever grateful that the Savior's Atonement overcame
original sin so that we could be born into this world
yet not be punished for Adam's transgression.
Having been thus redeemed from the Fall,
we begin life innocent before God and "become free forever,
knowing good from evil; to act for [ourselves]
and not to be acted upon."
We can choose to become the kind of person that we will,
and with God's help, that can be even as He is.
The gospel of Jesus Christ opens the path to what we may become.
Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ and His grace,
our failures to live the celestial law perfectly
and consistently in mortality can be erased,
and we're enabled to develop a Christlike character.
Justice demands, however, that none of this
happen without our willing agreement and participation.
It has ever been so.
Our very presence on earth as physical beings
is the consequence of a choice each
of us made to participate in our Father's plan.
Thus, salvation is certainly not the result of divine whim,
but neither does it happen by divine will alone.
Justice is an essential attribute of God.
We can have faith in God because He's perfectly trustworthy.
The scriptures teach us that "God doth not
walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand
nor to the left,
neither doth he vary from that which he hath said,
therefore his paths are straight,
and his course is one eternal round,"
and that "God is no respecter of persons."
We rely on the divine quality of justice
for faith, confidence, and hope.
But as a consequence of being perfectly just,
there are some things God cannot do.
He cannot be arbitrary in saving some and banishing others.
He "cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance."
He cannot allow mercy to rob justice.
It's compelling evidence of His justice
that God has forged the companion principle of mercy.
It's because He's just that He devised the means for mercy
to play its indispensable role in our eternal destiny.
So now "justice exerciseth all his demands,
and also mercy claimeth all which is her own."
We know that "it is the sufferings and death of him who
did no sin, in whom [the Father was] well pleased; ...
the blood of [His] Son which was shed"
that satisfies the demands of justice, extends mercy,
and redeems us.
Even so, "according to justice, the plan of redemption
could not be brought about, only on conditions of repentance."
It is the requirement of and the opportunity for repentance
that permits mercy to perform its labor without trampling
justice.
Christ died not to save indiscriminately
but to offer repentance.
We rely "wholly upon the merits of him who
is mighty to save" in the process of repentance,
but acting to repent is a self-willed change.
So by making repentance a condition
for receiving the gift of grace, God
enables us to retain responsibility for ourselves.
Repentance respects and sustains our moral agency:
"And thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice,
and encircles them in the arms of safety,
while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed
to the whole law of the demands of justice; therefore only ...
him that has faith unto repentance is brought about
the great and eternal plan of redemption."
Misunderstanding God's justice and mercy is one thing;
denying God's existence or supremacy is another.
But either will result in our achieving less, sometimes
far less, than our full divine potential.
A God who makes no demands is the functional equivalent
of a God who does not exist.
A world without God, the living God,
who establishes moral laws to govern
and perfect His children, is also
a world without ultimate truth or justice.
It's a world where moral relativism reigns supreme.
Relativism means each person is his or her own highest
authority.
Of course, it's not just those who
deny God that subscribe to this philosophy.
Some who believe in God still believe that they themselves
individually decide what is right and wrong.
One young adult expressed it this way:
"I don't think I could say that Hinduism is wrong
or Catholicism is wrong or being Episcopalian is wrong--I think
it just depends on what you believe.
...
I don't think there is a right or wrong."
Another, asked about the basis for his religious beliefs,
replied, "Myself--it really comes down to that. ...
How could there be authority to what you believe?"
To those who believe anything or everything could be true,
the declaration of objective, fixed,
and universal truth feels like coercion--"I shouldn't be
forced to believe something is true that I don't like."
But that does not change reality.
Resenting the law of gravity won't keep a person
from falling if he steps off a cliff.
And the same is true for eternal law and justice.
Freedom comes not from resisting it but from applying it.
That is fundamental to God's own power.
If it were not for the reality of fixed and immutable truths,
the gift of agency would be meaningless,
since we would never be able to foresee and intend
the consequences of our actions.
As Lehi expressed it, "If ye shall say there is no law,
ye shall ... say there is no sin.
If ye shall say there is no sin, ye
shall also say there is no righteousness.
And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness.
And if there be no righteousness nor happiness
there be no punishment nor misery.
And if these things are not there is no God.
And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth;
for there could have been no creation of things,
neither to act nor to be acted upon: wherefore,
all things must have vanished away."
In matters both temporal and spiritual,
the opportunity to assume personal responsibility is
a God-given gift without which we cannot realize our full
potential as daughters and sons of God.
Personal accountability becomes both a right and a duty
that we must constantly defend.
It's been under assault since before the Creation.
We must defend accountability against persons and programs
that would (sometimes with the best of intentions)
make us dependent.
And we must defend it against our own inclinations
to avoid the work that is required to cultivate talents,
abilities, and Christlike character.
The story is told of a man who simply would not work.
He wanted to be taken care of in every need.
To his way of thinking, the Church or the government,
or both, owed him a living because he
had paid his taxes and his tithing.
He had nothing to eat but refused
to work or care for himself.
Out of desperation and disgust, those who had tried to help him
decided that since he would not lift a finger
to sustain himself, they might as well just take him
to the cemetery and let him pass on.
On the way to the cemetery, one man said, "We can't do this.
I have some corn I'll give him."
So they explained this to the man.
And he said, "Have the husks been removed?"
They responded, "No." "Well then," he said, "drive on."
It's God's will that we be free men and women enabled
to rise to our full potential both temporally and
spiritually, that we be free from the humiliating
limitations of poverty and the bondage of sin,
that we enjoy self-respect and independence,
that we be prepared in all things
to join Him in His celestial kingdom.
I'm under no illusion that this can
be achieved by our own efforts alone,
without His very substantial and constant help.
We know that "it is by grace that we
are saved, after all we can do."
And we do not need to achieve some minimum level of capacity
or goodness before God will help.
Divine aid can be ours every hour of every day,
no matter where we are in the path of obedience.
But I know that beyond desiring His help,
we must exert ourselves, repent, and choose God for Him
to be able to act in our lives consistent with justice
and moral agency.
My plea is simply to take responsibility and go
to work so that there's something for God to help us
with.
I bear witness that God the Father lives;
that His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Redeemer;
and that the Holy Spirit is present with us.
Their desire to help us is undoubted,
and Their capacity to do so is infinite.
Let us "awake and arise from the dust, ...
that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath
made unto [us] may be fulfilled."
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Amen.