Comfort control

This is the last in my sporadic series on control. Other posts are here, here, here and here.

A popular feature in higher-end cars for some time has been Electronic Automatic Temperature Control. In fact, nowadays it’s not unusual to find two- or three-zone temperature controls so that driver, front passenger and rear passengers can all have a say in their own comfort.

We love to control our environment, and I think it’s because we are comfortable doing things over which we have control. We love our remote controls for our TVs, garage doors, ceiling fans, lights and so on. We love putting in our ear buds or putting on our noise-cancelling headphones to control what goes into our ears. We like to control what comes into our home on TV and the internet, so we install parental controls and filters. We control what goes into our bodies, so we watch our diet (or not), and we keep our divinely revealed health code (or not).

In fact, we rightly tout the virtue of self-control, praising someone who has the discipline to train as an athlete or musician, praising those who overcome adversity by their sheer grit and determination, praising students who earn great grades.

The Lord’s Plan of Happiness reminds us, however, that there are limits to our control. In the grand council in Heaven, we agreed to a plan that would allow us agency and accountability for our choices; we rejected an alternative that would have guaranteed our safe return and yielded honor and glory to the guarantor, Lucifer. (It’s worth noting that both of those provisions are offensive, though we tend to focus on the first just as I’m doing here.)

Even God Himself did not control Pharaoh as Moses sought the release of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. God offered consequences for Pharaoh’s choices, but he could not force Pharaoh to comply. And Pharaoh only complied with God’s will once the pain of not complying was great enough. Whether God could or could not force Pharaoh to comply is a moot question: the fact is he did not.

As I’ve written in this series, I have struggle personally with the issue of control in my life. I have at times overshot the mark in trying to control my children’s behavior, trying to control outcomes in conflicts and trying to control circumstances that were clearly beyond my control.

Albert Einstein is credited with the idea that insanity is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. In trying to exert control where I do not have it, I have lived that definition, and the results are not pretty. I’m fortunate that they people who matter most to me are gracious and forgiving and that our relationships are intact despite my human frailties.

As I have worked over time to sort out what I do and do not control (not what I should or should not control), I have found increased peace in letting go of the things that are not mine and focusing on the things that are.

The Plan of Salvation

One of the great hopes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that we can improve ourselves and prepare to return to our Father in Heaven. This ability to improve is part of the Plan of Happiness or Plan of Salvation that the Lord offers us. It is a gift that comes in several parts.

To understand it fully, we need to know how we fit into the “grand scheme of things.” Mormons believe that we lived before coming to this earth, that we are literal spirit children of our Father in Heaven and that we lived in His presence and wanted to be like him. In order to do that, however, we needed to receive bodies and have certain experiences we could not have in our spirit bodies.

So He made it possible for us to come to this earth to receive a body and learn to walk by faith. A part of that learning to walk by faith was that we would forget our prior life, passing through a veil of forgetfulness at birth.

In this life, we have experiences in our bodies that we did not have in His presence. We are tempted by physical appetites. We feel pain and suffer illness. And because we walk by faith, we make mistakes. In order to return to His presence, we must be clean. We therefore have problem: since we all make mistakes (sin) we are not naturally clean. How can we return to Him?

We can return thanks to the selfless gift of our older brother Jesus Christ who came to this earth, lived a perfect life and provided us an example and then offered Himself an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and was resurrected on the third day so that we also might overcome death.

The gift of the atonement comes in two parts – first because of the resurrection, all who lived on this earth will overcome death (when our bodies and spirits are separated) through resurrection (when our bodies, made perfect, will be reunited with our spirits), and second because of His atoning sacrifice which allows us to repent of our sins, allowing His suffering to replace our own. These two gifts demonstrate the grace and mercy of our loving Lord Jesus Christ and His Father.

After the resurrection we will ultimately be judged according to how we lived our lives here on earth. All will have had the opportunity to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ (not just those who hear it in this life). And those judged worthy by God will be able to return to His presence.

When I contemplate the Plan and its implications for me, it is quite astonishing. Though we talk about this subject often at church, when I take time to ponder the magnitude of the Savior’s gift, I am awestruck. And I’m certain that my understanding is still developing, so I suppose when I really understand it, I will be even more awestruck.

- Paul