The Price of a Life

First off, for those who haven't heard yet, I'm 7 weeks pregnant!! Yay!(?)

Because of this, I've been thinking a lot lately about why pregnancy has to be SO DANG MISERABLE and why I have to suffer so much just to have a baby. I was promised years ago that pregnancy would be a choice time in my life where I felt close to Heaven and to God, but so far I've just felt miserable and mopey. I had an attitude check last week reading about president Hinckley's unflagging optimism reminding me that I usually take pride in being that kind of person but I've been failing terribly at it lately. So I've been trying to be more optimistic about the hardships of pregnancy and the all day morning sickness hasn't been nearly so stifling these past couple days. Another result of my attitude check was that this morning I started to ponder more sincerely why pregnancy has to be so hard instead of just complaining about it. As I was thinking I remembered a quote from Thomas Pain:

     "What we obtain to cheep we esteem to lightly, tis dearness only that gives everything it's value.           Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods and it would be strange indeed if so               celestial an article as freedom should not be highly valued."

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. And I thought, wouldn't it be strange indeed if there was no price to pay for the creation of a new life? I remembered also that I've been taught for years that the process of pregnancy and birth is reflective of the atonement of the Savior, when He gave us new life and prepared a way for us to be born again through His blood and pain.
Maybe keeping that in mind is how I can feel close to heaven and to the Savior as I continue through this pregnancy. If nothing else it's given me tremendous comfort this morning.

Covenants, Obligations and Conscientious Objections

 

Freedom of conscience in the medical field, particularly in cases involving abortion and emergency contraception, is currently a hotly contested topic, so much so that Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman - a case disputing whether a pharmacist has the right to refuse to dispense emergency contraception when it violates his or her religious beliefs - has made it to this year's Supreme Court docket. Traditionally, a medical professional’s right to conscientious objection -- or refusing to perform services or dispense drugs that violate their conscience -- has been protected by law (Dresser 280), but recently, as shown by Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman, and other cases like it, this protection has come under scrutiny and been rejected by many legal authorities and policy makers.  [Since writing this essay the supreme court has refused to grant this case certiorari, allowing the appellate court ruling to stand, which essentially denies a small religious pharmacy the right to choose not to provide morning after pills, even though there is no shortage of access in the area and it puts an undue and discriminatory burden on the pharmacy - which directly contradicts all precedent for religious liberty cases. If you're interested in reading a scathing dissent by justice Alito, which is just as informative about the current state of religious liberty rulings and how we got to this point as it is entertaining, check out his dissent in this case.] Replacing the right to conscientious objections in many cases is the mandate to refer. The idea is that in order to ensure timely care, especially in pharmacies where obtaining an emergency contraception pill, for example, is an extremely time sensitive order to be filled (Card 9), if the medical professional is morally opposed to providing the service requested they are allowed to refuse but required to refer the patient to someone who is willing to provide the service. Many doctors, however, who are morally opposed to providing certain services feel that referring a patient to someone else still puts them in the chain of causality and makes them morally complicit in the perceived evil or wrong. For this reason, although it is often thought the best solution by law or policy makers, it is universally rejected by ethicists in the field, even those who oppose a broad right to conscientious objections (Card 9, Murphy 351-352, Dresser 282). Supporters of such policies, as well as many of those who reject them, believe that the medical community has a moral obligation to ensure access to medical services by licensed professionals. Medical professionals refusing to perform services creates shortages in care and impedes patient access to healthcare (Dresser 282). Though the mandate to refer is typically viewed as the prime solution to balancing freedom of conscience and the medical professional’s duty, this paper will argue that the responsibility to ensure access to medical care does not fall on conscientiously objecting individuals, but rather on the medical profession as a whole, and that the conscientiously objecting individual should retain their traditionally protected status. In order to fully illustrate this claim it is necessary to discuss the nature of freedom of conscience, the medical professional’s  obligation to society and to their patients, and how far freedom of conscience extends when weighed in balance with the responsibility of the medical professional to the rest of society.

1. Freedom of Conscience

Traditionally there are two great obligations devolving on man which comprise the essence of his humanity. The first of these is an obligation to his own conscience - or judging right and wrong and acting out of that judgement. It is often said that the ability to reason is what separates man from the beasts; reason, as defined by Noah Webster is “A faculty of the mind by which it distinguishes truth from falsehood, and good from evil, and which enables the possessor to deduce inferences from facts or from propositions” (Webster). But surely it is not only man’s ability to reason, to think, to judge, but also conscience or the sense of purpose and moral responsibility to act according to his reason and intuition that truly makes man human. Jeffrey Hammond, a law professor at Faulkner University writes about three things he says Martin Luther taught us about conscience at the Diet of Worms: first, that conscience is “the sacred space in which a person holds safe her most closely held values and makes her most important judgements” (433) and that Luther was “formed by his conscience;” second, “conscience is a guide for the holder” teaching them how to act; third, quoting Luther in his plea before the jury Hammond says “‘it is neither safe nor sound’ to abrogate one’s conscience...to violate his conscience, recant, and then slide back into obscurity under his accusers’ thumbs would be to do violence against himself. It would be to harm himself, the actor” (434). From this we can plainly see that a man’s conscience is not just reasonable thoughts or prudent maxims by which to live, but an essential part of his being that cannot be divorced from his person without actual violence to himself. In  “Freedom of Conscience in Healthcare: Distinctions and Limits,” Sean Murphy and Stephen Genuis explain that, according to research done by Tzvetan Todorov, “a sense of guilt or shame often haunts people who have been forced to participate in wrongdoing” (349). They mention various examples from the study such as “the ‘shame of destruction’ experienced by those who succumb to torture...concentration camp inmates forced to do that which they abhor” and “the guilt experienced by rape victims” (349), as well as a later example of the prison guards in concentration camps (350). They use the trauma and guilt felt by those in Todorov’s study to illustrate the “inseparability of the person and the will” (349) and clearly demonstrate that even in cases where someone is forced to violate their conscience against their will, as Hammond acknowledged with the example of Martin Luther, there is real harm done to that individual in the violation. One can only imagine how much greater that harm is in circumstances where the violation was committed from peer pressure as opposed to actual coercion.

Murphy and Genuis also provide another interesting insight into freedom of conscience by bifurcating it into two distinct categories: “Perfective” freedom of conscience and “Preservative” freedom of conscience (348). Perfective, they explain, is an action taken because a person believes it be correct or good, like volunteering in the community, intervening when someone is about to get hurt, or any other time a person acts out of a feeling of moral or ethical obligation. Preservative freedom of conscience, on the other hand, is choosing not to act in order to avoid committing a perceived wrong; some examples could include not buying products that harm the environment, not taking drugs, or an example more relevant to the discussion at hand, a doctor declining to perform an abortion because they believe it is morally wrong. They claim that preservative freedom of conscience may be justly abridged to keep citizens from harming others, but it is only justifiable to violate preservative freedom of conscience in extreme cases and as a last resort, or when immediate harm or injury is foreseeable, because of the actual harm it does to the individual (352). They argue that instead of coercive means these issues of freedom of conscience can “be resolved with sufficient imagination and political will, without prejudice to freedom of conscience” (352).

2. The Social Contract and The Medical Professional’s Obligation to Society and Their Patients

As great as man’s obligation to act according to his conscience is, no man is an island. The second great human obligation is man’s obligation to those around him. Ceremonies, weddings, funerals, humanitarian projects, rejoicing with those one is with, mourning with those that mourn, and sacrificing to help those less fortunate than one’s self - surely these ties of society are just as essential to man’s humanity as are his ties to himself. Governments, communities, cities are all built off of this fundamental desire we feel to be with others, and the moral responsibility we feel to ensure that all men are treated fairly, justice is accomplished, and the less fortunate are cared for. Often this obligation to those around us is described as a social contract in which each person invests and is expected to honor the investments of others. As is clearly evident, these socio-contractual obligations are derived directly from and can be viewed as extensions of obligations of conscience. It is therefore of major concern when these two obligations come into conflict due to complex and diverse societies.

In his article “Pharmacists and the Social Contract,” Kenneth Richman argues that “pharmacists benefit from a monopoly on the right to dispense prescription medications. This monopoly, like public utilities, comes with responsibilities that go beyond the usual duties of professionalism. Pharmacists have a duty to conform to the system which has invested in them and in which they have invested” (15). He argues that because pharmacists have entered into a social contract by being given a monopoly and because they have the ability to affect the laws and policies governing their profession, conscientious objections are unjustifiable. He argues that if a pharmacist wants to protest a policy or law he should do it off the clock, when not performing the duties he has contracted to do (15). Robert Card, in “Conscientious Objection and Emergency Contraception,” also supports this position by arguing that specifically in the case of emergency contraception  (EC), because there is potential harm done to the woman if the drug is not dispensed immediately by the first pharmacist they go to and because a pharmacists should prioritize patients over self, pharmacists have a socio-contractual obligation to dispense the drug. In addition, Rebecca Dresser addresses this issue by describing the current scarcity of abortion providers compared to the recent demand for abortion procedures and states that “without reasonable access, the right to terminate a pregnancy becomes an empty right” (280). However she argues, like Murphy and Genuis, that this response should not violate an individual physician’s freedom of conscience, but should come from the medical community at large (282). She readily admits that there is no quick fix solution to balancing an individual’s freedom of conscience and still ensuring that women have access to abortion and other contested services  (284), but she provides workable alternatives to the mandate to refer. The two main ways she proposes are through changes in training programs -- making abortion training more readily available and having those trainings be on an opt out basis instead of opt in -- and through a change in the social climate -- she suggest things such as providers who don’t perform abortions, but are not objected to them, vocally acknowledging the contributions of those who do, as well as the medical community in general extending symbolic gestures or support and local law enforcement doing more to protect abortion workers (283-284).

3. The Extent of Freedom of Conscience When Weighed in Balance with the Responsibility of the Medical Professional to the Rest of Society

Another way to frame the argument, outside of social contract theory, is the principle of a “duty” or “standard of care.” Medical professionals have been put in special positions of trust and authority, due to their training, education, and legally licensed status, and have an elevated “duty of care,” or are held to a higher standard of care then a common person -- Meaning simply that they have a greater responsibility to ensure that harm does not come to others who are not in the same privileged position as them due to their actions or inactions. Of course, as with most legal principles, this is tempered by the standard of reasonableness, or in other words the standard of care is defined by how a reasonable person would act in their situation and respond to the reasonable foreseeability or unforeseeability of harm. Because of our free market healthcare system this iteration is a much more reasonable way to frame the argument, and here’s why: though it seems the medical community has been given a “monopoly” on providing medical services by laws establishing that only professionals with proper licensure can practice medicine or distribute drugs, the medical community is so expansive, so diverse, and so open to anyone willing to spend the time and money to educate themselves enough to join it, that it cannot rightly be called a monopoly in the sense the word is generally used. Specifically in the case of pharmacies, Dresser’s argument would reasonably suggest that even if there is a perceived monopoly it is the responsibility of the medical community to ensure that customers know where they can go to get the drugs they need, not the responsibility of the conscientiously objecting individual.

Assuming that the individual doctors, pharmacists and other medical professionals are bound by a social contract that dictates they must ensure that all services are provided to every members of the community leads to some absurd conclusions. These are well demonstrated by asking a couple of essential questions to understand the scope of what that claim entails. The first question that needs to be asked is this: does the medical community have a responsibility to provide every service that society deems necessary for every individual who wants it? And if they do have this obligation, does it only apply to those who can pay for the services, or those who can’t pay as well? Answering affirmatively to either of these questions results in incredible unfairness, putting the burden entirely on the doctor's, or discriminating against the poor entirely. The logical extent of an affirmative answer is obviously absurd, as well, in a free market society: no one doctor is obligated to perform every service that every person requests of them, even if they are qualified to perform that service. In addition, the medical community at large does not even believe that individual doctors have an obligation to ensure that service is provided to every individual. An excellent example of this is a pair of articles recently published in The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics by Stan Block and Douglas Diekema. These articles take opposing sides on the question of primary care physicians dismissing families who refuse to vaccinate their children. Block states that when families refuse to vaccinate their children they arrive at an “impasse” which puts the pediatrician “in an untenable position, having to decide whether to provide substandard medical care or dismiss the family by ‘refusing the refusers’ of infant vaccines” (649), and goes on to advocate such a dismissal. Diekema, in his rebuttal to Block, does not disagree that pediatricians have a right to dismiss such patients, he simply attempts to demonstrate why such dismissals are “misguided”, and there are better option to convince families to vaccinate (654). While it may seem the articles would argue the right to dismiss, in fact the right to dismiss is not questioned, it is viewed as given by both sides that the physician has every right to decide not to provide services to those families whose values and paradigms of medicine are not compatible with their own. More than that, this right is viewed as a given even though there is a shortage of primary care providers (Schimpf). It is only in cases of controversial services that the right to choose not to provide certain services becomes an issue, and it is utterly unreasonable to mandate that medical professionals perform morally contested services when other services which meet all the same criteria of scarcity but are not morally contested go unmandated.

Another alternative view to the social contract paradigm that elucidates an individual doctor’s responsibility to society is posed by Law Professor Jeffrey Hammond, in his article “Conscience as Contract. Conscience as Covenant.” What Hammond proposes to replace the social contract argument is an individual contract between doctor and patient, but he even takes that one step further and proposes that the doctor patient relationship is, in fact, a covenant (433).  He argues that

“the Doctor is free to enter into a contract with the patient, and the patient is free to enter into a contract with the doctor. A great deal of contemporary health law is built on the premise that the doctor and the patient freely enter into their relationship with each knowing their respective responsibilities up front -- the doctor to provide agreed upon treatment, and the patient to pay for those services. . . if the doctor is to exercise his rights in conscience he should give wide berth to his counterpart the patient. The patient should know before treatment begins what the doctor will do and will not do for the patient” (436-437).

He says legally there must be other viable options to choose or not choose the contract by both parties in order for it to truly be a contractual relationship. Taking it to the next step Hammond explains that traditionally there have been three revered, almost sacred relationships, in which the government cannot interfere: the attorney-client relationship, doctor patient relationship, and the relationship between religious clergy and their followers (440-441). Doctors, he claims, often have a more intimate knowledge, “in the biblical sense” (440), of their patients than anyone but their intimate partner. He he explains that “Physicians who view their relationship in particular Hippocratic norms repose their skill into their patients, as their patients repose their trust in them, and that “this trust-bound relationship” (443-444), “is a covenant relationship that is an extension of the larger covenanted relationship that the doctor has with medicine itself and the larger public” (441).  Finally, Hammond points out, “the entire point of medicine is wrapped up in the following aphorism that doctors intuitively know: their job is ‘always to care, never to kill” (443). This intuitive conviction that medical professionals have, to ensure they use their extensive knowledge of the human body and medicines to heal, to help, and to care instead of using it to gain power over others, to kill, or to harm people to promote other goals is at the very heart of their covenant with those they serve. If a doctor were to do violence to himself by violating this aphorism, he would also be violating the sacred trust placed in him by the patient, and therefore violating the covenant and contract he had with the patient. Therefore, requiring a medical professional to violate their conscience in order to better serve their clients is potentially more detrimental to the client than helpful. Even in the cases where a doctor “conscientiously” refuses to perform a procedure for someone because they are a different race, as Dresser also points out, forcing them to perform the procedure anyway endangers the patient and does not promote the highest standards of care (282). In this discussion it is also necessary to note that as much as society would like to think of medical professionals as individuals who have answered a divine calling and dedicated their lives to healing and helping others, there job is a job. Just like anyone else’s job, they perform a service, and they get paid. Of course there are standards of care and moral obligations involving those in a greater position to do good than the rest of society, but at the end of the day someone needs a service, the doctor offers to provide that service, and the doctor gets paid for that service. America is a free market society complete with competitive prices and incentives, and medicine in the United States is not an exception to that. It is unjust and a gross violation of conscience to require physicians to perform contested services simply because they are contested when other physicians are afforded very large berth to refuse services to patients with whom they feel their values, standard of care, and hippocratic oath are at odds.

4. Conclusion

It is unreasonable to force pharmacies to provide every drug someone might ever want, and it is unreasonable to force someone to violate their conscience, even if they are being payed for it or given a “monopoly” in which to do it.  In order to preserve not only the covenant relationship between the medic and her profession, but to preserve to the highest degree the covenant of the medical professional to the rest of society to provide what she considers the highest standard of medical care, the medical professional must, of necessity, be able to fully bring to the doctor patient relationship the full extent of her moral convictions relating to her practice. The medical community has an obligation to perform medical services for society and to ensure that services it deems necessary are provided, but at the same time a person cannot have a moral obligation to violate their conscience or the seat of their morality. The obligation the individual medical professional has is their obligation to their own conscience and their contracts and covenants with their patients. In order to ensure the highest quality of of service within the individual contracts and covenants a medical professional’s freedom of conscience and right to conscientious objections ought to retain its protected status.

Bibliography

Block, Stan L. “The Pediatrician’s Dilemma: Refusing the Refusers of Infant Vaccines.”

Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 43.3 (2015): 648-653. Print.

Card, Robert F. “Conscientious Objection and Emergency Contraception.” The American

Journal of Bioethics 7.6 (2007): 8-14. Print.

Diekema, Douglas S. “Physician Refusal of Families Who Refuse Vaccination: An Ethical

Assessment.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 43.3 (2015): 654-659. Print.

Dresser, Rebecca S. “Freedom of Conscience, Professional Responsibility, and Access to

Abortion.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics 22.3 (1994): 280-286. Print.

Hammond, Jeffrey B. “Conscience as Contract. Conscience as Covenant.” Faulkner Law

Review 4.2 (2013): 433-444. Print.

Murphy, Sean, and Stephen J. Genuis.  “Freedom of Conscience in Healthcare: Distinctions

and Limits.” Bioethical Inquiry 10 (2013): 347-354. Print.

Richman, Kenneth. “Pharmacists and the Social Contract.” The American Journal of

Bioethics. 7.6 (2007): 15-16. Print.

Schimpff, Stephen C. “Why is There a Shortage of Primary Care Physicians?” Kevinmd.com

17 Feb 2014. Electronic. 14 June 2016.

Webster, Noah. “Reason.” American Dictionary of the English Language. n.p. 1828.

Electronic. 24 June 2016.

Johnathan, Adventures, and Slothful and Unwise Servants: or On Agency Concluded

Life is a forge, and we are the metal: if we are to be strong and virtuous tools we must be placed in the fire and hammered until we cannot break.  Life is a loom and our journey is accomplished one thread at a time, line upon line, precept upon precept.  Our life is clay on a potter's wheel and we must shape it and reshape it until it is what we want it to be.

False Paradigm III

Acting and Asking for Miracles

Another false paradigm I've fallen prey to in my life is that I shouldn't do anything unless I knew it was God's will for me. There were many times when I didn't really know if I should do something, like go on a service trip to Mexico with my friends or take a certain class, and I didn't feel God explicitly telling me to do it so I assumed it was not in His plan for me. But "he who must be commanded in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise steward." I used to think agency meant that we chose to follow God, on leash, like a puppy, and that's how we submit our will to His. I think there are definitely times when God requires us to follow Him through the dark, not knowing where He is leading, but I also think that  for the majority of our lives He wants us to work. Hard.  In a way I almost wonder if my old definition of agency was just a way to avoid work altogether, to avoid making hard choices.

The examples mentioned above, of not going to Mexico or taking a class because I wasn't sure, were times when I "took no thought save it was to ask" -- and so I received no answer. Living my life that way -- never doing anything unless I was explicitly told -- ended up resulting in depression because I felt like my life wasn't going anywhere. My life was too stagnant.

A story from the Bible I have come to love is found in 1 Samuel 13:5-14, 14:6-16, 23.

And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude: and they came up, and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Beth-aven.

When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead. As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling.

And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him.

And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash; Therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord: I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.

And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hathsought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee. . .

And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the Lord will work for us: for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.  And his armourbearer said unto him, Do all that is in thine heart: turn thee; behold, I am with thee according to thy heart.

Then said Jonathan, Behold, we will pass over unto thesemen, and we will discover ourselves unto them. If they say thus unto us, Tarry until we come to you; then we will stand still in our place, and will not go up unto them. But if they say thus, Come up unto us; then we will go up: for the Lord hath delivered them into our hand: and this shall be a sign unto us.

And both of them discovered themselves unto the garrison of the Philistines: and the Philistines said, Behold, the Hebrews come forth out of the holes where they had hid themselves. And the men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his armourbearer, and said, Come up to us, and we will shew you a thing. And Jonathan said unto his armourbearer, Come up after me: for the Lord hathdelivered them into the hand of Israel. And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and his armourbearer after him: and they fell before Jonathan; and his armourbearer slew after him.

And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and his armourbearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of land, which a yoke of oxen might plow. And there was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all the people: the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked: so it was a very great trembling. And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked; and, behold, the multitude melted away, and they went on beating down one another.

So the Lord saved Israel that day: and the battle passed over unto Beth-aven.

I love the contrast of the uses of faith and agency in these stories and the consequences that followed.  Saul, who become king because of his righteousness or through the proper use of agency, in this passage loses his right to kingship through pride and lack of faith, by assuming authority he did not have, acting expressly contrary to God's commands, and unworthily and improperly performing sacred rites. His son, Jonathan, on the other hand saw the responsibility he had to protect his people from the Philistines and devised a plan, then acted in faith and God worked miracles for him.  I am astounded, actually, by the amount of faith Jonathan had. It would be one thing to fight alone against a whole garrison of Philistines if God commanded you to do it, but Jonathan wasn't commanded! He didn't wait for God to tell him what he needed to do, he chose of his own accord to go alone against them, and God honored and rewarded his righteous use of agency. I wonder if this is one of the principles God was referring to when He counseled "knock and it shall be opened up to you."

Which leads me to my next thought

Storybook Lessons

I've been reading a lot lot novels lately, which is what inspired this post in the first place, and I've noticed some profound truths that helped me recognize even more clearly how much God wants us to use our own agency to act and experience life. This is what I've learned, you can't become a man without a struggle -- f you've never had to face anything hard, to defend your beliefs, to overcome your weaknesses, you have never become a man; the same for princesses -- Happily Ever After only comes after a significant struggle, if there was no struggle, frankly, we wouldn't even care about their lives or their story.

President Uchtdorf taught:

For a moment, think back about your favorite fairy tale. In that story the main character may be a princess or a peasant; she might be a mermaid or a milkmaid, a ruler or a servant. You will find one thing all have in common: they must overcome adversity. . . In stories, as in life, adversity teaches us things we cannot learn otherwise. Adversity helps to develop a depth of character that comes in no other way. Our loving Heavenly Father has set us in a world filled with challenges and trials so that we, through opposition, can learn wisdom, become stronger, and experience joy.

As the characters go on quests, adventures, journeys, or overcome their weaknesses they gain just that: character. Their souls and understanding expand and often realize upon returning home they realize that everything they knew, all the things they thought were important are suddenly so small, so many things they thought were dull become life's greatest joys, and the ugliness of the mundane becomes beautiful. We need adventures. We need journeys. We need battles to put life in it's proper perspective, to discover what life really is, to expand our souls and become more than was possible in the comfort of our bed, or our steady job. We need to Act and to Experience things. College started to do that for me, and awakened in me a desire to experience the glory of God through the world He created, to travel, to learn, to do new things.

Going to UVU was probably the first major life decision I made without feeling commanded to do it. I decided to go because I wanted to learn more, academically, socially, etc. and God blessed me for that use of my agency. For a long time previous to that decision I was determined that I was not going to go to a traditional college, so after I had attended UVU for about a semester and a half a friend asked me if I would recommend college for everyone. I told her that I unequivocally recommend experiencing things, particularly ones that are hard, throw you out of your comfort zone, and that give you culture shock.

Elder Oaks said

A desire to be led by the Lord is a strength, but it needs to be accompanied by an understanding that our Heavenly Father leaves many decisions for our personal choices. Personal decision making is one of the sources of the growth we are meant to experience in mortality. Persons who try to shift all decision making to the Lord and plead for revelation in every choice will soon find circumstances in which they pray for guidance and don’t receive it. For example, this is likely to occur in those numerous circumstances in which the choices are trivial or either choice is acceptable.

“We should study things out in our minds, using the reasoning powers our Creator has placed within us. Then we should pray for guidance and act upon it if we receive it. If we do not receive guidance, we should act upon our best judgment. Persons who persist in seeking revelatory guidance on subjects on which the Lord has not chosen to direct us may concoct an answer out of their own fantasy or bias, or they may even receive an answer through the medium of false revelation. Revelation from God is a sacred reality, but like other sacred things, it must be cherished and used properly so that a great strength does not become a disabling weakness (“Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall,” Ensign, Oct. 1994, 13–14).

Final Conclusion

The more I talk to friends who feel like they are stuck, the more I read the experiences of others -- whether fictional or actual -- the more I've come to realize that God gave us our agency so that we can create adventures, so that we can find battles that we can fight, so that we can literally leave the comfort of our home and learn more about God by learning about His creations and what He created us to be by EXPERIENCING THINGS.

Faith is a principle of action. The more we use our agency to create adventures and experiences the more God can bless us and perform miracles in our lives. God can't steer a parked car. Ask for miracles. Of course, go to Him and get His approval for plans, but elder Scott says if the answer doesn't come, often times God is telling us He trusts our judgement, and wants us to make the choice on our own.

I used to feel guilty, like I said before, about doing things I didn't feel commanded to do, and maybe other people don't have this same struggle, and it's taken me a long time to learn that God want's me to just do things. Of course He want's me to be wise about it and there are times when He will give explicit directions, but He want's me to take responsibility for my life, to make decisions, take responsibility for the consequences they bring, and become like Him.

Soulmates and Personal Revelation: or On Agency, Part the Second

Life is a forge, and we are the metal: if we are to be strong and virtuous tools we must be placed in the fire and hammered until we cannot break.  Life is a loom and our journey is accomplished one thread at a time, line upon line, precept upon precept.  Our life is clay on a potter's wheel and we must shape it and reshape it until it is what we want it to be.

False Paradigm II

Marriage and Soulmates (or the lack thereof)

I used to believe that there was one person in this world that God wanted me to marry.  I knew so many general authorities had said there is no such thing as a Soul Mate -- that every marriage isn't Saturday's-Warrior-esque -- but obviously God knew who I was going to marry and He wouldn't let me marry a jerk or anyone that wasn't perfect for me (and, really, how many people are out there that are perfect for me? Probably only one.) So it was kind of like a retrospective soulmate. All I had to do was find him, but even that would be some kind of miraculous meeting totally orchestrated by God, and God would tell me when the time was right to marry him. It's all predestined, after all.

Let me share some quotes with you from the prophets that totally shattered that paradigm like icicles being kicked off car.

First from President Kimball:

"Soul mates" are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price (“Oneness in Marriage,”Ensign, Mar. 1977, 4).

And from Bruce R McConkie:

How do you choose a wife? I’ve heard a lot of young people from Brigham Young University and elsewhere say, “I’ve got to get a feeling of inspiration. I’ve got to get some revelation. I’ve got to fast and pray and get the Lord to manifest to me whom I should marry.” Well, maybe it will be a little shock to you, but never in my life did I ever ask the Lord whom I ought to marry. It never occurred to me to ask him. I went out and found the girl I wanted; she suited me; I evaluated and weighed the proposition, and it just seemed a hundred percent to me as though this ought to be. Now, if I’d done things perfectly, I’d have done some counseling with the Lord, which I didn’t do; but all I did was pray to the Lord and ask for some guidance and direction in connection with the decision that I’d reached. A more perfect thing to have done would have been to counsel with him relative to the decision and get a spiritual confirmation that the conclusion, which I by my agency and faculties had arrived at, was the right one. . . . There’s a fine balance between agency and inspiration. We’re expected to do everything in our power and then to seek an answer from the Lord, a confirming seal that we’ve reached the right conclusion; and sometimes, happily, in addition, we get added truths and knowledge that we hadn’t even supposed. -- Elder Bruce R MocConkie, Angency or Inspiration?

I'll be honest, the responsibility I felt after reading those quotes was Immense. Of course there was at least one person I was seriously interested in when I heard it, and another I really cared about that was seriously interested in me, both of whom I could easily marry.  A fact which was causing me a lot of anguish. And I realized something -- GOD IS NOT GOING TO MAKE THAT DECISION FOR ME. Yes, He will help me not marry a jerk, but ultimately I have to Choose. I get to choose who I'm going to marry, you get to choose who you're going to marry, God hasn't made that decision for any of us.It's so freeing!

But freedom means work. And a lot of it. From the same talk listed above President Kimball said:

Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys. It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations.

President Hinckley said:

Be worthy of the mate you choose. Respect him or her. Give encouragement to him or her. Love your companion with all your heart. This will be the most important decision of your life, the individual whom you marry.

God has trusted us to make that decision. It's "the most important decision of our lives" and He will guide us and direct us, but ultimately it's up to us.  Like everything else in this life it's a learning experience and in the end the decision is not made all at once, when he hands us a ring, but little by little all along the way.

A friend of mine recently returned from a mission and said the only advice her mission president gave her when she left was this: You marry who you date. You Marry. Who. You. Date. When you put a lot of time and energy into creating and strengthening a relationship with someone, you create and strengthen a relationship with that person. Go figure. And 9 times out of 10 you marry someone created and strengthened a strong relationship with. You marry who you date, you see? So be careful how you use your agency because by doing so you're making choices.

That's probably more than enough tautology for now, so I'll apply this back into the rest of life and create a beautiful set up for the last part of this series by ending with another quote from elder McConkie:

Use both agency and prayer. It is not, never has been, and never will be the design and purpose of the Lord—however much we seek him in prayer—to answer all our problems and concerns without struggle and effort on our part. This mortality is a probationary estate. In it we have our agency. We are being tested to see how we will respond in various situations; how we will decide issues; what course we will pursue while we are here walking, not by sight, but by faith. Hence, we are to solve our own problems and then to counsel with the Lord in prayer and receive a spiritual confirmation that our decisions are correct. (“Why the Lord Ordained Prayer,” Ensign, Jan. 1976, 11)

Grace is Not a Fail-Safe: or On Agency, Part the First

Life is a forge, and we are the metal: if we are to be strong and virtuous tools we must be placed in the fire and hammered until we cannot break.  Life is a loom and our journey is accomplished one thread at a time, line upon line, precept upon precept.  Our life is clay on a potter's wheel and we must shape it and reshape it until it is what we want it to be.

Awkward intro

I was (and probably still am) a Molly Mormon all through my teenage years, and I will be the first to admit that I often went to extremes in my efforts to follow God and keep the commandments. For example, at one point when I was about 12 I decided that wearing undershirts was evil because if the shirt wasn't high enough in the first place it was too suggestive and you shouldn't be wearing it.  I also wrote this small snippet about my opinion on flirting in a 7 page dissertation about my personal standards (no joke, it was 7 pages long. Single spaced.)

Flirting [my definition of which was basically just playful banter] Is one of the most selfish acts that one can commit, using someone you care about to gratify your own personal lusts under the pretense of love; It is heretical and blasphemous, it is an evil counterfeit for true love, as well as a tool of the devil's to desensitize, lead down the path to emotional, spiritual and physical desecration, and takes focus away from God, and things which are Good, therefore, it is below anything which a future Queen of Zion should participate in.

All this to say, I sincerely wanted to be good and do what I thought God wanted me to, but sometimes I didn't go about it in quite the right way, or I had funny notions about what God wanted me to do. Some of those notions I've only recently realized were wrong.

False Paradigms

I

Grace and Personal Responsibility

Whenever anything went wrong in my life I used to assume that it was meant to be that way. I thought that if I made a mistake, or was running late for a class that thing was supposed to happen because otherwise I would be smashed in a car crash on the way to my class, or that that mistake was supposed to be made because God wanted me to learn a lesson from it.  This paradigm, I'm sure, was naturally born from my fondness of looking on the bright side of things and trying to find the good in life, and even from my testimony that God is good and works miracles in our lives. I don't deny that God's workings are beyond my comprehension and that those kinds of miracles do happen, but the result of that way of thinking was that I ended up believing my whole life was predestined and planned for me.  That I didn't have to make any choices other than believing that God was in control.  It took a C. S. Lewis novel to make me realize I was living a lie.

In the his book, The Silver Chair, Jill made a mistake at the beginning of the book which set off a chain of events which resulted in their quest being much harder and much longer than it needed to be -- a fact which Aslan pointed out to her. Then throughout the journey she failed to follow the instructions Aslan had given her and she ended up not only endangering her life and the lives of those with her, but almost failing the quest he had sent her on.  Through out all of it Aslan was able to help make up for lost time and help her learn from her mistakes but she still had to suffer the consequences of her actions.

In his talk Personal Strength through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, Elder Scott told the story of the Strippling Warriors and said

Consider the tender feelings of those fathers [of the Strippling Warriors]. How must they have felt to know that the rebellious actions of their past prevented them from protecting  their wives and children at that moment of need? Knowing personally of the atrocities their sons would now face, they must have privately wept. Fathers, not children, are  supposed to protect their families! Their sorrows must have been intense. . .sometimes our poor choices leave us with long-term consequences. One of the vital steps to complete repentance is to bear the short- and long-term consequences of our past sins. Their past choices had exposed these Ammonite fathers to a carnal appetite that could again become a point of vulnerability that Satan would attempt to exploit.

Conclusion: Mistakes are real, I do actually make them, it's not all God's fault. God does actually expect us to bear the consequences of our actions and mistakes, but He does so to teach us to become like Him. God has given us agency, and we can't have agency without consequences.  Whenever we make a mistake, or choose to do something we know we shouldn't we still have to suffer the consequences of that mistake - grace is not a "fail-safe". We still loose blessings when we sin or fall. Grace is what allows that mistake or sin to be consecrated to our good through repentance, and what allows us to return to the presence of God despite human frailty. God is "a perfect just God, and a merciful God also."