THE LORD'S WAY

This week's Sunday School lesson is on spiritual and temporal self-reliance.  I am amazed at how much this principle is a part of warfare we have been engaged in since before the world began.  This is very much good vs evil, freedom vs bondage.  God wants us to be free while Satan wants us in bondage, terrified and miserable as he is.  God's way is to have us spiritually reliant on Him and temporally reliant on ourselves but Satan's way is opposite.  Elder Dallin H. Oaks expressed it this way:

"There are powerful forces at work to beguile us into self-sufficiency in spiritual things and to lure us into some degree of dependence in temporal things.  It is easy for Latter-day Saints to fall prey to those forces". (Dallin H. Oaks, The Lord's Way, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1991)

The adversary seeks to corrupt the practice of self-reliance because through it he can lead us away from God and keep us in bondage.  He would have us believe that we need to be spiritually self-reliant (thinking we can "work out our own salvation", in other words, not needing the Saviour) and heavily reliant on others in temporal things, meaning we would be putting our trust in the arm of the flesh.  He seeks to put us into bondage to the world.  This is most evident through debt.  Anyone who is knee deep in credit card debt will agree with this.  When you are in debt, you are in bondage to the world and you are not free. 

Elder L. Tom Perry of the Council of the Twelve said it this way:

"Independence and self-reliance are critical to our spiritual and temporal growth.  Whenever we get into a situation which threatens our self-reliance, we will find our freedoms threatened as well.  If we increase our dependence on anything or anyone except the Lord, we will find an immediate decrease in our freedom to act". (As quoted in The Church News, Oct. 12, 1991)

This is the old battle field, different venue.  We are veterans of a war with Satan whose goal has been from the beginning to have us captive and in bondage.  Nephi said it well:

"Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man.  And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself". 2 Nephi 2:27

Tomorrow I will post about what it means to be spiritually self-reliant.