Free to Act

I have been reading The Dark Is Rising sequence to one of my sons, and I read an interesting scene to him last night from the last book Silver on the Tree. The Dark and the Light were moving towards a final battle, and the Dark challenged the Light that a certain person among them could not participate in the obtaining of the silver on the tree. They determined that a man who was committed to neither side named John Rowlands was to be the judge of the matter. John had just found out, though, that his wife Blodwen had been somehow allied with the Dark and she had disappeared among them. He was in despair over this, and as the Dark made its case to him as to why he should judge the matter as they suggested, John was told that if he sided with Dark’s wishes his wife would come back to him. She appeared and spoke to him. “John, help me, help—I have no hand in all these things, I am possessed. There is a mind of the Dark that comes into my own, and then… I say things, and I do things, and I do not know what they are…. It is the Dark taking over my mind and making me into something else while it is there. Oh John, cariad, say what they want, so that we can go home to the cottage and be as happy again as we have been all these years.” John considered the matter as he looked at her and then made this profound declaration: “I do not believe any power can possess the mind of a man or woman, Blod—or whatever your name should really be. I believe in God-given free will, you see. I think nothing is forced on us, except by other people like ourselves. I think our choices are our own. And you are not possessed therefore, you must be allied to the Dark because you have chosen to be—terrible though that is for me to believe after all these long years.” Even the powers of evil cannot take away our gift of agency; others can only have control over our mind and choices as much as we let them in to do so.  

This reminds me of the teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. He said, “The devil has no power over us only as we permit him; the moment we revolt at anything which comes from God, the devil takes power.” He also taught, “Satan cannot seduce us by his enticements unless we in our hearts consent and yield. Our organization is such that we can resist the devil; if we were not organized so, we would not be free agents.” In other words, there is no truth to the claim that “the devil made me do it.” We always have the power to choose what we let into our mind, even if we don’t have total control over our physical situation. Lehi declared: “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). The holocaust survivor Victor Frankl famously stated, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” He also summarized of his experience as a prison deprived of nearly everything, “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” In the end we need not fear anyone or anything except our own choices—as the Lord declared, “The power is in [us] wherein [we] are agents unto [ourselves]” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:27-28). The Lord did not let Satan “destroy the agency of man” like he sought in the premortal realm, and He will not let the adversary do it here on earth either. We are always free to choose what we will allow into our minds, who we will let influence and guide our choices. Jacob’s declaration was true for his people and for us today: “Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life” (2 Nephi 10:23).