16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.
Traditionally people have made Satan out to be this monster
with horns and a tail, etc. I don’t see it that way. Who in their right mind would
follow someone so repulsive as a monster? Instead, I see the devil as being
handsome, charismatic, and persuasive. I also see that he mostly tells the truth on most things. There’s just enough truth to
allow us to relate to our own experience. Then once he has you hooked, he can
tell lies to lead you gradually further away from the truth and light. He appeals
to our intellectual logic, which can be very persuasive, especially when put up
against the logic presented by the Lord. His logic makes perfect sense as well,
but only after you exercise faith to accept some things that don’t make sense
in a purely physical world.
For example, it seems farfetched for the purely scientific
mind that only gives credence to what can be observed, measured, and proven by
observation to accept that a man, such as a prophet, could know of future
events. You can’t observe or measure the future, so it isn’t reasonable that there
could be prophets who can have that kind of knowledge. But once you make the
faith-full step to believe in a God for whom the past, present, and future are
all seen at once (see D&C 130: 7), then you believe that God knows of
future events, and it is not a stretch at all that He talks to certain men to
tell them about what will happen. Then you can believe in prophets, which is
what these men are called.
So now we come back to Lehi’s assertion that everything has
to have its opposite, including our decision to do what it takes to return to
Heavenly Father. There has to be a different choice that looks good enough that
it is legitimately enticing. So Satan appeals to the here and now, the natural
man, the physical, while Christ appeals to our higher, more long-term and
spiritual natures. In Satan’s choice you have the instant gratification of
physical pleasures and knowledge, but the long-term disappointment of lesser
eternal rewards. In Christ’s choice you have the long-term reward of eternal
life with our Heavenly Father and all the joy that comes with it, but the price
is rejecting the instant gratifications that are natural to the physical man.
That doesn’t mean you reject science and logic, but rather you accept that
there are some things that cannot be explained to your satisfaction without
accepting a few things that cannot be proven physically (See Hebrews 11: 1).
That’s why the natural man is an enemy to God (see Mosiah 3: 19). There is no
room in the natural man for that kind of faith. The physical, or natural, is
the ultimate reality, and unless we can allow our bodies to be subject to our
spirits (or in other words, our reason to be seen in light of our faith,
instead of the other way around), we will not accept any other reality. Our unbridled natural desires run counter to
God’s work and glory of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of
man (see Moses 1: 39). By insisting that supernatural or un-measurable facts
cannot exist, the natural man hinders mankind from accepting things like the
Atonement, and the rest of the plan set in place to bring to pass our
immortality and eternal life.
- 2 Nephi 9: 9
- Alma 12: 31
- Moroni 7: 12–19
- D&C 29: 39 (39–40)
