If you search the scriptures, you can find many blessings that are promised to those who are obedient, but since the overarching topic here is being happy like Jesus, let’s look at what He’s said about that.
Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him…..These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:23-27)
If we are obedient, the greatest gifts promised to us for this life are the Holy Ghost, and through Him, peace. This is the kind of peace which shields us from depression, hopelessness, sadness and despair. Some of the emotional upheavals we suffer are a necessary part of our life experience, and they cannot be avoided. Others are brought on by our choices and our failure to be obedient to a loving Heavenly Father who has provided guidance through the commandments. When we choose to disobey, we choose to relinquish His divine protection from misery.
In “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis writes about the law of gravity and the moral law we all live under and contrasts them as one allowing us to choose whether or not we will obey and the other giving us no choice. Man did not make either of these laws, but he finds himself subject to both of them.
The moral law is inside us. We know it because we feel its influence. It would move us to always choose the right, do the humane thing, be charitable and care about others as we care about ourselves. There is an outside force that is prodding us to not respond to the promptings to obey that moral law. We have a choice to make.
The law we cannot choose to disobey is the law of gravity. However, there are outside forces that play with that law. Those forces allow planes to fly and feathers to float on the wind. Eventually gravity will have its way, but the other forces appear to defy the law for a time. If a rock is dropped, it falls to the ground. If it hits something on the way down, its course may be changed or slowed, but it will still go where gravity takes it. Something like a feather, however, plays with the law of gravity. It may fall gently to the ground. It may be carried about by the wind, up, down, around in circles, even across a long distance if it is light enough and the wind strong enough. The feather appears to have a little bit of freedom, deciding if and when it will obey the law of gravity.
We are not forced to obey the moral law, God’s law. God gave us agency, freedom to choose to obey or not, freedom to choose good or evil, freedom, it seems, to choose which external force will control where we go. We can go straight down like the rock as we obey perfectly His law, or we can float around like a feather as we allow our choices to carry us about on the wind.
Because none of us are perfect, none of us is the rock. The rock is Jesus. He perfectly obeys the moral law. We are all like the feather. We all start out free and enjoying the opportunity to make our own choices. Then the wind, that outside force, blows us, perhaps gently at first. Then the wind gets a little stronger, and we get whipped around a little more than we find comfortable. We try to get some control over our direction, but different ideas, experiences, even people blow us one way and then the other. We may find the external force leading us to go far from where we started, or we may just get tossed around in circles, moving only a short distance. We may get blown against some hard object that prevents us from going anywhere but does not allow us to land. The wind just batters us over and over against the immovable object.
We learn that our freedom to choose does not make us free at all if we make the wrong choices. When we cannot stand being blown about anymore, we might choose to bind ourselves to that rock that will weigh us down, seemingly forcing us to obey the law and freeing us from the battering wind. It is not really force, though, because we choose to be bound to the rock.
He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. (Deuteronomy 32:4)
The rock is always completely obedient, and if we are attached firmly to the rock, so are we. If we are lightly attached, we may be held somewhat in place, but the wind will continue to move us around until we finally choose to firmly attach ourselves or completely let go of the rock. Letting go could be a conscious decision, or it could just be the natural consequence of trying to have both the anchor of the rock and the freedom of the feather in the wind at the same time. It just cannot be done.
We have our freedom to choose. We can choose to not obey the commandments, and we will be buffeted by the wind, losing our freedom to progress to consequences of bad choices. Or we can choose to obey by surrendering our will to the Father. Then we attach ourselves completely to Jesus Christ, and through the atonement, the consequences are wiped away. Just as a rock may be kicked around, we may have a hard time of it. We may have difficult experiences and tough trials that toss us here and there, but as long as we are firmly attached to Christ, it will only serve to send us in the right direction as we progress toward perfection.
So if we choose to stop allowing the wind to batter us against all the barriers in life and instead firmly attached ourselves to the rock and guard that attachment with obedience to God’s laws, we can be Happy Like Jesus.
