Day 63 | Free to Choose
April 28, 2015 - WEEK NINE
Minerva Teichert, House of the World (Lehi’s Dream of the Tree of Life), BYU Museum of Art, not for commercial use.
DAILY READING
There is no scripture reading assigned today. Use this day to catch up as needed and ponder the supplemental reading.
For Younger Disciples
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
The call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true and have reasonable, but not certain, grounds for believing to be true. I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice, and [more]… laden with personal vulnerability and investment….
We are, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial…. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance. Men and women are confronted with a world in which there are appealing arguments for God as a childish projection, for modern prophets as scheming or deluded imposters, and for modern scriptures as so much fabulous fiction. But there is also compelling evidence that a glorious divinity presides over the cosmos, that God calls and anoints prophets, and that his word and will are made manifest through a sacred canon that is never definitively closed.
There is something to tip the scale, however…. There is a heart that in these conditions of equilibrium and balance—and only in these conditions of equilibrium and balance, … is truly free to choose belief or cynicism, faith or faithlessness.
Why, then, is there more merit obtained—given this perfect balance—in believing in the Christ (and his gospel and prophets) than believing in a false deity or in nothing at all? Perhaps because there is nothing in the universe more perfectly good, absolutely beautiful, and worthy of adoration and emulation than this Christ. And a gesture of belief in that direction, a will manifesting itself as a desire to acknowledge his virtues as the paramount qualities of a divided universe, is a response to the best in us, the best and noblest of which the human soul is capable. For we do indeed create gods after our own image—or potential image. And that is an activity endowed with incalculable moral significance (Terryl Givens, “Lightning Out of Heaven,” BYU Speeches, November 29, 2005).
READ FULL TALK
ADDITIONAL MEDIA
FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
QUESTIONS FOR YOUNGER DISCIPLES
- Why did the training start when the horse was young?
- What do you think the horse did when it heard the bell at the end? What will you do when the Lord speaks to you when you have things you want to do very badly?