Choice: A Universal Theme

Last week I wrote about our choice to come to earth and that by coming to earth we experience opposition.  I said that we chose this life. Why would we do that? Why would we want to experience pain, sorrow, sickness, heartache, disasters? Again, I don't know if we knew that we would experience bad things, but we did want to have the ability to choose.

Since we need, crave, and desire choice, it is a universal theme in stories. Let's look at three examples:

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The Capitol requires each district to provide two tributes to fight to the death. Their justification is that there was civil war and in order to preserve life for the good of the people, the districts are told what goods and resources to produce and must participate in the Hunger Games. If the people do not comply, they will suffer punishment. Choice is taken away. Katniss is a hero because she chooses to enter the Hunger Games to save her sister and then she chooses to not die or be the last one alive at the end by pretending to eat the berries with Peeta.

The Giver by Lois Lowry. The setting for The Giver is a futuristic society where in order for the people to "be happy" and prosper, all opposition is taken away. The people do not see color, experience pain or joy, or even birth their own children. The people are assigned a job. One of those is for young women to birth babies which are then given to couples. Jonas, an eleven-year-old boy, is given the job of  Receiver of Memory. He visits with the Giver who shares memories with him. These memories contain joy and pain, color, love, and other feelings and emotions Jonas has not experienced. Once he has these memories, he becomes discontent with his society and escapes. Jonas chooses pain so he can experience joy. He chooses hardship and trials so he can feel.

Both of these are dystopian fiction or stories set in societies that are controlled to make people happy. But people cannot be happy without choice. I think all of us and especially writers wonder how we can make the world a better place. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was kind, if no one went hungry, if it was safe for our children to play outside and wander the neighborhoods and make friends with strangers? Sure, so let's make people be nice. Let's make a system where everyone does their part so no one goes hungry. Let's take away the desire to do evil by taking away all feeling. Let's take away choice.

Let's look at the most universal story about choice, Adam and Eve. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He told them that they could partake of any of the fruits in the garden except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because then they would die. Death is bad, right? Knowledge of good and evil is bad, right? That's why our loving Heavenly Father told them not to partake of the fruit. No. Our Heavenly Father had a plan. And that plan depended on the ability of Adam and Eve to choose. As Mormons, we do not believe that Adam and Eve were wrong to partake of the forbidden fruit. If they had not, they would still be living there without children and without the experience of choice. None of the rest of us would have been born. Adam and Eve had to make that first choice so they could have children, so that they could experience good and evil and have the knowledge to be able to choose. Because Adam and Eve made that choice, we were able to come to earth and gain a body and then learn to choose for ourselves between good and evil.

So even when my children do not choose to pick up their clothes or I sleep in and don't exercise or I eat more dessert than I should, I'm grateful for choice. When I'm tempted to force my children to obey because I know what's good for them, I remember that taking away choice is Satan's plan. But if I give them a choice, they might choose wrong. In fact, they probably will choose wrong. What is a parent to do? What did a loving Heavenly Father do? He sent us to earth to gain a body. He sent a Savior, Jesus Christ, to be an example of love and charity and then to atone for our sins. He put us on this earth with pain and joy, light and dark, good and evil, healthy food and junk food, uplifting literature and pornography, sunny days and storms, stability and destruction, health and sickness. Now we get to choose again and again and again. Will we choose the path of happiness: clean living, keeping God's commandments, loving and serving others, and teaching by example and with patience? Or will we turn our back on God? When life gives us trials we did not choose like mental illness, cancer, earthquakes, suicide,  rudeness, how will we react? Will we turn to God?

You choose.