You are born again when you decide based on long-term expected benefit, not present feelings

Footnotes

By nature, you make choices based on what feels good right now rather than what benefits the most long-term. This shortcoming affects every choice you make across every domain, distorting the true value of the options of choice available to you, subconsciously filtering out options, and ensuring that the choices that you make will lead to less than the greatest long-term happiness possible.

God’s preference is for what yields the greatest long-term benefit.¹⁰ To think, feel, and act based on the long-term net benefit of the options available to you is the same as governing your life based on your understanding of how Jesus would live in your place.¹¹ Optimizing for long-term value is the only path to the greatest happiness.

Spiritual rebirth occurs when you choose to desire maximizing long-term benefit instead of the default aim of maximizing present pleasure.¹² This shift occurs when you abandon¹³ a guidance system based primarily on the emotional direction of carnal impulses and present pleasure-seeking in favor of the rational direction of choosing to think, feel, and act based on the long-term net benefit of the options available to you.

While the natural way of deciding can be practiced without much thought, optimizing for long-term value is always intentional. It requires actively choosing to be governed by reason instead of feelings. Reason gives us the ability to subject our emotions to objective reality, choosing what we expect will be best long-term instead of what feels good right now.¹⁴

Reason is meant to reveal the course of action that transcends your emotional impulses—to guide you in how you should feel and act based on how things really are over time, not based merely on how you feel right now. The shift from emotional to rational direction is so fundamental that it is like becoming a new person, because you become aware of and begin developing a completely new way of interacting with the world.

To become born again is to intentionally reason instead of emotionally react. Reason is the guidance system of the spirit, and by submitting to it,¹⁵ you become a child of God.¹⁶ As you rationally consider the cost and benefit of options before you, you can identify what option carries the greatest net benefit and, in so doing, decide what God would do in your place.

Footnotes

1. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17) ↩
2. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18) ↩
3. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. (Matthew 10:38-39) ↩
4. Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do; for that which ye have seen me do even that shall ye do; ( 3 Nephi 27:21) ↩
5. And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3) ↩
6. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved. (2 Nephi 10:24) ↩
7. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. (1 John 3:8-9) ↩
8. And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. (1 John 3:5-6) ↩
9. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. (1 John 2:29) ↩
10. He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation (2 Nephi 26:24) ↩
11. And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. (Ephesians 4:24) ↩
12. I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. (Psalms 119:59) ↩
13. Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: (1 Corinthians 15:36) ↩
14. Don’t conform yourself to the present world, but be transformed by changing your mind, by proving the will of God through searching and learning what is of the greatest worth and benefit. Not to think or feel independent of your reasoning, but to reconcile your thoughts and feelings through sound judgment to the reasons God has graciously provided you through me and my presence. (Romans 12:2-3, Author’s Reflection) ↩
15. For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19) ↩
16. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. (Romans 8:14) ↩

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