Our beliefs—what we really believe, not what we would like to believe or what we say we believe—dictate our actions and our feelings. They can't be separated from each other.
Our beliefs are wholly up to us. We can choose to believe whatever we wish, no matter how impossible, false, ineffectual, or unwise they may be. Our beliefs can come from many places, including society and our carnal desires.
Our natural observations and inclinations are wholly insufficient to instruct us in the ways of higher order truth:
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)
This is why we are commanded to “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (John 7:24) Recall that righteous means that which improves. God is the one and only source of truth, because everything that improves comes from him, and everything that comes from him improves.
When we choose to believe that which is contrary to what God has manifested to us, we choose to love a lie. Loving a lie is the opposite of embracing the truth. It means acting contrary to what you know, or continuing in ignorance when you have the means to learn more.
So often, we find ourselves loving a lie by choosing to remain in a belief that is contradicted by reality, whether through ignorance or willful denial. We act like children who play house on what they must realize is a fake plastic kitchen.
What are these lies? Really, they are all subsumed in one lie: that good is evil, or that evil is good. Specific manifestations of this lie include when we act in opposition to what we know is good; when we refuse to test something new that might be good; when we ignore a revealed counterexample or inadequacy in our presently held belief; when we believe we live in an unconstrained world where we can both do and receive what we please; when we focus on the symptoms of our beliefs without ever questioning or changing our beliefs.
Satan is described as a liar from the beginning. This isn’t because everything he says and does is a lie, but because everything he says and does is based on a lie—the lie that good is evil, or evil is good:
24 And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;
25 And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning.
26 The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth;
27 And no man receiveth a fulness unless he keepeth his commandments.
28 He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things.
29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. 30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. (D&C 93)
Satan’s modus operandi is to convince others what he believes—that outcomes can be obtained external to the law that governs all things. But this is false. It is contrary to reality—things as they really are. It is contrary to God’s word, because God embraces reality. It is contrary to the light. It is contrary to the system set up from the foundation of the world:
20 There is <u>a</u> law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which <u>all</u> blessings are predicated—
21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is [all things are] predicated. (D&C 130)
11 And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;
12 Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—
13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power <u>of God</u> who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things. (D&C 88)
Lies cannot improve us. They are ineffectual, or vain, at best, and at worst, can cause great destruction in our lives and in the lives of others— suffering that is completely preventable if we will only listen to God.
17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,
18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:
19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. (Ephesians 4)
When we believe lies, we empower the devil. We waste our lives in the counterfeit pursuit of things that cannot bring us the deep satisfaction that can only be won in toiling pursuit of the truth. We are fully occupied and divert our time, energy, and talents to that which is of no worth. “Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy. Hearken diligently unto me, and remember the words which I have spoken; and come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your soul delight in fatness.” (2 Nephi 9:51)
When we love lies, we deprive ourselves of what we need for spiritual, physical, and other sustenance, and end up malnourished in every sense. “O, my beloved brethren, remember the awfulness in transgressing against that Holy God, and also the awfulness of yielding to the enticings of that cunning one. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually-minded is life eternal.” (2 Nephi 9:39)
No amount of wishing something is true will make it so. Addictions, false traditions, sacred cows are all manifestations of the same underlying problem: loving a lie. When you comprehend the truth, these things lose all their power. The problem, though, is that we cling so tightly to what we wish was true, ignoring the unavoidable pain that accompanies the comprehension that they aren’t, that we will endure any evidence to the contrary—no matter how strong it is—fighting it to the death to avoid a realization of the truth.
Why do we love a lie, when the truth is by definition more fruitful? Why do we turn away from the light? Is it not because of a lack of trust in God? Is it not because we do not really believe that he knows more than we do, and loves us more than we love ourselves?
Far too many people have beliefs that do not accord with reality as they experience it. But they choose to ignore these deviations because they can. The error of their estimate is small enough to be tolerable. Small enough to ignore. Then, invariably, life hits them with something they weren't expecting. An error too big to ignore. They have a medical emergency, lose their job, catch their spouse cheating, or find out something they thought about themselves was wrong.
When hit with an undeniable ideological contradiction, they can’t help but wonder “if this thing that I thought was so secure is in fact not so, what else might be off?” They start to doubt the very foundations of their ideologies. Most go into a tailspin of reckless behavior and emotional instability, and few recover.
These “ego deaths” are exactly what the gospel is designed to prevent—and prevention, oddly enough, is acquired through the maintenance of that very state. The Lord said: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25) Because our perception of reality is woefully limited, clinging to what we think we know and what we carnally desire will always result in our reliance upon some aspect of life that is anything but reliable. It may be a complete illusion, or it may be something different than we think it is. Either way, by leaning upon it, we bake “ego death” into the future. We guarantee that we will “lose [our lives].” The only way to minimize those experiences—to find our lives and keep them—is to rely upon God and only God, or in other words to reconcile ourselves completely to the light that he has revealed to us.