Cheer Up Your Hearts

2 Ne. 10:23 "Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves—to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life."

Jacob tells us to "Cheer up" because we are free to choose life death. Therefore, some say we should be as grateful for the opportunity to choose death as we are the opportunity to choose life. Others say we should protect our rights to sin by decriminalizing and making sin legal and accessible.

If Satan was going to force us to be good. I guess we should be grateful for and protect the option to sin. However, the scriptures and prophets never specifically say that. What scriptures say is: 1. Satan sought to destroy the agency of man (get rid of rules per Korihor?) 2. Satan claimed he wouldn't lose anyone (false claim?). 3. Satan never persuades to do good (what about force?) (Moses 4). Prophets have said Satan wanted to force obedience, but they know obeying Satan is never good.

How did Satan seek to destroy agency. Maybe Satans plan was to throw out the rules and everyone live like savages (do as you will). There is no sin for animals following their instincts. They are just doing what animals do. Animals are predictable and thus easy to control and enslave. Maybe Satan's plan of force was really a plan of captivity.

Also, if Satan was to force us to be good, and Jacob says we should be equally "cheerful" about the choice of death as we are for life, shouldn't we be grateful for and protect the opportinity to sin?

I suppose, it all depends on what the default setting was. If good was the default setting, we should be grateful for sin. However, If death is the default setting, we should be grateful for the commandments and the atonement that allow us to escape death.

Which do you think was the default setting? Which new option should cause us to "cheer up".

Before the Fall, for Adam and Eve, Life in the garden was the default setting, and sin was the option that gave them a choice. So, I would say that Adam and Eve were thankful for the FALL. For us, after the Fall, death is the default choice. And commandments and the Atonement give us the choice and the "cheer".

When we properly exercise our agency and Satan is Forcibly bound in the Millennium, and our children grow up without sin unto salvation; will they be less free? Will they have less reason to be cheerful?

Someone balked when I said, " a free man doesn't exercise his agency by choosing sin". This person believed that choosing sin was still exercising agency. In my mind, exercise makes a muscle stronger. In my mind, you increase your agency by obedience and weaken it through sin.

Some say, "Satan's plan was to force us to obey". They then use this belief to say that a free society should protect our right to freely sin. However, when modern prophets warn against Socialism say, "Satan's plan is a plan of force to obey"; forcing to obey Satan is not forcing to do right. Doing Satan's will is always wrong.

Yes, I believe government shouldn't institute regulations to prevent sin, but that doesn't mean sin should be legal. When a person violates the liberties of or harms others, the perpetrator should be forcibly punished and the fear of punishment should be the deterrence. (Alma 1:17-18).

Accordingly, I also believe that the government should only intervene with force when there is a victim. So, like I said before, marajuana possession should not be criminalized, but drug Distrubution can be prosecuted. Recreational drug abuse is a lie, a fraud, and a theft of a "high" the person did not earn. It is self abuse that makes people weak and steals their motivation. However, recreational drug distributors become an accomplice to the self-abuse and can be prosecuted via the Kevorkian principle.

Criminalizing recreational drug distribution makes immoral consumption difficult. You can institute Constitutional/libertarian principles by criminalizing distribution and make access to sin difficult. A free society doesn't require free and equal access to sin. But if someone wants to sin bad enough, they are free to go out of
their way to do it. Why not make people go out of their way to sin?

If you're worried about the government deciding what is things are good to distribute and bad to distribute, the Book of Mormon instructs to decide by the "voice of the people". Then you might say the voice of the people spoke on repeal of prohibition. However, most people generally agreed in 1933 that recreational alcoholic beverage consumption was bad. However they were duped into thinking that "the law shouldn't criminize individuals for drinking". See, this confused the issue. Prohibition had nothing to do with individual consumption. Prohibition was about the criminalization of distribution only, which has both a moral and constitutional basis for its criminalization.

Satan always takes us to thd extremes as well. He will tell us we should have no rules, or too many rules. Understanding this we can see the proper balance between anarchy and tyranny in the true political spectrum.

When it comes to recreational drug use. Satan loves to confuse the issue. He likes to make many arguments that miss the Crux of the issue. But like Traditional Marriage, if you don't focus on and redirect to the core issue, you cant easily defend it.

Distracting Drug Arguments:
We can tax it (love hearing this from libertarians)
We can regulate it and make it safe
Marajuana isn't addictive or doesn't have harmful health effects
We can cut down on organized crime
Users don't hurt anyone else
Satan wanted to force
People should be free to due what they want
Marajuana has potential medical benifits
Private citizens should be free to contract

Real Issue:
Recreational Drug use is self-abusive and steals a 'high' they did not earn, therefore artifically stimulating your pleasure centers will rob you of your motivation for productive behavior. While individual rec. drug use should not be criminalized, recreational drug manufacture and Distrubution should be criminalized because explicit in the contract is the understanding that the product will be used for harm and abuse. Recreational drug distributors cannot claim they had no knowledge how the product was going to be used. If sold as a recreational product, it is sold for the express intent to be abused and cause harm by definition. Therefore, the government has the responsibility to use force to stop abuse and harm and protect. The fear of punishment should provide the deterrence.

If you read the text of the 18th Ammendment, it only applied to the manufacture and Distrubution of beverage (recreational) alcohol and not individual use. Knowing this we see that Pres Heber J Grant was perfectly constitutionally principled to ask LDS to oppose the repeal of prohibition.

Like alcohol, marijuana prohibition may require a similar strategy that the manufacture, import, export, distrubution and sale of "smoking" cannabis be prohibited. Like alcohol, the recreational use of cannabis is attatched to the way it is administered. If a cancer patient requires an appetite stimulant, the quality controlled thc cannabinoid can be isolated and administered in pill or suspension form "with wisdom and skill".