Aiming For Strikes, If Your Life Were a Movie, The Power of Agency
Amnous Newsletter #73
Discipleship
“Having bumpers is different than aiming for the target. We need to aim for strikes.”1
Jeffrey R. Holland
What does it mean to aim for strikes, spiritually speaking?
It means aiming for conversion to the Savior, as opposed to conversion to an institution, people, culture, etc.
There are so many amazing benefits of a church community. There are great people. There are great activities and programs. There is a welcoming, loving environment of people. These are really important. These are the necessary bumpers.2 But just like in bowling, not everyone who bowls with the bumpers up gets strikes. Strikes are only awarded to those who aim for strikes.
Daily engagement with the doctrine of Christ is what it means to aim for strikes. The doctrine of Christ is the disciple’s daily operating system. It’s their personal culture.
The doctrine of Christ includes exercising faith in Jesus Christ, repenting daily, honoring covenants with God, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and cycling through these steps repeatedly and iteratively.3 This is how to come unto and become like Jesus Christ. This is the doctrine that He taught.
Jesus Christ is the way. He is the mark. Don’t miss the mark.4
Leadership
“If you were the main character in a movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you to do right now?”5
Sahil Bloom
This week I watched the new movie Project Hail Mary. It was a fantastic movie. It had all the elements a great film typically has. I will avoid spoiling anything, but there are definitely themes that make for a great, compelling, inspiring story or character.
They have a pursuit or quest.
They are not perfect.
They have some sort of skill or gift.
They are proactive.
They are vulnerable.
There is some sort of hero’s journey.
Your life is a story. You are the main character. Just like a movie character, you can’t control all the circumstances, but you have complete control over your choices. You can be proactive and impact change. You have the power. You hold the pen.6
This is one of the primary reasons you are here on this earth. God wants you to be high agency, which means that He wants you to proactively (not reactively) use your agency to impact the world in a meaningful way.
26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.
27 Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;
28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.
29 But he that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned.7
A couple years ago, while being mired in uncertainty regarding my future (particularly wondering what career path to take), I went to the temple to seek the will of the Lord. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child. After being in the temple, I spent some time outside on the grounds, pondering about my situation. The Lord spoke to me. He didn’t give me any answers as to what I should do. But He did inspire my mind with a list of questions to ask myself. Principles to guide my thinking, if you will. Here is the list of questions I received that day:
What story do I want written about my life?
What story do I want my children to read about my life?
Am I living life by design?
Am I the creator of circumstance (agent who acts) or the creature of circumstances (object acted upon)?
Am I writing the story of my life? Or is someone else holding the pen?
Fortune favors the Bold. Is my faith bold? Are my actions bold? Are my intentions bold? Is my heart bold?
Am I leading by faith/conviction or fear?
So, how would you answer these? Your answers might just tell you what you should do next.
Mental Performance
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”8
Viktor Frankl
Latter-day Saint scholar Terry Givens recently appeared on a podcast talking about early Christian history. Here is an excerpt of what he said: “Elaine Pagels, in trying to account for the rapid growth and overwhelming popularity and emergence of Christianity, the one concept that she thinks is the key to this explosive dynamism of early Christianity is the concept of an autonomous will. This notion that we actually have the freedom to determine our own natures. To love freely, to choose freely, to respond freely. This is what animate(d) Christians who lived in such a highly stratified, hierarchical, deterministic universe.”
This truth, that you have an autonomous will, that you have the power to choose and change, is explosive in the best way. Read the following statements.
Book of Mormon: “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.”9
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People: “Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal world. The extent to which we exercise and develop these endowments empowers us to fulfill our uniquely human potential. Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.”
Man’s Search for Meaning: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Terryl Givens: “Agency is enshrined as the very ground of human existence itself.”10
Can you taste how good these principles are? Can you see why these would cause so much excitement and energy to people mired in a culture of determinism?
Here, your most crucial challenge … will be to believe that you can change, that there can be a different you. To disbelieve that is clearly a satanic device designed to discourage and defeat you. When you get home tonight, you fall on your knees and thank your Father in Heaven that you … have grasped a gospel that promises repentance to those who will pay the price. Repentance is not a foreboding word. It is following faith, the most encouraging word in the Christian vocabulary. Repentance is simply the scriptural invitation for growth and improvement and progress and renewal. You can change! You can be anything you want to be in righteousness.
If there is one lament I cannot abide—and I hear it from adults as well as students—it is the poor, pitiful, withered cry, “Well, that’s just the way I am.” If you want to talk about discouragement, that phrase is one that discourages me. Though not a swearing man, I am always sorely tempted to try my hand when I hear that. Please spare me your speeches about “That’s just the way I am.” I’ve heard that from too many people who wanted to sin and call it psychology. And I use the word sin again to cover a vast range of habits, some seemingly innocent enough, that nevertheless bring discouragement and doubt and despair.
You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. That’s another satanic suckerpunch—that it takes years and years and eons of eternity to repent. It takes exactly as long to repent as it takes you to say, “I’ll change”—and mean it. Of course there will be problems to work out and restitutions to make. You may well spend—indeed you had better spend—the rest of your life proving your repentance by its permanence. But change, growth, renewal, and repentance can come for you as instantaneously as for Alma and the sons of Mosiah. Even if you have serious amends to make, it is not likely that you would qualify for the term, “the vilest of sinners,” which is the phrase Mormon uses in describing these young men. Yet as Alma recounts his own experience in the thirty-sixth chapter of the book that bears his name, his repentance appears to have been as instantaneous as it was stunning.
Do not misunderstand. Repentance is not easy or painless or convenient. It is a bitter cup from Hell. But only Satan, who dwells there, would have you think that a necessary and required acknowledgment is more distasteful than permanent residence. Only he would say, “You can’t change. You won’t change. It’s too long and too hard to change. Give up. Give in. Don’t repent. You are just the way you are.” That, my friends, is a lie born of desperation. Don’t fall for it.11
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/byu-must-be-deliberate-in-upholding-its-unique-mission-elder-gilbert-tells-byu-faculty-and-staff
It has been said that it is possible to be active in the Church and less active in the gospel.
Lifelong Conversion. Speech by Dale G. Renlund. This is the best and clearest treatise on the doctrine of Christ I’ve ever heard.
Looking Beyond the Mark. Talk by Dale G. Renlund
The best choice you can make with your story is to give the pen to the Savior and let Him author your story.
D&C 58:26-29
Man’s Search for Meaning. Book by Viktor Frankl
2 Nephi 10:23.
The clear implication here is that we are free to choose anything. We are free. Nothing is already determined.
Terryl Givens Wonder of Scripture Lecture. BYU’s Maxwell Institute
For Times of Trouble. Talk by Jeffrey R. Holland