Before the world existed, we lived with God as spirits. We were his children. We saw his glory and the perfect, divine joy that is part of his nature. We wanted to progress and become more like him. Our Father proposed that we could do so if he created the earth for us, where we would come down and live a mortal life, experience pain, suffering, and death—things which no spirit could experience—and return to him. Essential to that plan’s success was the temporary “veil of forgetfulness.” We would not be able to remember our life with him; otherwise, earthly life would not be a true test. The Father promised us that he would use his Holy Spirit to reach out to us and that, when we responded to it, it would guide us back to him.
The plan required one key element—the most important element of all. It required a Redeemer and our placing faith in him. The Redeemer’s role was to live a perfect godly life without any sin of any kind. He had to have the innate, inborn strength to overcome the temptations of mortal life, all while having the capacity to experience temptation. In short, the Redeemer had to overcome the world to save the rest of us. Only one being could do that: Jesus. Jesus would be the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh. He would have power over the world, even over death. He would come down like the rest of us, as a tiny baby, having forgotten all. As he matured, his divine nature would prevail over the mortal one. If the rest of us followed him, he would have power to save us.
A great council or meeting was held. When this plan was presented, most of us rejoiced. However, some spirits were uncertain and afraid. There was risk in the plan. There was the possibility that some would fail to overcome the flesh and be swallowed up by the world and its temptations. Some might not respond to the spiritual promptings that would call us back to our Heavenly Father and his Redeemer. And that’s when the first lie happened.
Lucifer, a son of the morning, as the Bible called him, stood forth and offered an alternative plan. In its essence, his plan would be called Liberalism.
Lucifer offered to be the Redeemer. He would guarantee a positive outcome. No one would be lost. There would be no risk to anyone. There would be a trade-off, however. For his “plan” to work, each of us would have to surrender our agency, our ability to make choices between right and wrong. If we followed him without question, he could guarantee that all would return.
Lucifer’s plan was a clever lie. It preyed upon our fears and uncertainty. He seemed compassionate and caring. His rhetoric made some doubt the Father’s ability to execute his plan. He inserted doubt and fear into a place of certainty and peace. A war of words and opinions ensued. Imagine the worst flame war you have ever seen on the Internet, with eternal consequences, raging among every single human soul who would ever inhabit the earth. After allowing the lines to be drawn between those who would follow Lucifer and who would follow him, the Father intervened. The rebels were cast out of heaven to the earth where they would remain as disembodied spirits. They are spiritual “shills” and servants of Lucifer. Lucifer became Satan, whose name means “one who opposes.” They will never live as mortals and thus, will never rise in the resurrection to heavenly glory.
Satan tempts us to disobey God’s commandments. When the consequences of disobedience come, he offers “help” to help us deal with the consequences. The “help” he provides limits your choices and locks you into a path where you are less free than before. Let me give you an example. A young couple are tempted to be intimate although they are not married. God’s commandment is to have sexual relations reserved for the bonds of marriage. The couple yields to temptation and a pregnancy results. Satan’s “help” is free, taxpayer-funded abortion services. The young woman is counseled by someone whose job it is to increase business. She follows the counsel of the “expert” and kills her baby. She lives her life with regret every day thereafter. The spiritual weight of the sin is crushing. If she chooses the other alternative—to keep the baby, then she might end up unable to work and provide for herself and the child. No problem, the liberal tell her. We will give you an EBT card and Section 8 housing for you and your child, but only so long as you don’t let the child’s father live in the home. That would violate our rules. The “help” is only for broken families, not healthy ones. She takes the money and the child’s father stays away. In many cases, he simply continues to find other promiscuous young women and sires children by them, never having to take responsibility. The children grow up angry and feeling abandoned. They turn to drugs, gangs, self-harm, and even suicide. Some of them simply repeat the whole pattern. A whole chain of misery results from the sins and the liberals demand ever more money from society to deal with the consequences of sin. The solution would have been to repent and turn to God. The “help” from the liberals decrease the likelihood people will turn to God. The “help” is a trap.
The fear of losing the "help" controls people. I had students in a middle school where I taught when Romney ran for President against Obama. I had a bunch of students whose families received government assistance. Many of them were children of illegal immigrants. They had been told that Romney would take away their food stamps. Meanwhile, these kids had $200 athletic shoes, wore $100 jeans, and carried around $600 iPhones. Do you see the disconnect? That's the result of receiving the "help." There is a necessary cognitive dissonance that a person adopts when they accept the "help" as an entitlement. It's hard to repent and change once a person has accepted that mindset.
It's all about control. If you accept the "help" you have to play by their rules. They will tell you what you can say, what you can do, where you can live, how much you can earn, where you can travel, where you can worship, what you can own, etc. It's a trade of "help" for freedom.
This is not to say that everyone who receives government help is sinning. There is good reason to have a compassionate social safety net. However, it is the restrictions on freedom that today’s safety net—created by liberals—are dangerous snares. Satan uses false compassion to trick people into thinking they are doing the right thing. Liberalism was his plan in the beginning and it is still his plan now. It is an effective message because it makes people believe there are doing good, even as they dismantle the freedom and agency of others. It is a deception older than the world.
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