Satan: Lessons from Relief Society

Tonight's reading might just be a little bit too much for me right now, I read the material but might not get into it until tomorrow night. So instead I wanted to share some insights that I had today during Relief Society. The lesson was on "Obedience to Law is Liberty." Like usual, I hear something and then mentally go off onto my own little tangent, and it leads into something different from the lesson, but hey, as long as I'm learning right? In the article, it says that we are free to choose for ourselves, and I thought "hey, I was just reading about this last night" and I started reflecting on Lehi talking about how without agency there is no real purpose to our existence. I would think that since some spirits chose to join Lucifer in the war in heaven, that implies that we had agency from the beginning. So he would have taken away the agency that we already had and compelled us to do the "right" thing and return to God again. If he was successful in his plan, he would have taken our agency but preserved his own. He would have had all power because he would have been the only one with the ability to choose. Without choice we would have been his slaves and existence would have been pointless. This is when I realized, the point the whole time was slavery and ultimate power. This put much into perspective for me as far as understanding Satan and his true purpose.

Another aspect from the lesson that I learned was along those same lines. I've been talking with a friend for the last couple of days about self esteem issues and satan's goal to make us hate our bodies. In the lesson they brought up the point talked about by Boyd K. Packer's talk "Counsel to Youth," he says "The Prophet Joseph Smith taught 'All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not.' So every living soul who has a physical body ultimately has power over the adversary. You suffer temptations because of your physical nature, but you also have over over him and his angels." Satan hates our bodies not only because we have one and he doesn't, but also because with our bodies we have more power than he does. In his "do anything for ultimate power" plan, he gave up the one thing that would have enabled him to move forward with that plan. So between the two he's jealous that he doesn't have a body and can't move forward, but the billions of people who chose to be born in this world, have more power than he does.