Introduction

This is an experiment almost certain to fail.  I thought I would start a blog mostly as a kind of journal (although why I would need to write such a thing for others to see, I don't know).  I have no set plan for this experiment hence the title.  My goal is to force myself to write at least once a day in the hope that it will a) improve my writing and b) improve my thinking by requiring me to impose some order on my random thoughts. 

I have no illusions that what I write will be of interest to anyone but myself (not even my immediate family), but what the heck.

I started thinking about writing something like this today in a Sunday School class.  My wife and I are inner city missionaries assigned to a Spanish speaking Ward.  My wife speaks Spanish; I do not.  I did at one time, however, speak Italian and have found that in some, but by no means all, cases I can understand fairly well the teacher and comments from the class in Sunday School.  (I find incidentally that I am able to understand people who speak in formal settings more than people who are having a conversation).  So, I found myself today in Sunday School listening to a discussion about the Children of Israel in the wilderness pleading with Moses to let them go back to Egypt because at least in Egypt they were assured of food and water.

I found myself wanting to make some comments in the course of this discussion because for one thing the topic seems pretty, well, topical given the debate going on in the U.S. presently about the proper allocation of freedom to the individual and authority to the government.  (I use the word "debate" loosely as it seems to me mostly that those in favor of more government authority are trying to impose their view without permitting any discussion of the matter for fear that such a discussion might foil their program).

I, of course, couldn't add my witty and incisive commentary to the discussion, because I don't actually speak the language in which the discussion was being held.  I was frustrated.

Later in the day, I thought about how well I use my leisure time.  Last night for example, I spent a couple of quality hours watching episodes of Arrested Development and half of an insipid (thus the half part) movie based on a Mauve Binchey story.  I have read some of her books when forced to for a book club I half belong to, but generally have not thought much of them.  I concluded that I would be better off using my spare time to write down my unexpressed comments than to waste my time on television.  I could of course have done so without starting a blog, but then the world would have been deprived of my witty and incisive commentary to which I will now turn without further ado.

The dilemma in which the newly liberated Israelites found themselves is archetypal reflecting the great issues first raised in the pre-mortal realm in the contest about the proposed conditions of our mortal existence.  The tension between the security of an existence whose terms are completely imposed and the chaos of an existence without imposed structure has existed from before the foundation of the earth.  We chose then the risks of freedom, but the argument was successful enough to lure one third away from the presence of God so why change what's worked?  We find the choice placed before us again and again and the temptation of security is great enough to persuade many.  So we find the newly liberated children of Israel willing to trade their freedom for certainty.

But it is more than just that; God had freed them and lead them with miracles did they really believe He would leave them to starve or die of thirst in the desert?  The question for them was whether to trade freedom for the certainty of the arm of flesh.  Whether to give away their freedom for the certainty of a salvation they could see or keep their freedom based on faith in a salvation they could not.  Their choice was between God and Man.  But since their are only two ways in this life the real choice was between God and Satan who promised his own brand of salvation in exchange for the ability to choose.

What's our choice?