Episode #251 - The Devil's Playground

There exists two major forces inspiring Lucifer's dictatorship.  The first is fear.  And the second is contention.  Both work in the dark to inspire pride, jealously and a host of difficulties.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #251 – The Devil’s Playground.  I am your host, Damon Socha.  When we think of Lucifer and all the tools he has at his disposal to inject into our mortal lives, there are two major tools that are the basis of his theology.  The first is fear.  This isn’t the type of fear you are thinking.  This isn’t running from a bear type of fear.  This is the fear of those willing to yield themselves prey to the awful consequences that await them.  This is fear of living far beneath one’s capacity.  The is the fear of what could have been.  And King Benjamin describes this fear as the unquenchable fire.  

38 Therefore if that man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever.

Hell is personal, not communal.  While we may walk in groups, if we have chosen worldly ideals we have done so under our own agency.  It is knowing what you could have been and seeing the happiness one could have enjoyed and being entirely unable to attain it.  This fear is not the fear of physical death but of a spiritual one.

The second major tool tends to run with the first and this one I refer to as the Devil’s Playground.  When the Savior visited the Nephites after his resurrection and taught them the gospel.  One of the first commandments  the Savior gave was to avoid all contention.  

29 For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.

Now the definition of contention is similar to our discussion of fear.  Contention is not defined to an argument between two people.  Yes an argument can be contentious but it doesn’t need to be.  When we think of contention, it is important to think of it as an emotion rather than a specific action.  A powerful emotion that is one of the core elements of who we are as individuals.  Rather than think of situations, think of what it is to feel contention.  How do you recognize it in your own life and the lives of others?  Contention can be and often is energetic in its nature.  One can feel motivated and passionate about a subject for which we have been properly angered.  Given enough time and effort contention always leads to rebellion.  Contention always removes the Spirit of the Lord from our lives.  Contention tends to cause defensiveness, argumentative behavior, emotional positioning without any reason, anger, fear (the one we just talked about) and also tends to cause us to build fortresses around particular subjects, ideas, feelings and injustices in our lives.  Contention can also appear in the form of judgment of others, revenge, retribution, and seeking to injure others.  

Now we are naturally this way in mortality.  We naturally defend ourselves, our ideas, our culture, language, way of life.  We as human beings always believe that we are standing on the holy ground and our competition is always standing in the mire.  We are physically defensive.  One time my wife hit me hard while we were just playing.  Without any thought, I immediately struck back.  I was terribly sorry and ask her forgiveness but it taught be a great lesson about this power of justice and contention in our lives.  This is our mortal, natural man, nature.  Eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth and a second tooth for good measure so you don’t do it again.  Contention always has its eyes on justice and seeking for that justice.  That is why when we are contentious we tend to judge other people far too often and with far too little information about their situation.  Those individuals who avoid contention are quick to forgive, to seek out understanding, and to extend mercy and love.  But we are wired in our natural man mortal bodies for contention, justice, revenge and the Mosaic Law.  Let’s say we have a very good sense of injustice and justice when it comes to how we are treated by others.  And we tend to use it regularly.

Now before we get too far down the road of contention, we should really understand what contention does to mental health.  Contention is to mental health like an opiate is to an addict.  If you use it to bypass your depression and anxiety, it will do the job, but terrible consequences await the person who uses contention and anger to manage their mental health.  It can also be very addictive to the mental illness mind.  Contention provides energy, drive, and motivation to accomplish daily tasks.  I know several individuals who suffer with mental health problems that listen to talk radio and not the talk radio that informs, the talk radio that wants you angry about life.  They use that anger to drive their motivation and their day.  However, that methodology is very destructive in its nature to the soul.  As you continuously use anger, you continuously drive the spirit from your life.  When you have mental illness, the spirit is really the only true life line you have to the Savior.  Driving that from your life, simply to obtain false motivator leads to dangerous roads where it is very easy to diverge from the truth.   You set yourself up to be used by Lucifer and to be blown about by every wind of his worldly doctrine.  Simply put anger and contention are dangerous to any form of mental illness.

The primary reason is that it drives the spirit away from our lives.  The secondary reason runs just as deep.  Anger and contention are addictive.  Like the opiates our society consistently targets as destructive, anger and contention are just as spiritually destructive.  Chasing justice, revenge, anger, and jealousy will eventually destroy every fiber of your spiritual body.  Why is it that chasing justice and fairness causes us such grief?  Is not the Lord fair and just?  Yes the Lord is.  However, because we lack sufficient information and for the most part we lack a great deal of information about the person and the situation, we will never be able to judge someone righteously as the Lord would.  We are asked to leave it to him.  Now if the Lord never provided us relief from the suffering or in other words make up the difference or pay the debt of the sinner then we would be justified in our feelings of justice.  If we were not made whole, then most certainly the Lord would need to apply ample justice.  But he does make up the difference in our sufferings, pains and afflictions.  He has told us that he will make up the difference and how he deals with the sinner is really none of our business, except to help them to return to him that he might heal them.  He has paid that price and we cannot ask more than that to be restored.  So we are never really justified in our anger, or contentious behavior.

President Nelson has said the following about contention.  

“Anger never persuades. Hostility builds no one. Contention never leads to inspired solutions. Regrettably, we sometimes see contentious behavior even within our own ranks. We hear of those who belittle their spouses and children, of those who use angry outbursts to control others, and of those who punish family members with the “silent treatment.” We hear of youth and children who bully and of employees who defame their colleagues.

My dear brothers and sisters, this should not be. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to be examples of how to interact with others—especially when we have differences of opinion. One of the easiest ways to identify a true follower of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people.”

What I want to identify is something incredibly important for those of us who our seeking exaltation.  The last sentence states “One of the easiest ways to identify a true follower of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people.”  In other words the more judgmental you are about others, the more likely you are heading in the wrong direction.  Our measure of exaltation and perfection could simply be this one statement.  The reflection of your conversion to the gospel and your capacity to become like the Savior is directly evident in how merciful you are to others.  And this especially includes those who are closest to us in our lives.  If you tend to be kind, merciful, loving and understanding you are likely headed in the right direction and have a deep conversion to the gospel.

There does exist a third reason as to why anger and contention are so addictive.  They activate our pride neurochemistry.  Dopamine floods the system along with adrenaline, and they feel good.  The mind becomes hyperactive and aware, muscles flow with strength.  One can feel almost invincible and for someone who suffers with depression and anxiety anger can really feel like a cure.  Although just like any addictive substance it is temporary and intoxicating.  It can make someone do things they never would have under normal circumstances.  It is very easy to become addicted to this dopamine and adrenaline hits to the body.  However, those hits come at a terrible price.  Abuse, misuse, mistrust, anger, confusion, contention, guilt, and a host of other terrible emotions come with the misuse of anger and contention.  The worst part of it all is that you will drive every person from your life that has any value to you and you will be alone with your anger blaming the world for all your problems.  Anger always leads to very lonely roads.

So why tell me all this.  I’m already depressed enough.  This isn’t exactly helping me.  My own emotions are deceiving me and telling me I am worthless and you want me to extend myself and mercy to others in that condition.  Yes the Savior does expect that.  But that will take some time to accomplish.  And you should worry about it.  

What is important to discuss and to understand, it that to the extent you can drive contention in all its forms from your life, you will find greater peace, prosperity and light.  This can apply to a host of difficult circumstances in one’s life.  Relationships with family and friends that tend to be what we call toxic are generally filled with contention.  If there is no healing the relationship and the contention then it is better to remove yourself from the problem.  And I know that is no easy task.  These relationships might be a spouse, a parent, a sibling, and long term friend and they are meaningful in our lives.  However, if you dread talking to a particular person and always come away feeling angry and contentious.  Probably not someone you should be around in your life.  Now don’t come away thinking that I am saying anyone in a contentious marriage should get a divorce.  That is not what I am saying.  We are going to live with some contention in our lives as a natural consequence of living in a fallen world.  Marriages tend to have some contentious feelings regularly but we are able to work through the contention, vowing to do better, and then forgiving each other fully.  The type of relationship I am discussing is one in which you would encounter a person and know that every time you do you come away angry, frustrated and more embedded in your own beliefs.  These relationships are terribly damaging to a normal relationship but when that relationship includes mental health concerns the damage can be magnified many times.  When you mix contention, anger, frustration with mental illness on a regular basis, symptoms tend to worsen at a magnified rate.   

While it might be difficult, sometimes the best medicine is to avoid the sharp knife before it cuts.  However, I will warn that this will be far more difficult that you might think and may require significant changes in your own life.  Relationships that are toxic do not provide any value to any person.  In almost every case if the relationship issues cannot be resolved you are better off without the relationship.

This will also mean driving contention from every part of your life that is not a relationship.  What do you listen to?  What do you watch as television or streaming shows?  What do you read online?  If any of that content has contention embedded in it, then you need to remove it from your life.  Wherever you feel contention, the object of contention needs to be removed and yes this can even be things in your house that cause contention to arise or to be remembered.  Everything must be removed.

Warning about removing everything too quickly.  If you have lived even a moderately angry life, be aware that you are using anger as a drug.  When you remove the drug consequences will follow quickly.  One of those might be an increase in depression symptoms and or anxiety.  This can make it feel as though removing contention was not the solution.  If I remove all contention and my depression returns, then I am going to take the hint.  Removing contention does not help.  Actually it does.  What you are experiencing is the depression you were masking every day of your life.  It was always there, you were just using drugs to avoid it.  And the more contention you feel the worse your symptoms will become and you will need greater and greater doses of contention to continue to keep the depression and anxiety at bay.  So now you can feel the real problem and find a real solution.  One that is not so damaging to the soul.

One final note.

There exists a great benefit to having mental illness and the emotions that come with it.  Anyone who suffers understands the deep and abiding emotional pain and distress that comes with mental illness knows about difficult experiences.  Those experiences can make us Laman and Lemuel or Nephi and Sam.  If we give into anger contention and hate then Laman we will be.  If we allow our suffering to change our hearts and give to us compassion, love, understanding, tolerance and charity, we can become like the Savior.  Our suffering is never if vain if the Savior has allowed it to occur in our lives.  It has purpose and meaning.  Would Joseph Smith ever have written those three remarkable chapters in the Doctrine and Covenants starting with 121, without languishing in Liberty jail?  Very unlikely.  Why because it was the suffering that infused his soul with the doctrine.  He needed to learn that deep and abiding trust that only comes when life dredges into the cold mire, and moonless darkness seeking for any light that can be found.  When we come to the edges of our trust, there the Lord can work with us and built greater trust.  Mental illness is actually a very good method to take one to the edge of trust on a regular basis and yes it feels a little compelled but Alma once said that we sometimes make necessary changes when we are compelled to be humble by our weaknesses and trials.

What I am trying to say is the suffering has purpose and design even though it does not feel that way.  It provides necessary lessons that few individuals will ever learn in this life time and the eternities.  When we turn to face our difficulties with the Lord we can find a great purpose in the illness and in our own lives.  It is not easy and it was never meant to be.  Changing our behavior is easy with the right motivation but changing our nature requires a very different approach and it is often under severe pressures and stress where we learn to become like God.  I hope today that my devil’s playground is helpful to that journey you are taking.  May the Lord bless you to see hope and love and far less contention in your life.  Until next week, do your part and the Lord will do his.