The movie You’ve Got Mail opens with the character Joe Fox explaining how people are flooded with choices to make just to start their day off with a cup of coffee. “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee.” If only life today were as simple as a late 90’s Starbucks menu. In this post-modern, iconoclastic, anarchic, deconstructionist, revisionist, question and redefine everything, worship at the altar of skepticism kind of world that we live in, we have to make a lot more than six decisions, and about things that are a lot more important than how much milk we want in our coffee. For starters, back in 1998, they just had regular old cow’s milk, and now they’ve got soy, oat, almond, coconut, cashew, and who knows what else kind of nut or bean they’ve managed to squeeze milk out of. And it would be bad enough if all we had to worry about was which option best suited our particular tastes or preferences, but with the way that we live so much of our lives bared to social media, all of our decisions are placed under a microscope and examined under the court of public opinion. Instead of trying to decide if we think the blueberry scone tastes better than the chocolate chip scone, we also have to think about whether or not the blueberries were harvested by migrant workers being paid unfair wages, or whether or not the chocolate chips came from cacao beans harvested in conflict free regions of Africa. And if both of those happen to be true, maybe weighing the moral complexities of that choice is moot anyway because both are made from flour that came from genetically modified wheat. We are constantly being flooded with way too much information and it can feel impossible and utterly exhausting to try and make a good or correct decision amidst all of this chaos and confusion. And even if we could fashion a reliable exchange rate between all of these overlapping and conflicting scales of good vs. bad decisions, it doesn’t even matter because the so called wisdom of crowds races from one bedrock truth and moral certitude to the next so fast we’re liable to get whiplash. Some celebrity or other can in the span of days or even hours go from untouchable paragon of virtue to worse than Hitler pariah. People may be canceled and then exonerated and then canceled again. Last October, President Nelson gave a talk about how we can overcome the worldly obsession of constantly weighing all of these millions of options to find peace and happiness and be a “good” person in the constantly shifting sands of moral relativity. “As we strive to live the higher laws of Jesus Christ, our hearts and our very natures begin to change. The Savior lifts us above the pull of this fallen world by blessing us with greater charity, humility, generosity, kindness, self-discipline, peace, and rest. Now, you may be thinking this sounds more like hard spiritual work than rest. But here is the grand truth: while the world insists that power, possessions, popularity, and pleasures of the flesh bring happiness, they do not! They cannot! What they do produce is nothing but a hollow substitute for “the blessed and happy state of those [who] keep the commandments of God.” The truth is that it is much more exhausting to seek happiness where you can never find it! However, when you yoke yourself to Jesus Christ and do the spiritual work required to overcome the world, He, and He alone, does have the power to lift you above the pull of this world. My plea to you this morning is to find rest from the intensity, uncertainty, and anguish of this world by overcoming the world through your covenants with God.” (President Russell M Nelson October 2022 General Conference). As we keep the Commandments and focus on the Covenants that we make with the Lord, we are promised that we will have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. Yes, it is true that in this complex, global society we live in, whether we buy the blueberry or the chocolate chip scone can have ramifications that ripple out and perhaps increase the misery and degradation of certain groups of people, or perhaps support and strengthen certain people. The Holy Ghost may not weigh in on which scone we should choose, but he might just prompt us to buy one of each and take one to a friend who is struggling and needs a kind word. We can rest from the analysis paralysis and put our faith in the Lord and trust that He will direct us down the path that will bring the most amount of good into the world while at the same time cutting out the most amount of misery that it is possible for us in our small way to accomplish. There is a peace that comes from trusting that our Heavenly Father knows what He is doing and He will not lead us astray. I hope that we can all rest in the peace that comes from keeping our Covenants with our Heavenly Father and choosing to do small and simple things in a world that has grown too big and complicated for any of us to handle.
