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The Flaxen Cord
Given the steady decline of our society, how does one ensure they remain faithful despite the cost of doing so? The answer: by small and simple things.
It is the steady accumulation of little actions -- done over long stretches of time -- that gives Satan his power to rule and reign over us. The scriptures describe this steady regression as a flaxen cord that soon tightens around the neck bringing the subject into captivity.
And there are also secret combinations, even as in times of old, according to the combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and works of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever. 2 Nephi 26: 22.
Note the imagery. Satan's initial draw into captivity comes from a flaxen cord around the person’s neck. Flax, on its own, is weak and easily breakable. The tactic, however, is that this cord eventually tightens -- presumably as more cords are wrapped around the person’s neck until the cord becomes unbreakable. The language of strong cords is used elsewhere in the Book of Mormon to refer to chains of captivity. Thus what started as an easily breakable flaxen cord has turned into a chain for Satan’s captivity.
Against this backdrop Satan whispers into our ear -- “just lie, even if it’s a little.” “Sin. Even just a little -- surely God will overlook a merely slight indiscretion. “…[T]ake the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow [you] die; and if it so be that [you] are guilty, God will beat [you] with a few stripes, and at last [you] shall be saved in the kingdom of God.” (2 Nephi 28:8).
Despite the fact that God does not tolerate sin to any degree, this subtle lie of the adversary achieves the even greater objective of bounding us to our habits. And, as I’ll explain later, habits play a direct role in shaping our ability to be faithful unto God -- for better or for worse.
Thus, when it comes to the imagery of the flaxen cord getting stronger and stronger, suppose each strand represents one bad habit. What becomes a little indiscretion every now and then gives way to further rationalization for even more severe sins, until rationalization is within our nature. We are habitualized to do evil. As a Spanish proverb reads: “Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables.” What’s worse is that at this stage our evil habits have been so married to our identity that it’s nearly impossible to break free. These are the conditions of the addicted. This is the condition of our society and ourselves.
As the psychologist William James noted:
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
We are spinning our fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, “I won’t count this time!” Well! He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work.
Sadly there are already those who, through their steadily accumulation of evil (since everything that is evil is bad) habits, are living in hell. They are caught in a vicious cycle caused by their bad habits put on a feedback loop.
As Jordan Peterson explained,
If you pile up enough junk in your closet, one day, when you are least prepared, the door will spring open, and all of what has been packed inside, growing inexorably in the darkness, will bury you, and you may not have enough time or energy left in your life to confront it, sort through it, keep what you need, and discard the rest... Then you will come to curse man, reality, and God himself for producing such an impenetrable maze of impediments and barriers. Corruption will beckon to you, led as you increasingly will be by dark, unexamined motivations—bred by failure, amplified by frustration—viciously culminating in the resentful belief that those who have transgressed against you are getting from you exactly what they deserve.
Coding For Behavior
But besides the torment, there is more to extract from James’ quote: Our habits are being counted. And not only by God, but by us. In fact, James made a similar observation
What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic activity of the mind … Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results.
According to James, because our habits set up a “sequence of mental action” they trigger a subconscious response from us when initiated which then determines how we’ll act. Those who play competitive sports understand this principle. Our bodies respond to the conditioning they undergo and are subjected to.
Science shows that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed in a new situation. The genes code for new proteins. Proteins are the building block for new structures in the brain. This means that the decisions we make shape who we are because our brain turns on more genes adapted to that behavior. If we fail to cultivate good habits, then our genes will adapt to that behavior.
Our brains do this because our brains are constantly looking from ways to outsource its high process thinking to automatic thinking -- or in other words, transfer tasks to the nonconcious mind from the conscious This is how habits form. A habit is a behavior that has been repeated enough times to become automatic.
Brains code for habits in order to reduce "cognitive load" and free up mental capacity to engage in high order thinking. Without this, our brains would be overloaded with information and our ability to process new information would be limited -- even stifled -- due to that overload, similar to a computer's hard drive that becomes sluggish and slow when it's downloading multiple programs at once.
When we adopt good habits, this neurological feature is not an issue, as we go about our days processing new information without thinking about the routine actions in our life. But this features becomes a problem when we have adopted bad habits, as these habits become automatic that we do them without even realizing and get stuck in a rut.
This is why Satan's typical tactics of temptation and deception start with the little sins that we rationalize away. If he can get us to rationalize the small, then in can get the small to be embedded into our automatic action. While these small sins may not turn us into a mass murderer, we have not become sanctified either.
Placing a Vote for Who We Will Become
But besides the neurological explanation for why habits condition us is the psychological reason: habits form our belief. As James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits explains, habits condition a certain response because they serve as evidence for the belief we hold about ourselves. “And the more evidence you have for a belief, the more strongly you will believe it. Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
The pastor, Tim Keller, from whom I quote a lot, shared a story about a young man (early 20s) who was driving one night and hit and killed a woman. He later fled from the scene. He was eventually caught and convicted of manslaughter. When asked about why he chose to flee, he remarked that he had already made that choice even before that happened. He then went on to explain that ever since he was young, he never hesitated in shifting responsibility onto others and lying to get out of responsibility. Thus, in a large part, his decision to flee had been made before it happened. His past decisions become encoded into his character.
Thus if we develop the habit of taking shortcuts in school (through cheating) or work (incorrect reporting of the time we’ve worked or saying we are working when we’re not) or any other areas of our lives, we will form a belief about ourselves that we are dishonest. And when other situations arise that test our integrity we are more inclined to take the low road because we have done it before. As these actions continue, we reinforce the belief that we are dishonest. Thus when a circumstance arises that calls for us to be honest, we are less likely to be honest and act with integrity because that’s not who we are. This is especially true when acting with integrity comes at a great cost.
By Small and Simple Things
Therefore, if you are accustomed to rationalizing God’s commands and finding end-arounds and “loopholes” to doing what you know God expects of you, you are merely forming the pattern in your brain to code for that behavior in the future and establishing a belief system about who you are. When it comes time to decide between God and man, you’ve already made the choice based on your actions in the past.
Our faithfulness to God, then, is a matter of habit.
Although we don’t know for sure, I imagine that the Nephites who readily gave into the demands of the Gadianton Robbers did so because they had developed habits beforehand where they readily ignored their conscience to satisfy the flesh. Thus when the time came to make the decision, like the young man who fled the scene of the accident, they had already been making it throughout their life.
This is the nature of habits.
