The First Order of Business

Self-preservation is the first order of business.

What is self, but what I choose?  Our ability to choose is our identity.  It's our flavor.  Without it, we are not what we are.  St. Augustine in his Confessions said "I knew as well that I had a will as that I lived." book VII, part III.  Autonomy is our self. 

Plan Bers cannot agree to disagree.  The basic tenets of their faith do not allow for it.  They seek to eliminate choice.  Since we are our choices, they seek eliminate themselves and us.  Satan was a murderer from the beginning (1).  To "overcome" is to retain our agency in the face of all that Satan uses to persuade us to forsake it (pleasure and pain).  Since evil is ever existent and ever wanting our destruction, self-preservation becomes the first order of business.  It is the second birth.  It is equal to the creation of life.  It is keeping the eternal fire burning, and it is primarily man's role.

Self-preservation is the first and the last battle between God and Satan.  It is the first and the last principle in man's development.  In the war in heaven, we fought Lucifer for man's agency.  In this life, we often lose our bodies in the war for agency.  But, the point will come when the very last attempt of our adversary and his minions to destroy our autonomy will fail.  The war will not go on forever.  The war is our development.  In the end, we will shut our adversary away, to protect ourselves, because he is unable to stop seeking our destruction.

Our souls consist of our spirit and our body.  Our spirit is eternal.  All of our bodies will die.  Self-preservation, in our current state, is comprised of both spiritual and temporal preservation, or, protecting our spirit and our body.  In the scriptures, we read about men who are praised for laying down their lives (2), and men who are praised for taking up the sword (3).  This may seem like a paradox.  In reality, it is a matter of priority.  Protection of both is important, but protection of the spirit is most important.  If we surrender our bodies to death, our spirits will still live.  If we surrender our spirits to death, both parts of us will die.  Therefore, our need to protect the existence of our body is smaller than our need to protect the existence of our spirit.  In cases of war, those who protect both spirit and body are heralded (3).  When the protection of the body is a threat to the protection of the spirit, those who sacrifice their body are heralded (2).  When the protection of the spirit is not in danger, protection of the body is our first priority.

(4) 

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1 John 8:44  
2 Alma 24
3 Alma 48:17
4 Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights.  Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? - Frederic Bastiat, The Law