“And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters. And Satan came among them, saying: I am also a son of God; and he commanded them, saying: Believe it not; and they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God.  And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish. And the Lord God called upon men by the Holy Ghost everywhere and commanded them that they should repent.”[1]

“For behold, my beloved brethren, I say unto you that the Lord God worketh not in darkness. He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him.  Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation. Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me?  Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth…”[2]

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”[3]

What does it mean to be an enemy to God?

If God “doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world” then why should any oppose Him?

How does being “carnal, sensual, and devilish” benefit man? Is this rational? Is this sane?

Why do we do what we do? What are the primary motives for our decision-making processes?

Do we do what we sincerely think is best, for our benefit, both short term and long term, both for ourselves and for others?

Do our decisions and actions reflect dispassionate and objective reflection on what is best?

Do we trust God enough to prioritize what God says is best over our own wishful thinking?

Unfortunately, the answer to these questions is, again and again, a resounding NO.

This is not rational. This is insanity.

Rather than do what we sincerely think is best, again and again, we do what we think will make us feel good—now. That is our rationale and motivation. In short, we desire pleasure, security, convenience, and ego-affirming beliefs and activity. We desire fun, excitement, and merriment. We desire the gratification of the flesh, and we overwhelmingly tend to act accordingly.

Far too often, we do not equate moral reality with what is best.

Moral reality is the most principled course of action leading to what is best.

Moral reality can be discerned by recognizing the truth of God as it is revealed to man, but moral reality is hardly a concern to the criminal mind.

The criminal mind is not concerned with moral reality; rather, the criminal mind is fundamentally selfish, being perpetually carnal, sensual, and devilish. The default mentality with mortality is the criminal mind.

As we seek out moral reality, embrace moral reality, and act in accordance with moral reality, as revealed by God, we negate and reverse the effects of the criminal mind; we become new creatures in Christ, taking upon ourselves the divine nature of Christ, in complete conformity with moral reality, and we receive all that is best.

Dialectic decision making is the process of dividing any issue into two opposing sides. Within the dialectics of moral reality, there are only two sides: God’s revealed truth and everything else that opposes it. We are to tenaciously cling to all truth, as revealed by the mind of God, and oppose everything else. This is sanity. Everything else is insanity.

Sanity is reason and action based on truth. Insanity is reason and action compromised by false beliefs and bad decision-making.

Rationality is increased as we repent and increase our faith in God. Insanity is increased by capitulation with the forces and influences of evil.

Breaking this down, in this text I define insanity as exhibiting one or more of the following conditions:

1. Difficulty or inability in distinguishing moral reality
   • Difficulty or inability in distinguishing between right and wrong, virtue and vice, or good and evil
   • Difficulty or inability in comprehending principles of ethics or morality
2. Difficulty or inability in making choices based on principles of virtue or moral truth
   • Tendency toward irresistible impulses and addictions
   • Tendency toward irresistible dangerous behaviors
   • Tendency toward irresistible unethical behaviors
3. Difficulty or inability in making rational, informed, logical decisions based on contextual reality
   • Difficulty with situational awareness
   • Difficulty with deductive reasoning and problem-solving
   • Difficulty with formulating plans and executing tasks
   • Difficulty with prioritizing tasks
   • Difficulty conceptualizing principles, processes, and trends
   • Difficulty anticipating outcomes and consequences
   • Difficulty with comprehension, memory loss, and brain fog
4. Difficulty in distinguishing reality from fantasy
   • Inability to distinguish cognitive reality from true reality
   • Inability to distinguish fictitious reality as experienced by participating in media products and publications versus events and conditions within one’s physical reality
   • Inability to distinguish factual reality from emotional delusion
   • Difficulty distinguishing emotional/subjective decisions from dispassionate/objective decisions
5. Mental, emotional, and behavioral incompetence as the result of false moral conditioning and teachings
   • Mental or cognitive ineptitude due to false teachings
   • Emotional dysfunction resulting from negative experiences and harmful choices
   • Behavioral dysfunction resulting from negative experiences and harmful choices
   • Delusional perspectives due to false teachings, complex experiences, and harmful choices
6. Insatiable appetite, fetish, and propensity toward sadistic, overtly evil, and malevolent thoughts and actions
   • Enamored and obsessed with evil knowledge
   • Addicted to acts of lust, hate, anger, and moral depravity
   • Uncontrolled appetites, passions, and obsessions, with no rules or boundaries
7. Physiologically induced mental instability and dysfunction 
   • Dysfunction caused by chemical and hormonal imbalances
   • Dysfunction caused by physiological abnormalities
   • Dysfunction caused by drugs or substance abuse

Note: The discussion in this chapter does not address the topic of spiritual realities in the unseen realm as influencing mental health or propensities toward self-defeating behavior. That will be addressed in a later chapter. 

Each of these definitions deserves a lengthy discussion, but I want to at least establish a baseline for what I mean in this discussion by the word insanity, or if you prefer, irrationality. The difference is that irrationality is easier to correct, while insanity is less so.

In most cases, I link insanity (and irrationality) with sin. After all, if sin is doing less than, or other than what is best, such behavior is, by definition, irrational, and insane.

Irrationality is generally not deliberate. Rather, it is simply the byproduct of ignorance and stupidity. It is the result of misdirected focus, lack of situational awareness, and emotional instability. As such, for many, irrationality is simply our natural and instinctive state of being. This is hardly complimentary of the average human being.

Insanity is likewise not deliberate. Rather, it is the result of mental or physiological dysfunction, captivity, ignorance, and delusion. For many, it is the result of repeated, prolonged, and exacerbated irrationality. Thus, we see that irrationality and insanity are the default modus operandi for the entire human race.

On the other hand, like the mad scientist, there is always a method to our madness. We have reasons and we have motivations—just not good reasons or particularly intelligent motivations.

One does not sin or do other than what is best, without explanation or incentive for doing so. The explanation, more often than not, is that you are just too stupid, irrational, ignorant, and delusional to do what is best. Or you simply lack the self-discipline or sufficient incentive to do otherwise.

Sin, and the love of sin, or the propensity toward sin, tends to render one increasingly irrational. Sin tends to compound and snowball, getting more and more habitual, addictive, and prolific, because it tends to give the illusion of benefit. This illusion and delusion of benefit, renders one irrational and functionally insane. The remedy is a more correct and abundant knowledge of reality, or in other words, an increase in relevant light and truth. In short, our illusions and delusion need to be repaired with a corrective understanding of what is real.

In our modern era of technology and information abundance, the light and truth of corrective understanding is abundant. Anyone with a willingness to read and research can readily find mountains of light and truth available. As I visit with family and friends, I am continuously referred to authors and researchers who have carefully documented and published hundreds and thousands of pages of brilliant insights that effectively improve the perception of truth and functional behavior. I have scores of excellent books on my bookshelf that I am eager to read as soon as I can find the time.

In most cases, I argue that insanity is the result of sin, but not necessarily by the faults or sins of the insane. Cases of abuse and extreme trauma are also known to cause mental illness, irrationality, and insanity. Cases of abuse can critically exacerbate emotional trauma, which tends to overpower the deliberative processes of the human mind.

In discussing the realities of evil and sin, it is helpful to list exhaustive definitions of what is meant by the word sin.

Broadly speaking, I define sin as exhibiting one or more of the following actions or conditions:

1. Doing what you know, or suspect is unethical, immoral, harmful, or evil
2. Doing what you know, or suspect violates the laws and commandments of God
3. Doing what you know, or suspect violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of others
4. Doing what you know, or suspect violates the divine sanctity or dignity of the human soul, including your own
5. Doing less than what you know is best for you and all those you may affect or influence
6. Willful rebellion against God
7. Disobedience to God’s laws and commandments through apathy, ignorance, and corrupt understanding
8. Selfishness, pride, arrogance, apathy, animosity, and malicious competitiveness with others

I know that many of these definitions are somewhat redundant, but I want to be very descriptive and clear on what sin is, above and beyond that which offers less or negative value. I also know that my definitions of sin are very meticulous and difficult to reconcile. The standard really is perfection, but repentance eventually enables perfection as we learn to trust and follow God.

The solution to sin is repentance. I define repentance as reconciling your ideas, desires, and actions with your sincere understanding of what is best.[4] Your sincere understanding of what is best is defined by your mental projection of the ideal man and the ideal woman, which is God. Repentance is choosing to do what you sincerely think God would do in your place, in your circumstances.

If you are sincere, you will follow your conscience by doing what you sincerely believe God would have you do. As you do this, you will eventually arrive at a condition in which you are in complete harmony with God. Contrary to popular belief, these ideals are most definitely achievable with sincere effort, over time, acting in good faith. As we place our lives in God’s hands, He enables us in doing all that He asks.

Righteousness can be defined as consistently doing what is best, or what you sincerely believe is best. The key word here is consistently. Those who are righteous are reliable and consistent.

It must also be recognized that righteousness is not achieved by following a set of rules. Lists of rules do not always tell us what is best. Rules are only a beginning, not an end. Besides, one person cannot dictate righteousness to another. Righteousness is relative to each person. I am not saying that ethics are situational or relative, but what one person versus another person ought to be doing is relative to their individual circumstances and in consideration of their limitations and abilities, and in consideration of their sincere belief of what is best. Righteous conduct is very much an individual thing.

God’s laws of justice require that we do good in the best ways we know how. We cannot be expected to do what we do not even comprehend or conceive as being best or right, which is why righteousness is consistently doing what you sincerely believe is best. We become righteous when we cease intentionally doing that which we know is not best.

God’s righteousness is consistently doing what God believes is best. God’s righteousness is the ultimate standard. God’s righteousness goes above and beyond personal righteousness. It is the next step. It is doing as God directs even when we do not understand or comprehend the reasons or objectives. This requires exceedingly great faith. Obtaining God’s righteousness is to become perfect in Christ. This level of obedience and faithfulness ought to be our goal.

“The state of being reconciled to what is best is called sinlessness.”[5] Those who are sinless are the most rational and the most intelligent of us all because their thoughts, emotions, and actions are clear reflections of what God’s thoughts, emotions, and actions would be in their place.

Seeking God’s righteousness is the ultimate wisdom and the one true path to rationality and sanity. Any other path will compromise and undermine rationality and sanity.

In contrast with, or opposition to repentance, righteousness, sinlessness, and sanity, we fine insanity; or in other words, we find evil, or the nature of evil.

The nature of evil is insanity. Sin, and the [un]controllable need for sin, or compulsion to sin, drives you insane.

The more you sin, the more uncontrollable it becomes. Sin is addicting because it is done with the pretense of making things better. This programming promotes addictive and compulsive behavior.

Addiction is programmed. As it is programmed it becomes instinctive. Your instincts drive actions that are supposed to be problem-solving. So, as we struggle with the problems, challenges, and deficits of mortality, we tend to follow our baser instincts in trying to solve those problems. Our baser (or debasing) instincts which have been conditioned by repeated actions are often called addictions.

Insanity is the absence of rational thought and the result of being mentally, emotionally, and spiritually compromised and negatively conditioned. Sin and insanity are often the results of what aviators call negative training. Negative training consists of teaching and conditioning that is contrary to best practices or proper procedures.

Similarly, sin is often the result of needs that have not been met in edifying or proper ways. Our irrationality lies in believing that our sinful behaviors are helpful and desirable.

Sin is the product of lust. Lust is the product of desires not based on truth, reality, or morality. Lustful desires do not reflect solvent solutions. When we lust, we desire that which will not truly satisfy our needs or appetites.

Sin, and the lust for sin, conflict us with reality; because as it turns out, feeding our lusts only makes things worse, not better.

Sin is primarily a matter of being conflicted. Our debasing instincts tell us one thing, and the moral truth of conscience which comes from God tells us something quite different. God knows what is best; our bodies only know want. Our bodies can never completely be satisfied, but our souls, body and spirit, can, but only in and through faith in Christ.

Our bodies scream at us to feed our lustful desires, while God teaches us how to receive the most profound joy and peace; but if we ignore God’s promptings, feeding our lusts, the more we believe in the alleged benefits of sin, and the more conflicted and irrational our thoughts and feelings become.

Mental illness and depression often result from thinking and feeling that the opportunities and benefits of sin are unobtainable, or that they are old and worn out, no longer effective, and increasingly futile; whilst also falsely believing that the theoretical efforts of applied virtue, or following God, are also miserably futile. These thoughts often result in feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, despair, and futility. Why get out of bed in the morning if nothing we can do is going to make us happy?

Those enamored with sin are rationally compromised because their beliefs do not add up. They lack cohesive truth.

As you may recall, Cohesive Truth is characterized by all the facts, principles, laws, arguments, and details fitting together in an unbroken chain of logic and intelligent explanation. The imperfect and flawed expressions of possessive truth all have broken links in their logic and explanations. Cohesive truth does not.

Those wrapped in the chains of sin are driven and controlled by their addictions, cravings, appetites, and passions. Their lusts and passions blind them and harden their hearts against any countermanding arguments, facts, details, plausible predictions, or potentially negative consequences. In effect, they really do not care about the details. All they care about is getting what they want—all other details be damned.

I remember years ago watching a television program called Cops, which showed a heroin addict being arrested in his home. I watched him hug and kiss his baby boy as he said goodbye. One of the cops remarked that it was obvious that the man loved his son. They discussed how they wanted to help the heroin addict get the help he needed so he could return to his family and be a better father. I can hardly think about this scene without my heart breaking in love and pity for this poor addicted man.

It is normal for basically good people to do very bad things because they are desperately unhappy and they have been convinced that their addictive behaviors will somehow help, if only temporarily; even though they also know that these things will likely come at a very high price later on. Their addictive insanity compels them to sin. In effect, they mortgage their souls, selling off their virtue for a perceived temporary respite from the effects of sin. And so, for a few moments they feel some peace and reprieve; but all too soon they are fraught with misery once again. This is how and why they give in, again and again.

Emotional insanity causes mental insanity. Logical and rational thought processes are compromised by emotions that seem more important than the haunting plausible results or adverse consequences. God tries to warn us, again and again, through the still-small-voice of conscience; but all too often we do our best to silence Him.

Bad information and false beliefs tend to inform bad decisions that exacerbate the conditions leading to mental and emotional insanity, or sin. Evil and corrupt teachers and teachings cause sin and the resultant problems that result from sin. Of course, by definition, sin causes problems; but we still sin, again and again. This is insane.

God has warned us to “trust no one to be your teacher nor your minister, except he be a man of God, walking in his ways and keeping his commandments.”[6]

One of the most insane things we do is to accept the teachings of men who are not men of God, who do not walk in His ways, who do not believe His teachings, and who do not keep His commandments. We see this in academia and in other fields, even when God has warned, again and again, “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”[7] By these keys we are empowered to choose wisely. So why don’t we?

Humans are inherently conflicted and inconsistent.

In a somewhat heated discussion with my wife a while back, she pointed out my inconsistencies. She said it is difficult for the kids to take me seriously when I am inconsistent. In this case, we were talking about eating foods with sugar. I am often very frustrated by how much sugar we consume, but then on occasion, I go and buy ice cream or make a sugary treat. It would be easy to list several non-dietary examples of similar inconsistencies as well.

When we fail to be consistently governed by true and consistent principles, we demonstrate our insanity. Hence, one of my favorite and most used expletives: “Crazy! That’s crazy!”

In several ancient cultures and religious traditions, various forms of stoicism have been the prescribed solutions. Recognizing that reason and logic are often compromised by emotion and epicurean indulgences, philosophers have determined that various forms of stoicism are the solutions. And I would say they are correct, although I typically do not agree with their suggested forms of stoicism.

Years ago, the great historian and philosopher William James Durant (1885-1981) said that every nation is born stoic and dies epicurean. I think there is a lot of truth to that. Forming a robust creation from the materials of chaos requires stoic discipline; whilst a departure from stoicism toward epicurean indulgences always triggers a return to chaos and destruction. 

If we desire to be liberated from sin, to become fully rational and enlightened, and to receive the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then stoicism in the form of faith in Christ, repentance, and a return to virtue is required.

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[1] Pearl of Great Price | Moses 5:12 – 14

[2] Book of Mormon | 2 Nephi 26:23 – 25

[3] Book of Mormon | Mosiah 3:19

[4] Robert Smith, Repentance: Making Straight the Way of God, pg. 1

[5] Robert Smith, Repentance: Making Straight the Way of God, pg. 2

[6] Book of Mormon | Mosiah 23:14

[7] Matthew 7:20

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