Temperance: The Virtue of Living in the Pause

"Take My Hand," Greg Olsen

If you go into a Deseret Book store, and look for the book Like Him, and turn to page 49, you'll find this essay from 2021:

I’ve had the blessing of learning from some gifted clinical psychologists about the nature of the brain—particularly, the different cognitive functions of the limbic system and the frontal cortex. It’s had profound spiritual implications on my better understanding the spiritual gift of temperance.

The limbic system of the brain is where our instincts reside, such as eating, breathing, and mating. The baser emotions of fear and anger, often referred to as the fight-or-flight response, come from the limbic system. In spiritual terms, the limbic system of the brain controls our natural man (see Mosiah 3:19).

The frontal cortex is where our humanity lies, where the difference between man and other animals is manifest. The development of the frontal cortex allows reason and principle to override instinct and emotion.

Because humans have a frontal cortex, there is what has been called a “pause” between an external stimulus and a person’s response to that stimulus—in either a thought, a word, or a behavior. The frontal cortex serves as a filter for our brain, stopping us from acting on every unhealthy impulse our limbic system wants to act upon. In spiritual terms, the development of the frontal cortex is what allows us to tap into our divine nature we have inherited from our Heavenly Parents (see 2 Peter 1:4–7). And parenthetically speaking in a spiritual sense, the frontal cortex begins to develop in humans at age eight. Imagine that!

Our Heavenly Father has given us the capacity to learn, reason, and ultimately choose to change (aka repent) so we’re not doomed to stay in the limited existence of merely reacting to outside stimulus. Because of the way our brains are created, we’ve been given the means to act rather than be acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:13). It is here where temperance is born.

Jesus Christ was perfectly temperate. He had the infinite capacity to live within that millisecond pause between stimulus and response and, with perfect righteousness, override His human instincts of hurt, fear, or anger. His eons of perfect obedience to the Father gave Him the power to temper the baser instincts and, instead, choose to act on higher, holier principles of forgiveness, faith, and charity.

We fallen mortals will struggle to develop temperance—this mastery over our own instinctive existence—for two basic reasons: The first reason is our fallen natures themselves, which will create the resistance and opposition necessary for us to change and grow. Oh, how our feet of clay hold us down! The spirit may be willing, but our flesh, indeed, is weak (see Matthew 26:41). The limbic system was designed to keep us alive, but inherent in that is the lifelong struggle between spirit and flesh.

Human nature (inherent limbic system) will always be in opposition to our divine nature (developing frontal cortex) because it’s built into us. But there is a second reason we will struggle to bring forth that divine nature. The wickedness of the world at large provides an unhealthy nurturing environment in which to do it. To use Book of Mormon vernacular, the voices of the world—media, social media, government, even academia—“stir up” emotions. Sadly, this is often used to pit groups against each other, just as that strategy was used time and again in the Book of Mormon. Remember, emotions reside in the limbic system. Emotions, unchecked—untempered—make it difficult, if not impossible, to find our humanity—our divine nature—within the pause between the stimulus and the response.

We can take great hope in overcoming instinctive living where we merely react emotionally to our environment. The reason we can govern ourselves when we know correct principles is because principles have the power to subject emotion. This is temperance—the ability, enabled by the Spirit, to control our appetites, passions, and even ideas.

Temperance is at the heart of every other Christlike quality. Christ had the ability to fast for forty days because of His perfectly developed temperance. He had the ability to ignore Satan’s temptations—when Christ was at His weakest—because of temperance. He had the ability to say exactly the correct and necessary thing in every situation because of temperance. His perfection turned that millisecond pause between stimulus and response into an eternity, allowing Him the power to make every single human choice intentionally.

Jesus Christ has the ability, because of His infinite atoning sacrifice, to widen that pause for us. To develop temperance is to cultivate the ability to develop all other virtues. To develop temperance is to cultivate the ability to do the most intentional living our Father in Heaven hoped for us. It requires more than reading or even studying doctrine; it requires metabolizing it—writing it on the fleshy tables of our hearts (see 2 Corinthians 3:3).

As God’s word and will become ever more a part of us, we will know the correct principles sufficiently to govern ourselves, as the Savior governed Himself. It is temperance that will widen the pause between stimulus and response, allowing us to truly choose to be like Him.