Of Math and Men

In Elder Robert D. Hales April 2009 general conference talk, he taught that we should become provident providers temporally and spiritually. He said, "Our challenges, including those we create by our own decisions, are part of our test in mortality. Let me assure you that your situation is not beyond the reach of our Savior" In addition he stressed that "Our success is never measured by how strongly we are tempted but by how faithfully we respond." Upon reading that last phrase, the gears in my nerd-of-a-brain began to turn...

Linking engineering principles to life lessons and the eternities is not a strong point of mine, yet this dynamic system is of particular interest to me. As I recall from analog feedback controls coursework, time domain parameters such as overshoot, rise time, settling time and ringing for a given system may be analyzed to design a controller to help minimize those undesired quantities. But controllers aside, "Formally, knowing the step response of a dynamical system gives information on the stability of such a system, and on its ability to reach one stationary state when starting from another," as cut and pasted from our friends at Wikipedia :)

So how does this control theory jargon apply to you and me in a spiritual sense? Simply put, as sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father (second order systems), our faithful (optimal) response in giving head to spiritual promptings (e.g., analog or digital system inputs) will determine our success and happiness (system stability) in this life and the life to come and how we can mature spiritually as exemplified by the Savior, from "grace to grace" (i.e. ability to transition from one state to another), until at the end we reach that perfect day (no overshoot, rise time is near instantaneous, and settling time and ringing are n/a).

And just so you don't think I'm trying to pull a fast one on you, here's a snapshot of the step response for a common second order system: