Oh, It Is Wonderful!

Wonderful thing for Friday, 29 May:

One of the great personal benefits of being a Pathway missionary is that I get to teach the Institute class.  The students, Jenny, Elton, Melvin and Daniela, are wonderful; and the course, a new Religion course recently published, "Jesus Christ and the Everlasting Gospel", is beyond marvelous.

Yesterday we talked about how important it is - and how much an example of the condescension of God - that Jesus be born of a mortal mother and of an immortal Father.  An utter marvel.

We talked about how our trust is confirmed and our faith grows as we realize that Jesus was mortal as we are -- and, on the other hand, how our trust and faith are strengthened by the fact that Jesus inherited the traits of his immortal, celestial Father as well.  Writing about it in my journal this morning, I kept setting my pen down to think about it, to ponder the significance of his suffering in the garden.

The garden... "For as in Adam [the Garden of Eden] all die, even so in Christ [the Garden of Gethsemane] shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22).

How perfectly He did and does His part:  "For this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39).

It has all helped me to be more committed to do my little planting, hoeing, dunging, nourishing and harvesting.  He "marked the path and led the way" (Hymns, 195, "How Great the Wisdom and the Love").

Fun thing:

In fact, we were just given a taste of the fruit yesterday:  the oldest daughter of one of our neighbors, who knew us in our most excruciatingly dysfunctional times as a family,  sent an email yesterday:  she is a member of the Church now!

She commented, "Bet you didn't know I was watching..."

The fact that she saw something, was testimony to the power of the Holy Ghost working in the lives of people desperately but prayerfully trying to weed their garden.

Hallelujah!

(our garden after 30 years of effort)

This.is.really.big. "Infinite and Eternal" (Alma 34:10-14)

Wonderful thing for Thursday, 5 February:

Blaine has been working for weeks on his profile for mormon.org.  Yesterday he sent out lots of emails with a link to it.  Some of our children have shared the link on Facebook.

I am enjoying, especially on this mission, the happy harbors of our long voyage together, but sometimes along the way, I wondered why the Lord gave me his approbation to marry Blaine.  Then I would comfort myself by saying that only someone from a family as wonderful and strong as mine could help someone from a family so wounded and pathetic as his.  That was among the first of my own personal obstacles to overcome.  My sister shared with me how once, when Amy was about 16, she had said during a visit, "Your whole family is so stinkin nice!"

It's true, we are soooo nice.  But the "stinkin" part is true too.  When Blaine and I really started looking into the issues at the source of our family problems, my uncle, who was in recovery, warned me that I would have to accept that like people find each other.  In other words, if Blaine was broken, so was I.

Our kids started warning their friends that if they came to visit, they could expect some weird questions from Dad, one of which was, "Is your family dysfunctional?"  If the answer was no, we would just shake our heads for them - because they were in denial.

That's kind of a joke, because there really are functional families...somewhere...but the key, at least from our experience, is this:  functional families are just like dysfunctional families in that we all have problems; functional families talk about them and work to resolve them - that's what makes them functional.

We had so many years of pain.   For several years know, we have been experiencing more and more joy.  Blaine's post, and Tamra's FB post sharing the link, talk about some of the whys.  As for me, I've been working on the "stinkin" part, the part where you go beyond the superficial niceties and are willing to live real life.

Both our families, in fact, are becoming more functional.  It's a great, slow, painful, rewarding, joyful process.  "O the wisdom of God, his mercy and grace" (2 Nephi 9:8)!  "I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten" (Joel 2:25).

http://www.mormon.org/me/GPBT/Blaine
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2006/04/broken-things-to-mend?lang=eng

fun thing:  We skyped with an entire branch council yesterday evening, in La Spezia, about a couple of hours away, sharing our Pathway ppt.  Technology is awesome!

Time, Talents, and Everything the Lord Has Given Me

Jesus suffered - before the spear wound and the nails - scourging (which in itself killed some), the crown of thorns crushed into His scalp, deprivation of sleep and sustenance, humiliation, unbelief, scorn...all this, AFTER the expiatory agony of the Garden. As he trod the Via Dolorosa in a near state of physical, mental and emotional collapse, He could at any time have "self-medicated" - or, more specifically, self-healed. He alone among mortals - for He was mortal - had the power to do that, for He had nascent Immortality in Him. He could have healed Himself in every moment in every particular. But at every stage, He practiced Self-denial: "No. I will not do this for Myself, that I MAY do it for others."
Because of His choices in my behalf, I will never be alone in suffering or in agony; I will never be faced with more than I can bear. He only asks that I do as He did, that I use whatever "powers" He has given me, whatever talents, gifts, capabilities, callings, stewardships - not for my own benefit, but for others'.

Sacrament meeting talk: Works and Grace

When I was a student at BYU, we received a caution from our Priesthood leaders that there were some then circulating among us, which had made a whole religion out of a single principle of the Gospel, such as The Word of Wisdom, or Preparing for the Last Days. These people tended to focus on the one principle, to the exclusion of all others, and then preached according to their understanding, thus fomenting a misunderstanding of the Gospel in general among those who chose to listen. We were cautioned not to be swayed by their preaching. These people, though members of the Church, preached “up unto themselves their own wisdom and their own learning,” something Nephi warned against; they “set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; but they [sought] not the welfare of Zion (2 Ne. 26:20,29).”

Such was very much the case, when our Savior walked the earth, with those who were supposed to be the leaders and teachers over the people of God. Because of their state of apostasy, it had been a very long time since the Jewish people had been led and taught by a prophet, who spoke and acted under authority from God. Their leaders had also “set themselves up for a light” by making up countless rules, based more and more loosely on the Law of Moses, which they said people must strictly adhere to if they were to be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God. By the time the Savior and his forerunner, the great prophet John the Baptist, had begun their ministries, almost the entire Jewish religion depended more upon the outward performance than upon the state of the heart. The law of Moses had become their whole religion, rather than what it was meant to be, and what indeed it was to the righteous peoples of The Book of Mormon: merely a tool to point people to the Savior. As stated in the Gospel of John, 1:17, “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

The apostles who spread the true Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the predominantly Jewish world found it necessary to lay a great deal of emphasis upon the principle of grace, in order to help them see the Law in its true light: as a “schoolmaster” that leads unto Christ (Gal 3:24-25), rather than as the defining goal in and of itself, as the Jews in general had come to believe. The apostles taught that it is “Through the grace of Christ, we shall be saved (Acts 15: 11, Rom. 3: 23-24; D&C 138: 14),” that “we have access by faith to his grace (Rom. 5: 2),” and that “by grace [we] are saved through faith (Eph. 2: 8). “The grace of God brings salvation (Titus 2: 11).” “Come boldly unto the throne of grace (Heb. 4: 16).” “God gives grace to the humble (1 Pet. 5: 5).”

It was very necessary for those who desired to be part of the Kingdom of God to understand that, as Paul taught, “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17)” through the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and through his Resurrection and Atoning power.

The Jews had to rethink their whole idea of salvation and of the Messiah, whom they had come to expect as One who would deliver them from earthly bondage. They had to come to see that it was from the bondage of their own sins that they most needed deliverance, and that such redemption was only possible in and through the Atoning grace of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The apostles of the New Testament era were charged with the daunting task of undoing hundreds of years of false teachings that emphasized salvation through man’s works, teachings that excluded what the prophets of the Old Testament had plainly taught: that a Savior was necessary to save us from our iniquities, that an atonement was required for our sins, an “infinite atonement,” as Nephi tells us (2 Ne. 9:7; see also 2 Ne. 25:16 and Alma 34:12), to which every sacrifice ever made by the priests of the temple pointed.

“It is through the grace of the Lord Jesus, made possible by his atoning sacrifice,“ we are told in the Bible Dictionary, “that mankind will be raised in immortality, every person receiving his body from the grave in a condition of everlasting life.”

It was very important for the people of New Testament times to understand this principle, so the apostles reiterated it again and again. This was occasioned, as I said initially, because the leaders of the Jews had created an entirely different religion, based upon their own interpretation, in order to set themselves up as a light, to gain unto themselves followers who would uphold them and support them.

We all know what happened, eventually, to the Lord’s apostles; Paul had warned that “the time [would] come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables (2 Timothy 4:3-4).”

What I understand from Paul here is that, after all the efforts of the apostles to teach and to spread the true Gospel again, so that people would know to Whom they must look for salvation, and would know the way in which they must walk in order to receive the blessings of salvation; notwithstanding being led by the power of the Priesthood of God and by the Gift of the Holy Ghost, yet eventually people would choose other ways, would follow those who “set themselves up as a light” in order to get gain; and the true Gospel would be taken from the earth once more. The people would be left with only a “form of godliness (2 Tim 3:5),” until many churches would be built up around this or that principle, but none would have a fullness.

Elder Bruce R. McConkie spoke in 1984 at a devotional at Brigham Young University, concerning this Great Apostasy, and what has sprung out of it. He says:

"I wonder how many of us are aware of one of the great religious phenomena of the ages, one that is now sweeping through Protestant Christianity, as only one other thing has ever done in the whole Christian Era.

"We are silent witnesses of an almost worldwide religious craze that had its birth in the minds of a few great religious reformers nearly five hundred years ago and which is now receiving a new birth of freedom and influence.

…

"But before zeroing in on this religious mania that has now taken possession of millions of devout but deluded people, and as a means of keeping all things in perspective, let me first identify the original heresy that did more than anything else to destroy the primitive Christianity.

"This first and chief heresy of a now fallen and decadent Christianity--and truly it is the father of all heresies--swept through all of the congregations of true believers in the early centuries of the Christian Era; it pertained then and pertains now to the nature and kind of being that God is.

"It was the doctrine, adapted from [pagan beliefs], that changed Christianity from the religion in which men worshipped a personal God, in whose image man is made, into the religion in which men worshipped a spirit essence called the Trinity. This new God, no longer a personal Father, no longer a personage of tabernacle, became an incomprehensible three-in-one spirit essence that filled the immensity of space.

"The adoption of this false doctrine about God effectively destroyed the true worship among men and ushered in the age of universal apostasy.

…

"The Second Greatest Heresy

"Nearly a millennium and a half later, during the sixteenth century, as the Reformation grew out of the Renaissance, as a means of breaking the hold of the dominant church, the great Christian reformers lit a new doctrinal fire. That fire, burning wildly over the dry and arid prairies of religious autocracy, is what really prepared the way for the restoration of the gospel in modern times.

"It was nonetheless the doctrinal fire--the burning, flaming, heretical fire--that became the second greatest heresy of Christendom, because it effectively destroyed the efficacy and power of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ by whom salvation comes.

"The first great heresy, sweeping like a prairie fire through the struggling branches of a newly born Christianity, destroyed the worship of the true God. And the second, a heresy originating in the same courts of darkness, destroyed that very atonement of God's only Son.

…

"This second heresy--and it is the delusion and mania that prevails to this day in the great evangelical body of Protestantism--is the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone, without the works of the law. It is the doctrine that we are saved by grace alone, without works. It is the doctrine that we may be born again simply by confessing the Lord Jesus with our lips while we continue to live in our sins.

…

"Interwoven with this concept is the doctrine that the elect of God are predestined to be saved regardless of any act on their part

..."

You see what has happened? The doctrine of grace, which the apostles found it so necessary to emphasize in order to combat the false Jewish ideas of outward performance, has itself become “a religion of its own” in the eyes of many today, to the exclusion of other principles of the Gospel of Christ that are every bit as essential to salvation. It is the doctrine that appeals most in today’s world, and so it is touted by those who “set up themselves as a light.”

So, we could say that the pendulum has swung the other way in our time; among those who purport to follow the Gospel of Christ, the value of one’s works is diminished; “the conviction that the sinner is justified by faith alone, without the works of the law“ has overridden all other considerations.

Now, as I have grown up in the Church, I have observed an interesting phenomenon, and it is best illustrated by a conversation with a friend of mine several years ago. As we sat discussing the challenges of being a Latter-day Saint, he expressed the belief that he had “just about made it.” He clicked off the basic commandments, as he viewed them, expressed his modest evaluation that he kept them conscientiously, and pronounced therefore that he felt pretty close to being a candidate for the Celestial Kingdom. His wife, on the other hand, felt that no matter what she did, she was abysmally far away from being a candidate for the Celestial Kingdom. In short: he had made “works” his religion, and she was in dire need of understanding grace.

To continue from Elder McKonkie:

"We believe and proclaim that salvation is in Christ, in his gospel, in his atoning sacrifice. We are bold to say it comes by the goodness and grace of the Father and the Son. No people on earth praise the Lord with greater faith and fervor than we do because of this goodness and grace.

"As the Lord's agents, as his servants, as ambassadors of Christ--sent by him, sent to speak in his place instead, sent to say what he would say if he personally were here--we testify that no man, as long as the earth shall stand, or the heavens endure, or God continues as God, no man shall ever be saved in the kingdom of God, in the celestial kingdom of heaven, without doing the works of righteousness.

"As far as man is concerned, the great and eternal plan of salvation is:

"1. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; faith in him as the Son of God; faith in him as the Savior and Redeemer who shed his blood for us in Gethsemane and on Calvary;

"2. Repentance of all our sins--thus forsaking the world and its carnal course; thus turning from the broad way that leads to destruction; thus preparing for the spiritual rebirth into the kingdom of God;

"3. Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; baptism under the hands of a legal administrator who has power to bind on earth and seal in heaven--thus planting our feet firmly on the strait and narrow path leading to eternal life;

"4. Receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost--thus enabling us to be baptized with fire; to have sin and evil burned out of our souls as though by fire; to be sanctified so as to stand pure and spotless before the Lord at the last day; and

"5. Enduring to the end in righteousness, keeping the commandments, and living by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God.

"Thus saith the Lord:

'He who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come. [D&C 59:23]'

"As God is true, and Christ is the Savior, and the Holy Ghost is their minister and witness, such is the plan of salvation, and there neither is nor ever shall be any other.

"Let those in the world think and act as they please; let us, the Saints of God who know better, together with all who are willing to live by the higher standard of the gospel, praise the Lord for his goodness and grace and do so by keeping his commandments, thereby becoming heirs of eternal salvation."

In the Bible Dictionary, we read: “It is … through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts.”

Brothers and Sisters, let us not just hold on to those parts of the Gospel of Christ that are the easiest, or that make the most sense to us; let us not hold on to any “private interpretation (2 Peter 1:20)” at all, wherein we build up our own religion. We have the first principles and ordinances before us; all of them revolve around the great atoning sacrifice of the Savior in our behalf, because the Father and the Son want us to become like them: “For this is my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39).”

Moroni, in almost the last verses of The Book of Mormon, summarizes how this is accomplished:

"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

"And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot (Moroni 10:32-33).”

Coming unto Christ is our part, our little but absolutely necessary part, involving obeying his commandments and keeping our covenants to the very best of our ability; his “amazing grace” does the rest. In this way “when he shall appear we may be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen (Moroni 7:48).”

note: James E. Talmage's tome Jesus the Christ was an invaluable resource in the thoughts expressed in this talk.

Aspire Higher

Recently I heard our principal say over the morning announcements that everyone needs to practice safe sex so that they can avoid sexually transmitted disease. That was painful on many levels, not the least of which has to do with the fact that there were undoubtedly, and contrary to popular opinion, many tender, chaste young hearts pierced in the hearing of it. Nevertheless, too many young hearts have also become inured to the gentle promptings to the chaste life: A few days ago I substituted in an English class and found it necessary to mention to at least two young women that the amount of cleavage their attire showed was unacceptable (actually, that's a very low number compared to what I see daily in the attendance office). Occasionally I see students fondling each other in the classroom. Often in the hallways I see “public displays of affection” from which I must abashedly turn away.

It seems to me that what we are dealing with here is a spiritually transmitted disease. We have foresworn ourselves from teaching values, however, from teaching the sanctity of the human body as the temple of the spirit God placed in it, and from teaching purity and morality.
We leave ourselves therefore with very little to back up our pitiable rules and dress codes. If there is, ultimately, no real right and wrong, what is the reason for doing anything?

Is there any wonder that from this little beginning, the individual and the society that produces him stumble around in a moral miasma, floundering in the swamp created by failed relationships, tepid education, and an amoral economy?

We have to have some kind of standard; people realize this: "Because things work out better that way, because it contributes to the common good."

Guess what, though? When it comes to selfish desires, those reasons simply don't hold sufficient sway to direct a person's conduct. I see such reasoning in modern textbooks on citizenship and I am torn between shaking my head that someone actually went to the trouble of publishing such banality, and outright guffawing - except it really isn't funny at all.

"Because God gave us commandments, because he loves us and because they are therefore for our best good, and because we stand to lose a great deal on the eternal scale if we ignore purity and morality."

Now those are reasons to do something.

Most of all, because Jesus Christ set the example, paid for our sins, heals our sorrows, and makes up for all that we miss out on in this life, through his infinite and eternal Atonement; we owe it to Him to do our little part, to show our gratitude and our obedience, and to shine a light for those of His children who do not yet know these things. A solemn obligation is upon us, in fact, to repent, or perish.

"Aside from Jesus Christ and his program of giving," I remember C. Terry Warner saying in a speech at BYU, "there is no real reason for doing anything."

I am looking for ways to share that message, because basically I am persuaded that most of those young hearts are yearning for something loftier, something, as Viktor Frankl would say, more meaningful. Pray with me that they will find it, and blessings upon you as you too strive to share it.

A Marvelous Work and a Wonder

Liza, a new convert to the church, made some great chalk drawings on our driveway one day. They were based on stories from The Book of Mormon. One of them told the story of Ammon's heroic efforts to save the flocks of King Lamoni (Alma 17). There were the severed arms on the ground, along with the dumbfounded enemies of the king. The caption read, "I think I'm beginning to be astonished!"

We all got a good laugh at that. That one simple phrase seemed a huge understatement of the actual event.

Recently, though, I have been pondering that phrase. I was reading about Alma's and Amulek's public conversation with Zeezrom (Alma 10-13), and in chapter 14, the word "astonished" appears again in much the same context: as the sophistry of Zeezrom begins to erode before the sure tide of the revelation-founded prudence and authority of Alma and Amulek, Zeezrom is "astonished:" an evil man who has laid a cunning plan finds his secret laid bare, and is completely routed.

In the New Testament we are shown that the people were astonished because Jesus " taught them as one having authority from God, and not as having authority from the Scribes. (JST Matt. 7:28)" He confounded the leaders of the Jews at every turn in the simple majesty of truth and divine power: "Talitha cumi...And straightway the damsel arose [from the grips of death] and walked...And they were astonished with a great astonishment. (Mark 5:42)" Saul, the militant Pharisee, full of zealous purpose, blinded by the Light, trembled and was astonished. Perhaps Lucifer's hosts, cast out of heaven, "began to be astonished," all that precipitous fall to earth.

I can remember feeling astonished at various times myself, doing something "my way," and finding my purposes confounded. I imagine the creators and navigators of the Titanic and the Hindenburg "began to be astonished" as their mighty inventions sunk or blazed into nothingness, leaving unimagined grief and tragedy in the aftermath.

Pride, I gather, infuses the "natural man" with boundless confidence that his cunning plans are unstoppable; yet by what simple means, whether by a man whose father was given divine assurance that he could not be harmed, or by the word of testmony, or by nature's force, or by any number of providential ways, do the efforts of the natural man vanish into thin air. When you've put a lot of sock into a "foolproof" plan and it falls apart completely, and you are helpless to stop it, in the process fearfully "falling into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31)," it is most emphatically astonishing.

If being astonished can lead to being amazed, to recognizing utter helplessness, to falling down in abject humility, calling upon God, to receiving his grace and his forgiveness, to leaping from one's bed of affliction, to becoming a mighty servant of the Lord [as it did at least for Paul and Zeezrom], then let the marvelous works and wonders come, and let us all be astonished!

A Grim Tale

I have read many stories over the past few weeks of people reaching out to people, particularly amid the rubble that is now Haiti, and I applaud every effort, even the one mentioned in Wendi C. Thomas' column "Center Has Soft Spot for Kids in Hard Times," in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, which championed a safe place for young people dealing with same gender attraction. However, I must respond to the underlying "born-that-way" implication that someone dealing with same-gender attraction has only one recourse, which is to submit and embrace homosexuality.
We seem to be living in the grim fairy tale world in which the emperor is parading around naked, yet we all feel compelled to exclaim over his dazzling new clothes. In this world, to hint that homosexuality is not a sentence but a challenge, is to be denounced a heretic. One who so proclaims is forthwith accused of "gay bashing" and is relegated to the lowest possible rung of societal opinion.
Notwithstanding, I feel compelled to say unequivocally: there is a way out of homosexuality, just as there is a way out of alcoholism, or of sexual addiction of any kind, or of any addiction, whether genetically imposed or environmentally disposed or consciously chosen. There is always a way out; I have seen it happen. One must ask: Did Christ come for nothing?!
Had we not embraced such a casual attitude toward right and wrong that families began to fall apart, that marriage became optional and "shacking up" preferable, that sexual relations among teenagers became normal and expected, then we would not have arrived at the place where we find ourselves today, where homosexuality too has become normal and natural, and where further moral erosion threatens the innocent in ways we dare not (as yet) imagine.
We have, as Isaiah describes it, "turned things upside down" (Isaiah 29:16), as societies before us have done; and, while we fiddle our own tune, like Nero, modern Rome - I mean our Western world - burns. For while the emperor was "born that way", his nakedness exposes him to dire repercussions, unless he finds a way to be clothed.
I say this, not because I hate, but because I care.

Why Moral Issues Eclipse All Others

Okay, I’ve been thinking about whether or not same sex marriage, abortion, pornography, and all the other prevalent-but-not-so-big-a-deal-anymore moral sins ought to or ought not to be higher priority issues than poverty, environment, education, etc., or whether in fact they are just part of the overall “family issues” list along with the rest. Here are the thoughts I have on the subject:
If you mess with pro-creation, what kind of respect are you going to have, really, for the rest of Creation? Idolatry and Adultery (in the broadest sense of sexual sin) are both infidelity, ultimately to God. Unfaithful to what we have been given and to Who gave it, to the greatest stewardships possible: our physical creation. Throwing back in His face that he took on mortality and “corruptibleness” for us, in turn to lay it down, in turn to pick up, in all our behalf, immortality and incorruption.
Can a world that wholeheartedly espouses immorality (adultery, infidelity) in fact produce any kind of financial, environmental, educational well-being? No. Everything else is in jeopardy unless the fundamental building block of virtue, morality, is in place. Environment, health, education become smoke screens to mask where the attention needs to go first and foremost in order for all those other things to be assured. “If we make enough noise about those things," the thinking becomes, "we won’t have to pay attention to the still, small voice that keeps droning the same thing: honor, virtue, integrity.” The prince of this world, who never had and never will have a body, wants to distract the brothers and sisters from whom he is eternally estranged by encouraging them to get involved in secondary causes first, so that the covenants they must make to return, live with, and be like their Father never quite come to pass.I think the Brethren’s stand is in concert with this outlook. That’s why, as an issue, moral rectitude eclipses all others, because it strikes at the very heart of Heavenly Father’s Plan: that he sent his children here to gain a body, to attain unto perfection through the only means possible, by means of the Atonement: in families.
So, yes. Morality first. In my mind, that ought always to be the basis on which I make political and all other choices, because nothing else is really possible without it.