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.

Stopping the Tape in the Middle - Thoughts on You’ve Got Mail

I really like the movie You’ve Got Mail, it’s so charming and sweet - except for the fact that they’re both living with someone. That’s unfortunately not a big deal these days. Next thing you know, Kathleen and Frank are talking about how they’re “perfect” for each other, but, funny thing, they just don’t love each other, and isn’t that amusing, and Frank walks out with his typewriter, and it‘s just a part of the plot that brings Joe and Kathleen together. .
Today I found a copy of Redbook magazine in the teacher’s lounge at the school where I work, and I brought it down to our office to read in the off moments, but I only made it halfway through before I couldn’t take any more raciness. When I was a child my mom read Redbook all the time.
Kids at my school talk about same-gender relationships in the same way they talk about the latest shoe styles.
Last Christmas, it seemed as though the Babe in the manger were slipping further and further away from our celebration, and with him, the magic - even though people make elaborate, fanciful substitutions to pretend the magic is still there. You can’t have magic for long , though, while ignoring the source. You can’t hold on to it because you’ve cut off the current that produces the glow.
Relationships aren’t supposed to be casual. I am not just waxing nostalgic here; we really are losing what is precious, precious and meaningful, and we are clinging more and more frantically to - what? Fluff. Insubstantial, elaborate, showy fluff.
Relationships were never meant to be casual. Ironically, that is the very reason You’ve Got Mail is so sweet and so memorable, because we know, deep down inside, that relationships are meant to mean something, to be substantial, to last. We just know that Joe and Kathleen will be forever.
But becoming “forever” would take a major change of heart for anyone caught in the sophistry of casual relationships. All that witty, cosmopolitan (sorry, Redbook), casual, racy magazine talk is so insubstantial, so cold, so devoid of meaning, so like eating cotton candy - all you’re left with is sticky fingers, for all its gloss and surface appeal. Why do we long for that stuff? We don’t. It’s just easier to come by, more available, more accepted. It’s only a substitute for the real thing, and we wonder if there really is anything more out there.
There is! There always has been and always will be, so much more. So much more. It starts with making and keeping promises. And it builds on a rock, and it stands through everything, absolutely everything, that life can throw at you. The Apostle Paul - yes, I will quote the Bible, and not some watered-down version of it either, because the Bible is more current and more real than any of your glossy, casual, sophisticated fluff, and ever will be! - the Apostle Paul said that we ought to seek after “whatsoever things are true…honest…just…pure…lovely…of good report,” anything of virtue or worthy of praise. He exhorted us to “think on these things.”
Don’t fall for the sophistry that has us eating cotton candy - or worse. The old virtues are still the real thing. It is still possible to live by them, to hold on to them. They will surely hold on to you, if you are true to them, they really will. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!

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.