Monday, July 01, 2013
At our ward’s Girls Camp, I was
asked to speak at one of the devotionals, and I chose to speak on the topic,
“Don’t Settle”. I believe that the
subject is important enough to reprise it here.
There are pressures all around us to “settle”, to go with the flow, to
choose the easy path, but little in
life is gained without effort and consistency.
The “If It Feels Good, Do It” generation has marred the integrity and
morality of our country as it has matured, observing and even encouraging the
immoral to become mainstream. That is
not to say that evil hasn’t been with us always; it has. The barefaced
prominence with which it now masquerades as commonplace and normal is new, in
my observation. The ease with which
students and their teachers are prone to cheat to pass tests, the blatantly immoral
excuses and actions some corporate executives use to justify creating shareholder profit, and the
steady decline of decency in media are only a few examples. The decline of sexual mores has resulted in
soaring rates of unwed motherhood, poverty, abortion and divorce. Our faith puts great emphasis on the avoidance
of premarital sex, and any sexual relationship outside of marriage. We believe that the sexual relationship is a
sacred one and is reserved for marriage, rejecting infidelity, pornography,
promiscuity and the sadness and heartache that they eventually bring.
My message to the girls is that it
is theirs to choose the higher path and to not settle for the baser level that
society seems to sink to. We can choose
to do our best in school, in our employment, and in our moral behavior in
general, or we can settle for pleasing only our ego and sensual self. The great commandment that Christ gave us was
to love God and to love one another as we do ourselves. To put others above ourselves is the very
definition of Christian charity.
Pleasing only ourselves puts us at odds with God. True joy in our lives is the result of loving
others and not ourselves. It is their, and our, choice to settle for the
mainstream and join society and all its ills, or strive to rise above, and find
joy in our families, our friends, and our God.
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