I was looking through the wonderful videos on lds.org the other day, when I saw this one about honesty that caught my attention:
We can’t go through life thinking we can always find an easy road and assume it is just as good as going through the toil and hard work of honest labor. That cannot be. That which is most valuable is often what costs us the most. Along with the general loss of honesty in our society, many other noble virtues have been left behind and replaced with selfishness and greed, inconsideration and rudeness, immorality and glorified vices. We must remember how important it is to have moral discipline, as Elder D. Todd Christofferson explained in October 2009:
“Moral discipline is the consistent exercise of agency to choose the right because it is right, even when it is hard…The societies in which many of us live have for more than a generation failed to foster moral discipline. They have taught that truth is relative and that everyone decides for himself or herself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as “value judgments.” (D. Todd Christofferson, “Moral Discipline“, Oct 2009)
He goes on to explain that many societies today depend too much on law enforcement to maintain order and civility in their communities. But we must acknowledge that increased enforcement and creation of laws will not prevent people from breaking them. As he explains,
“There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone…In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.” (“Moral Discipline“)
He quotes a newspaper article that I found enlightening. The author wrote: “Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become” (Walter Williams, “Laws Are a Poor Substitute for Common Decency, Moral Values,” Deseret News, Apr. 29, 2009). I completely agree. Imagine a civilization made up of entirely honest, decent people–gentlemen and gentlewomen alike, all working to make their world better. Where would you find violence and crime? Where would you find hateful and hurtful things? Where would you find anything vulgar or base? They would not exist. It is by internal forces and personal integrity that our societies can function harmoniously. If everyone had a determination to uphold what is right and denounce what is wrong, then we would have no need for many of the drastic measures we take today to maintain order and peace. I feel that it is time for all of us to rise up and do the right thing, all the time, even when it is not easy to do.
