#MeToo

The following is my personal opinion and does not reflect any official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

I was flying home from a work conference last year in April and a business college of mine spent most of the short flight talking about how right it is that he encourages his boys to masturbate.  Talk about awkward.  It was more of a justification speech than a conversation.  I don't know if I was more shocked at his views or that he was talking about it with a woman sitting between us.

This forceful imposition of his views is typical of how so many in the world need us to agree with them because they think somehow that if enough people believe it; it becomes ok.  As if by normalizing something, the natural consequences are abated.

We are saturated in society's filth.  We can't even watch a Carl's Jr. hamburger commercial without having to endure a half-naked female model in some lude pose.

Playboy recently announced that they were removing naked women from their magazine because nudity had become so prevalent and so accessible on the internet that you can't sell it anymore.

Even if you put the religious aspect of self-control and inappropriate images aside for a moment and just consider this issue from a secular perspective; sex and pornography are addictive no different than many other chemical addictions.  That is a fact.  The problem with any addiction is that the more of it you use, the less effect it has on you; creating a progressive need for more.  In other words, masturbation and pornography are "gateway drugs" to sex addiction.

If you doubt that is true, I submit to you the sudden unveiling of the reprobates in our society that have given rise to the #MeToo movement.  Where do you think all these men came from?  Everyone is so anxious to prosecute these vipers of society, but those same people who feign surprise over the actions of these men have no interest in asking how these titans of society came to be that way. That is because they already know the answer and choose to ignore it.  These men grew up in the "sexual revolution;" which is nothing more than a cover for normalizing and rationalizing the lack of self-control.

I wonder if now, faced with all the abuse that is going on, if the #MeToo folks are going to call for society to instill the values of self-control and modesty to be taught to our children to prevent this from happening in future generations.  Don't hold your breath.

In fact, they are doubling down.  This year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit addition honored the #MeToo movement by replacing the normal swimsuit models with naked models, on which they wrote #MeToo phrases.  The magazine said the women they are objectifying in this year's issue were allowed to pick the words to display on their bodies in the nude photos; as a means of empowering them.  Sports Illustrated editor MJ Day told Vanity Fair that she hopes the images will help change attitudes about how women are seen.

Are these people really this dense?  This was like providing an open bar to alcoholics as a sign of solidarity for the Alcoholics Anonymous program.  Not to mention this is a female editor objectifying other females in the name of empowering women.  It doesn't take a genius to see that rather than stemming the tide of sexual reprobates, those like Sports Illustrated, who say they are supporting the #MeToo movement, are enabling the distribution of the drug that motivates them.

Will there ever be a reckoning with the source of the problem rather than the product of it?  Unlikely.  Because those pointing out the crimes of others are snorting the same dope.

Ted Bundy, the mass rapist and murderer of young college girls, said in an interview with Dr. James Dobson the night before his execution, that he started with pornography and, as is the case with all addictions, pornography eventually wasn't enough for him and one thing led to the next until he ended up murdering young women. Bundy said in the interview, "out there are many, many more people who are addicted to pornography and you are doing nothing about that."  That interview was back in the 70's!  I wonder if the upcoming movie about Ted will illuminate the dangers of pornography?  Not likely.

I'm not saying that Harvey Weinstein would have become a murderer, but this sex addiction that is provided free of charge by our society is the same type of progressive addiction driving men to more and more reprehensible behavior.  How can this epidemic ever end when society points an accusing finger at the addicted men with one hand, while they simultaneously encourage the very environment that enables those men with the other?

Let's call this what it is; mass addiction to sex.  The fact that it has become so common that people talk about it on airplanes, does not change the nature of what it is.

The cure is simple and available.  Let's teach our young men the value of self-control and our young women the value self-respect and the problem will irradicate itself in the next generation.

Helaman 6:38
...BEGINNING at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the RIGHTEOUS until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils... 

Alma 5:57 / 2 Corinthians 6:17
...Come ye out from the wicked, and be ye separate, and touch not their unclean things...

1 Corinthians 6:19
...Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God...

Independently Happy

It's hard not to be envious of people who are independently wealthy.  No matter what else happens, they are still wealthy.

Our odds of winning the Lotto or being born into the family that started Walmart are pretty slim, but have you ever considered the possibility of being independently happy?

Why do the external circumstances of our lives get to dictate whether or not we are happy?  Why do we allow other individuals who are perpetually unhappy (I know you know one) to force their unhappiness on us?

Most of us allow our attitude to blow whichever direction the winds of daily circumstance take it; rather than determining for ourselves that we will be happy independent of what happens around us.

Similarly, have you ever noticed how the things we pray the hardest for are often things we already had and lost?   Ask the parent of a sick child if she has ever prayed harder than to have her child's health back.  Would you ever pray that hard for a boat?  A lot of the time when we want something back so badly, we didn't truly appreciate it when we did have it (speaking from experience here).

Why does it take a crisis for us to recognize what great things we already had?  Imagine if someone you love died and you prayed so fervently that the Lord brought them back to life.  Your joy would be off the chart.  Yet, since that person is still here; you are not experiencing that immense joy.

That begs the question, would your joy in the previous example happen because a miracle happened or would your joy come from having your loved one back?  If its the latter, shouldn't you be that happy now?

The means for independent happiness is all around us.  We just miss it while we choose to focus on the gossip of someone we don't even like or what we have decided is an unfair hand in life.

Give this a try...pick the person that you love the most and pretend that he/she died tragically.  Then spend this week acting as you would if that person was miraculously returned to you.  No matter what else happens, you will be happier than any amount of money could provide.  The usual interruptions in your life will seem petty and will have little ability to stem the tide of your joy.

We have it in us to be independently happy, we just need to focus on the right things.  2 Nephi 2:25 says that, "...men are that they might have joy."  If an all-powerful Father in Heaven put us here for the purpose of being happy, it seems likely that we can be.

John Greenleaf Whittier
For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, "it might have been."

All Roads Lead To Root Beer

A very respectful non-member attended my gospel principles class not too long ago.  He was a great benefit to the class because he asked sincere questions about things that we don't talk about enough. For example, he told the class that it offends him how we say that we are the true Church of Jesus Christ.  In his opinion, he said, all roads lead to Heaven.  

In response, I asked him, "If I offered you a root beer float and you declined, because you don't like root beer, have you been wronged?"  

Every person should either believe that their church is the true church, or they should be attending somewhere else.  So why are people offended by our belief?  

The answer can be found in an analysis of what "all roads lead to heaven" really means.  That phrase is just code for moral relativism or that there is no universal truth.  Everyone can do as they please because everyone is right.  In other words, "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us...and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God."  (2 Nephi 28:8-9)

But when someone shows up declaring universal truth, it obligates us to change our behavior.  That's why it offends some people; not because they disagree but because they don't want to change.

Jesus Christ lives.  There is truth.  If a person doesn't want His gospel because they prefer a tradition they are more comfortable with or is more convenient for their lifestyle; they should not be offended any more than a person who prefers Pepsi over root beer.

Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

A Hard Lesson In Forgiveness

When I was in jr. high, I was a nerd first class.  I was often chased home from school or beat up on the way there.  Not every day, but enough that I developed a certain preference for chainlink fences because having your face pressed against chainlink doesn't leave splinters the way a wood fence does.  Sometimes survival is all about timing the inevitable.

My arch nemesis, Jeremy Jones, was a football star and all that.  I played volleyball which irritated him even more than my nerdy appearance.  In my art class with Jeremy, the teacher would set us to our tasks and leave.  As soon as the teacher was gone Jeremy would find some means of torture for me.  One day I was wearing a tie, because it was game day, and Jeremy dragged me to the front of the class by my tie and choked me with it until my eyes watered up.  After his petrified audience filed out at the conclusion of the period, his girlfriend Jennifer (a cheerleader) came up and ask if I was ok.  I couldn't understand why she didn't say something during class.

I spent many hours hoping that a cement truck would meet Jeremy on the crosswalk.

Many years later my fiance Emily and I were flying from California to my hometown in Utah with a friend of hers.  While on approach into Salt Lake City, Emily's friend had an asthma attack.  Somehow she had accidentally packed her rescue inhaler under the plane.  The stewardesses did what they could for her while the pilot made an emergency descent into the airport.  As soon as we hit the ground the crew hustled us off the plane to the waiting paramedics.

Everyone stood there motionless while the paramedics worked on her.  A crowd of curious passengers formed around us.  I also stood there motionless; not only out of concern, but also because I instantly recognized the paramedic working diligently to help our friend...Jeremy Jones.  The man I had been harboring hatred for since my youth.  I watched in amazement because he truly seemed compassionate and concerned about her welfare (and appeared to be quite skilled at his craft).  All the hatred I had buried but not forgotten suddenly felt out of place.  He seemed to have changed.

Our friend was fine and back to her old self.  But I walked out of the Salt Lake Airport with a completely different attitude.

I don't know what kind of man Jeremy turned out to be, but I know that he taught me a valuable lesson about forgiveness that day on the tarmac.

Joseph Smith once said, "I have been afraid to ask God to kill my enemies lest some of them, perchance, repent."

What we see in the lives of others around us is a snapshot.  The Lord has given us 70 or so years on this planet precisely because we develop over time and learn from the mistakes we make.  What a shame it is that some of us judge others based solely on a single snapshot.

Doctrine and Covenants 64:10
I the lord will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.