This Experience Makes Me Feel Like A...

This experience makes me feel like a Marine lieutenant friend of mine. ¶

He had been in the last war for four years and when he learned they were considering his recall, he sent the board a telegram in which he said: "I desire to remind you that I spent four years in the last war, and I just want you to know I do not want to crowd in ahead of anyone else who wants the experience." ¶

I am grateful for a great many things this morning. I am always grateful to be on these grounds and in this building, for daily association with them has never dimmed their beauty and their memories for me. I am grateful for the lovely flowers which festoon this stand, for many of us learned to love them and what they represent in the islands of the sea; and I am particularly grateful for the blessing of aloha or love which motivated the good people who sent them. ¶

I am especially grateful this morning, for freedom. As a serviceman who had opportunity in an armed conflict to help defend this nation, as a young American, and as a Latter-day Saint, I am as grateful for freedom as my intelligence and capacity to understand it allow me to be. ¶

But as I look at you and consider myself, I think of another kind of freedom which is even more important than that which we here enjoy to assemble and to teach and to worship. ¶

This freedom has no relationship to prison walls, or to any other aspect of physical restraint or deprivation. It may, in fact, be employed by one immured in deepest dungeon, penniless and starving and in ill health. On the other hand, it may be absent from one who is not physically restrained, who has an abundance of wealth, health, prominence. I think of the freedom taught by Jesus to certain of the descendants of Abraham many centuries ago. Having taught them of his Father, he gave them another great lesson, in these words, many having believed on him: ¶

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ¶

They answered him, [angrily, you see, because they were already free, were they not?] We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? ¶

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. ¶

And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the son abideth ever. ¶

If the son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:31-36.) There is a freedom different from and superior to even that which we enjoy today, to meet, to teach, and to worship. What is it? Is it, as some suppose, the right to do as we please? Do we find this freedom in indulgence, in unrighteousness, in sin? Do we find it in giving loose rein to passion, to emotions, to appetites, to the unrighteous thought or act? ¶

This freedom of which Jesus spoke does not company with unrighteousness nor is it the product of the evil act. This freedom, this freedom which he taught as being most important to mankind, comes to those who in righteousness have faith in God, learn his law, and seek to understand it, and who, obedient to it, and with responsibility, seek to do his will. ¶

There are many among us, and throughout the world, young and old (though perhaps we too often confine the lesson to the young) who have the idea that freedom, the freedom of which we speak, can be found in unlicensed liberty. But this freedom which Jesus taught is not the freedom of irresponsibility or unrighteousness, but the freedom which accompanies obedience. ¶

Is that husband free, for instance, who with disloyalty to his wife and family and with lust in heart, entangles himself in alliances outside his own home? Is that father free who, neglecting his children, turns them away and does not love them and teach them? Is that man free who hates his neighbor, and who will not forgive the trespasses his neighbor has committed against him? ¶

Is that wife and mother free who will not perform the duties of her home with joy in her heart, realizing this to be her great calling? Is that woman free who gives her time to selfish social pursuits of doubtful worth instead of to her neighbor, her community, her Church, her God, in honest service, when there . ¶

is so much to do? ¶

Is that boy free who trifles with good habits, who cheats a little in school, who will not accept sound counsel and loving parental advice, but who, making his own stubborn way (for he is of the age when he thinks he knows better than they) chooses companions who are on the wrong path, goes about his activities with them, perhaps even stealing from some others the most precious things they enjoy? Is the young girl free who thinks so little of herself that she allows herself to be handled as if she were worth nothing, or who talks with evil tongue about her friends or acquaintances; who will not be counseled, who will not be helpful or humble in the home? ¶

The obvious answer is that these people are not free. True, they have the right to choose, but they violate their agency in choosing that which denies them the very freedom which God would have his children enjoy; for how is this freedom achieved? ¶

Let me quote two or three verses of scripture. In addition to the words of the Lord, telling us that truth makes us free, he said again as recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, the sacred book of the restoration: ¶

I, the Lord God, make you free, therefore ye are free indeed; and the law also maketh you free. (D. & C. 98:8.) And He said to us, as John recorded it when he was among men: ¶

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. ¶

Abide in me, and I in you. . . . ¶

... for without me ye can do nothing. ¶

(John 15:3-5.) And the Psalmist sang, "And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts." ¶

(Psalms 119:45.) And again, James: ¶

But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:25.) And finally, and perhaps most importantly, out of the book of II Corinthians this simple statement: ¶

. . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (II Cor. 6:17.) My humble testimony is that real freedom is not irresponsibility or license, but that real freedom accompanies faith in God, the understanding of his word, and obedience to it. (And each of us, I believe, knows personally the difference between the freedom of faith and obedience, and the bondage of sin.) God bless us to realize as we seek to learn the marvelous principles of the gospel that he who will not in his heart forgive, he who will not be clean, he who will not seek to know the truths of the Lord as they apply not only to the obedience which is a word, but also to the obedience which is a way of living, is not free. ¶

God bless us that we may have faith, that we may learn his word and live it, in order that we may have his spirit with us, for ". . . where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (Ibid., 3:17.) In the name of Jesus Christ. ¶

Amen. ¶