Continuing from ‘Choose to Be Good II,’ President Henry B. Eyring now of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shared in 1997:
President Spencer W. Kimball wrote: “To every forgiveness there is a condition. The plaster must be as wide as the sore. The fasting, prayers, the humility must be equal to or greater than the sin. There must be a broken heart and a contrite spirit. There must be “sackcloth and ashes.” There must be tears and genuine change of heart. There must be conviction of the sin, abandonment of the evil, confession of the error. . . . That is not a description of an easy fix justifying a purposely flawed life. That is not a description of a “few stripes.” How much better to choose to be good and to do it early, a long way upstream from the terrible effects of sin.
Upon hearing President Kimball’s description of the terrible effects of sin, those who are now in serious sin will have a thought delivered to their mind that goes something like this: “Well, if it is that difficult to repent, I might as well go on in sin. Later, when I need forgiveness, I’ll just go through that once.”
That is so unwise. Let me tell you why. First, people who postpone repentance may run out of time. And second they will find more misery in more sin, not the happiness they hope but can’t find. Remember the warning of Samuel the Lamanite: “But behold, your days of probation are now past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head. (Helaman 13:38)
If you’ve avoided serious sin, you may be thinking, “None of this applies to me.” But it does. The choice to be good is the same and equally necessary for every person. The choice to be good, which is what repentance includes, must be made by all of us. It is more difficult and more urgent for those in serious sin, but these words apply to everyone: “And the days of the children of men were prolonged, according to the will of God, that they might repent while in the flesh; wherefore, their state became a state of probation, and their time was lengthened according to the commandments which the Lord God gave unto the children of men. For he gave commandment that all men must repent; for he showed unto all men that they were lost, because of the transgression of their parents.” (2 Nephi 2:21)
I know I don’t need to persuade you to choose to be good. The fact that you are reading this book is pretty fair evidence that you want to make a lasting choice to be good. But the fact is that most of us have made the choice more than once. . . . Since I’ve had that experience too of fading resolutions to be good, I’ve thought some about why it happens. The problem is this: We all need a standard, something to compare our behavior with, to help us understand what a practical goal of goodness is. And most of us choose people to compare ourselves with. I learned long ago that it matters who you choose for that comparison. . . . Up to that point I had never had a date. And I had no sisters, so what I thought I knew about girls and how to treat them came mostly from the visions I got from Gospel Ideals (authored by President David O. M. McKay) I sat in the back seat of the car, and they talked about girls. I remember that as I listened to them, the thought came into my mind: “I have been wrong. Those ideals about girls and how you should feel about them, how you should treat them, they are unrealistic.”
For the continuation Elder Eyring’s message, see the post of October 27, 2019. . . “The True Standard of Goodness”.
