Neal A. Maxwell wrote in 1981: “Deep inside some of the hardest doctrines (such as the seventh commandment—thou shalt not commit adultery) are truths and precious principles. Obedience to them actually brings both blessings and additional knowledge, as Peter promised. (See 2 Peter 1:8)
For instance, Alma said that we must bridal our passions so that we can be “filled with love.” (Alma 38:12.) If such passions were actually true love, clearly they would not need to be replaced with true love. The Lord in an 1839 revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith, even linked our capacity to have “charity towards all men” (the second commandment) with our capacity to let virtue garnish our thoughts unceasingly. (see Doctrine and covenants 121:45.) If our mind is filled with the wrong things, there will be no place in it for true love of God and our fellowmen.
Thus a failure to checkreign sensuality carries with it both personal penalties and, more than we realize, real deprivations for our peers and associates. No wonder that Paul said that to feed these lusts is to “drown men in destruction.” (1 Timothy 6:9.) Unchastity and sensuality are very preemptive in their demands.
In the parable of the sower, Jesus spoke of how some of those who might change for the better fail to do so because the lusts of former things actually “choke the word.” (Mark 4:19.) Carnality is especially choking because it causes a profound contraction of the soul. As with other commandments, disobeying means a shrinking of self, and obeying means an expanding of self.
In pondering the seventh commandment, we come to see, too, that we are also dealing with considerations of a transcendental or eternal character. In Proverbs we read, “Whoso committeth adultery . . . lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.” (Proverbs 6:32. Italics added.) There are some consequences of sexual immorality that we are simply not able to measure fully, but they are, nevertheless, very real.
We are preparing now to live in a better world. If we are too quick to adapt to the ways of this fleeting and flawed world, the very adjustment will maladjust us for life in the next. No wonder those who break this commandment are bereft of perspective and lack understanding.
There are, of course, some concerns associated with the seventh commandment that we share with the world. There is, for instance, a desire to avoid the disease that often goes with unchastity and infidelity. People naively assume that with the coming of antibiotics, venereal disease would no longer be a concern. The secularists were blithely wrong again.
A second point of concurrence is avoiding pregnancies in unwed mothers. Unfortunately, when their pragmatism fails, the world’s “final solution” is . . . abortion.
Ronald Butt wrote in the London Times (February 7, 1980): “For nearly 2000 years of Christian civilization, taking the life of an unborn child was regarded as a vile and heinous moral offense which degraded humanity. When an abortion was done to save the life of a mother or to prevent a woman from the consequences of rape, those responsible, including doctors, acted in conscience that a grave moral decision was involved. Abortions to avoid illegitimate births, or otherwise for convenience, were performed with a secrecy that was as much the mark of shame attaching to the deed as a consequence of its legality.”(As quoted from the Human Life Review, Spring 1980,p.3.)
Abortion, like unchastity about which Jacob so eloquently wrote, produces conditions in which many hearts die, “pierced with great wounds.” (Jacob 2:35) Note the pain in these words to the author by a repentant, but still shaken, young woman who had two abortions:
“I wonder about the spirits of those aborted—if they were there, if they were hurt. I was under three months each time, but a mother feels life before she feels movement.
“I wonder if they were lost and alone.
“I wonder if they will ever have a body.
“I wonder if I will ever have a chance again to bring those spirits back as mine.
A third gospel concern shared somewhat by the world is that sexual immorality assaults marriage and family life, further increasing the already spiraling divorce rate. Having so said, though, some in the world are not actually concerned with family life. The prescience of Charles Perguy’s assertion made earlier in this century is obvious that “the true revolutionaries of the twentieth century will be the fathers of decent and civilized families.” (In John Lukacs, The Passing of the Modern Age, New York: Harper and Row, 1970) p. 92
continued. . . see Why Chastity II.
