Sum Total of Values and Principles in the Modern World

Moral decay continues in the United States and around the world.  Yet each of us need not succumb to the enticings of a modern world, ready and willing to compromise its values at the winds of public sentiment.  Your upright principles and values strengthen a nation.  On the other hand, your vices if not tended to, will project an acceleration of moral decay in those around you.  With each decision we make we need to ask ourselves who we really are and what is our potential?  The answer should be reflected in each succeeding decision we make - large or small.

How we got to this point in the history of mankind is important.  However, we are here, and we need to know how to remedy the state of things for the good of the rising generation and our own prosperity.  I like to learn things visually and so I choose to learn from the David O. McKay stone.  It is a stone that a young missionary by the name of David O. McKay saw above a door in Scotland and struck him to the heart with profound impact.  The inscription reads "What E're Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part."

Credit Maskery and Lunk

With this inscription was an interesting engraving of a "magic stone."  It was a square sectioned into nine smaller squares as seen above.  It was considered such because each of the symbols in each square represented a numerical value.  When you add the values up in a line in any direction the sum results are the same.  Combined with the inscription we can learn that changing any one value changes the whole or "magic" of the system because the outcome has undeniably changed.

This has everything to do with the state of the world today.  We have all these supposed values and principles that we claim to live by but tend to be "in the way" when they are inconvenient.  When our values and principles are upheld with a firm foundation the spirit or magic of the whole is maintained and becomes a splendor to all who look on.  Yet, in a world of declining values we fail to see that compromising one out of convenience or for any reason degrades the outcome of the whole.
DAVID O. MCKAY STONE VIDEO
So, who are you and what is the potential of your outcome?  I'll tell you...  You are of divine offspring and as such are entitled, if worthy, to inherit powers and blessings unmeasured.  You have a worth equal to that of the truest liberty you've been given.  In credit to the Atonement of Jesus Christ you have been afforded the greatest of liberty - to inherit the consequences of all your good and bad choices.  In other words with your continued favored choices in life you can, in absolute reality, return back into the presence of the Father - your Father - clean, and be found worthy of continued learning and opportunities boundless throughout the eternities with the loving accompaniment of your family relationships.

Is this not the ultimate of happiness?  Is not the possibility of boundless personal expansion the pinnacle of liberty?  Can there be anything greater than that?  Nope, don't think so.  It can be yours and its all with the establishment of Jesus Christ as your foundation - your rock upon which all your values and principles are engraved.

This may all sound as an advocacy of a particular religion but it is not.  I am a patriot who loves the divinely inspired Constitution of the United States.  I believe it to be a preparatory Constitution for a coming greater law with greater expectations and prosperity.  I believe that our Founding Fathers were correctly inspired from the tender ages of youth to fulfill the measures which history now credits them.  Religion is good and becomes a bedrock for healthy families.  My aim though is in exhorting all people to return to a state of dignity and integrity.  Return through living strictly by upright values and principles.  Shore up these virtues to stand against all the temptations and mockery of the world.

Search your own heart.  Of course it's true that you have a unique purpose in life and that the end destiny should only be that of happiness, continued growth, expansion and unfailing love.  Anyone who truly loves freedom and liberty should at least feel the desire for this compassed path toward ultimate peace.  Isn't this worth taking inventory of your own values and the principles you live by?  Isn't it worth it for the sake of making sure you're a good example to the rising generation charged to protect the Constitution of the United States, and the expansion of liberty to all who are ready and willing to accept it?

In the sacred writ of Doctrine and Covenants 82:10 it states: "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise."  How many times and in how many places in scripture are we promised great blessings for obedience?  Those are contracts that the Lord has committed to - with us.  We break our covenant with him when we are not in compliance with the commandments of God.  Yet, many of us dare to curse God when we, ourselves, have brought us out of His favor.

The stalwart nature and the upright ethics of our forefathers are a direct cause of the prosperity they've prepared for us.  It is their pioneering efforts ethically and morally that have paved the way to the greatness that builds nations that the world has never seen before.  It is character like theirs that proudly crossed their heart and declared the Pledge of Allegiance.  It is character like theirs that upheld the Second Amendment, knowing that by God we do have the right to protect our homes and property against any threat foreign or domestic.  It's character like theirs that have raised great men and women like your great grandparents, grandparents, parents and hopefully yourselves as well.

Return to virtuous living.  Return to dignity and integrity.  I have one more scriptural passage for you and it is found in the Book of Mosiah 18:9.  It states that we are to "...stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God..."  As the pilot nation of liberty of the modern era it is our obligation to recognize the hand of God in all things.  In so doing we will recognize more sensitively our own actions and thoughts.  We'll be more receptive to the compelling in the heart to modify our motivations for the good of all mankind.

Stand firm to correct principles.  We have now entered a time when we are content to legalizing immorality and calling it good for us to do.  This is not good and condoning immorality in the halls of justice only compounds the greater condemnation yet to come.  Hold true to what's right even in the face of those who demand your compromise.  The laws of God are absolute and unchanging just as each one of us should be.

This is my testament of the integrity of man that I'm compelled to share for the benefit of not only myself but for even just one out there who may be struggling in mires of the modern world.  Now that you know your potential as a literal heir of God, I urge you to apply the before-mentioned saying to yourself and make all the sum totals of your values match up flawlessly.

What E're Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part