Be A Man!

In the most recent general conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland made an appeal to the men to, 'step up' and 'be men'. The call to 'be a man', colloquially and sometimes humorously used to motivate a burst of courage, was anything but a joke to Elder Holland.

What does it mean to be a man? The conclusion we come to may depend on who we ask. The world around us sends an ever-changing message on what manhood is. Not many years ago that message was based on grit, toughness and persistence. Clint Eastwood, Rocky Balboa and the generals of World War II were held up as 'real men'.

Now that image of manhood is considered cliche and old fashioned. The world's next attempt to define manhood pointed to the extremely successful-- the Bill Gates' of society who have every want satisfied with money to spare. Just as non-butch young men struggled with the previous definition of manhood, many in the rising generation have become discouraged by worldly pressures to provide an unrealistic level of income for themselves or their families.

Yet modern man, in the world's view, has evolved beyond the role of provider to something much less responsible. Elder D. Todd Christofferson explained it this way:

Some act as if man's highest goal should be his own pleasure. Permissive social mores have 'let men off the hook' as it were, so that many think it acceptable to father children out of wedlock and cohabit rather than marry. Dodging commitments is considered smart, but sacrificing for the good of others, naive.


The elusive, constantly changing messages of what the world calls manhood miss the target entirely and seek only to toss men 'to and fro with every wind of doctrine', as it were. These definitions attempt to restrict men to the selfish impulses of their carnal natures-- the very natures which stand in opposition to God (see Mosiah 3:19, Jeremiah 17:5, D&C 3:7, Moses 1:10).

So we're left again to ask what it means to be a man. The gospel of Jesus Christ provides a firm foundation upon which men can build their identity as men.

The scriptures teach that men are made in the image of God-- literal sons of God, eternal in nature and the focal point of God's glory. Men are called to be stewards over the whole earth and trusted to care for our sisters, daughters of the Most High. Every man has within himself the potential to be like our Heavenly Father, heirs of all He has and able to overcome every obstacle that may fall into our path. Real men, the gospel teaches, are mature, cheerful people who respond to the call to preside and provide.

Modern prophets also show the way to be a man. Elder Christofferson said, 'It is a wonderful aspiration for a boy to become a man--strong and capable; someone who can build and create things, run things; someone who makes a difference in the world.' Citing the proclamation on the family, he continued, 'In large measure, true manhood is defined in our relationship to women'. Real men honor marital vows with complete fidelity, help rear their children, preside with in love and righteousness and take responsibility to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.

Elder Christofferson had a few more things to say about manhood:

Integrity is fundamental to being men. Integrity means being truthful, but it also means accepting responsibility and honoring commitments and covenants... A man of integrity will honestly face and correct his mistakes... True manhood is not always measured by the fruits of one's labors but by the labors themselves-- by one's striving. Though he will make some sacrifices and deny himself some pleasures in the course of honoring his commitments, the true man leads a rewarding life. He gives much, but he receives more, and he lives content in the approval of his Heavenly Father. The life of true manhood is the good life.

President Kimball once quoted U.S. President J. Edgar Hoover's answer to what makes a real man:

There are many things, but perhaps the inner voice he listened to as a young boy was most important of all. That voice we call conscience, and it directs one’s thoughts. What one thinks may find expression in actions. Since repeated actions form habits, the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing at this moment tend to reveal the kind of a man you will be.

Were I asked what a boy needs to do today in order to be a man worthy of the name tomorrow, I would say: Never lie and never cheat. A liar is a weakling. A cheat is both a weakling and a thief. In finding the courage to honor truth in all things, you are on the way to self-mastery.

Work hard. Your mind is a storehouse and you stock the shelves. Stock them with quality goods. Remember that the habits of work and study you form today are the ones you will live with tomorrow.

Have fun. Play active games which require stamina and sportsmanship. Abide by the rules yourself. Demand that others do likewise.

Honor your Creator. God is the source of all good. The ideals on which the nation is founded stem from him who is the author of Liberty. You can express appreciation for your priceless heritage best by living according to the code of ‘Duty, Honor, Country, and God.’

If you do these, and in all things do your best, the mind and heart and soul you develop will one day be those of a real man.

These are the ideals of manhood: integrity, kindness, strength, honor and duty.

Manhood finds its ultimate expression in our ultimate example. Pilate may not have understood the significance of his words when he brought Jesus forth wearing a crown of thorns and declared, 'Behold the man!' As Elder Christofferson taught, Christ showed us the way to be men by rejecting temptation, by obedience, by forsaking completely the 'natural man', by service, by fearless opposition to evil and error and by standing firm in defending sacred things and raising a warning voice.

What manner of men ought we to be? Even as he is (3 Nephi 27:27, Matthew 5:48, 1 John 3:2).

As once Lehi called upon his sons to awake and rise from the dust and be men, so the prophets of today have called upon the men of our generation to 'step up'. President Monson has reminded us that we are not spectators. Elder Bednar counseled that when men 'neglect to do what is necessary to qualify for priesthood power' their efforts are 'unnaceptable to the Lord'. Elder Uchtdorf called upon men to put into practice dormant doctrines-- those that lie in our hears yet unapplied in our lives-- to qualify ourselves as husbands, fathers and sons.

Rise up, O men of God!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and soul and mind and strength

To serve the King of Kings.

Rise up, O men of God,

In one united throng.

Bring in the day of brotherhood

And end the night of wrong.

Rise up, O men of God!

Tread where his feet have trod.

As brothers of the Son of Man,

Rise up, O men of God!

Always Remember Him

Every Sunday as we attend our ward sacrament meeting, we hear two prayers repeated word-for-word. The first is the prayer on the bread of the sacrament; the second for the water. In these prayers we find the covenant we accepted at baptism: we covenant to take the name of Christ upon ourselves, to always keep His commandments, and to always remember Him.

Or do we?

When I was a teacher at the Provo Missionary Training Center, I would read the sacrament prayers often with the missionaries. At least once during their 8-week stay, after agreeing upon the covenant as mentioned above, I would inquire how long the missionaries kept all of the commandments after they took the sacrament on any given week. Most often, we would agree that we usually didn't get through an entire day, sometimes not even out of church, without having some undisciplined thought or saying something regretful or doing something inconsistent with the commandments we had covenanted to keep. We agreed that our failure to keep the commandments could potentially break the agreement we had made, making our covenant void.

At this conclusion, I would challenge the missionaries with a question: "If, in reality, we don't always keep the commandments, and that jeopardizes the validity of our covenant," I'd ask, "what happens if I die on a Thursday?"

With some back-and-forth discussion, the missionaries insisting repentance overrides all individual shortfalls and me asking for evidence from the verse, one or more of the missionaries would always stumble upon a most interesting word in D&C 20:77. "It doesn't say that we'll always keep the commandments," they'd say, "but that we we will be willing to take upon us the name of Christ, willing to always remember Him and willing to always keep the commandments." We'd conclude that a willing attitude is a key to keeping our covenants. We may not always keep every commandment, but as long as we press forward and are always willing to keep them, we are keeping our covenant-- and that is something we can do from Sunday to Thursday to Sunday and on again from week to week.

Something that I didn't realize well enough to share with my missionaries was the way the sacrament prayers work together. The prayer over the bread does indeed emphasize willingness. It says that as we eat the bread in remembrance of the body of Christ, we witness that we are, "willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keeps his commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to be with them." If we are truly willing, we may have his Spirit with us always.

The prayer over the water, however, is not about willingness. It is not about trying, it is about doing-- but the requirements are slightly different. As we drink in remembrance of the Savior's atoning blood, we witness, "that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them."

First, we agree to be willing, to keep trying, and to press forward. Then, we agree that we will always remember our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Knowing how to always remember Him is a point of such importance that it has merited three talks from living apostles with nearly identical titles. In a 2009 address from Elder D. Todd Christofferson, we learn that three aspects of always remembering Christ include seeking to know and follow His will; recognizing and accepting our obligation to answer to Christ for every thought, word, and action; and living with faith and without fear so that we can always look to the Savior for the help we need.

Elder Oaks provided more examples of how we can always remember Him in an address given in 1988. Some of those examples include serving as called, forgiving others, receiving ordinances, enduring affliction, ministering to the sick and afflicted, and loving our neighbors.

In his 1999 CES fireside address, then-Elder Eyring taught:

The Master not only foresees perfectly the growing power of the opposing forces but also knows what it is like to be mortal. He knows what it is like to have the cares of life press upon us. He knows that we are to eat bread by the sweat of our brows and of the cares, concerns, and even sorrows that come from the command to bring children to the earth. And He knows that both the trials we face and our human powers to deal with them ebb and flow.
He knows the mistake we can so easily make: to underestimate the forces working for us and to rely too much on our human powers. And so He offers us the covenant to “always remember Him” and the warning to “pray always” so that we will place our reliance on Him, our only safety. It is not hard to know what to do. The very difficulty of remembering always and praying always is a needed spur to try harder. The danger lies in delay or drift.

If we are unsure how to always remember Him, Elder Eyring encouraged us to start by remembering Him. He pleaded with us to study and ponder the scriptures and to go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. As we learn to always remember Christ, we will always have his Spirit with us, we will have armor and protection against pride and undisciplined thoughts that may lead us astray. We will have strength that we will not drift and faith to do all things.

As we take the sacrament each week, we are reminded of the promises we have made to be willing to take upon ourselves the name of Christ, to be willing to keep his commandments at all times and in all places, and to always, always remember Him. As the ten-minute reminder concludes, the task to remember becomes our own. As we establish habits of scripture reading, prayer and blessing those around us, we can ensure that we will remember Him for the 10,000 minutes of each week spent outside of sacrament meeting.

And, best of all, we can have his Spirit to be with us. Always.

Moral Discipline and Public Policy

The sacrament meeting remarks in my ward today were based on an excellent conference talk from Elder Christofferson called, "Moral Discipline." As I came home and reviewed that talk, I found significant commentary on current policy decisions. Rather than paraphrase poorly, I think it would be worthwhile to simply include an excerpt of that talk. After defining moral agency as the right to make choices and the obligation to account for those choices; and after defining moral discipline as the consistent exercise of agency to choose the right because it is right; Elder Christofferson says this:

The societies in which many of us live have for more than a generation failed to foster moral discipline. They have taught that truth is relative and that everyone decides for himself or herself what is right. Concepts such as sin and wrong have been condemned as “value judgments.” As the Lord describes it, “Every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god” (D&C 1:16).

As a consequence, self-discipline has eroded and societies are left to try to maintain order and civility by compulsion. The lack of internal control by individuals breeds external control by governments. One columnist observed that “gentlemanly behavior [for example, once] protected women from coarse behavior. Today, we expect sexual harassment laws to restrain coarse behavior. . . .

“Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.”

In most of the world, we have been experiencing an extended and devastating economic recession. It was brought on by multiple causes, but one of the major causes was widespread dishonest and unethical conduct, particularly in the U.S. housing and financial markets. Reactions have focused on enacting more and stronger regulation. Perhaps that may dissuade some from unprincipled conduct, but others will simply get more creative in their circumvention. There could never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were, enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone. In the memorable phrase of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, “We would not accept the yoke of Christ; so now we must tremble at the yoke of Caesar.”

In the end, it is only an internal moral compass in each individual that can effectively deal with the root causes as well as the symptoms of societal decay. Societies will struggle in vain to establish the common good until sin is denounced as sin and moral discipline takes its place in the pantheon of civic virtues.

The policy implications here are many, but I am especially intrigued by the question of the role of government in the development of the moral fabric of society. It seems an especially frustrating question for the current political schools of thought: the right can no more ignore their way into a satisfactory laissez faire solution than the left can regulate their way into a socialist one; nor can either claim innocence in this failure of society that we are taught has spanned periods of heavy influence for both sides over more than a generation.

From Elder Christofferson's talk, it seems the role of government and society in developing the moral discipline required for the common good is twofold: 1) fostering home atmospheres where moral discipline may be taught and 2) denouncing sin. These solutions require active doing; as a society we should protect and promote traditional marriage, reject obscenities and sexual content in our entertainment and be family friendly in our legislation. There is much that can be done. There is much that must be done.

Elder Christofferson warns: We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past—that things and patterns we have relied upon economically, politically, socially will remain as they have been. Perhaps our moral discipline, if we will cultivate it, will have an influence for good and inspire others to pursue the same course. We may thereby have an impact on future trends and events. At a minimum, moral discipline will be of immense help to us as we deal with whatever stresses and challenges may come in a disintegrating society.

Ultimately, the improvement or continued decay of moral discipline in our societies rests with us. If all of us were to be more morally disciplined in our personal lives, that would soon be reflected in our government and in our society. Whether enough of us are morally disciplined to turn the tides of decay or not, this principle will help each of us in our personal lives. On that, we have a prophet's promise.