April 2005 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

48
look at may become an obsession and may take your life
from you—your mind, your spirit, your body. You may
think, “I can take one extra pill, right? That isn’t going to
hurt anything.” I’ve known men who take 20 or 30 pain
pills in a day, and they’ve been hooked for years.
I once met with a man who was a leader in the Church
in his community. He was a good man and had a great
family. Because of his professional background he was
commissioned by the federal government to be on a committee
to determine what kinds of materials were obscene.
He decided that if he was going to do this, he’d better see
the range of things they were looking at to see where the
line should be drawn. But he got hooked on this material.
And then he was released from his Church calling. He no
longer held the priesthood, and he no longer was married
to his sweet wife.
Before they divorced, I met with him and his wife, and
I asked them, “How did this come about?” He answered,
“I started bringing it home.” His wife said, “He would
come home and wouldn’t even have dinner with us. He
would take a sandwich into his den, and he would view
this material. It totally obsessed him.”
The man told me, “The one thing I want you to teach
more than anything else is that pornography is allconsuming.
When I started, I had never seen it before. But
after I had my first experience, it would not leave my mind.”
So as I said before, you have to decide what your standards
are before you ever confront a situation. You have to
decide, “I’m never going to have my first pornography experience
on the Internet or anywhere else.” Questionable material
may pop up on your computer all the time. What do
you do? You get rid of it. You delete it. You’ve got to have a
delete button in your life. You shouldn’t have to sit there
and say, “Should I look at this, or should I not?” You can’t rationalize
and say, “Well, maybe just once. Maybe I ought to
experience or see a little of it so I know what it is.”
Church Magazines: The same concept could apply to
other areas besides pornography.
Elder Hales: Yes. You say to yourself, “I’m never going
to have my first cigarette, I’m never going to have my first
drink, I’m never going to say my first swear word.”
Church Magazines: Some would argue that you’re not
really free if you don’t try some of these things.
Elder Hales: They don’t understand what freedom really
is. I am a great believer in agency. Going back to the beginning
of time, when we were in the Council in Heaven, we
all had to choose what we were going to do. One-third of
our brothers and sisters chose to follow Lucifer. The rest of
us chose to follow Christ. We chose agency. When you look
at corrupt government, evil societies, or whoever the dictatorial
individual is, you realize that agency must be very
important if their evil behavior was allowed.
You have to have agency to choose between good and
evil. So we say, “I understand I’m free to do what I want.
I’m my own person. I have agency.” It’s true that we are
free to make our own choices, but we’re not free to choose
the consequences of those choices. Once you understand
that, you begin to understand that there is a great price to
be paid for agency. Those people who think agency means
“I can do whatever I want whenever I want” do not understand.
They may be able to do what they want, but they
can’t choose the consequences.
We also have to say, “What are the eternal consequences?
What should the eternal perspective be?” And that’s what I
would hope—that every time we make an important decision,
we say to ourselves, “What is the effect of this decision
on my eternal progression?” Then many of the decisions become
easy and clear-cut, because you then say, “I know who
I am; I’m a child of God. I know where I’m going, and I
know what I must do to achieve that eternal goal.” And with
every decision you make, you say to yourself, “Does it move
Money will
never
possess you
if you can let some
of it go for tithing
and other worthy
causes.