That was an outstanding talk. I was there last spring when Elder Oaks delivered it to young adults.
That last point was a great example of how God is a loving, forgiving, understanding God who has ushered his saints beyond the letter of the law into the spirit of the law.
For example, we are commanded to keep the sabbath day holy, and many interpret that to mean not to spend money. However, due to an unforseen power outage, all of your baby's milk has spoiled. You can either make her starve until midnight, like some kind self-righteous Mormon Taliban, or you can go to the damn store.
As a missionary I had a greenie who struggled to think for himself. One night after hours we got a phone call asking us to go to the hospital to give a blessing. My greenie was hesitant because the white handbook says not to be out after 9:30 pm. I told him the ox is in the mire, let's go. While I was worried about the man who wanted a blessing, my greenie was worried about breaking the letter of the law.
|