Sunday, July 14, 2019

Alma 38:12 -- On Love, Respect, and Self-Control

"Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love; see that ye refrain from idleness."
Alma 38:12


I like the bold but not overbearing idea... that we should have opinions and express them, and work for what we think is right, but that there are limits, and we shouldn't be talking over other people or not listening to them, and we shouldn't step on others when we express ourselves.

That idea of there being limits to our self-expression carries over into the next idea, that of bridling our passions.  Emotions aren't inherently bad, but they can get bad quickly if we let them control us, rather than us controlling them.  It's interesting to say that we have to control our passions in order to be filled with love, because we often see love and passion portayed as the same thing... but restraint and self control are *essential* to real love.  Only when we have the ability to respect someone else and control ourselves around them can we understand what loving them really means.  Just like the first idea... if we always talk over them asserting that our opinions are superior, then we have no idea who they are, because we haven't stopped to listen and to find out.  We can't love people if we assume they are stupid or that their opinions don't matter.

Refraining from idleness at first seems like the outlier here, but here too is the idea of restraint.  God gave us a day of rest.  He knows that we need to take time away, and control our anxiety levels.  Here though, he says that rest doesn't mean the same thing as idleness.  Resting shouldn't be the main part of our lives, but instead it should be the necessary downtime from our more important pursuits.

Today, let's consider the idea of self restraint.  Let's be bold, and passionate about the things that matter to us, and let's take time to rest and recharge.  But let's not take any of these things (or anything else) too far.  Let's respect God and respect the people around us by learning moderation and keeping ourselves in check.

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