Bodies are sacred, to be kept clean, pure
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PROVO, Utah — Calling the body a sacred instrument of the mind, President Boyd K. Packer asked college-age young adults worldwide Feb. 2 to live the Word of Wisdom and stay morally pure.
"We have agency," said the Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve. "What happens in our lives and in our path of eternal progress is just what we decide it to be."
Speaking during a Church Educational System fireside, President Packer addressed more than 22,000 college-age young adults gathered in the BYU Marriott Center in Provo, Utah. An estimated 150,000 more in 77 countries participated in the fireside via satellite. The fireside, translated into 29 languages, will also be made available on videotape to institute students around the world.
"You are young and I am not," President Packer told the worldwide congregation. "I have been where you are, but you haven't been where I am. With the encouragement of my wife, I am going to do something I have never done before. That is to speak very openly and directly and personally to you, and to speak more about myself than I have ever said before a congregation."
As a child, President Packer said he suffered from polio. "I lay for several weeks on a World War I Army cot in our front room beside a coal stove," he recalled. As he recovered, he learned to walk again. However, as a result of the illness, his muscles were always weak. "I was very self-conscious," he said. "I couldn't be an athlete."
President Packer said as a young man, he always felt self-conscious. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, he felt the physical strain of military service. At night, he found himself, again on an army cot, lying in agony with aching muscles and swollen limbs.
"In that time I learned to pray. I learned the difference between saying prayers and praying, earnestly praying for health and strength and wisdom."
Then, something else happened that changed his life in a remarkable way. He received a patriarchal blessing.
While noting that patriarchal blessings are very private, President Packer told the young adults he felt the need to share a part of his blessing with them.
The blessing told President Packer to cherish and protect his body. "It is sacred," the blessing said. "It is the instrument of your mind and the foundation of your character.
"All at once I didn't care what kind of body I had," he said. "I had a body of sufficient capacity to let my spirit function through it. I had learned that the body is sacred, I found that it didn't matter, really, what kind of bodies we have, so long as we understand that our spirit and our body are combined in such a way that our body becomes an instrument of our mind and the foundation of our character.
"From then on I saw no purpose, nothing to be gained, from talking to other people about my aches and pains. I just moved on through life."
Quoting Joseph Smith, President Packer said the principles of happiness consist with having a body. "The devil has no body, and herein is his punishment," he said.
All beings who have bodies, have power over those who have not, he added.
President Packer said while serving in the Pacific during World War II, he became a product of the Book of Mormon.
Holding up his own serviceman's copy of the Book of Mormon, President Packer told the congregation how he bound the sacred book in leather from an abandoned flight jacket, using string from a broken parachute.
From the Book of Mormon, he said, he learned another important fact; quoting Moroni he explained that the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil.
"We know what is right and what is wrong," he told the young adults. "We live in very troubled times. I want to speak to you very openly: What we faced in World War II, the jeopardy and challenge, was nothing compared to what you young people face now. It is a terrible and challenging time."
President Packer said the Word of Wisdom contains both principles and promises.
"We have accepted as a Word of Wisdom in the Church some standards that we will not change," he said. "You are not going to go on a mission unless you adhere to it, and you are not going to go to the temple for more sacred ordinances unless you observe it."
The Word of Wisdom is a requirement for spiritual progression. "You can't just toy with it," he said.
President Packer promised the young people that if they will keep their bodies clean and pure, angels will attend them and speak to them through the power of the Holy Ghost.
Church members have a choice, he said. They can listen to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost or to what President Ezra Taft Benson once dubbed "sin-spiration," or messages from angels of the devil.
He asked the youth to activate a delete key in their minds, erasing anything unclean that enters it. "I know a little bit about computers; my grandkids have taught me," he said. "I know every computer has a delete key. . . . You can have a delete key in your mind. Your mind is in charge, and your body is an instrument of your mind."
Calling music powerful, he said, the Spirit can't dwell in loud or dark places. "You are very, very, very, very, very, very foolish when you like to participate in music that is dark and noisy."
Of pornography he said, "You leave it alone, and if you have any, destroy it. And if you know someone that has it, help them destroy it and don't even look at it. Not ever. It is destructive and it will take you on a path that is not consistent with who you are. Not ever."
He also spoke about moral purity. "Don't you ever let anyone touch your body in order to stimulate in any way those sacred powers of creation. Nobody! Not of your same gender or any gender! That power is to be expressed only and solely with your husband or wife with whom you are legally and lawfully married. . . . You must guard that sacred power with your life.
"Young women, if young men want to take you someplace you know you shouldn't go, don't go. Break it off. Send him a letter and stamp it second class 'MALE.' "
President Packer also asked the young men to guard themselves against sin.
"You just let it be known that you have ahead of you the fulfillment of the blessings that come with the Great Plan of Happiness," he said. "You may feel alone, sometimes you are alone. But that is part of what life is."
It is important, he said, to save "those creative powers until they are used for the purpose for which they were given, that is to create a family. They are natural instincts and they are very strong; they have to be."
Self-stimulation, he continued, is unworthy.
"You don't have to be commanded in all things. Without having to have the Church deliver a statement on it, you should know the Church's position on abortion and cloning and same-gender marriage, or birth control. All of those things are built in as a part of what we know and what we are."
Others may not always agree with our stance, he said. "We are going to stand alone. If so, there we will stand."
Some people will say they were born with a tendency toward certain sins. "Whether you were born with it, you acquired it, or you got it through over-medication, addiction or any other way, what should you do? Resist it. You resist it, push it away. For how long? As long as you live."
Closing, President Packer told the young adults about spending hours and hours carving a bird that eventually was broken. As the bird's creator, he fixed it, making it stronger than ever.
"Who made you? Who is your Creator? There isn't anything about your life that gets bent or broken that He can't fix. But you have to decide. If some of you have made mistakes and think you are broken and can't be put together, you don't know the doctrine. You don't know what the Atonement is all about and who the Lord is and what power He can have in your life.
"This is His Church. . . . We have His authority and we can perform miracles."
The greatest miracles, he explained, have nothing to do with healing physical bodies. They are the miracles of spiritual growth and healing in the lives of every one of us. Repentance, he added, is like a mathematical equation: Repentance leads to forgiveness.
"You are consummately precious to the Church, to your parents and to one another. You now must decide what is right . . . and you will be blessed and redeemed and exalted."
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