My name is Cambrie Martinez. I have lived here in Denver
with my husband, Jason, since 2008 and we have three daughters,
Lenna, Cora, and Vada. I am very grateful for the opportunity to say to my
husband, “You have to take care of the kids right now, because I’ve got to
write this talk.”
I am very grateful for my husband and my children. I am
grateful to the Holy Ghost for any good ideas I may have had while writing this
talk, and I really pray that the Spirit will be here, so if I make any
mistakes, you will be able to understand what I was supposed to say, and if
I say anything that is true, the Spirit will testify that it is true and
help you remember it when you need to.
Virtue
I was asked to speak about virtue.
In 2 Peter 1, the apostle Peter writes to his fellow
Christians:
3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all
things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge
of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and
precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they
make you that ye shall neither be barren nor
unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Peter tells us to add to our faith virtue. What exactly is virtue? In the Preach My Gospel manual we
read:
“Virtue
is a pattern of thought and behavior based on high moral standards. Virtuous people are clean and pure spiritually. They focus
on righteous, uplifting thoughts and put unworthy thoughts that lead
to inappropriate actions out of their minds. They obey God’s commandments and
follow the counsel of Church leaders. They pray for the strength to resist
temptation and do what is right. They quickly repent of any sins or
wrongdoings. They
live worthy of a temple recommend.”
When we have faith in Jesus Christ, he asks us to change the
way we live our lives. He asks us to change our thoughts and actions. That is
how we add virtue to our faith.
As early as the Bronze Age, people going into battle would
wear a sign, or standard, on their clothing, on their armor, and later on flags,
in order to identify themselves. Likewise, our virtue can identify us as a
follower of Christ. It is a mark that shows that we don’t just say we believe
in Christ, we act like we believe in Christ.
Virtue is the accumulation of thousands of small decisions
and actions. It can be difficult to measure. I know there are some
artistic personalities that thrive on abstract concepts like this, but I am not
one of them. I like a checklist with clearly outlined rules that I can mark
off.
During baptism and temple interviews the bishop will ask you
questions about your conduct that clearly apply to virtue. During an
interview, you are asked if you keep the law of chastity, which means
sexual relations only take place within the bonds of marriage. You’re asked if
you keep the law of tithing, which means you give ten percent of your earnings
to the church. You’re asked if you keep the Word of Wisdom, which means you
don’t drink tea or coffee, use tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, or illegal drugs
and you don’t misuse any medications. You are asked if you keep the Sabbath Day
holy and partake of the Sacrament weekly. You are asked if you live in harmony
with the teachings of the Church.
Some of these standards have obvious benefits for
anyone who would keep them, regardless of their membership in
the church. Some of these standards entitle us to spiritual blessingss, and some of these standard are just symbolic demonstrations of our
faith. From the world’s point of view, some of these standards might not make
sense. But that is okay; they are not the world’s standards. You
can’t get your standards from the world. The world’s standards
are relative and constantly changing. At any given point, the world
has a fifty-fifty chance of being right. That means you can’t
even base your standards on the opposite of what the world would
say. You need an independent source. The standards mentioned in the baptismal
and temple interviews are the standards that the Lord has picked
out. When we live by His standards we are adding virtue
to our faith in Him
In Alma 31 the prophet Alma was concerned for the welfare of
the Zoramites. It says:
5 And
now, as the preaching of
the word had
a great tendency to lead the
people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the
minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto
them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.
Alma knew that if the Zoramites would try living the
virtue of the word of God, the Spirit would dwell with them and they
would have no more desire to do evil.
High moral standards can be inconvenient, and when we
fall short they can seem judgmental, or discriminatory, or harsh. But
they are none of these things. They are given to us with love. The
difference between having virtue and having a holier-than-thou attitude is
love. High moral standards are given to us by our Savior in
order to make our lives as easy as possible.
Recently, my little brother and his wife were expecting
their first child, and I was full of advice. Tons of it. I was
probably a little overwhelming. My brother and his wife are very smart and
loving people. They are going to be just fine. But I know, from experience,
that taking care of a baby is really hard, and the older the baby gets, the
harder it gets. Taking care of a baby is going to be hard no matter what
you do. I love my little brother, and I want his experience to be as easy as
possible. I didn’t want to control him, or jump in and make his decisions for
him. I know that he and his wife have the potential to be wonderful parents,
and I want them to put themselves in a position where they can do their best.
I am sure the Savior feels the same way about us. Our Savior asks us to have virtue because having virtue will
make our lives as easy as possible. From the moment our Father in Heaven presented the
Plan of Salvation and told us we would be able to come to Earth, our Savior
knew it was going to be a difficult and painful experience for all of us. When
our Savior gives us advice, it’s not called advice. It’s called a commandment, because His advice is perfect and we worship Him.
He is not trying to control us. He defiantly is not going to jump in and make
our decisions for us. He is telling us how to put ourselves in a position to do
our best.
Christ said:
Matthew 11:29 Take my yoke upon
you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and
ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30 For my yoke is easy, and
my burden is light.
We are going to be yoked by something. In this universe,
that is unavoidable. There are all kinds of things that we can be yoked
to. The virtue of the word of God is the lightest possible yoke
we can carry. It is the only yoke light enough that we will be
able to carry it all the way to the Kingdom of Heaven. The reason it is light is because our Sviour Jesus Christ helps us to carry it.
In Psalm 24:3-4 we read:
3 Who
shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his
holy place?
4 He
that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn
deceitfully.
In the
footnotes to these verses, we learn that the hill of the Lord, the holy place,
refers to the temple. Having a pure heart refers to having
virtue. Virtue
is a prerequisite to entering the Lord’s holy temple.
When I
was 15, my family and I had the opportunity to help build the St Paul Minnesota
Temple. Gordon B Hinckley had just announced the new plan of building “small,
beautiful, serviceable temples” so that more members of the church would have a
temple nearby. The St Paul Minnesota Temple was one of the first
ones. It’s not actually in St Paul; it’s in the city of Oakdale,
in the former parking lot of the church building that I attended most of my
childhood.
During
the construction, I had the opportunity to witness the high standards with
which temples are built. In addition to the building codes of the city and
state, the church has a whole other set of building codes
for temples. My father was hired as one of the carpenters who helped
finish the inside, and during that time I spent several days a week at the
temple site, doing odd jobs and running errands for my dad and the other
workers.
The
inner walls of the temple were framed with two-by-fours like in a regular
building, but before the framework was covered with dry wall, all the little
spaces between the two-by-fours were vacuumed out. I know, because I was tasked
with vacuuming a lot of them. I don’t care how expensive or prestigious the
building is, you would have a difficult time finding another place where the
spaces between the walls were not filled with sawdust, dirt, broken nails, and
other small pieces of trash.
I also
got to see my father and others lay the white carpet, and after it was laid an
artist came in with a pair of shears and carved patterns right into the carpet
by hand. After the trim and walls had all been painted white, another artist
came in. She was literally using 24-carat gold to paint a border
around the walls of the celestial room.
A
temple building is the accumulation of thousands of small details like these.
But all of the attention to detail and the beautiful and expensive decorations
are not what makes a temple sacred. They are just physical items, and they are
going to wear out and get thrown away and be replaced. The temple isn’t sacred without people inside of it. The temple is
sacred because of the people who work and serve in the temple: the priesthood
holder who dedicated the land and the building to the service of the Lord; the
temple president, matron, and their counselors; and every worthy member of the
church who holds a recommend. Virtue is
what entitles these people to blessings of the spirit, and that is the
spirit that makes the temple holy.
In 1
Corinthians 3, the apostle Paul teaches:
16 Know
ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
17 If
any man defile the
temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
God did
not create us for the temple. He created temples for us. He did not set high
standards of virtue so that we could dwell in temples. He created high
standards of virtue so the spirit could dwell in us.
In
October, 2008, Sister Dalton, the Young Women General
President, gave a conference talk called "A Return To Virtue".
She said:
I
testify that a return to virtue is possible because of the Savior’s example and the “infinite virtue of
His great atoning sacrifice.” I testify that we will be enabled and strengthened not only
to do hard things but to do all things.
Now is the time for each of us to arise and unfurl a banner to the world calling for a return to virtue.
Before
we built our temple in Oakdale, our stake was in the Chicago Temple
district, so we would make the eight-hour trip to Chicago to attend the temple
a few time a year. The historic city of Nauvoo, Illinois, is
about 280 miles from Chicago, but when you’re driving from eight hours
away, a little side trip to this church historical site doesn’t seem
like that big of a detour. During my early teens I had
the opportunity to visit the city of Nauvoo often.
At the
end of the 1830's, the early members of the church were driven
out of Kirtland, Ohio, and set up a camp on the swampy
banks of the Mississippi river in Illinois. They would build this
site into the beautiful city of Nauvoo. The most important
building they would build here was the Nauvoo temple. The saints were
so poor and had lost so much, but they still gave their fine china and
family heirlooms and other treasures that they held dear in
order to have the means to build the temple. After all of their
sacrifices, they completed the temple in 1846, and were driven out of
Nauvoo a few months later. First, a mob broke in
and vandalized the temple. Then, there was a fire that
completely destroyed the interior of the temple. For a while the lot
was used as pasture for sheep and cattle. Then, a tornado took down
one of the outer walls and damaged the others. Finally, the
city officials had to pull down the remaining walls, because it
wasn’t safe to leave them crumbling there. In 1865 the Carthage Republican Newspaper reported, "The last
remaining vestage [sic] of what the famous Mormon temple was in its
former glory has disappeared, and nothing now remains to mark its site but
heaps of broken stone and rubbish."
The
story of the Nauvoo temple is not the most extreme example of bad things
happening to good people, but because I had so many good memories of spending
time with my family and friends while visiting Nauvoo, I always took the
destruction of the Nauvoo temple a little personally. A lot of the homes and
businesses of the early saints are still standing and it’s a lot
of fun to go visit them, but for reasons I couldn’t quite put my
finger on I missed the Nauvoo temple.
Then,
in April 1999, at the conclusion of General Conference, Gordon B
Hinckley announced that the church would be rebuilding the Nauvoo
temple. I was shocked. I had expected the barren field where the temple
had stood to remain empty forever. We finished our Oakdale temple in 2000,
and weren’t taking any more trips to Illinois. I didn’t get to
travel back to Nauvoo until the summer of 2002, right after
the new Nauvoo temple had been dedicated. The outer façade of the
temple was a replica of the original, but it was so much bigger
and more beautiful than I had pictured. I had spent years imagining
what the Nauvoo temple looked like, but when I saw the real thing I was
surprised by how grand and majestic it was compared to my own limited ideas.
In the
past, I have heard analogies saying that your virtue is like a stick
of gum, and once it’s been chewed it can never go back. Or that your virtue is
like a glass of water, and when you lose your virtue it’s like someone has
taken a drink, swished it around, and spit it back out.
These analogies are meant to illustrate the serious consequences
of our choices, but they completely miss the point of the
atonement. You are not a stick of gum. You are not a glass of water, or a
balloon, or an Oreo cookie, or any other analogy you’ve heard. You are nothing
so trivial. You are a temple, and temples get restored. No matter what your
position in life, your virtue can be restored.
Sometime in
your life you are going to feel like a pile of rubble in the
middle of an empty field. If you haven’t experienced that yet in
your life, you will, and probably several different times. The resources, time,
and effort that the saints spent on the Nauvoo temple, old and
new, are nothing compared to the effort God will spend on you. He waited
150 years for the Nauvoo temple to be restored; he will wait for
you for as long as it takes. He will rebuild you into something greater
than you ever thought you could be.
The
Nauvoo temple is just as glorious and beautiful and virtuous as every other
temple. The temple ordinances that take place in the Nauvoo temple are just as
sacred and binding as the ordinances in other temples. The Nauvoo temple
is not the only temple that has been rebuilt, or the only temple that will be
rebuilt. In fact, every temple is constantly being restored. They are
always being closed for cleaning and repairs and even a total remodel, like the
Ogden temple was just this last summer. And then they open back up and get
right back to doing the work of the Lord. This same principle applies to
every one of us as God’s children and our virtue.
I bear
testimony with Sister Dalton that a return to virtue is possible, and it is
worth it. I bear testimony that the virtues taught by the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints will make our lives easier, and that the Spirit of
the Lord will dwell with us giving us comfort and power. I challenge you
to try the virtue of the word of God. I am grateful for the temporal and
spiritual blessings that virtue brings.
In the
name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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