Strip-mining scars the landscape, causes floods, and leaves
an economic emptiness which haunts the coming generations.
Similarly, unchastity leaves terrible scars, brings floods
of tears and anguish, and leaves a moral emptiness.
Significantly, both strip-mining and unchastity rest on a
life-style which partakes of an "eat, drink, and by merry"
philosophy-gouge and grab now without regard to the
consequences! Both strip-mining and unchastity violate the
spirit of stewardship over our planet and over person.
In such context, birth control pills are not a substitute
for discipline. As one author observed, the coming of the
pill may simply substitute a "copulation explosion for a
population explosion."
(Neal A. Maxwell, 2.)

We do not know, for instance, all of God's reasons for
requiring us to be chaste. We can make sociological guesses,
we can see the sadness of history-individual and cultural-
when sex satiates a society as it did Sodom. We know from
the Book of Mormon that in circumstances of gross
unchastity "many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds."
While we do not know fully what the underlying rationale
for chastity is, we certainly know enough to obey.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 10.)

Joseph said,."How can I do this great wickedness, and sin
against God?"...and also cited...how wrong adultery would
be in view of...how much...trust is in our relationship
with God, and vice versa.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 29 - 30.)

The principle of work is also fundamental to spiritual
ecology. We shall come to know that work is a spiritual
necessity, even if the time comes when it is not an
economic necessity.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 2.)

God has never ceased to be interested in free agency and
all threats to it (of any kind), neither has he lost his
interest in human health-nor in
chastity.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 21.)

La Rochefoucauld gave us a marvelous figure: "There goes
another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal
gang of facts." .... ....The gospel is the only
constellation of concepts which is illusion-free.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 25.)

Just as football coach Vince Lombardi suggests, with
reference to football, that "fatigue makes cowards of us
all," there is the cowardice that comes when we are tired
and physically spent, and when we suffer from what has been
called "people fatigue."
(Neal A. Maxwell, 26.)

Rather, we, for our part, ought to contemplate how truly
deep God's commitment to free agency must be, how truly deep
(and unpossessive) his love for his children must be to
allow us to err, to fail, to learn, and to grow. And how
wonderful is his refusal to impose, by his power, a faith
that otherwise seems to come so slowly and to so few when
men are left free. Sensing, even on such a small scale,
these divine commitments ought to help us to reflect them
in our lives. If we are tempted to unwise responses because
of our small-scale frustrations with those who are ungrateful,
with those who misuse their gifts, lo, how much greater the
sense of disappointment at the divine level is. And yet
his commitment to free agency remains intact, and his love,
justice, and mercy continue even for those who defy their Father.
(Neal A. Maxwell, 28 - 29.)


"Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the
word of God, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide
asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the
devil, and lead the man of Christ in a straight and narrow
course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is
prepared to engulf the wicked-

And land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the
right hand of God in the kingdom of heaven, to sit down
with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our
holy fathers, to go no more out."
(Helaman 3:29-30; italics added.)
(Neal A. Maxwell, 44.).)