Here is one of the most important single-line teachings in all of scripture: “Bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love.” Note that passion and pure love are not the same thing. In fact, the word passions here is referring to feelings much broader than simply romantic love or immoral ideas. It refers to any strong emotions in a variety of contexts that, left unchecked, will drive away the Spirit of the Lord—whether those emotions are social, political, sexual, and so on. If we want to feel real love toward God and toward other persons, we must bridle our passions or emotions. A bridle does not suppress the spirited creature (whether horse or human) but is used to control or direct.
“[Alma] did not say eliminate or even suppress your passions, but bridle them—harness, channel, and focus them. Why? Because discipline makes possible a richer, deeper love.”20
One of our Book of Mormon students inadvertently misspelled the word on an exam, but the mistake was rather instructive: he spelled it “bridal all your passions.” All right, get married; that is a positive way of properly directing our passions!
Sexual restraint or control is particularly imperative for young people. Will and Ariel Durant insightfully wrote: “No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history. A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires; and if he is unchecked by custom, morals, or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos the individual and the group.”21
Other excellent counsel in verse 12 is for all youth: Be bold, but don’t be overbearing, and refrain from being idle. An old Spanish saying reminds us, “The devil is the king of idleness, but he is not idle!”