“Wickedness Never Was Happiness”

K. Douglas Bassett

Alma 34:34; Morm. 2:13; Hel. 13:38; Psycho-Cybernetics, Maltz, pp. 87-100; Articles of Faith 1:13; Improvement Era, 17 [no. 2]:172-173; For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, p. 4

“When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad.” (Abraham Lincoln)
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need, because what you don’t need will never satisfy you.” (Dallin H.Oaks, Conference Report, Oct. 1991, p. 104)
“You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible.” (Ezra Taft Benson, New Era, June 1986, p. 5)
“Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.” (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 5: 134-135)
“So many of us are fearful of what our peers will say, that we will be looked upon with disdain and criticized if we stand for what is right. But I remind you that ‘wickedness never was happiness’ (Alma 41:10). Evil never was happiness. Sin never was happiness. Happiness lies in the power and the love and the sweet simplicity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We need not be prudish. We need not slink off in a corner, as it were. We need not be ashamed. We have the greatest thing in the world, the gospel of the risen Lord.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, Ensign, May 1997, p. 49)
“Laws do not change. A law, like truth, ‘abideth and hath no end’ (D&C 88:66). A theory is tentative, subject to change, and may or may not be true. A theory is a means to an end, not the end in itself… . Laws governing spiritual things were irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundation of the earth (D&C 130:20). Often young people fail to accept moral and spiritual laws because the laws are not measured by methods they have been accustomed to using. Physical or natural laws are much easier to demonstrate, and can be useful in teaching about spiritual things. Let me illustrate. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, water freezes and changes from a liquid to a solid. At 212 degrees Fahrenheit it turns into a gas. Your students know that and there isn’t anything they can do about it—they can’t change it. It can be described accurately or inaccurately, in complicated measurements in Fahrenheit or centigrade or anything else, and nothing that is said about it is going to change it because it operates according to law. It will freeze or evaporate according to the law. It should not be difficult to understand that there are basic spiritual laws that have always existed, that never change, that beget consequences, and we can’t change them. The wonder is that we can depend on these spiritual laws. ‘Wickedness never was happiness,’ and anybody that has tried to find out, has found out. It is a law.” (Boyd K. Packer, CES Symposium, Aug. 10, 1993)

Latter-Day Commentary on the Book of Mormon

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