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Honesty

Honesty. One church manual says, “Complete honesty is necessary for our salvation” (Gospel Principles, 2009, 179). It added, “Copying music, movies, pictures, or written text without the permission of the copyright owners is dishonest and is a form of theft” (Gospel Principles, 2009, 181). With that in mind, consider how you would interpret the thought process of BYU professor Robert Millet who was speaking in March 2004 at a BYU club: “Whenever a person asks me an antagonistic question, I never answer that question, but rather, I answer the question they should have asked. That’s why I grouped this under, ‘answer the right question.’ For example, and this will lead into the next principle in just a second. For example, if a person out of the blue, that I don’t know from Adam, walks up to me and says, ‘So you’re a Latter-day Saint.’ Uh huh. ‘Tell me, uh, you folks believe that man can become like god, huh?’ See, how do I respond? This is a total stranger. I don’t know what he knows about the church. It may not be the smartest thing in the world to say, ‘Yeah, yeah, let me quote the Lorenzo Snow couplet for you and then I’m gonna get the teachings of the prophet, and I’m gonna read to you King Follet Discourse. Now that may not be our best approach. It might be a much wiser approach to say, ‘Well that’s an interesting question. It is asked frequently. But, you know, let me begin this way. In the spring of 1820, there was a young man named Joseph Smith Jr., who was concerned about the subject of religion and wanted to know which church to join, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.’ What did I just do? I just answered the question he should have asked. …We never provide meat, when milk will do. We never provide meat when milk will do. We always use, we never use meat, when milk will do.”

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