The Immediate Price – Sunday, December 05, 1943
At some time or other during his life, perhaps everyone asks himself: “Why should I conform to the accepted rules? Why should I maintain standards and ideals? Why should the promises or threatened punishments of a remote hereafter restrict my way of life? Maybe all this moral restraint is merely something my parents taught me because their parents taught them. Maybe this old idea of virtue’s being its own reward has no justification in fact.”
There are many answers to this line of questioning, but for the benefit of the agnostics, for the benefit of those who profess not to believe in immortality, suppose for the moment we forget about heaven and the hereafter, and confine our answers to the known conditions of this world—to what we positively know about ourselves here and now.
It has, for example, been established as a finding of physiological research, that such negative emotions as worry, anger, hate, jealousy generate within the human organism itself, those substances which can and do impair physical well-being, and tend to induce disease. Even to the agnostic, it can now be demonstrated that anyone who gives way to violent passions pays an immediate and certain price. It isn’t necessary for an angel from heaven to pronounce the penalty—although it has been recorded that that may occur, too. Anyone who hates his neighbor, anyone who must perform the mental rationalization of justifying his own misconduct is experiencing the relentless operation of the laws of reward and punishment, as they affect every man every day. And what is true negatively is true, likewise, positively. In an atmosphere of trust, of good will, of rectitude and benevolence there is an observable tendency toward physical and mental well-being, which often may account for the difference between health and happiness or ill-health and anguish.
That’s one reason why a man’s misdeeds plague him, even when no one else knows about them. To wrestle with a gnawing, troubled conscience, devoid of peace, is a punishment which no scriptural fire and brimstone can equal, and which takes its toll physically, mentally, and spiritually. Mind you, we do not believe that rewards and punishments are confined wholly to the present. Sometimes the wheels of the gods grind slowly. Sometimes it seems that justice is not done in this life. In this, as in all else, many things not now understood will have to be left for future explanation. But to those who do not care to project their thinking beyond their present life expectancy, to those who want to know only what a given course will do for them here and now, let it be said that, in a very real sense, every day brings its own reward and punishment. And, to quote the words of Isaiah: “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.” (Isaiah 32:17.)
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Dec. 5, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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December 05, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,746