"Eat, drink, and be merry"

“Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us. And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God--he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God” (2 Nephi 28:7-8).

In my early years of scripture study, teachings on this point conjured up in my mind images of what life in Sodom and Gomorrah might have been like. I envisioned scenes of human debauchery that were to take place at a time far into the future, truly in the very last days. However, I came to realize sometime ago that the days of eating, drinking, and being merry were already a reality, and that examples of this behavior were all around me. Likewise, I have come to more fully understand and appreciate the prescribed consequences of such behavior.

My wife and I attended a major league baseball game recently and one of the young men sitting behind us informed the other members of his party that he had calculated how much it would cost him to get drunk given the ballpark’s price for a cup of beer. It was not many days later that I learned that jewel-encrusted cell phones are available for purchase at $70,000 a piece, and that one man owns four of them. That suffices. The point has been made. Whether speaking of the affluent or those of fewer means, the examples of worldly excess abound about us. Just how much of the world’s bounties ought we to possess? If we place life’s importances into proper priority, then the obtaining of the world’s riches is important in order that we may be safe and live healthy and orderly lives thus enabling us to accomplish that for which we were placed upon this earth.

Speaking personally, from my youth my motto has been “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). This truth has been a guiding principle during my life.

Far too many of this and the next generation are being reared without the advantage of religious instruction. Some religion in a person’s life even if it cannot lead to true salvation is better than no religious training at all. Someone asked years ago, “Why Christ?” His family had purposely ignored discussing the subject of religion with him during his maturing years. His parents’ position was that if he wanted religion in his life, then he could make that determination better when he was mature. As a result of this parental approach, today he understands almost nothing of Christian doctrine.

It is understandable to me that those who were never taught the fulness of the gospel in their youth would as adults not understanding God’s plan for His spirit children. Even those individuals who were or are being reared within the “mainstream” Christian churches are hardly better off on this point. Nevertheless, after all that we as true Saints can do to make the unaware aware of the restored gospel, we may take comfort in knowing that the day is coming whether in this life or the next that everyone will have the opportunity to be taught the gospel.

However, my heart truly aches for those who were reared in a home in which the true gospel was taught and practiced. Their religious training included an understanding of their Heavenly Father’s expectations for them as well as the path they must follow if they desire to return to Him. How painful it is when they reject the blessings of heaven both for this life and forever in order to enjoy the immediate gratifications they hope to derived from worldly pleasures.

For years, I have asked myself why this is so, and the full answer is still beyond my mental reach. I suspect this troubling behavior is rooted at least in part in a lack of faith. The first and most fundamental principle of the gospel is faith. Faith is a gift of God, a gift of the Spirit. If one cannot exercise the required faith on their own, it is unnecessary to throw aside the gospel and its attendant blessings. The Lord taught concerning an alternative means. “To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful” (Doctrine and Covenants 46:14). Those who cannot muster from within the requisite degree of faith required, must only “believe” on the faith and the works of others, and if “they continue faithful” the prize will be theirs also.

It is often the case that those who set their hearts upon the accumulation of the material things of this world embrace and profess the notion that what they have come to possess belongs to them because they have earned these things. They do not understand a fundamental truth of living in this world namely, they have produced nothing on their own, and in reality, they own nothing. Everything they possess is a gift from God, and they possess nothing more than a stewardship over that with which they have been blessed. Moreover, they will be judged by God according to the manner with which they manage the particulars of their stewardship. King Benjamin said it thusly, “I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another--I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants. . . . And now I ask, can ye say aught of yourselves? I answer you, Nay. Ye cannot say that ye are even as much as the dust of the earth; yet ye were created of the dust of the earth; but behold, it belongeth to him who created you” (Mosiah 2:20-26).

True to the Prophet Nephi’s teachings, many of the earth’s inhabitants mistakenly believe they will only be punished lightly for their disobedience towards God’s commandments, and that afterward, they will be saved in the kingdom of God. How foolish they are. The day is coming when these will find that they were seriously mistaken. The blessings they thought they would acquire in spite of their rebelliousness are gone and out of reach forever. Indeed, they may be separated from their loved ones for eternity because essentially they lacked the required faith, a proper understanding of the gospel, and a history of faithfulness to higher principles, all of which they were taught from their youth.