Randolph Harris II International

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Present Effects on Human Happiness with an Inquiry Into Our Prospects Respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils Which It Occasions

Evil exists in the World not to create despair but activity. Dreams which are to be understood as fulfillments of wishes is not new, but has long since been recognized. Many girls and boys dream of growing up and one day getting married and having a home of their own, a career, children and at least two automobiles. However, evenless pessimistic observers have emphasized the fact that in our dreams pain and disgust are more frequent than pleasure. Research indications that 58 percent of dreams are disagreeable, and only 28 percent have a been beneficially pleasant. Besides those dreams that convey into our sleep the many painful emotions of life, there are also anxiety-dreams, in which this most terrible of all the painful emotions torment us until we wake. Now it is precisely by these anxiety-dreams that children are so often haunted. The anxiety-dream does really seem to preclude a generalization of the thesis that dreams are wish-fulfillments, and even to condemn it as an absurdity. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to parry these apparently invincible objections. It is merely necessary to observe that our doctrine is not based upon the obvious dream-content, but relates to the thought-content, which, in the course of interpretation is found to life behind the dream. It is true that there are dreams the manifest content of which is the most painful nature. However, has anyone ever tried to interpret these dreams—to discover their latent thought-content? #RandolphHarris 1 of 6

The decay of the family has long been a favourite them of social alarmists. Looking back on the conventions which in their own early days were held to be sacred, whether or not they were actually observed, seniors exclaim on the bankruptcy of those marriage conventions today and the consequence dissolution of home life. Even under modification, there has always been some form of marriage, and the home in some shape has still persisted. It is, therefore, only the shallow and the ignorant who can mistake the changes that take place in their own little day and environment for the obliteration of great landmarks—that is, when we have put aside those well-meaning people who like to pay with the idea of the bankruptcy of marries in order to startle their fellows into a more lively concern with social problems. It is not only a truth for the human species that marriage is omnipresent; it is also found among other beings. As a matter of fact, marriage, so far from dying out, tends in various countries of the West to increase in frequency. Dr. Malinowski reports that the elements of soundness and truth in rival doctrines that procreative institutions of humankind are more or less transformation into culturally socialized forms. What mainly concerns us here to observe is that, whatever view of the family we adopt, we are still constrained to admit that, under all changes of forms, it has always persisted, so that its existence may even be said to be woven into the texture of the species. #RandolphHarris 2 of 6

Obedience to the law of chastity will increase our happiness in mortality and make possible our progress in eternity. Why is the law of chastity so important? The law of chastity is a moral code that only allows intimate, adult relationships between a man and a woman who are legally and lawfully wedded as husband and wife. The eternal importance of chastity can only be understood within the overarching context of our Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness of the Lord’s children. “For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of men and women,” reports Jacob 2.28.  All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of Heavenly parents, and has a divine nature and destiny. All men and women lived with God as the Lord’s spirit children before coming to the Earth as mortal beings. The Father’s plan enabled his spirit sons and daughters to obtain physical bodies, to gain mortal experience, and to progress toward exaltation. The fundamental principle is that unfreakish human populations possess a power of multiplying in a geometrical possession. The next step is to urge that this power always is and must be checked by countervailing forces; for, on the most optimistic supposition, means of subsistence could in the long run at best be increased only in an arithmetical progression. However, no human population ever does achieve its full multiplicative potential. #RandolphHarris 3 of 6

Do not allow yourself to be alone and walk in the darkness without light. The problem of the origin of species in natural selection is that there is constantly a struggle for existence because our inordinate power of multiplication is bound—sooner or later, and usually sooner—to run up against the inexorably constricting walls of scarcity. All measures of intended amelioration which directly or indirectly encourage an increase of population that outstrips resources—and most do—will, in the not very distant end, merely multiply the number of bearers of misery and agents of vice. These harsh and gloomy conclusions were only modified, not upset, by the belated recognition of the option of moral restraint. For it was, and remains, hard to cherish high hopes from the preaching of such prudence; and in any society which did generally accept such preaching all but the richest would have to marry women nearing the evening of their reproductive powers. In the school of mortality, we experience tenderness, love, kindness, happiness, sorrow, disappointment, pain, and even the challenges of physical limitations in ways that prepare us for eternity. Simply stated, there are lessons we must learn and experience we must have while we are human. The means by which mortal life is created is divinely appointed. The power of procreation is spiritually significant. Misuse of this power subverts the purpose of the Father’s plan and our mortal existence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 6

It is perfectly impossible to conceive that any creatures of God’s hand can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such an idea, all our natural conceptions of goodness and justice would be completely overthrown, and we could no longer look on God as a merciful and righteous Being. Eternal death means eternal death and not eternal life in torment. The doctrine of life and immortality which was brought to life by the gospel is the doctrine that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, but the wages of sin are death. What that means is when you are sinning and hurting people and you know it is wrong, you will be repaid by eternal death and will not go to Heaven with all the good people. So, even if you think you are getting away with doing bad and appear to be doing well in this life, remember, God sees everything. Specific guidelines for the proper use of the ability to create life are vital elements in the Father’s plan. How we feel about and use that supernal power will determine in large measure our happiness in mortality and our destiny. The power to create mortal life is the most exalted power God has given his children. Its use was mandated in the first commandment, but another important commandment was given to forbid its misuse. The emphasis we place on the law of chastity is explained by our understanding of the purpose of our procreative powers in the accomplishment of God’s plan. #RandolphHarris 5 of 6

Intimate relations are proper only between a man and a woman in the marriage relationship prescribed in God’s plan. Such relations are not merely a curiosity to be explored, an appetite to be satisfied, or a type of recreation or entertainment to be pursued selfishly. They are not a conquest to be achieved or simply an act to be performed. Rather, they are in mortality one of the ultimate expressions of our divine nature and potential and a way of strengthening emotional and spiritual bounds between husband and wife. We are agents blessed with moral agency and are defined by our divine heritage as children of God—and not by sexual behaviors, contemporary attitudes, or secular philosophies. Contraception is one kind of preventive check; none at all would be required if the multiplicative power was not still there to be checked. Catastrophe does not have to be a tendency—not if people can be persuaded to employ the means which science has and will put into our hands. No plan for social improvement can be complete, unless it embraces the means both of increasing production, and of preventing population making a proportionate advance. We are here on Earth to develop Godlike qualities and to bridle all of the passions of the flesh. The Father’s plan is designed to provide direction for His Children, to help them become happy, and bring them safely home to him with resurrected, exalted bodies. #RandolphHarris 6 of 6