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Sometimes as Latter-day Saints we have difficulty seeing through the maze of
personal and private opinions, and it is always a challenge to determine where the truth
lies in a particular issue. We do not have too much difficulty in the field of religious thought,
because we are prone to go to the proper standard or criterion to measure things. We are
not upset about whether baptism is practiced by sprinkling, pouring or dry cleaning; but
when we get outside the realm of the religious, we have some difficulty. Essentially the
reason for this is that we do not in these instances go to a central authority. We have had
the idea impressed upon our minds that Mormonism is merely a religious system, “four
walls and preachin,” and that it has nothing to say about the social, economic or political
aspects of life. At least we haven’t analyzed Mormonism any further than in the area of
religious thought; and if we do analyze it further, we don’t believe it with the same authority
that we do its declarations on religious matters. Tonight, I would like to talk about the
Gospel’s standard of principles and doctrines that deal with the social, economic and
political aspects of life. It is not difficult to measure something if you have a yardstick or if
you have a standard. But if you disregard the standard then any person’s measurement
is as good as another. I think we need to keep in mind that there is almost as much, for
example, in the Doctrine and Covenants dealing with so-called nonreligious subjects as
there is on certain religious subjects. There is more said there on economics than there
is on baptism, and there is much there on the subject of politics.