Secret Combinations -- Right Here in River City

Talk by Doug Ladle & Jeffrey R. Holland.

Ladle: The next experience happened on the campus of Brigham Young University. It is an experience told by Jeff Holland when he was the president.

He had been embarrassed, as I am sure many in the Church and at BYU were, by an article that came across the news wires about four BYU students who were charged with fake-document fraud. These four students, living in a campus dorm, had obtained the means to create false driver's licenses showing the age to be 21 or older. President Holland, now one of our General Authorities [apostle], shared his feelings in a very heart-rending manner:

Holland: What of the six to seven individuals known to have ordered the false identification documents showing those in possession to be 21 years of age when they were not? And what of the rest of the students in those rooms and in those halls and on those floors and in and out of the dormitory?

Was everyone's education so paltry that none had ever heard Edmund Burke's telling dictum, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [or women] to do nothing." (Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 23 Apr 1770.)

Did anyone within 45 miles of Hinckley Hall have any pangs of guilt or any whisper of conscience, knowing that a felony was being committed in facilities paid for and maintained by tithing dollars of widows and the fatherless?

Let me cite one last disappointment and then I will leave the whole matter. Sometime during our life together last year a very angry and disappointed father called me about his daughter's off-campus living situation.

She had at least one roommate who apparently thought her boyfriend should be entitled to spend the night on the couch whenever the evening's weariness overtook him -- and apparently, most evenings he was "overtaken." After all, there was nothing really wrong going on.

It was a little inconvenient for the apartment of girls, but there were walls and doors and robes, and he could be left pretty much alone.

Well, I say to this Rip Van Winkle of Raintree or Riviera or wherever, and to his girlfriend and to her roommates -- men do not sleep in women's apartments if either said man or women wants to remain at BYU. Not on the couch, not in the kitchen, not on the floor, not entwined around five-gallon cans containing a year's supply of whole wheat.

No one has to be a 4.0 student to understand that -- including the roommates who put up with it. (Jeffrey & Pat Holland, "A Faithful Friend Is a Strong Defense," BYU Devotional, 7 Sept 1982.)

Ladle: From these stories and quotes we see an important fact: When we know something, we are involved -- whether we want to be or not. We have the responsibility to do something and should never turn our head aside in apathy.

What about the thought, "I don't want to be labeled as a 'snitch' or a 'rat' or a 'tattle-tale'"? What happens when we take that role and we don't tattle-tale; we don't snitch? Much is left unsaid, truth goes undiscovered, and secrecy prevails.

When truth is covered over by our fears of these labels, whose devilish schemes are assisted by our silence? When the truth is withheld, when wrong-doing is continued in the cloak of silence, and when individuals avoid accountability for their actions, who is succeeding in the war for the souls of men -- Christ or Satan?

I believe Satan is so wise that he has chosen a very powerful way to dupe us all. He has placed an ugly mark upon this practice of telling the truth, and these ugly masks, which we all shrink away from, are the labels "snitch" or "rat" or "tattle-tale." When we fall into that trap, we are furthering his plans. We are scared into doing exactly what Satan wants: secrecy and cover-ups. What would Christ do?

Consider this truth: When you allow truth to be covered up because you fear a label, Satan, not Christ, is winning. (Doug Ladle, "The Confused Samaritan," Ricks College Devotional, 22 January 1991.)

[Therefore, we can have secret combinations right here.]