An Icy Balance: Rights and Responsibilities

Schools were closed in Virginia again because of freezing rain—and I work up this morning to an ice-painted world. Every blade of grass, every branch on the tree, every car was covered in a fine sheet.

It was beautiful. It also took my companion and me almost thirty minutes to scrape all of the ice off our car; we needed to get every piece, or these sheets of glass would hit cars on the road behind us.

This experience made me think of my studies, and the Ensign article that I had read: The Book of Mormon and Modern Moral Relativism. This article discussed how "in purporting to be in favor of individual liberty, moral relativism actually threatens one's privilege to exercise agency by ignoring the negative consequences of not being cognizant of one's responsibilities to others" (Daniel L. Belnap).

My right was to drive on the road; I have a driver's license, legal access to an insured car, and I am a citizen of this country. If that was all that I focused on, then I might have only scraped off the windshield and not the roof. However, I understood my responsibility to make sure other cars were safe from the ice, and so my companion and I scraped off the entire car.

Obviously, this debate between rights and responsibilities extends far beyond icy cars. In fact, a push for moral relativism threatens people's faith. I love how Daniel L. Belnap reminds us that faith is not a right—it is a responsibility:

"[A] pattern of fasting, praying, and pondering is that same pattern by which all may come to know the truth. Not surprisingly, this pattern also emphasizes that a knowledge of truth is acquired by taking personal responsibility for one’s actions, not merely as a right we are entitled to."

I know that when we fulfill our religious responsibilities—attending church, praying, reading our scriptures—there will come a time when we do know truth. And truth is not relative; it is absolute.