Virtue is a power produced by faith that can enable LDS Church members to live an abundant life.
"The word 'virtue' has come to mean different things to different people at different times," said Brent L. Top, the first speaker at a new Brigham Young University religious education conference called "Virtue and the Abundant Life: Teaching and Defending Virtue in the 21st Century."
Often LDS Church members associate virtue with sexual purity, while others use virtue as a word to describe righteous attributes.
"I find it fascinating that when we speak of virtue, Latter-day Saints tend to focus on one dimension, and the secular world focuses on many. Both are right in their own way, yet there is a dimension of virtue lacking in each," Top said. "This dimension is found in how the word is used in the scriptures, and it is this understanding of virtue that to me gives ultimate meaning to all other dimensions of the word."
This dimension of virtue, Top went on to explain, can be found in a New Testament story of Jesus healing a woman afflicted with "an issue of blood." In this account the afflicted women reaches out to touch the hem of Jesus' garment in an attempt to be healed. Upon touching the garment the woman is healed and Jesus stops to inquire about the virtue that has left him.
"Clearly Jesus is not talking about either moral cleanliness or attributes of excellence or character, he is speaking of power," Top said. "From his virtue or power she is given strength and power to achieve what she could not have done on her own."
Virtue as a power in individual lives is dependent upon faith, and Top believes it is this divine combination that helps set LDS youth apart from the rest of the world.
In order to show real life benefits to this theory, Top and others tracked the lives of thousands of LDS members over a 10-year time period and found some noticeable differences.
"First, Latter-day Saint youth and young adults are considerably more religious both in the intensity of their religious belief and the extent of their religious behavior," Top said. " Second, Latter-Day Saint youth and young adults have significantly lower rates of delinquent behaviors including drug and alcohol abuse, dishonesty and premarital sexual activity than their national peers."
From this study and others, Top concludes LDS members have the power to find an abundant life that can be seen and measured. While virtue and faith play key roles in this process, they are ultimately only blessings that stem from a testimony in Christ.
"In our personal quest for virtue and the abundant life, and in seeking this power that Jesus infuses, may we as Moroni in the Book of Ether admonished, seek ye this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written," Top said.
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