September 18, 2009

President Clark invites students to build Zion

 

Writer: Colby Flint

 

President Kim B. Clark encouraged Brigham Young University-Idaho students to seek high moral standards and to build Zion in the first devotional address of Fall Semester. His wife, Sue also addressed the students.

Comparing low morals to Babylon (scripturally known as a filthy city), and using the holy city of Zion as a metaphor for high values, President Clark urged students to lift each other to a new level of morality and virtue.

“We are to leave the towers and the great and spacious buildings of spiritual Babylon and to come to Zion,” President Clark said.

He then pointed out two major challenges that may hamper a journey to righteousness: the first challenge is that Babylon is all around; the second is that the attitudes of Babylon are camouflaged in popular culture and media.
After presenting the challenges, President Clark framed the rest of his address on three characteristics that will help students flee Babylon and build Zion. He encouraged students to be unified, pure in heart, and to take care that there are no poor among them by watching over each others' spiritual and temporal well-being.

“We can’t build Zion passively waiting for someone else to build it for us,” President Clark said. “We build Zion by acting in faith under the direction of the Holy Ghost to understand, internalize, and apply the doctrines of salvation and to recognize and flee from the corresponding attitudes and practices of Babylon that fight against Zion.”

President Clark’s wife, Sue, also addressed students. She spoke of three essential nutrients for spiritual growth: love of God, love of fellowman and love of self.