BYU-Hawaii president Eric B. Shumway delivering the first devotional to start the 2003-04 school year, explained to students and faculty Thursday that "one of the greatest gifts in life and eternity is our precious agency, the right and privilege to choose."
President Shumway related a personal experience to further illustrate the principles in his talk "A worm for a wing feather."
He told students that several years back he had the misfortune of being struck in one eye in two separate occasions while playing tennis—incidences he shrugged off at first, but that would later put great pressure on his optic nerve and affect his vision for the rest of his life.
"I've thought about how so many silent things in our lives can overwhelm a person, problems that did not seem like problems, because they were to us somehow imperceptible or unimportant," President Shumway said.
He explained that much like the eye disease glaucoma, "there are creeping and insidious dangers that will cause blindness and suffering and spiritual death, things that come upon us because of our own agency, choices that we make."
President Shumway used a Chinese fable shared by Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles on the BYU-Hawaii campus several years ago about a skylark who because of the sins of pride, vanity and convenience gave away all of its wing feathers in exchange for worms. This ultimately lead to the birds downfall and loss of freedom.
"By itself, each individual bad choice doesn't seem too bad, but there is a cumulative effect, a slow crescendoing of inevitable consequences to all bad choices, even unto the loss of everything he loves," he said.
President Shumway urged, "We must cherish the right to choose by cultivating two things: a clear vision and understanding of the good and the evil in our environment on this planet, and a determined sincere desire to choose to do good and to choose not to do evil."
Using the BYU-Hawaii honor code as an example, he described how some students' disregard for the code by means of dishonesty and immodest dress continues to plague the campus.
"The loss of the wing feather, one after another, can lead you to disaster, including the loss of the privilege or freedom to attend school, the freedom to enjoy chaste associations with young men and women from around the world," President Shumway said.
"Pornography is (also) the perfect example of how wing feathers are exchanged for worms," he continued. "Like glaucoma that is not diagnosed or treated, this kind of soft, snide, cynical attitude toward sexual purity will all of a sudden create a crisis where there is blindness to things of the spirit, things transcendent and eternal."
President Shumway explained that it is these daily choices that will either lift us with "love and confidence in the Lord" or bring us down "silently and carefully to an imprisonment where we are no longer free to avoid the consequences of our choices."
"Through Jesus Christ, as King Benjamin so eloquently taught, we can become free again from the bondage of sin and sorrow," President Shumway said. "That is the great hope, that is the good news, but we must always remember that we must choose Christ. He has already chosen us and died for us."
President Shumway praised the vast majority of students for making righteous choices, being an example to those around them and for being faithful in their church callings, jobs and academic studies. "I want to say how inspiring and uplifting it is to see (your examples)," he said.
He added, "With all of my heart I pray that in this special environment, this enclave of wonderful possibilities for righteousness, which is BYU-Hawaii, that all of our choices will be noble and righteous ones.