Transcript:
The late Alvin R. Dyer faced something of this challenge when he was a bishop many years ago. He had a member of his ward who said that smoking was the greatest single enjoyment he got out of life. He said, “At night I set my alarm every hour on the hour and wake up to smoke a cigarette. Bishop, I love smoking just too much to give it up.”

A few evenings later the man’s doorbell rang at 10:00 p.m. There on the doorstep was Bishop Dyer.

“Well, Bishop, what on earth are you doing here at this hour? I’m ready to go to bed.”

“I know,” said Bishop Dyer. “I want to see you set that alarm and watch you wake up and smoke.”

“Good heavens, I can’t do that in front of you,” the man said.

“Oh, sure you can. Don’t worry about me. I’ll just sit in the corner somewhere and be very quiet.”

The man invited him in and they talked about everything Bishop Dyer could conjure up to hold the man’s interest. “I pursued every idea and conversation I could think of to keep him speaking. I thought he was going to throw me out a number of times, but shortly after three o’clock in the morning I said, ‘Well, heavenly days! You’ve missed five alarms already. Please forgive me! I have ruined your evening’s enjoyment. The night is such a disappointment now that you might as well just go to bed and forget the rest of the alarms this once!'”

Then note this language:

At that moment [I] felt [in him] a sense of honor and a dignity. . . . He looked at me with a peculiar smile. . . and he said, “All right, I will.” [And] he never touched another cigarette [for the rest of his life]. [See Alvin R. Dyer, Conference Report, April 5, 1965, p. 85.]

How would you describe Brother Dyer’s loyalty? Was it loyalty to that inactive man, or loyalty to the members of his ward generally, or loyalty to his office as bishop, or loyalty to the Word of Wisdom, or loyalty to the principle of revelation, or loyalty to the Church, or loyalty to God, or—well, you get my point.

Jeffrey R. Holland was president of Brigham Young University when this devotional address was given on 21 January 1986.

The full address of this talk is available on BYU’s Speeches Website.