Eyring Speaker Chauncey Riddle
March 23, 1977
Thank you, Pres. Clark. Let me assure you that having them is nothing to raising them. I always find it remarkable that people find it remarkable that we have thirteen children. That’s too bad. I wish that everyone could be so blessed, because that is a great blessing. I’m grateful to be with you tonight. I appreciate that beautiful music and the spoken words very much. I thought that was a wonderful prelude to what I wish to talk about.
My topic is, “As a Man Thinketh.” The thoughts we think are very important to our lives. Truth is a precious quantity. The truth is a stranger to the world in which we live. It’s an outcast, a fugitive. Indeed, there are some who prize it. But honestly, we must admit that people prize that truth they wish to prize and ask the other to get lost. But I take it we cannot be Latter-day Saints unless we can face all truth. Whatever is true we must be willing to accept that. I recognize that probably we can’t stand all truth at once, but we must be able to accept it as it comes to us and to grow with it, because wherever we cannot accept it, wherever we want it to be otherwise we turn the Lord off because He is the Spirit of Truth. There is a very good reason why Truth is so hard to come by in this world. There’s no mystery about it. It goes back to that story which is so fundamental for everything about our lives. That story we need to know backwards and forwards, inside and out, like we know nothing else, and that’s the story of Adam and Eve.
We know something about Adam and Eve—that they were begotten children to our Father in Heaven in the pre-mortal existence. They were blessed by our Father as were we; and there it became important, as He tried to share His blessings with us, that we grow and develop beyond that stage of existence. So a plan was devised to send us down to an earth where we could have a body of flesh and bones, even as He does. Only then could we rise to the fulness of His stature and being, and the purpose of our Father is to help us to become full heirs of all that He has and is.
And so the plan was prepared that Adam and Eve would come down—they did—into the Garden. But in the Garden they were very different beings from what we are. In the Garden they had Celestial bodies—they did not have blood in their veins, for instance; they had spirit matter in their veins. They would live forever. They were quite different.
Although they were very much like our Heavenly Father, they were quite different from us, even though we are in the same form. Let me ask you this question: How many eyes did Adam have when he was in the Garden? Do you know the answer to that question? The answer is not two. Let me ask you another question: How many bodies did he have? I think if you get the answer to that question, you might get the answer to the first one.
Well, he had two bodies in the Garden, did he not? He had a spirit body, and that was the body he received as he was born to our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother in the pre-mortal existence. That body was in the exact shape and form of his physical tabernacle, but Adam also had a physical tabernacle—a body of the materials of this earth.
So how many eyes did he have? Four. He had two eyes with which to see the spiritual existence of things around him, things of that order, and because he could see both the spirit world and the physical world, he had quite a bit of information at his disposal. Now we know, because we are told, not because we can see, but we know there is a spirit world all around this earth. There will come a day when the veil will be parted for all of us and all of us will see the spirit world. It is the place where people go when they die; it’s right around us, and if our eyes were opened, we could see these realms which are now unknown, unperceived, to us.
Some people perceive them, and they tell us about it, and that’s how we know. But Adam could see all that, and we’re also given to understand that it’s the spirit world that is the governing mechanism, essentially, for the physical world; and if we have questions and wonderings about why things happen the way they do, most of our questions would be answered if we could see the spirit world and see the causal connections, but of course we can’t so we don’t understand many things; we do not see many causal connections.
But Adam could see these things. Now he, however, was as a little child. He could probably see much that he did not really understand and probably understood very little of the importance of what he did see. But then came the fateful day when he was tempted and he and Eve partook of the fruit, the forbidden fruit, and fell. They had been promised that if they did so they would die, and they did immediately—that very day, and the death they suffered was the spiritual death.
That doesn’t mean their spirits died; they still had their spirit bodies, but it was as if their spirits had gone to sleep.
Supposing we went up here on the floor in back of the bench there and found somebody lying there sound asleep. Supposing you know them: you shake them and call them by name, and no response. You shake them a little harder and maybe pour some cold water on them, and no response. How do you describe that sleep? We have a phrase for that kind of sleep. We say they are dead to the world. Does that mean they’re dead? No, it just means they don’t respond; and similarly, when a person’s spirit is dead, as in the spiritual death that came upon Adam in the Fall. The spirit was still alive, but it no longer responded to the spiritual world around him. And so Adam could not see the spirit things anymore; he could not discern.
The most important thing he could no longer see was our Father in Heaven and our Savior. He had walked and talked with them before, but on that day a curse, which was actually a blessing as all curses are, was put on him in order that he might progress and grow, that he might have the chance, truly, to become like our Father in Heaven.
And so a veil came over his spiritual eyes and over his spiritual ears, and his sense of touch and smell and taste. This veil is a very important factor in the lives of all of us because all of us are heirs to Adam’s Fall, and when we are born, we are born spiritually dead, even as he was when he was cast out of the garden.
Because someone is spiritually dead does not mean they are bad; they’re not sinful, therefore. It just means that they cannot perceive with their spiritual senses, and this is the way we are born into this world, that we might be ignorant of those spiritual things by our own perceptions, that we might learn to live by faith.
To see is not to have faith. We have faith because we are told about these things that we do not see, and we substitute ideas that we are told, and if we can believe in the source, and the source happens to be a good source, a true source, then that is true faith.
But Adam and Eve then had this veil over their eyes and ears and could no longer perceive.
Do you know what the veil is? That’s a very useful piece of information. You might want to part it sometime. What is the veil? You have to know the answer to this; it’s pretty hard to guess. Anybody know? I’m going to tell you then. I take this from Brigham Young. He said that the veil is our physical body and when Adam fell, his physical body became corrupt, and because it was corrupt, his spirit could no longer perceive through it. And the obvious corollary to that is that should we ever desire to perceive spiritually, we had better get our body cleansed and perfected and purified.
And that is, of course, why we have many of the commandments we have in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are here with a tabernacle that is not ours. It is a gift or loan to us from our Savior who created it. We can claim it as our only if we use it correctly.
Apparently only some will get exactly the same body back in the resurrection. They are those who do prove faithful, who do prove that they can use this body as an instrument for doing good rather than as a means for self-gratification. There is nothing wrong with pleasure in a sense if we take it when we are supposed to and where we are supposed to. The thing that’s bad is when we make pleasure in this world an end in itself.
If the body runs us, we fail the test of this life. The test of this life is to see if we’ll hearken to the voice of God and through faith in Christ, faith in that voice, do the things we should do. If we restrain ourselves to work for the welfare and benefit of our brothers, to serve our Heavenly Father and be His witnesses and do what we should do; then indeed the time will come, we are told, when this body will be cleansed and purified and renewed. We will be different people. We can then have that same privilege that Adam had in the garden before he fell. He regained it again after he fell, and we may regain it also if we choose and are willing to make the sacrifices necessary.
When someone comes back to spiritual life and again can see with their spiritual eyes, they have a very special name that we call them. What is the name? What can they do? They can see, so what do you call them? You call them a see-er, or in other words, a seer. That’s the meaning of our word seer. A seer or a see-er is one whose spiritual eyes have been opened through his obedience to the Lord and who then can tell us of the things of that order of existence. That’s a little apart from our story, however. When Adam and Eve had fallen, they were out in the world, spiritually blind; and they could see only the physical world. Adam had been told to offer sacrifices, and so he did, and an angel came and asked him why, and he said, “I don’t know, I’m just doing what I’ve been told to do,” which was a great answer, one that we could all emulate. But then it was explained to him that he was doing that in commemoration, in anticipation of the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and that if he would do everything he did as an act of faith in Jesus Christ, remembering who Christ was as the Savior of the world, putting his trust and his faith in the Savior, learning to live by faith and not by sight, that he would then be able to be redeemed and return to spiritual life, which he did.
And he taught this same principle to his children. He explained to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how they could also be redeemed also from that Fall.
The scripture tells us that most of them rejected what he said. Satan came among them saying, “Believe it not,” then they believed it not, and from that time forth men became carnal, sensual and devilish.
Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? It really isn’t that bad, but I think it’s important to understand what it does mean. When people are spiritually dead, they perforce must be carnal, sensual, and devilish, because for them there’s no other way to be.
What does carnal mean? Meat, flesh. A person who is carnal is simply a person who lives after the flesh. His spirit is dead, in a sense. It does not perceive, and therefore he has to live by the sight and the hearing of the flesh. He is carnal; he cannot help it. We mean to say that he is sensual simply because the only pleasures he knows are the pleasures of the body.
A person who is spiritually dead cannot know the pleasures of the spirit. The pleasures of the spirit are far better, far more desirable, but a person who has never tasted them is oblivious to them and must live for the pleasures of the body. But worst of all, the person who is spiritually dead is devilish, and this because when Adam fell, Satan not only gained power to cause his death, his physical death eventually, but gained power to tempt him. He was given so much power that he has power to lead mankind captive at his will. Satan has the power to lead every soul over eight years of age, captive at his will unless they do one thing. What’s that one thing? Unless they hearken to Jesus Christ.
So we have a world full of people who are carnal, sensual and devilish, most of them because they cannot help it. Because they have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they’ve never had the chance to become free and alive. That’s why it’s so great to do missionary work. We go out to the people of this world and give people that opportunity. A lot of them don’t want it, but then that may be as much our fault as theirs. We need to set a good example, too, so they’ll see something that is really worth wanting. But we’re working on that too, I hope.
But at any rate, there Adam was, subject to Satan; and all of his children were subject to Satan. Now it so happens that Satan is the father of lies. That’s his chief title, and lies are his chief weapon. By this means he captivates the souls of men and keeps them from knowing what they ought to do.
Am I correct in assuming that Phoenix is somewhere up that way? Supposing that as a little child you had been told by someone you loved very dearly that Phoenix was that way. And they told you, “Be very careful now. People will tell you it’s that way, but don’t you believe it. It’s really down that way, and if you ever want to get to Phoenix, you go that way.” Now, if that young child were told that often enough, and really believed it, he or she would invent all kinds of explanations for why you said it was that way, why the map said it was that way, just like people make explanations why the Bible says certain things even though it doesn’t say that, and so forth. When people are taught something by somebody they love, they tend to respect it. And when people are taught false things about the nature of God and the nature of salvation, they tend to believe it. And just as you couldn’t get to Phoenix very well by going that wrong way, so many people cannot find spiritual life because they have false ideas; and Satan just loves to put these false ideas on them.
Now the Lord is in the world, too. The Savior’s mission is to spread light and truth so that people will know how to do the thing that is necessary. He tells people everything they need to know, not all at once, but line upon line, precept upon precept. He is willing to give this basic instruction to everyone. That’s the good news of the Gospel.
Beyond the good news of the Gospel, He tells us, there are things often called mysteries. The mysteries of God are those special things we need to know and can know once we have accepted the basis of the Gospel, and are able to perceive all the way back to spiritual life.
Zeezrom was asking Alma about these things in the Book of Mormon, and Alma began to expound these things to him saying this in Alma 12:9–10, “It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God.” The word mystery is very interesting. The world thinks it means things that are not known, such as when you go to a murder mystery or something and it’s unknown as to who did it. That isn’t what the word means in the scriptures. The word in the scriptures comes from the Greek, well it all comes from the same root, the scriptural meaning is this, it comes from the Greek word, muo, which means to shut the mouth. Mysteries are those things we are supposed to keep our mouth shut about, and if you know some mysteries you probably already have been told not to talk about them.
And so it is that those special things beyond the basics of the Gospel are so precious that they are not to be known by those who will not accept the fundamentals. And so Alma says to Zeezrom, “It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God, nevertheless, they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him. And therefore, he that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full.”
That is our heritage. There is no mystery we cannot discover the answer to. We can know all things, if we will seek them through faith in Christ. And to them that harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries.
When people reject the word of God, Satan comes in and fills their minds with answers to replace the truths of the Gospel, and these false ideas are like the idea that Phoenix is that way, and then people cannot find either Phoenix or happiness or salvation. If Satan feeds them lies and they believe it, they condemn themselves to lives of misery and damnation.
That’s the nature of the world we live in. They that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion until they know nothing concerning his mysteries, then they are taken captive by the devil and led by his will down to destruction.
Now this is what is meant by the chains of hell. The chains of hell are the lies that Satan perpetrates in the world and gets people to believe, and these lies are the creeds of the fathers, the scripture says, which are riveted on the hearts of the children and become the source of Satan’s power in this earth.
However, here we are. We live in the world. The world is full of people who are fallen, who are spiritually dead, and who have succumbed to the temptations of Satan and to his false ideas. And thus it is that he who would be the god of this world, which is Satan, governs and controls through lies; and it’s not surprising that so much that goes on is evil and perverse and mistaken.
Don’t you get exasperated reading the newspapers, seeing all the crazy things people do? Why do they do it? It’s because they’re in hell. Hell is the kingdom of Satan. It’s where he rules, and part of his kingdom is right here on this earth among those who are in the flesh, and it’s purposeful, it is designed that we come into hell, into his kingdom, that we might have opposition. He does a good job of that, doesn’t he? He provides a very stout opposition. But that’s necessary. You cannot gain great heights, we cannot gain great goodness without great opposition to that goodness, and the reason this world is so terribly evil is so that you and I can have the opportunity to work against the evil, and struggle and struggle until we gain the strength that we can stand to be exalted.
And were it not for the opposition Satan provides we could never get ourselves to that point where we could stand to be exalted, so he does us a great service even though he’s our enemy. Of course he doesn’t do it because he’s serving us, he’s doing it because he gets a kingdom out of this. He gets some people to be permanent converts to his domain, and they will be with him forever, so that is what he’s after, but in the process he tempts all of us and gives all of us the opportunity to become his servants. So in the process of spreading lies, he does a magnificent job of keeping people from the truth, the truth of many, many things.
I’d like to explore with you some categories of evil, some categories of lies he perpetuates upon us. The first category I would call the category of romantic notions. The thing that distinguishes the romantic notions of the world is that it is an untrue picture of the way the world really is. Often it’s a belief in magic or luck or something of that sort to solve one’s problems. People think that one of these days, luck is going to come along and change their fortunes and make them a different person, you see, so that they will be happy ever after. That’s a very romantic notion; the world is not like that.
The perfect example of the romantic dream is the story of Cinderella. Now most people are born and bred on Cinderella. It’s no wonder they grow up and do such strange things. Cinderella is the poor benighted stepdaughter, and that’s not bad and it’s sometimes good to have that kind of opposition. But how does she escape from it? She escapes by the fairy godmother coming. You see, there’s the supernatural intrusion of something into the world. It isn’t her responsibility that changes her life, it’s some stroke of good fortune that changes her life. The fairy godmother fits her out in a beautiful gown and sends her out in a coach. That, of course, is the epitome of good luck to most people to thus have their material situation changed. And she goes to the ball, and there the second version of the romantic notion takes over, and the prince takes one look at her and falls madly in love. That’s the romantic notion of love. The romantic notion of love is basically that if he’s rich and she’s beautiful and they happen to fall for each other they will live happily ever after, and it’s hard to imagine a more perverse doctrine because that isn’t the way happiness happens in this world.
Love is not something that might be true. Someone might see someone for the first time and be told spiritually that’s whom they are to marry, but love does not come that way. Love is a thing that grows out of friendship and admiration and esteem, and unless the proper foundations are made for love, love can gain no permanent root, and it withers and dies when problems come. Many people who are rich are poor marriage risks. Many women who are beautiful think that is all they need as a ticket to success and develop nothing else in their lives, and they’re very poor marriage risks.
We simply need to face the fact that if we’re going to be happy in marriage, we hadn’t better follow the Cinderella story. I suppose that’s one reason why a third of our marriages in our country break up in divorce, because people have assumed that one of these days a great overpowering irrational urge will come upon them, and they’ll think that’s love and they’ll marry that person. But I don’t think that’s in accordance to what we understand in the Gospel. But that is how many people marry, nevertheless.
Well, there are many versions of the romantic story. Peter Pan is another good example, a belief in fairies, if you really believe in them, they will live and they will help you, and so forth. We need to be a little more realistic than that and to work according to those principles that bring success in life. Another version of the romantic doctrine is the poem, Invictus. “Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.” That’s a bit of arrogance, that’s romantic. Nobody’s unconquerable. If we don’t have enough humility to know that we can be overcome by many things in this world we aren’t going to be very successful, and if we suppose that we are the masters of our fates and the captains of our souls, we’re missing the point of this world.
Orson F. Whitney wrote a reply to the poem Invictus. I hope you have read that poem. He points out that the master of our fate and the captain of our soul is one, Jesus Christ. We would do well to hearken to him.
This idea of Invictus is behind most of the success books. Have you read one of the success books, Think and Grow Rich, or something like that? They have a common principle. The common principle is simply the power of positive thinking, that if you set your goal and fasten your mind upon it and let nothing stop you in attaining it, you will attain your goal. It does work for some few people, but for the majority, it doesn’t work. But everybody likes to believe in the romantic dream like that, so many people buy the success books, and that’s of course the success, selling success books.
But you see, many people go into business with this Prometheus or Invictus type attitude that they’re just going to go out and conquer the world. There are some very hard, real facts about the world that it would be better to substitute for this idea that you can do anything you think you can do.
For instance, it pays to know that most businesses fail for two reasons: Number one, that they are undercapitalized and number two, they don’t keep sufficient books, they don’t have enough records. If you know those two things in advance, if you know your business; that is to say if you know your service that you are performing and you can solve those other two problems, you’re likely to succeed in business. That’s certainly a better basis than supposing that just by the power of positive thinking you can go and do it.
Another kind of romantic idea that many people don’t like to think of as romantic because it’s near and dear to them is the Social Security Program. Our government has engaged in a very interesting attempt to help people in their old age, but it’s romantic. It is a very ill-founded, unrealistic program that is obviously doomed to ultimate failure. If any insurance company went that wild in setting up an insurance program, it would be broke almost immediately. Why isn’t the Social Security Program broke? Because they can just keep raising our taxes. If the insurance company could raise your premium every time it wanted to, would you buy their insurance? No, you’d be smarter than that. But, you see, you’re hooked because the government can force you to whether you want to or not.
When the Social Security Program started out, the anticipation was that we would have an ever-expanding population so that the people down at the end of the line would be more than the people getting benefits would be paying into the system, and would be paying for the few people who would be getting benefits. Now, it’s over two in five. Soon it will be three in five. How much are your social security taxes? Now they’re something like eleven and a half percent. Don’t suppose that the 5.85 that your employer contributes comes out of his salary; it comes out of your salary; you pay for it. And it’s going to go to 15 percent, it’s going to go to 20 percent; it’s going to go to 30 percent. This is inevitable. The present obligations without taking anybody else into the work force of the Social Security Program are over a trillion dollars, which is getting pretty close to the total assets of the United States. The handwriting is on the wall. Either we’re going to be taxed to death through this system, or it will be repudiated. Those are the only two alternatives, so it’s a romantic system. And even though we might like it, it is very important to face the fact that it’s ill-founded; it does not meet the realities of the world in which we live as so many other things in our political situation do not.
I suppose that you are aware that you have to talk a romantic line to get elected at the national level. Think back over the last few presidential elections and see if it isn’t the case that the person got elected who is just a little more romantic than the other, unless he was too romantic. Now when people get too romantic people know they’re wild, but if they’re just a little more romantic than the other candidate they will usually win, and so the politicians talk a romantic line. When they are running for election, they say things like, “We’re going to balance the budget and have a fifty billion dollar surplus in the next eighteen months.” That’s absurd, you see; and when the person who says that gets in, does he do it? No, it’s impossible, that was just the way to get elected, so another thing is approached then and so we see people saying things before they get elected because the bulk of the people of our country, the bulk of the voters are romantic, they want to believe in pie in the sky and Never-never land. Don’t they?
A desire for the romantic is why people keep looking at all these programs on television, like the Bionic Woman and so forth. These are all romantic tales, they are unrealistic. Most of the police shows are very unrealistic. But people just love to see those unrealistic things, they just love to believe that’s the way things are. That’s the kind of world they could live in, and if they can’t live in a real world like that, they will go sit in front of a TV and live in an imaginary world like that. That is how strong the romantic mindset has a grip on our people.
Most of the novels we read, most of the books are based on a romantic image of the universe, but it just won’t fly. To come down to a very personal level, most people have a very romantic notion about eating, for instance. They believe if they just eat what pleases their taste, they will have sufficient nutrition. Now I ask you, don’t most people eat that way? There are very few people who rationally calculate what they should eat. No farmer would dare feed his cows what he felt like feeding them, because he knows he would go out of business soon. He feeds them what he knows they need to have to get good gain or good milk production. But he feeds his children by what he feels like feeding them, and they don’t grow up nearly so healthy. We have one of the most overly-fed, undernourished populations on the face of the earth. That’s one of the reasons we have to have more doctors than most other populations. It’s interesting that we would continue to perpetuate such a strange, romantic notion, but we do.
Well, one more on this vein. One of the classic romantic notions is the idea that educated people will not sin, or that educating a person will help a person so that he will no longer be sinful. There is just no foundation for that, but it is strange how deeply embedded this is in our society. If you came from a little town of five thousand people and supposing the local dentist and local plumber were accused of some heinous crime, most people would assume which one did it. The plumber, of course. Because he didn’t have the education the dentist did. Now that is crazy. There is no evidence to support that notion whatsoever, but our whole civilization is built on it.
What is the thing you are supposed to do for people who live in the ghetto when they are headed for a life of crime? Educate them. Because then they will be decent, respectful citizens. Now it is true that it’s good to educate them, but for other reasons. Educating people does not help them be more moral. In fact, there is some evidence that goes the other way. During the Watergate scandal many people were shocked, “You mean those people deliberately lied? They’re lawyers,” as if people with that much higher education and professional opportunity would not lie. That does not stop them one bit.
Have you heard the saying that education doesn’t make devils into angels, it just makes clever devils. And there is a very real truth to that.
Now you see, it is dangerous to talk about all these things. My wife tells me if I make this list long enough, I’m sure to offend everybody. But we live in a romantic society. I admit I have been romantic much of my life and that is one of the reasons I can understand romanticism, I suppose all of us are romantic at times. But it doesn’t pay to be romantic, for it doesn’t pave the way to success or happiness.
There is another kind of error which we will call cynicism. It is the opposite of the romantic notion. The cynic is the person who does see the world as it really is, in a sense, he sees it much more clearly than the romantic. But he also sees the way to get ahead in this world, for yourself, is to take advantage of the romantics. And so he takes all these people, there’s a Barnam statement, there’s a fool born every minute and two to take him, or I think it’s the other way around. There are two fools born every minute and a cynic to take him because the majority are apparently romantic. But the cynic is the person who acts without scruples to take advantage of the people who have some kind of romantic notion.
For instance, it’s a romantic notion to think that some physical object, such as a piece of the cross, will somehow save us, or help us. It is estimated in this world that there are three to four shiploads of fragments of the cross on which Christ was crucified. Because the cynics have gone into business selling fragments of the cross to romantics. This is what the cynics do.
As you heard, I grew up in Las Vegas, which is the happy meeting ground for cynics and romantics. The romantics are the people who fled into town every weekend thinking they are going to make a killing. Occasionally someone does and they herald that to high heaven. They never make headlines when somebody loses every cent they’ve got, but they are certain to publicize the ones that go away with more than they came with. The cynics set up the tables knowing there is no way those people can win in the long run. In fact, the people who go there usually know that to start with, they think they are going to beat the odds, that luck, you see, will save them. Good fortune is going to intervene in the system, and they will come out ahead. I know men who get themselves in hock to the club and every payday they go down and spend their whole check hoping they will strike it rich so they can pay all of their debts and take care of their family. Year after year they go on totally in debt to the club, which then gives them back a little money so they can feed their family and pay their rent for the next month so they get another paycheck and come and try to break the bank again. That is absurd, that is insanity. Yet many people are caught up in that romantic notion.
The cynic is the person who marries for money or position, not for love, and usually they get the money and position they want, and they profit from it. They don’t have any happiness, but that doesn’t bother them because they don’t think there is any happiness. Anyway, to the cynic there is really only one thing that counts, money. He thinks you can buy anything with money and anything you can’t buy with money is not worth having. And so he operates that way.
Sometimes, I suppose all of us tend to be a little cynical. When you have ideals and someone lets you down, it’s hard not to be a little cynical and suppose maybe there’s no point in having ideals. But if our ideals have been romantic, that is to say unreal, not realized in the real world, we probably deserve to be let down. But the cure is not cynicism. The tendency that we have is when Satan finds us way over here and suddenly awake to find the world isn’t romantic, we swing all the way to the other side and become cynical and want to burn the whole thing down. That’s just as bad, just as great an error.
The place where we belong, of course, is in between, on the straight and narrow, to believe the things the Lord tells us. But suppose we try to get on the straight and narrow. We have to be careful in the Church too, because sometimes false ideas are taught in the Church.
Let me rehearse two or three for you and hope I don’t offend anybody unduly. But there are some of these ideas that I think are very important. I’ve heard many little children told as they came out of the waters of baptism that now their sins were washed away. I think that is just a plain falsehood. I don’t think water washes away any sins, ever, and I think there is ample scripture justification for that, then somebody will say, “But doesn’t it say that baptism is for the remission of sins?” Well, certainly that is a necessary condition, but it isn’t sufficient. We have to be baptized before we can be forgiven of our sins, but it takes more than that.
The scriptures tell us that the time we are actually forgiven of our sins is when we receive the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost. The water is merely the preparation, the making of a covenant and we must actually go beyond that and obey the commandment we receive, that we are given, “to receive the Holy Ghost.” If we obey that commandment, then our sins will be forgiven. But what a terrible thing to cause people to suppose that merely by being dipped in water their sins can be washed away. Do you see that is just not consistent?
Another idea is that it is impossible to become perfect. Now, I admit it is impossible to become perfect in every sense that God is perfect, but it is possible to become perfect in one sense, and I think that is what the scripture intends, and that sense is that we should stop sinning. We can stop sinning by devoting ourselves completely, and that is what the word perfect means. A synonym for the word perfect is complete, if we become completely servants of Jesus Christ, if we serve him with all of our heart, might, mind and strength. If we have the spirit with us as a constant companion and following the Savior’s example, if we do nothing but that which he tells us to do, even as he did nothing but that which His Father told Him to do, then we are perfect.
Now you see, if someone says to me, it’s impossible to be perfect, to me they are saying it is impossible to repent or, in other words, it is impossible for Jesus Christ to save anyone because He has said plainly that He will not save anybody who does not stop their sinning. He will not save people in their sins. He will save them from their sins once they have stopped sinning. So if it is impossible to become perfect, the Gospel has no meaning. I think it is possible to become perfect. I think the scriptures also testify that very few do it in this world. Straight is the way and narrow is the gate that leadeth unto life and to become perfect is the key to eternal life. That is to say, to give ourselves wholly and completely unto the Lord, to be His humble, faithful servant in all things. That is the test. Those that are able and willing to do that will find life. I believe that with all my heart.
Another thing that I think is sometimes taught falsely is the concept of eternal progression. Sometimes it is taught as if we would go on repenting and learning and getting better and better forever. But I don’t think the scriptures bear out that interpretation. The scriptures tell us that there is such a thing as progress, they tell us there is such a thing as eternal increase, but nowhere are the words eternal progression to be found in the scriptures.
The true concept of progress is that whatever we are when we die, if we have indeed given all that we have to the Savior, He will allow us then to grow and develop to become as He is. But once we become as He is, there is no progress then because He does not progress. He knows all, He is perfect, He has no need of repentance. But His kingdom grows, and that is eternal increase. He grows in glory because His glory is His righteous posterity and that increases. That is a fully scriptural concept. But I think that the other notion has been planted in the Church by the adversary to get people to think they don’t need to repent now, to wait till they die and then they can repent.
Sometimes we get the idea that repentance and living the Gospel is some nasty pill we have to take so we get our blessings in the next life, but we have to give up all the good things in this life. That is another false notion. That just isn’t the way it is. The Gospel is the way for happiness and every good thing in this world. Those who will live the Gospel fully will find that they are blessed beyond their wildest expectations. We cannot really sacrifice because the Lord makes it up to us so much for everything that we sacrifice that it’s as if we had given up nothing, almost.
Now, it is hard to see that when we are in the process of sacrificing sometimes, sometimes we hurt, sometimes we are abused by others, sometimes we give up our fortune, our name or something. But you see He rewards us so richly, that still should we give our lives, we have given very little in comparison to what we gain from Him.
This is one of the things that is involved in having a testimony, it is to come to a real light, it is to come to realize that, to see that the blessings are so great. And thus to know the glory and the majesty and the goodness of God. But it is hard to live the Gospel completely. It is easy to be a romantic or a cynic, it is difficult to be on the straight and narrow.
My wife and I were married some thirty odd years ago. Before we were married, we went through the Doctrine and Covenants very carefully and we wrote down every commandment. We said we were going to live by every one of those words, we are really going to try to be perfect. I still think that was a great thing to have done, but thirty years later, we are a little more impressed with how long it takes.
The great difficulty there is that it is one thing to want to give ourselves to the Lord completely, and it is another thing to be able to deliver ourselves to the Lord because the world has such great ties on us, so many bad habits, so many false notions, so many things that we have inherited that just don’t fit. So we have to go through our lives idea by idea, emotional pattern by emotional pattern, desire by desire and just get rid of all the faults. But it is a slow, painful process.
The other day we were talking about it, my wife was writing and said, “You know, maybe if I stop writing with my left hand and start writing with my right, that would be enough of a change that I could start living more of the Gospel.” We laughed, because that is a romantic idea. That isn’t the kind of change that is going to help us live the Gospel. The kind of change we need is just a little more self-discipline to do more what we know we should do. It is the pattern of our daily lives, the things we allow ourselves to think and to desire and to work on each day. That is where we are going to find perfection, is just by perfecting each day, each hour, each minute, until we can just someday deliver a perfect day to the Lord, and we can say, “Lord, I gave you everything I had today, I didn’t do anything that was just my idea. I did thy will.” When we get to the point that where we can say that, I think that is a real achievement and that is facing up to reality. But I think we have to recognize that is hard to do. It isn’t hard because serving the Lord is hard, His yoke is light. What’s hard is getting rid of the yoke of the world, getting rid of all the ideas that have gotten into our minds through advertising, and through false education, and so forth. If we could just throw that yoke off, living the Gospel would be simpler, more beautiful, easier. But it is hard to wear two yokes, and I guess most of us find ourselves in that position of struggling between two masters, which is a very difficult thing.
Well, I’ve said enough about error. I think it is sometimes necessary to talk about error, but it isn’t a very pleasant thing to do. It is a lot more fun to talk about truth, so let’s talk about truth for a few minutes.
As we go through our lives and find errors and get rid of them, we ought also at the same time to be looking for precious truths. I think we ought to have a jewel box where we collect specially important truths and ideas. Because it is awfully easy to get a good idea and then forget it.
The Savior pointed this out when He said sometimes the seed falls upon the beaten path and the birds come and pick it up and carry it away. That’s as if the Lord gave us a precious truth that we did not make much fruit from, and we do not care for and treasure it, and Satan comes and takes it away. So we need to write down the precious revelations that we gain. Where would you write that down? There is a special place to put those precious things the Lord reveals to us. What is the scriptural name for it? A Book of Remembrance. And that is where the original Book of remembrance came from. It was Adam’s record of God’s revelations to him. He did not wish to lose any of those precious words because the word of God is the basis for our faith, and that is the only possibility for our having faith. But we should write those things down.
May I take a few minutes and share with you some of the precious ideas that I have, they’re special to me.
Now, there are some truths that are like the phone book. You find an awful lot of truths in the phone book, but most of the ideas there are hardly world shaking. However, there are some ideas that are world shaking, and I would like to express a few of them. The first one comes from Ether 12:28. The basic idea there is this, that Jesus Christ is the fountain of all righteousness. This is found in several places in the scriptures. To me this is a powerful idea, it is seminal, it affects so many things in our lives. I guess the ramifications touch about everything. Jesus Christ is the fountain of all righteousness.
That says some very important things to me. Number one, I take righteousness as the acts of blessing others, not the desires, not the theory, but the actual acts of blessing people. Now, I take it that to be fully righteous the act should be as effective as possible. The question of our lives is, are we going to spend the rest of our lives pleasing ourselves, or are we going to spend our lives blessing others as much as possible?
I find it delightful to worship our Savior because I understand Him, I have the witness that He is a God of righteousness, that He does nothing except it is to bless His children. That is why I say I don’t think there are any curses that are really curses, they are really blessings. Everything He does is perfectly calculated to bring as much blessing as possible to the children of men.
And believing that, I also recognize what the scriptures say, He is the fountain of this righteousness. There is no other source, there is no other place I can go in this world to know what to do to be optimally effective in my actions. Let me unpack that a little bit. This goes back to a fundamental principle, in secular terms we could say it this way, there is no way that any human being can maximize his decisions. That may not be very meaningful, so let me say it another way. Nobody by his own wisdom or by collective human wisdom can be sure that anything he proposes to do is the best thing to do in any given circumstance.
Suppose you were worried about whom you should marry. Suppose you wanted to make a rational decision, and the best possible decision. What would you have to know? Well, you would have to know all about yourself, all about your potential, your proclivities, inclinations, and so forth, —everything about yourself.
Next, you would have to know every possible partner you could have in this universe, and you would have to know as much about them as you know about yourself, all about them. And then you’d have to know what would be the consequences of the next million years or so of marrying each one of these persons. Not only that, you would have to decide which set of consequences would be the best for both of you. Do you see, there is not even a fraction of human ability to answer that question. But that isn’t so remarkable because you can show, very simply, that exactly the same problems attach to deciding the simplest kind of action. Is it best to go to the store now, or at 4:00 in the afternoon? The same kinds of problems attend that kind of decision as well, and we have no more human ability to make that decision and make sure we are doing the best thing possible on our own than we do the other.
This is the thing most people do not want to face. Humanity in general is committed to the proposition that human beings can act intelligently and correctly on their own. But it is just not so, that is a great falsehood. When men act on their own, they are stumbling in the dark, hoping only. There is no rational way for them to know in advance that what they propose to do is the best thing to do. You don’t have to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to figure that out. Socrates figured it out a long time ago. That’s what made him so unpopular in Athens. He went around asking all these people why they were doing what they were doing. He was seeking wisdom. He figured out that he didn’t know how to be wise, so he went around to all these people who said they were wise and knew what to do and asked them how they know what they should do. None of them could tell him, but they still insisted that they could. He finally concluded that he was wiser than they all because he knew he couldn’t do it, and they thought they could. But he was very discomfiting to them, you see.
Supposing you went to the local head politician to ask him why he was doing what he was doing, and you could show that he had no idea that what he was doing was best for the community. That would make him rather unpopular, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s what he did with the leaders of Athens, so they gave him the hemlock. So be careful how you use that idea, if you subscribe to it, because they might give you the hemlock, too.
This is where the world stands. The world says, “I can do it on my own,” but the scriptures say that unless you come unto Christ, you cannot be righteous, and that’s a very powerful, fundamental idea. He is the source of all righteousness. There is no other source besides Him, and we can get all of it from Him.
Secondly, there is a law upon which all blessings are predicated. This is D&C 132:20–21. There is a law upon which all blessings are predicated, and when you receive any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. How many laws? How many laws are there by which we get our blessings? Let’s try the scripture again. There is a law upon which all blessings are predicated, and when we receive any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. How many? One. There is only one law by which blessings are received, and that’s why the law of the Gospel is singular.
Now, when you want to get down on the Law of Moses’ level, there are lots of laws. The Ten Commandments are an example. But you see, we have to remember the Ten Commandments do not bring about eternal blessings. They are stepping stones to prepare people for the law; but like the Savior told the Jews, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, unless you can do something better than the Law of Moses, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The eternal blessings we hope for through God are predicated upon one law, and one law only. What’s the name of that law? I’ll tell you what I think it is. I think the name of that law is Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the only way we can get anything that will prove to be a blessing to us is to have faith in Him.
We can get lots of things in this world. Lots of people think that when they get rich, for instance, they’re being blessed, don’t they. Like the old preacher who said, “Lord, you’ve tempted me with everything else, now please tempt me with money.” But riches usually are not a blessing. Most of the people who are rich will not go to the Celestial Kingdom. The Savior said that in no uncertain terms, simply because they do not learn to use it correctly, and it proves to be a millstone that drags them down instead of a help. They use it for themselves instead of for others.
But if a person, the scriptures say, will put his faith and trust in Christ and obtain a hope in Christ, then if he seeks riches, he will get riches because he will seek riches for the opportunity of blessing the poor, of clothing the naked, and so forth. And that’s the proper use of wealth. But there is a law, and the law comes down to the word of Christ. His word is His law. We have faith only through His word, which means to say we cannot have faith until we receive a revelation from Him.
The word of Christ is probably the most precious thing we could have. That’s why the Gift of the Holy Ghost is the Pearl of Great Price. It is the thing that is our connection with Christ. It brings us His word, and when we receive His word, we may then believe and may act upon it. To receive the word, to believe and to act is faith in Christ. That’s the definition of faith, and without all three of those there is no faith; and all blessings are received through faith in Christ.
Idea number three: Whatsoever is not of faith, meaning faith in Christ, is sin. Now that’s a powerful idea. It hits people right between the eyes. That means anything we do on our own, we’re sinning because the only way to be righteous is to get it from the Savior; and if we get it from Him, if we get instruction from Him and do it, then we’re being righteous, everything else is sin; and that’s what humanity has to repent of, is doing everything else.
We can be saved only as much as we turn to the Savior (this is Romans 14:23): Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. The Prophet Joseph makes a very pointed point of this in the introduction of the second volume of the Documentary History of the Church, pointing out that only as we come to Christ and serve Him can we escape sin.
Idea number four: From Romans 8:28: All things work together for the good of those that love the Lord. Again, you see, this is a powerful idea. What does that tell us? If we just love the Lord and serve Him, there’s nothing that will happen to us except it’s for our good, for our eternal welfare. If we’ll just put ourselves in His hands and as King Benjamin said, be meek, patient, submissive, full of love, willing to submit to all things the Savior sees fit to inflict upon us, He will see to it that we will get those experiences, those trials, those tribulations and those blessings that will enable us to grow till we become like Him.
It might be that he will have to do it through sickness, it may be that He will do it through health, He may do it through poverty, He may do it through wealth, He may do it through ignorance, that is to say, by being denied the kind of education you’d like to have. He may do it through education, but it doesn’t matter, because if we are His children and subject to His will, He will see to it. His love and His mercy are great enough that He will see to it that everything that happens to us is for our good.
And that leads to the next idea, which is almost the same thing, but I like it so much, I just have to make a separate one out of it: from Romans 8:38–39: Paul says that he is persuaded that nothing, neither principalities nor powers, nor life nor death, nor things above nor things beneath, nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus Christ. There is no circumstance so difficult that He cannot help us, no problem so difficult that He cannot solve it, no situation in which we can get where we’re beyond the power of His blessings. In other words, there’s nothing to be afraid of. All we have to do is be His humble children, rejoice in the opportunity to live life each day, to do His will and be grateful, acknowledge His hand in all things in our lives because He does control and govern all things in our lives.
Idea number six: This is found in D&C 50:26–30. I’ll read this one. Here we are told one of the great promises concerning those who are faithful. “He that is ordained of God and sent forth, the same is appointed to be the greatest, notwithstanding he is the least and the servant of all. Wherefore, he is possessor of all things; for all things are subject unto him, both in heaven and on the earth, the life and the light, the Spirit and the power, sent forth by the will of the Father through Jesus Christ, his Son. But no man is possessor of all things except he be purified and cleansed from all sin. And if ye are purified and cleansed from all sin, ye shall ask whatsoever you will in the name of Jesus and it shall be done.” Now I’ve never heard the wildest fairy tale that’s had that great a promise or hope. And this isn’t a fairy tale; this is reality. Have you ever heard of a greater promise than that you can have anything that you desire in righteousness, if only you’re cleansed and purified from all sin? If we have hungered to do good things in this world, there’s a great shortcut, there’s a great secret to being able to accomplish good and that is to come unto Jesus as a little child and be cleansed and purified from all sin through His atoning power. Then, you see, we can have anything we ask for.
We’d better read the next verse though, just to put it in context: “But know this, it shall be given you what you shall ask.” Now, to many people that sounds like a contradiction. We can only have anything we ask for, as long as we ask for only what we’re told to ask for? Is that bad? No, that’s the way it has to be, because we don’t know what’s right to ask for until He tells us. We cannot pray correctly except we are instructed as to what to ask for. And so if we come to Him as little children and say, “Tell us what to ask for,” then if we are purified and cleansed from all sin, we can have whatever we are told to ask for. That may sound circular, but I don’t think it is. That is the principle of salvation, if we can just live by it.
I have shared now with you some of my ideas. Let me put this all together now. I’m sure you are aware that when people accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ and truly are servants of the Lord, they are called different things by different people in the world. Someone who believes in Christ is looked upon as a romantic by all cynics because they have ideals. Those who believe in Christ, we who do, hope for things that are not seen, but which are true. We know they are true because we trust the Spirit of the Lord. On the other hand, those who are true servants of Jesus Christ are called cynics by romantics because we are more realistic than the romantics. We see the world the way it is, and we believe in doing things so they will get done. But we have to struggle with both of those extremes. We have to struggle with ourselves. The real struggle to conquer is in our heart. If we can ever get the struggle within our own breast, within our own mind settled in favor of the Lord Jesus Christ, that solves, really, all other problems. You see, that’s what the cynic calls a romantic idea. But you be the judge; it’s your life, it’s your future.
I commend to you the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that it is true, I don’t just believe it. I’ve lived too long. I’ve seen too many things. I have seen the manifestations of the spirit. I have seen the power of the Priesthood in so many ways that were I to deny, I know that I would be denying that the sun shines. I know this is the true work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I know this is the way of happiness, the way of light, the way of truth and that the only intelligent thing for any of us to do who know about the Gospel is just to live it completely. I think we all know that when we go against our conscience, against what we think is best, the result is disastrous. I think if we have any kind of testimony, we also know that when we follow that still small voice through our conscience, it goes well with us.
My hope and prayer is that we will seize upon this great key to eternal life, and let our lives be filled with truth and then they will be filled with righteousness. They will be filled with the Savior, and by the Savior in order that we might do much good for our fellowmen. But that’s the real question, you see, do we wish to do much good for our fellowmen. The scripture says, blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. I pray that that might be our hunger, that our lives will be as nothing to us except as we can bless others through our Savior. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
