What we choose to think – Sunday, October 30, 1960
Last week we talked of “the seed and the fruit,” of cause and consequence in thought and action and utterance, and of the importance of avoiding all untoward intent. This scripture is perhaps most frequently cited on this subject: “For as he thinketh in his heart so is he.”1 Now since thoughts are the forerunners of action, there sometimes comes the question: Where do thoughts come from? How can they be controlled?
It may sometimes be assumed that we are not responsible for the thoughts we think, since we cannot say for certain what might be their source. It is true that we little understand the mystery of memory, that we little understand the storing process of the mind, or how to erase impressions made upon the mind. And in idleness, and even in activity, random thoughts may come to immediate remembrance—in a manner for which we cannot account. But it is also true in a positive sense that we can control our thoughts, we can control what we give our attention to. It requires the will, the wanting to, for the mind can surely wander far afield. But we can, if we will, make our minds consider a single subject; and we can, if we will, make our minds turn to another subject—not in vacancy, not in a void or vacuum, but by crowding out unwanted thoughts, by filling the channel with thoughts we want to think.
There is an old and trite saying, almost too trite to be quoted, but in principle profoundly true—that an idle mind is the devil’s workshop. And even a busy mind can be the devil’s workshop if it chooses or consents to concentrate on evil, it has been observed that the measure of a man is what he thinks when he doesn’t have to think, what he thinks when he is alone, what he thinks in his idle hours. No one would be so extreme as to say that it is possible never to have a stray or uninvited thought. But certainly, we must say that we can choose to think certain things, we can choose to think of certain subjects.
Thinking can, in large measure, be controlled, and the more we think of clean, constructive, useful, moral thoughts, the more the mind makes channels that lead to high-minded habits. Our thoughts are the evidence of our plans and purposes, the blueprints of what we propose, and it isn’t safe to hold wrong thinking in the heart, it isn’t safe to entertain evil.
The Lord God gave men the right to choose, the obligation to choose, the ability to choose, and it is the obligation of us all to choose such thoughts as would be safe and wise to follow through. There is no real way of separating ourselves from responsibility for our own thoughts and acts and utterances.
1Old Testament: Proverbs 23:7
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the CBS Radio Network, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, October 30, 1960, 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1960
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