Confronting Ourselves with Ourselves – Sunday, March 22, 1942
There is a very old subject that has been distasteful to every generation, and which every generation has had to reckon with no matter how distasteful it was. It isn’t a popular subject—in fact speaking of it at all is commonly thought to be quite old-fashioned.
Bluntly, it is the question of repentance. Perhaps current practice would suggest that we sugarcoat the subject, call it by some other name, dress it up for modern consumption—but this is no time for dodging issues, and repentance is a thing to be reckoned with.
The storm has broken and vain boasting and foolish threats are as obsolete as last year’s news. In their place we have misgivings, fearful hearts, and oppressive realities. Perhaps there are still those who want to know what it is that we have need to repent of. For the answer to this each man should examine his own soul and let his own conscience tell him. And if his conscience isn’t active enough to use himself as an example let him compare the conduct of his neighbors with the commandments of God and the established rules of life.
It is readily understandable that we would rather not face these things, but there comes a time when confronting ourselves with ourselves is mandatory—a time when a man must concede the error of his ways—when pride has given way to the imminence of his fall; and if, at such a time, he repents, not merely for the expediency of the moment, but if he cleans out his soul in acknowledging his shortcomings, in asking forgiveness, and departs altogether from his former ways—if he has learned the spirit of humility and forsakes the spirit of boasting—if he can say—and mean it—“create in me a clean heart, O god, and renew a right spirit within me”—then is the time when the battle is on its way toward being won—and not before. The subject of repentance may be distasteful to this generations, as it has been to all others—but marvel not that we must reckon with it as a critical element in the course of those events that lie before us.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, March 22, 1942, over Radio Station KSL and the Nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1942.
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March 22, 1942
Broadcast Number 0,657