No wholesale rate on errors – Sunday, January 10, 1960
Last week we spoke of special days and seasons, and of the danger of delaying repentance or improvement, and closed with this comment (and conviction : “When we need repentance, we need it now.” There is this further thought on a somewhat related subject: Sometimes, if we have made one mistake, we may think it won’t matter much if we make one more. We may fall into the fallacy of supposing that the multiplying of mistakes is not, additionally, so serious. This is, of course, an untenable position to take. It is certainly no less wrong and it may be much more—to make the second mistake than to make the first.
The second false step is not more acceptable, not less serious, than the first false step. For the first, we may plead impetuousness, or innocence, or ignorance simply not knowing. For the second, we can scarcely plead innocence or ignorance as convincingly as we could for the first. Stealing twice is surely not less serious than stealing once. A second act of immorality is certainly not less serious than the first.
There is really no wholesale rate on sin or error or the making of mistakes—and the more deliberate, the more experienced, the more intentional, the more frequent the offense, the more serious it would surely seem. And it is a gross fallacy to feel that after one mistake, another doesn’t matter very much. Again, there is the reminder that life is everlasting, and no matter how far in a wrong direction we might have moved, it is always urgently and earnestly important to get back to the right road. The right direction only will get us out of wrong ways. The wrong direction never did. And just because a man may be down deep is no reason why he should go down deeper. Wherever one is, or has arrived, let him resolve to make his next move toward the right way, and not succumb to the false philosophy that following a first mistake with a second, or several, doesn’t matter very much. It simply isn’t so.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station KSL and the CBS Radio Network, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, January 10, 1960, 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1960
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January 10, 1960
Broadcast Number 1,586