On Accepting Sound Principles – Sunday, November 11, 1945
Not infrequently children ask questions, and then rebel against the answers—if the answers don’t happen to please them: “Why can’t I do it? Why is it so? Why does it have to be this way? To a detached observer we grown-ups must sometimes look very like children. The right answer is often not to our liking. Facts often get in our way. Principles are often looked upon as being most inconvenient. Indeed, it would sometimes seem probable that we live in a world where too many are looking for the solution to problems which have already been, solved—where too many are looking for the answers to questions that have already been answered—but some of us don’t like some of the answers.
The plain truth is sometimes distasteful—especially if it interferes with our accustomed ways of living and thinking. No doubt, there were many in ancient Israel who didn’t like the Ten Commandments. There were many in their day who didn’t like the Sermon on the Mount. We recall the experience of Jesus the Christ, whom the multitude devotedly pursued when he fed them loaves and fishes, and whom they deserted when he stood trial for his life. And “Jesus answered them and said . . . Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.” (John 6:26.) Both before and since this utterance, there has been much eager running after those who offered bread, and ‘much deserting of those who offered only sound principles—those who insisted on the right answers.
It takes moral courage to stick to first principles, but there isn’t any other way to peace, to prosperity, to self-respect, or to anything that is worth while in life—-and there are thousands of years of history to prove it, and a good many repetitions of old blunders in our own century to prove it further. And merely because we may not like the right answers is no excuse for resorting to the wrong ones.
We can’t compromise principle and arrive at the right answer—and part of the answer is that men, communities, and nations cannot live in peace, in prosperity, in happiness, or in safety unless they are honest, virtuous, reasonable, decent, hard-working, self-supporting, self-respecting members of society; unless they speak the truth and live it. And those who spend their time seeking elaborate ways of bypassing the right answers will everlastingly find themselves on the same old detours, in company with all the wreckage of the past. When our children do it, we can see the utter foolishness of rebelling against the right answers.
It is still utter foolishness when we ourselves rebel against the truth. That new heaven and new earth of which we often speak will not come until we get down to first principles.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Nov. 11, 1945. Copyright 1945.
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November 11, 1945
Broadcast Number 0,847