On Disregarding the Future – Sunday, November 19, 1944
All of us at times deplore mistakes we have made in the past and ask why we couldn’t have known the future and thereby have avoided our mistakes. Of all the reasons given by men for their desire to know the future, this one would seem to be the most valid—to help us avoid mistakes. But even this reason might readily be ruled out when we remind ourselves how often we ignore even those things we do know—both about the present and the future and how often we ignore those things, which the past has taught us about the future. We already know the future in principle. Causes which have once produced specific effects may again be expected to produce the same effects.
This is the process of law. This is why man may, in some respects, plan for things to come. But the fact that the future may in some degree be judged by the past does not prevent our repeating the mistakes of the past, and disregarding its lessons. Even when the prophets have opened the future and forewarned their own generations of things to come, they have been rejected more often than not. Indeed, we often repeat our own mistakes, knowing full well that they are mistakes, and much of what we know with certainty, even about the present, we often ignore in practice. We know many of the rules of health, but often fail to observe them.
We know many of the rules of happiness, which we often ignore. We know that if we disregard law, we shall pay the consequences—but still there are many who disregard the law. It would seem, then, that a certainty of knowledge of the past, the present, or the future does not keep us from our mistakes, because, in our conduct and in all the pattern of our lives, we disregard so much of what we do know. And this admission leads to the conclusion that greater knowledge of the future is not our most urgent need. It is more important to know correct principles and to observe them, than it is to know the future.
Observing correct principles will save us materially and spiritually, but merely knowing the future and then ignoring correct principles will never save anyone, materially or spiritually. To know how to live, and to live that way, is so much more fundamental than to know a few fragments of the future pertaining to ourselves or others. To know the commandments of God and to keep them, to know the rules of life and to live them, will lead to the certainty of a glorious future whether we know it in detail or not.
Heard over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Nov. 19, 1944. Copyright – 1944.
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November 19, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,796