Spoken Word Messages - Page 94

One of the seemingly unfortunate circumstances of life is the manner in which the innocent are called upon to suffer with guilty.  If misfortune came only to those who were responsible for it, we would welcome it as an avenging angel, but, in the complexity of our living, trouble visits whom it will, and when it is started in once place, it travels to another.  Dishonesty in high places causes misery all down the line. 

Responding to the accusation that he was merely attempting to justify his own actions by false reasoning, the brilliant but misguided young man replied,. "Of course, I am justifying my own actions. A man cannot enjoy life in any sense of the word, if he cannot justify his own actions in his own mind.”   No man can find peace or pleasure so long as he is pursued by an awareness of guilt.

In looking out upon the confused and troubled scene, we are impressed with this overruling fact: Every man in his own way is seeking happiness. That is the ceaseless quest of life in all generations and in all ages: "Men are that they might have joy". (2nd Nephi 2:25) -- a deep and abiding joy.

Within the past few weeks we have seen again the pouring forth from school doors of millions of our youth variously classified and labeled and certified as to their attainments and degrees of excellence in the great business of formal education. And many questions are being asked, as they always are at such times, one of the most important of which is asked by youth Itself, "You say we are educated - now what?"

We have with us again the month of June, in which many things, traditionally, begin and end - it is the month of weddings when young men and women begin life together; the month of graduation when sheltered school days end, and the real business of making a living begins; it is the month of spring's departing and of summer's coming. And since It is June, perhaps something should be said concerning romance.

"And Stephen said unto them: "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" (Acts 7:52) Speaking unto his own generation and his own people, Stephen might have directed this accusing question with equal justification to any generation; Which, indeed, of the prophets have not men persecuted - if not in person, at least in effigy, in thought and speech, by ridicule, by unbelief. Men have persecuted those who have seen ahead of their own generation both in science and in things material and things spiritual, and in all fields of thought and knowledge pertaining both to things here and hereafter.

A phrase commonly printed in connection with the news of the day is this: "Censored at the source." Especially is this true of word that comes to us from across the troubled waters. It is the warning of an honest purveyor of news that no report can be relied upon with certainty, and that everything we read and hear is colored and modified to serve the purposes of those who control the news at its source.

The world scene which lies before us, and those events of the past quarter century which have led up to it, have cause the spread of cynicism and unbelief. In all nations and among all peoples we find the question rising - Why would an All-wise and just and merciful God permit such events to transpire? Failing to find the answer that brings peace to their troubled hearts, men, 'in increasing numbers, lose faith and hope and understanding, and cry out in the bitterness against a Providence, the existence of whom they deny.

For all men life is a search - a constant reaching from the known into the unknown. Even those who have a conviction that they have found its meaning and are travelling the way that leads to exalted places, are reaching always for an understanding of things not understood in an everlasting journey that moves toward an infinite goal.

There is some modern disposition to suppose that the means justifies the end, no matter how drastic or deceptive that means may be. Superficially, and in isolated cases, this may sometimes be true, but it is never true where fundamental principles are compromised, or where truth is ignored, or where human liberties are set aside. And of those who would sacrifice human rights to achieve allegedly desirable ends, it should be known that "While they promise *** liberty, they, themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought into bondage." II Peter 2:19

A so-called modern thinker is responsible for the statement that it is no use to educate our children for the worlds today because the world twenty years from now will be different; and it is no use to educate our children for the world twenty years from now, because no one knows what it will be like.

The great forces that are at work in the physical world have a close counterpart in the forces that are at work in the lives of men. In nature there is a constant leveling process which relentlessly attempts to void and off-set the great building-up movements. As the mountains rear their heads above the commonplace level of the earth's surface, the winds and the rains, and the frosts and the heat of the day attempt to break them and wear them down to the common level, and the high places tend to be lowered and the valley to be filled in. It is difficult to be conspicuously different even in nature.  And so it is in the lives of men. That force for good which constantly works within us would lift us to high places, but once let a man rear his head above mediocrity and immediately there seems to come into greater play those influences which would push him down again.  It may be the jealousy and envy of his fellow men; it may be the power of evil; it may be a man's own intoxication with his success; it may be the temptations that seem to multiply as we ascend. And so in human affairs it is difficult to be conspicuously different. But our generation needs those men who rear their heads above the common level and who have the strength to maintain themselves in places of high principle so that the eroding winds of temptation and the breaking heat and cold of jealousy and criticism, and the wearing-down work of compromise may not reduce them from high purpose, but rather increase their determination to lift themselves higher and their fellows with them, so that the pace that humankind travel and the direction in which they move may be determined, not by the worst elements in our society, but rather by the better influences among us.

To Abraham Lincoln is accredited this statement:  “No man is good enough to govern another man without that man's consent." Significant in the day in which it was uttered, it has become more significant in our day in the light of current world happenings. In the affairs of men there is talk of superior and inferior peoples, of being born to high station or to low station, of inheriting the right to dominate others. But let it be remembered that the Lord God is no respecter of persons, and in an absolute sense - in the eternal scheme of things - men have a right only to those privileges and blessings which they earn by righteousness and diligence of their lives, both past and present and in times yet to come. They who suppose that they are heir to pre- ferment, regardless of merit, either in the affairs of God or in the affairs of men, fail to understand the basic principle upon which privileges and blessings are founded. It is as Paul clearly indicated to the Athenians, when he said: “God hath made of' one blood all nations of men." In this eternal picture, wealth and power and learning and race are minor considerations. The great differences between brother and brother grow out of the manner in which they are willing to accept truth and pattern their lives in accordance with it. In no other way has any man claim to superiority, and hence we say again In the words of Lincoln-. "No man is good enough to govern another man, without that man's consent."

In a day when sensational and unrestrained publicity sometimes makes men seem to be what they are not - in a day when unchecked propaganda ignores truth and fact and sways the judgment of men, it is refreshing to recall the tersely-stated words of the writer of Proverbs: "Remove far from me vanity and lies; Feed me with food convenient for me." It is pleasant to think of that day when all things shall be what they seem to be, and when all men will seem to be what they are. Then shall we stand before God, unable to conceal our thoughts and desires with words and gestures that contradict the things that we are thinking and the motives that we are concealing. In the meantime we yearn for the time when the news that we hear and the things that we see and the rumors that confuse and contradict will be known and trusted quantities in a world where seemingly no report may now be accepted at its face value.

Most of the men and women who move about us from day to day are carrying hidden within their hearts a load of trouble and sorrow of one kind or another, and we, with, our unseeing eyes, often walk rough-shod over them, not understanding their cares and not being considerate of their burdens. So often we misjudge those whose circumstances we do not know. Those whom we meet in an impersonal way in places of business and on city streets and in all the crowded ways of life may seem to us at times to be sullen, to be impolite, to be inattentive to our wants. And not knowing what cares are oppressing them; with our lack of understanding, we ignore their breaking hearts, and fail to perceive the tears that lie close to the surface - and the world seems thoughtless because it does not understand. And so we reach a trite but fundamental conclusion - that every man's burdens are important to him, and that judgments must be withheld where wisdom and understanding are not sufficient.

In the grief that comes with a time of bereavement, it is often our first impulse to call back those who have departed this life. Perhaps we may sincerely think that we are acting in their interest in wishing them back. But in reality it is not so much their separation from us that we are thinking of as it is our separation from them. It is natural that we would wish to call then back, but It is also quite probable that they would not wish to come back, even if it were given unto them to choose, because what they may realize there so far transcends what we have to offer them here, that, were we fully aware of it, it is probable that even in all our grief and loneliness, we would not raise our voices to recall the righteous departed. Better had we live so that where they are, there we may be also, and until such time as we may be called to our eternal home, let hope, grow into assurance, and faith acquire the certainty of knowledge.

Walking through the ways of life, we see many enter and leave the scene of human activity through the portals of birth and of death.  With our limited understanding, we do not always agree with the time and the place and the manner in which men come and go. 

Many exalted exhortations are spoken with the passing of each week from the world's pulpits and platforms. Enough good advice is given In the run of an average day to make the world a veritable heaven - if that advice were accepted and acted upon; but that which is proclaimed from the pulpit and the public plat- form is not nearly so important as what goes on over the back fence and what transpires harbored behind the closed doors of those places wherein we dwell, and what is in the minds and hearts of men.

So long as we live in a world composed of people who do not accept a single law of conduct, a single standard of ethics, or a single code of morals, we shall have to face the problem of differences of opinion and disagreement among men. So long as we mingle socially and in business and in our schools and communities, with people whose views and standards of living are not identical with ours, we shall be confronted with a choice between being different In some respects from other men or sacrificing our own standards and beliefs for the sake of not being different.

So sure and unfailing is the certainty with which remorse follows our misdoings, it is greatly to be wondered that men persist in disregarding the rules of life. Perhaps there may be some who would ask what there is to restrain us or to induce us to do otherwise. Certainly not threat of physical punishment. Fear of physical punishment never made a good man in any land In any age. The most relentless penalties of a man's misdeeds are things less tangible and more terrible - the accusation that comes from within, the dull heaviness of a heart that knows it is not clean, the dogged pursuit of a conscience that allows no peace and no surcease, the heaviness of spirit that comes with the disapproval of our Eternal Father whose children all men are; these are the real price a man pays for his own misdeeds, as David of Israel testified with heartbreaking conviction when he cried out,. "Hide Thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, 0 God; and renew a right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:9)

We have read of those times and those places when a man's principal weapon was his honest and open physical strength. Life must have been very simple then. You know what to do with a man who wields a club - or even with a man who carries a gun. But it is a far cry from that day to the currently prevalent practice of using all manner of concealed weapons-- such weapons as false statement, subtle propaganda, untruthful teaching, misrepresentation of facto and motive.

A modern apostrophe to the mountains reminds us of a text from the Psalms: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: He that keepth these will not slumber.” (Psalm 121:1-3) Before us are those hills at the crossroads of the West—with their sure footing and their refusal to be moved by the winds of strange doctrine—hills with their strength, their peace, and their quiet assurance—hills that do not run to and from, chasing false Utopias, following after blind leaders—hills that turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but stand with calm majesty on rock foundations, no matter what storms may be raging around them—hills that quietly speak age-old truth to all who will listen and learn. “God give me mountains, and strength to climb up.”