Christmas - A Great Opportunity to be Humble

Typically, when voices or circumstances call upon us to be humble, we resist the idea. To be humble is to be put down and to be made little and insignificant in the eyes of others, right? I've felt that way much of my life. I'm not so sure any more.



Years ago I heard a man named Bruce McConkie say that "man cannot resurrect himself or assign himself to a degree of glory after this life." If that's not an exact quotation, it'll do till one comes along. That was certainly the gist of what he said.



His point, of course, was that we need God. We need His constant support, His guiding influence, and His ongoing protection. To believe anything else is to believe that we are self-sufficient and that what we become in this life is all we'll ever be. To believe that God does not exist or that we have no need of His aid is to believe that there is no purpose for our existence and no hope for a betterment of our condition in this life or in a later one.



Life leads us through experiences which, in turn, lead us through thought processes, which, in turn, lead us to conclusions about important questions. Surely, the most important of these questions is "How and Why Do We Exist?" Every religion and every philosophy of men seeks either to answer these questions or to obviate them away by making them appear unimportant. A visitor from some other realm (and that is surely what we all are) will naturally stop from time to time to ask him/herself "Where have I come from? Why do I exist? Is there a purpose to all the widely varied and sometimes horrible experience in this life?" And there is another question I believe we ask ourselves if we are people who have a natural and healthy sense of responsibility: "What is expected of me in this life?"



Have you ever stopped to ask yourself these questions? I think that virtually everyone has asked him or herself these questions at one time or another. Only the most self-centered, self-serving, blithely unaware of the needs of others could be people who do NOT ask themselves such questions. Often, in movies, TV shows, and novels, I'll see someone portrayed as such a person. Sometimes they're strong antagonists in the stories, but often they'll be unnamed characters with no character whatsoever. They are the kind of people who, when told to shoot a hostage in the head unless contacted by a given hour, will carry out such instructions with no more compunction than your or I would feel about killing germs in the sink. Such persons have either never asked themselves those important questions about life, or have long ago ceased to care about what the answers might be.



Great founders of religions, however, are sometimes those who have asked themselves these questions and have sought for the answers until they are satisfied that they have found them. Prince Siddhartha, known today as The Buddha, had led a sheltered life. But when he became aware of human suffering, the natural sense of responsibility which he had brought with him into this life would not let him rest until he believed he had found the answers.



Of course, some religious leaders merely use the natural desire to know the answers to life's important questions in order to lie, cheat, steal, and dominate. David Koresh and the "Reverend" Jim Jones are among such men. The priests of ancient Egyptian deities had to know in their hearts that they were serving false gods who had no power to save and no power to exalt people. They proved this when a new Pharaoh decreed that all other gods and goddesses were to be eradicated and only one god, Aton, the sun disk god, was to be worshipped. This instantly threw the members of the wealthy priest class who served in the temples of the newly "down-sized" gods into a serious tizzy. If no one worshiped the gods and goddesses whom they served, then there would be no donations, no income, no status, and no reason (or ability?) to go on living.



So, it must actually matter whether the answers we find to life's big questions are true or not. It must actually matter whether "our truth" is the THE truth. Too often in the past three decades or so I've heard or read the words of others who seek to avoid individual responsibility for their own arrival at real truth by using such phrases as "my truth tells me that..." or "Maybe in your truth..."



Bovine Excrement!



If we are so weak and so needy that we cannot resurrect ourselves, then we surely need a higher, loving power Who brought us into existence and has a purpose for that existence.



In the early nineteenth century, the east coast of the United States was overrun with preachers of various Christian denominations. They preached Christ, but often they were seen to be particularly unChristian in their attitudes towards one another. Enter Joseph Smith, the fourteen year old farm boy who made an avid search for truth and the answers to life's big questions among the many denominations which so vigorously competed with each other for membership along the east coast that it had come to be called "the Burned Over district." His desire for knowledge of THE truth was so powerful, that, even in the face of pressure from preachers, new converts, neighbors, friends, and family members, he could not bring his heart to align itself with any of these religions.



Even the Bible seemed to be of little help to him, for the various preachers taught conflicting doctrines about what the seemingly important passages of scripture meant.



That's when he read the Epistle of James, Chapter one, verse 5. You ought to read it, too. Find out what that farm boy did about what he read. Find out what the answers were to his fervent questions. But don't even look it up - - Don't even start to search - - Don't even begin to research this topic unless you really mean it! Because, if you find out that God actually revealed His mind and will to someone in these latter times, then you'll become responsible to live your life in accordance with those truths!



I found out. I know what the truth is. Now I'm responsible. I love knowing it. But I feel a great responsibility to tell everybody else about it and to live that truth as well as I can.