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A Word To The Self-righteous - Page 2

Journal of Discourses, Vol.2, p.330 - p.331, George Albert Smith, June 24, 1855:

I have seen men, even in this Church, who have become discouraged at a few trials. I can tell you, brethren and sisters, if all such men will trace their conduct to its source, they will find that they have fostered an evil spirit, evil principles, and lived in open rebellion to the religion which they have professed; and consequently darkness has come over their minds, and they soon felt as a very self righteous man did some years ago. He was in the Church, and he said he had proved the revelations of Joseph Smith to be untrue. "How did you prove them so?" "Why," said he, "one of Joseph Smith's revelations says, that if a man shall commit adultery, he shall lose the Spirit of the Lord, and deny the faith, and shall be cast out. Now," says he, "I have been guilty of that crime, and I have not apostatized, and consequently that revelation is not true, and that proves Joseph Smith is not a true Prophet." This was the darkness which his corruptions had brought upon him, and this is the kind of darkness which transgression will bring upon all men in this Church.

Self-righteous To Word A

How about individuals that point at you and say you are 'self-righteous'. Could it be that in the 'pointing' they also consider themselves 'righteous' in order to make the assessment?

A Word To The Self-righteous Studies Doctrine Mormon

Yes,

and think about this...

If the one who does not forgive has the greater sin, then what happens if you don't forgive someone for not being forgiving!

Yoikes!


Dubhdara.

Page 2 Self-righteous To Word A

I think as members of our church we have a lot to be proud of. My life is better because I believe in the the Lord and his teachings and TRY and obey his commandments. I am proud of who I am.

The "pride" that rubs me the wrong way is a different sort of pride though. Motivation to show off one's accumulation of wealth. HUGE SUVs pulling even bigger boats pulling up to old run down houses. The number of times I have had to help people move very expensive furnature and elecronics out of people's re-posesed houses . . . is just sad. People think "I deserve this!" and if they don't have it. . . their self image suffers. They cannot be proud of themselves and who they are without it. I once dated a girl in High School who lived in a house that didn't have a lock on the front door. That was amazing to me. . . but then I looked around and realized. . . there was nothing anyone would want. No big TV, nice furnature or anything. It looked like they just spent a few hundred dollars at Deseret Industries and that was it. I knew her father made good money and they were a really happy/fun family to be with. But they had no need to outwardly show that. I'm not saying that is how we should all live but. . . but . . . would we be unhappy if we did? And if we were un-happy. . . what does that say about our own level of Pride.

Hmmmm. . .

Self-righteous To Word A

I have a real admiration for people who set a humble but reasonable standard for their homes and physical posessions at the beginning of their marriages, then maintain it and do righteous things with the surplus funds. I know one family in our stake sold their home and dental practice to move to Tonga and serve a medical service mission. They are back, and they live comfortably, but are very generous with what they have. I want to be like that - to keep any wealth I receive in perspective.

A Word To The Self-righteous

"Our membership in this Church, with eligibility for all of the blessings that flow therefrom, should never be any cause for self-righteousness, for arrogance, for denigration of others, for looking down upon others. All mankind is our neighbor. . . . "Regardless of the color of our skin, of the shape of our eyes, of the language we speak, we all are sons and daughters of God and must reach out to one another with love and concern. "Wherever we live we can be friendly neighbors."

Ref. (President Gordon B. Hinckley, "Closing Remarks," Ensign, May 2005, 102)

A Word To Self-righteous - Page 2

I never understood people who would bragged about their gospel knowledge.

We do not know 1% of what there is to know about the universe, God, and everything theological. So what if I know .25 percent of the gospel and someone knows .5 percent about the Gospel.

We are all here on this Earth and given different levels of knowledge. It is not necessarily the knowledge that we have, its what we do with it. That is the main message of the restored doctrine of baptism for the dead. All people will have the opportunity to hear the full gospel in the world to come (including all of us members of the church who now only have a portion of the great truths that will be revealed.)

We all struggle, we are all are at different levels in and out of the church. When we judge others and think ourselves better then them we have just fallen a few rungs down the ladder and we need to quickly repent.

A Word To Self-righteous Mormon Doctrine Studies - Page 2

Wow! What awesome comments on Pride! I love it! Here are a few of my comments:

Satan uses this enmity to "reign with blood and horror on the earth". He does this by teaching people 3 things. Every religion has members that believe these 3 things:
1) There is only one truth.
2) I have all of the one truth.
3) All others are evil.

Because we all hate evil, the natural man naturally wants to fight evil, which is everyone else. His pride says he has the only truth and all of it. So, he has both been stopped in his own learning, because he has nothing else to learn, and he is at war with everyone who disagrees with him. This enmity has caused all the major wars, religious and non-religious. Hitler for example was very religious and thought he was doing God's will. So did the 9-11 attackers. They believed these 3 things and Satan was able to use them like pawns. So, in the end, well intentioned people start attacking and killing well intentioned people. All because of pride.

This is correct, and worth repeating, because it is, I believe the very cause for of the church being under condemnation as stated in D&C 84:53-57. in 1994 Elder Oaks said,

Pride is what holds the church under condemnation, because the church has been too proud to open the scriptures every day and start reading, studying and learning.

Regarding humility: Henry B. Eyring pointed out,

Although he what he said was humorous, it is true. Conversely, I have learned that "the problem with pride is, you just can't see it." We become blind to our own pride, among other things. So we can't see that we are being prideful. If you can see it, then you just became humble.

Amonhi - You just hit on a major problem with pride! Because pride is about having more or being better than others, in order to feed that pride or ego, people will not share what they have. They want to have more physically than others and so giving to the poor is limited if at all. In the case of knowledge, It somehow places them in a position of superiority. If knowledge is power, then they have more power over others. We saw this in large scale in the dark ages when the catholic churches did not allow their members to read the scriptures. The people at large relied on the church leaders to tell them what God wanted them to do. The church controlled the people.
In the Celestial world, this is not the case. All efforts are focused on creating equality. I have met people who refused to tell the "wonderful secrets" that they had learned, but were more than willing to let me know they had learned more than me. Some things these people have said sound like, "When you learn what I have learned, then you know not to do ..." or "When you are more mature in the gospel, you will understand that..." Notice that they have not taught any principle or given any reason for changing our action except that they are more experienced and learned than we are. In this way, if we let them, they would have had eternal control over us and we would have remained in the dark about the principles they knew they led them to their conclusions. But teaching me what they knew would have ruined it, because we would have become equals, and pride doesn't like that.

Here we are told that we should not consider it robbery to be equal with God. This would seem to be a prideful view point, however, upon closer evaluation, it is not. First off God is humble enough to want us to be equal. Secondly, if we viewed ourselves as equal with God, and also everyone else as equal with god and ourselves, then we would not be treating others as un equals or lessers/greater than ourselves. If we respected everyone in the same way we respected God, then we would be more like Christ who respected even the least as if they were a king. Imagine a society of Gods who are equal with each other. That is the essence of humility, and the Celestial society we are trying to prepare ourselves for.

Edited: Amonhi on 19th Sep, 2007 - 6:59pm