Richard L. Evans
The Spoken Word
23 February 1969
FOR LESSONS WE REFUSE TO LEARN
Life is good— if we will live to let it be. It is also difficult at times. No one ever said it wouldn’t be. Certainly the Father of us all did not say so. But, as a loving Father, he has given us counsel and precautions, and has “warned and forewarned” us according to his own words. In a sense, he says to us: Don’t clutter up your life with things that are sure to damage the mind, distress the spirit, which are sure to destroy health and peace, and embarrass and disquiet conscience, and cause a complexity of personal problems. Some things are good for man. Some things are not good for man. This is true morally, physically, spiritually.
And yet with all the experience of the ages, and all the counsel God has given, we keep repeating many of the same mistakes— in a sense, hitting our heads against a wall, perhaps wondering why the wall remains while our heads are hurting. It comes down to a question of listening to counsel, learning the commandments and keeping them. ”
The hour will be a priceless one,” wrote Lida Churchill, “in which one faces the truth, for it is a truth, and a most important one, that no one is free in the sense in which the unthinking mind regards freedom.”
It is true that we are free to choose, but we are not free from the consequences that come from choosing. We are not free from the operation of law. “To be deceived by our enemies or betrayed by our friends is insupportable,” said a French philosopher; “yet to be deceived by ourselves is worse… .”
The Creator knows what will bring happiness and misery to man, and we should not deceive ourselves that we can do anything that is not good for people, or for us personally, without paying a price. “There is a law …”— a law of health, a law of happiness, a law of peace and progress— “upon which all blessings are predicated,” and we cannot safely set aside what has been tested and proven over and over in the past, without paying a personal price for each lesson we refuse to learn.
Wow! You answered my prayer, Ardis! There are passages in this quote that are going to fill the blanks in a talk I’ll be giving a week from today! You have my gratitude!