True At All Times?

"The questions are no longer, "Is the Church true?"' "Is God true?"; "Is Christ or Joseph Smith or Russell M. Neilson true?" All of that and a lot more was decided a long, long time ago. It is not subject to popular ballot, yours or mine. In a word, all that remains for you and for me, is the simple inquiry, "Are you true?"

- Jeffrey R. Holland

In Alma 53 we are introduced to a peculiar group of young men known later as the Stripling Warriors. Apart from their miraculous victories recorded, Moroni chooses to explain them to us first and foremost as "men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. Yeah, they were men of truth and soberness."

What does it mean to be a man or woman of truth and soberness? To be true at all times with whatsoever we are entrusted?

It at least means in part that they orient their lives according to what is True. In a sense they pursue truth over convenience.

They live for principle, not for pleasure.

They do not seek their own will, but rather the painful and at times very inconvenient will of God. And as we later see, they put their very lives at risk, to die if necessary, for a cause greater than themselves. (Do you remember what it is?)

It also means that the lens through which they choose to see the world is a lens of truth. In other words, they have fixed their moral compass outside of their own inner desires and personal ambition or agenda. Indeed "they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before Him." NOT uprightly before themselves.

The pervading mentality in the world today would have you do the opposite. "Do your own thing" and "Be yourself!" above all, and at all cost. The world would have you be your own moral compass. To explore every whim and passion you may have, as if they were all equally valid and good.

But they aren't.

To be true at all times means to be disciplined. It means to sacrifice. It means you don't look at the world and pick what truths you want to abide by and which ones you will disregard simply because you don't feel like it.

Joseph Smith said of his youth "in this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?"

Perhaps now in a world of fake news, polarizing political parties and ideologies, and widespread moral relativism we ask ourselves these same questions.

What is to be done? What can you do?

How will you know who and what to vote for?

Where will you invest your time and effort?

What social justice or political causes are truly good anymore?

The answer? Learn to see things through God's lens, not your own. Filter ideas, laws and policies through the lens of the gospel, not your own. Not your uncles or friends. Not your random Facebook acquaintances. Learn what is True and start there. Then stick to it.

"And I said unto them that it was the word of God; and whoso would hearken unto the word of God and would hold fast unto it, they would never perish; neither could the temptations and the fiery darts of the adversary overpower them unto blindness, to lead them away to destruction." - Nephi

-R.W.

• "Are You True?" - Jeffrey Holland Sep. 2, 1980