Don't Let the "Stuff" Get in the Way of the Big Picture

I was fortunate in many ways growing up, not least of which was being raised by very common, “salt of the earth” parents who will never attain any level of acclaim, but who taught us that the Church and the Gospel were up to us to figure out. They took us to church and taught us in our home, but they never claimed to understand everything - and they never expected anyone else to understand everything.

For example, my dad used to say that if he left the Church every time someone said something stupid or offensive, he would never have time to set foot in the church - since just about everyone says something stupid or offensive every single day. He said that prophets were very different - since they said something stupid or offensive only occasionally. He said that the Lord had never said the Church was perfect - just that it was “true” and “living” - and he never defined “true” as related to Truth (”correct in all things”) but merely as “conforming to or consistent with a standard, pattern, or the like: a true copy” or “of the right kind; such as it should be; proper: to arrange things in their true order”.

The interesting things is that my dad NEVER would have said what I just wrote. Those aren’t his words; he is not an academician or “intellectual” by any stretch of the imagination. He hated school and would have been a long-haul trucker if he hadn’t had a family and a wife who desperately needed him home. Instead, he became a mechanic, then a printer, then a school janitor. What I just described is how I interpreted what he said - how it was translated inside me. It gave me a foundation that just doesn’t care much about the details - even though I really like to study and consider and discuss them. I love the learning; I just don’t put much eternal stock in it compared to what I do and the attitudes I develop - what I become.

Finally, “a prophet is not accepted in his own country” for a reason. The people with whom he was raised have seen his humanity - his natural man, if you will. They know he isn’t unique enough to be a prophet, since they either gave him a wedgie as a kid and he swore at them, or they received a wedgie from him and swore at him. We hold our own prophets (and spouses and children and parents and friends) to a much higher standard than we use to measure others whose warts we don’t see as clearly, and that often keeps us from understanding the amazing characteristics that we take for granted as what they really are. That’s natural, but it also is too bad, since we miss out on so much when we let the "stuff" distract us from the big picture.