From his book “Things As They Really Are,” Neal A. Maxwell wrote:
Having a basic sense of direction about life makes all the difference, because if we don’t understand things as they really are, then we may wrongly conclude that man is alone in the universe without the redeeming and living God. Such a mistakenly narrow view can cause people to despair, which is wrong, or to have an inflated sense of self-sufficiency, which is equally wrong and probably more dangerous.
When we understand things as they really are, we will understand that each of our lives is actually lived out in an astral amphitheater where, as Paul said, we are “compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses.” (Hebrews 12:1) There is never really any private behavior, so there can really be no private morality. And when mortals are lonely, it is not loneliness that mortal crowds can cure. We could be in a filled Olympic stadium and still miss Him and home!
The author remembers seeing a child take a piece of toast his mother had told him not to take from the breakfast table, and eating it with his eyes closed tightly. His mother asked him why his eyes were so tightly closed, and he said, “So you won’t see me eating the toast!” Children are not alone in such pretending about being alone and unseen.
Knowing how things really are permits us not only to utilize those truths of overarching significance, but also to test all mortal propositions thereby, lest we be victimized by fleeting time with its tempting tradeoffs. It is so easy to make the error of Esau, if we lose perspective under pressure. It is so easy to try to cling to things that will dissolve anyway, in a decade or sooner. The fine young man who had lived well, but who, Jesus said, lacked one thing, could not bring himself to sell all that he had and to give it to the poor; he traded a chance for discipleship for an inventory of perishables.
Time makes of the praise and honors of men so much cotton candy—it is sweet, but it melts in one’s mouth quickly. Yet how many have paid such a terrible price for that transitory taste. The problem with approaching life on the basis of “now” is that “now” is over even when one says the word.
If we do not cling to these eternal realities, time can be used to manipulate us, especially by Lucifer, the great exponent of “now.” He is also deft at manipulating us mortals by pushing one desire against another, like so many tumbling dominoes. He can use one man’s desire for business profits to feed another man’s alcoholism; a woman’s immodest dress to kindle lust in another man’s shaky marriage. Evil has it’s own ecology, its own interlocking arrangement of appetites. Hence it is so easy to be caught in the webbing of the world.
Instead, for instance, of having men understand who they really are and why they are really on this planet, the adversary will try to persuade all those whom he can that sin is either permissible or inevitable. Only if we give place for the gospel in our lives can we avoid giving up as the adversary advocates.
Satan is very apt at using any momentum he has in order to make it look as though he has already prevailed. No wonder obvious exceptions irritate him so! Though he postures as a nonconformist, my, how the adversary likes his lemmings to line up and march—towards self destruction—to the most conforming cadence caller of them all! ~Neal A. Maxwell, Things As They Really Are (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1978), 6-7
Continued. . . click ‘to see II’
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