Jeremiah 44

(February 5, 2015)

                One rather frightening part of our pathway to return with God is our human capacity to derive the wrong lessons from the events of our lives.  Here we have the Israelites deciding that when they were sacrificing to the queen of heaven, things were going well for them.  It was only once they stopped sacrificing to the queen of heaven that things went downhill.

                This is a remarkably difficult logical position to be in, and it has the capacity to trap each of us if we are not careful.  On the one hand, anecdotal evidence is truly necessary in acquiring an understanding of the world in which we live (after all, the Lord is teach each of us through our experiences, and our individual educations will be unique).  On the other hand, if we allow our sins to teach us Satan can corrupt that process and lead us astray binding our minds so tightly to false propositions that we find ourselves having a great deal of difficulty escaping them.

                The secret, as with most things, is humility.  We need to be ready and willing to accept whatever lesson the Lord has ready to teach us, but if we come to a conclusion as to what that lesson is that was wrong we have to be willing to let that go and allow the Lord to better instruct us.  Much like President Packer’s talk on Candle of the Lord, if we draw the wrong lesson the Lord will gently instruct us where we went wrong.  If we honestly drawn the wrong lesson, but remain humble enough to change what we have learned at the prompting of the Lord, He can then guide us back where He wants us.  If, instead, we allow ourselves to harden in the pride of our righteousness we enter dangerous ground where we become attached to our false ideas – perhaps ideas merely correlated in time or perhaps ideas deliberately used to mislead us by our adversary.