(January 11, 2015)
We in
the Church like to believe that there is a ‘righteous’ group (us, usually) and
a ‘wicked’ group. We like to believe
that, since we are part of the righteous group that we are destined for great
things and can count on the Lord to recognize our righteousness and reward us
accordingly. We likewise expect the Lord
to recognize the wickedness of those who we believe are wicked (our enemies, of
course) and punish them accordingly.
As a
brief transition, I keep (kept?) bees, and I would love to sit around and watch
them at work as they moved in and out of their hives. Of course I was utterly unable to tell one bee
from another, although I could tell one genetic strain from the other after a
while (each hive had a number of genetic strains).
Here is
the point that I want to make – our righteousness in comparison to the Savior
is a far greater gulf than my intellect in comparison to the bees. The bees were so far below me intellectually
that I was effectively incapable of telling one bee’s intellect from another’s.
The only thing I could tell were which
bees were placid and which bees wanted to chase me around the bee yard and try
to sting me.
In a
similar sense, though we might take pride in our righteousness (neglecting
basic awareness of the irony of this conceit) we are so far away from the Lord
in righteousness and the most wicked and most righteous are still close
together on the scale in comparison to Him. We take pleasure in being the “smartest bee in
the apiary” when we would be better off taking pleasure in being the bee that
the Lord could count on not to try and sting Him (metaphorically speaking).
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