Becoming

“I was not making much progress at all.  The problem did not lie in my objectives.  My objectives were lofty—never stooping to dishonesty, not compromising my principles, standing forward to defend the right and make corrections when things didn’t go as they should....

“The problem was that pursuing these objectives was a project too much in behalf of myself.  ...My worries about myself [and my progress] led me to slight others or use them for my purposes...

“How then shall we come unto Christ so that everything will be different from what it could possibly be otherwise?

“By sacrificing all taking of offense.
By giving up criticism, impatience and contempt, for they accuse the sisters and bothers for whom Christ died.
By forswearing vulgarity and pornography which diminish both the user and the used.
By putting aside, in short, every practice that bears the image of murder, obliteration of souls, discord, and death.
By giving these practices their true name, violence, and abhorring even their first appearance.
By renouncing war in every form and proclaiming peace. (Doc. & Cov. 98:16)

“... in the long term, and often in the short one, people respond more energetically, think more clearly, work more joyfully, and build more wisely when they put one another ahead of self;

“when they welcome the interruption brought on by another person’s need;
when they do their work in ways that enhance each other’s work;
when the forget about getting credit [from God or man or self];
when they renouce in their hearts all sense of belonging to an elite company, even a company of the brightest or best trained or the most doctrinally pure;
when they reach out to and embrace those who are violating all of those principles.

“I am here this day because of those who treated me graciously in spite of my frequently making things worse by trying aggressively to make them better when patience would have been much the wisest way.”

C. Terry Warner, “Honest, Simple, Solid, True”