2.280 Others... Would Not Turn and Revile Again

In Matthew 5:13, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth, a bold reminder that our lives are meant to carry his flavor, his truth, and his love to the world. Join me each day to explore one verse of scripture and one thought, striving to stay full of savor and truly live as savory salt. Hello, my friends.

It's great to have you with me. Today, let's be anxiously engaged in a good cause and bring to pass much righteousness. If Mormon could truly see our day, and if he could possibly have glimpsed our online interactions with each other, what would he maybe have written about in the Book of Mormon?

We're reading this week Doctrine and Covenants sections 111 through 114. And we started yesterday. I want to continue that thought and I want to do so inside of the Book of Mormon a little bit.

I want to make sure that as I share these ideas, please remember, as always, that really this is Allen holding a mirror up for himself and talking into a microphone. And so as I share these thoughts and ideas with you, these are the things going through my mind about how I, Allen Roberts, can improve my own savor in the world. And I appreciate you coming along the ride and listening.

But as I share these ideas about how to be better and how to improve, please understand they come from the seat of me thinking about what I can do to improve. So let's take a look inside of our Book of Mormon side of things for this week, 3 Nephi chapter 6. We see inside of here, and last season I actually shared this verse so I won't do it today, but we see inside of here in chapter 6, verse 5 that the people are so prosperous that the only thing that is going to stop their prosperity is transgression.

Now there's like a dun-dun-dun moment, right? Like, and the only thing that could make it bad. Now the fascinating thing is within, from verse 5, within about, say, 8 or 9 verses here, we're going to cover 2 or 3 years.

And we're going to see from verse 5 to verse 14, the entire church is going to be torn apart. It will be broken up and there will be a very few amount of believers left. What in the world happened?

Now I'm going to let you read through all of the verses there, but the one that I've chosen to look at today is verse 13. This is only a fraction of it, but I couldn't help but look at it and think, my goodness, did Mormon and Moroni actually see the way that we talk to each other in some cases? It says this in 3 Nephi 6, verse 13. "Some did return railing for railing while others would receive railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions and would not turn and revile again but were humble and penitent before the Lord." Now did you catch the phrase in there that perhaps we wouldn't use this terminology when talking about social media interactions or online conversations?

And yet it did make me pause. There were some that did return railing for railing. My friends, I know there have been times in my life where I absolutely am going to argue.

I'm going to return. I'm going to get my message across and I'm going to be right. And then there's been other times in my life where I've let it go.

And one of the times that stood out to me was on my mission. It was very common on my mission to be yelled at, called names. And one particular day, one specific day I can think of, I may have shared this before, but it's been a long time.

We had a group of guys that we walked through, kind of off to the side, I should say, but they were, you know, heavily, heavily drunken. I'm going to read a passage from the book of Alma, and I thought, you know, today I had just a little bit of a window of what that was like. My friends, I don't know that the Lord says that our job is to return railing for railing with every argument that could possibly be thrown our way.

I don't think when people are slinging mud that the answer for us as saints is to sling more mud back. And that is certainly an example of what I see in today's world online in whatever platform. Pick your platform.

I'm not even talking specifically about one platform. Perhaps there's something for us to look at inside of here and say, you know, do I return railing for railing or do I receive the railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions and not revile again? Do I seek to humble myself and be penitent before the Lord?

That's absolutely one that's got me thinking about my own online interactions, my own conversations with friends, family, strangers, whoever it may be. I hope that I can be an example of the Lord Jesus Christ and a light in all of my interactions, rather than one who's known as a guy that simply returns railing for railing. It's worth thinking and spending some time on what you look like, sound like, and come across in your daily interactions as well.

I know it's given me pause to think about that and I hope that Mormon and Moroni were writing a few of these scriptures and saying, 'Hey, Allen, you could probably read a little bit more into that.' Luckily for all of us, the Lord has given us repentance through the atonement of Jesus Christ. That's all for today, my friends. Lift up your hearts and rejoice. Cleave unto the covenants you have made and together we will be savory salt.