Unbelief
It would be silly to ask someone if they wanted to go to heaven. The almost universal answer would be yes. This excitement would die down if, attached to that question, were an accurate description of the path. It has been said that everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. Getting to heaven takes far more than dying, of course, but the point remains: we tend to make an artificial separation between the outcomes we seek and the path to obtain them.
Because of the leveled nature of truth, everyone—no matter who they are—faces limitations in their present awareness. These limitations manifest as problems. Pain and uncertainty are symptoms of the limitations of a given level of truth, and though the specifics change at each level of truth, there are always limitations at each level.
Every person seems to desire to have these limitations alleviated. No one likes to experience the gut-wrenching emotional crash of seeing one of your core beliefs inarguably disproven. No one likes to see something or someone they’ve relied upon for comfort fail them. No one likes to experience the fear that comes when you have no idea what comes next, or the realization that everything you thought was solid suddenly isn’t.
And yet, there is a palpable disconnect between cause and effect. Like treating symptoms instead of the disease, we endure unfruitful situations for far longer than is needful.
Seek to change causes, not consequences. Seeking to understand the cause of the undesirable outcomes is the key to changing the outcomes.
There are two types of situations: first, situations in which you know the cause of the undesirable outcomes, but you choose to ignore it, and second, situations in which you are unaware of the cause of the undesirable outcomes. Perhaps surprisingly, both situations are a result of a lack of faith.
In the first situation, you know what is ailing you, but you ignore the changes you know you need to make. This is loving a lie, and is discussed in Part I.
In the second situation, it is less obvious that you are struggling from a lack of faith. The failure here is that you haven’t translated undesirable outcomes into a search for the cause—a search that is one and the same as the search for an expanded awareness. Whenever you experience an undesirable situation, your first question ought to be how you can acquire further light and truth to reveal the cause and cure of these symptoms. It doesn’t matter what the situation is—your dog dying, a prognosis of cancer, losing your job, losing your temper, or not having enough money for bills. 178
Anytime you experience an unfavorable situation, interpret it as an invitation from God for further light and truth.
Making this connection is critical, because it opens your mind to the possibility that the answer to your search may be found around you. You will start asking questions, which triggers the expansion of your awareness. You will also pay more attention to those around you (literally or figuratively through, for instance, the internet). You will realize that you are not that special. If you have a problem, chances are that there are and have been many others with the same problem. Odds are that at least one of those other people had or has more light than you on the issue, and thanks to our technological advantages, you can probably find their solution in far less time than it took them to figure it out. Through leveraging the light of others in this way, you can obtain solutions to far more problems in far less time than imaginable for almost all humans ever born on this planet!
So why haven’t you? Because light and truth doesn’t come shrinkwrapped, clearly labeled, and with a bow. Yes, sometimes there are attractive sources of further light and truth. But most times, it seems more like needing to drink from a car radiator when you are out of water than it does pulling a bottle of Fijian spring water out of an icebox. Truth is like a cashew nut—most people are allergic to the packaging, and only those who learn how to get around that can enjoy the prize.
In this case, it isn’t just the fact that the solution to your problems lies in accepting truth from other people—people who probably offend you. The bigger struggle is probably that it is very hard for you to recognize and believe that what they are saying is connected in any way to your problem. Recognition and belief are two different problems.
The problem of recognition is huge. It is so often the case that God sends the solution to the very problem someone is struggling with, and the recipient never even seems to notice, even if it is offered explicitly as the solution to their problem. We seem to have a strong disposition to disbelieve that our surroundings are connected to our problems, both in terms of noticing the causes and in noticing the solutions. For example, suppose you are struggling with money. Chances are that you know many people who are not. Have you spoken to any of them about what they would do in your situation? If not, how much effort have you expended in dealing with the consequences of your lack of money? How much effort have you expended complaining about your situation? You can substitute practically any problem for this one, and the fact remains that the vast majority of people do not make use of the resources they have to find solutions to the things that bother them. And this is, 100%, a problem of faith.
The problem of belief is huge. A willingness to believe must precede any test of a new principle. Another way of putting this is that you will never know the truth of anything you aren’t first willing to believe. You will never be limited in your progress from believing too much. Remember, the belief scale (dogmatic to open-minded) is independent from the discernment scale (undiscerning to discerning). You can never believe too much, but you can test too little.
Belief really comes down to this question: Are you hungry enough for a solution to your problem to consider anything and everything that has any hope of solving it? For most people, the devil they know (their problem) is preferable to the devil they don’t (a potential solution). A willingness to believe that there is something better available is called humility. The secret to acquiring massive amounts of truth is developing such a willingness to believe that you do not need to experience massive discomfort in order to hunger and thirst for better ways:
13 And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved.
14 And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?
15 Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.
16 Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe. (Alma 32)
Humility is intricately connected to faith. Faith is a willingness to act on a putative truth. Humility empowers faith because it determines how many times you will try and how much you are willing to try. Some putative truths take only a little humility to be willing to test. If you were told that a $100 bill is in your left pocket, you’d probably check, even if you thought the chances were low. Some putative truths take a massive amount of humility to be willing to test. If you were told a $100 bill would will appear if you went into a public place and quacked like a duck as loud as you can, you probably would pass.
We all start out with massive humility and faith by virtue of being children. Why do children have so much of both? Because they are woefully ignorant of the world, and everything they do shows them this. They do not know what causes generate what effects, because they pay attention to surprises. They have to try to walk and fail perhaps a thousand times before they take their first step. And it is like that with everything. How are we different than children? We think we know everything—not because we are necessarily more successful in linking cause and effect—but because we have developed the ability to ignore our ignorance. We also have developed a strong unwillingness to keep trying when our initial tests fail.
It has been said that the successful don’t succeed more often than others, they try more often than others. They fail faster and more often than those who are less successful. The same holds true in seeking truth. If you recognize putative truths around you as potential solutions to your problems and believe enough to try them out, you will fail in your tests much more often than those who don’t. But you get to keep everything that proves true, and you will accumulate much more truth than those who don’t believe solutions to their problems exist, and don’t believe enough to try them out.
This process need not involve another person, but more often than not, it does. It typically requires someone else who has walked the way to help us see the path. It takes humility to believe that another person may hold the solution to your problem, and it takes faith to test the putative new truth. There will be many propositions that do not solve the problem, but you have to have belief to recognize a potential link to the problem and to test the solution.
How we react to people with greater truth
It has been said that everyone you meet can teach you something. The pinnacle of humility is to both believe that everything you believe is incorrect or incomplete, and that everyone you meet can give you something better. Few reach this ideal, but it can be somewhat shocking to honestly evaluate where you stand on this continuum.
It is essential to cultivate the correct response to those God puts in our path who possess some piece of truth that we lack. God uses people to distribute truth. All who refuse to receive truth in this way permanently cut themselves off from higher light and truth. Having a correct notion of how you really react can help you in detecting and correcting your natural reaction to higher truth, giving you a better chance of detecting and accepting it.
People like to imagine that, were they to meet someone with more light and truth, they would immediately see the value in what they were teaching and would rejoice in the experience. Our imagined response to someone with greater truth is just that—imaginary. It isn’t realistic.
It is the tendency of every person to reject greater light. Normal people will react to people with greater truth by wishing they would just shut up. They wish they didn’t have more truth. They prefer praise to correction. They would rather have people with more truth be satisfied with them rather than reveal that they could be better. They love the fruits of greater truth, but hate the means of getting them. They love the bread that Jesus miraculously creates, but despise his wisdom that generated it, and how it collides with their perspectives. They are not willing to suffer for the truth, and they are proud.
Truth seekers will seek to do God’s will and will rejoice at anything that progresses their understanding of God’s will. They love the wisdom of Jesus more than the loaves it can miraculously produce, because their trust is in God’s love and knowledge, and because they appreciate the spiritual more than the carnal. They are willing to suffer for the truth, and they are humble.
It has been said that “all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes.” (Proverbs 16:2) Perhaps because people also like to imagine that whatever they are doing is right, they assume that if they were to meet someone with much more light, that person’s message would reinforce their current beliefs (even though this has never ever been the case in scripture):
27 But behold, if a man shall come among you and shall say: Do this, and there is no iniquity; do that and ye shall not suffer; yea, he will say: Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a prophet.
28 Yea, ye will lift him up, and ye will give unto him of your substance; ye will give unto him of your gold, and of your silver, and ye will clothe him with costly apparel; and because he speaketh flattering words unto you, and he saith that all is well, then ye will not find fault with him.
29 O ye wicked and ye perverse generation; ye hardened and ye stiffnecked people, how long will ye suppose that the Lord will suffer you? Yea, how long will ye suffer yourselves to be led by foolish and blind guides? Yea, how long will ye choose darkness rather than light? (Helaman 13)
Were you to meet someone with more light and truth than you, their message would not be that all is well. Instead, they would instantly focus on the parts of your belief that most need upgrading, and you would hate every minute of it:
...if a prophet come among you and declareth unto you the word of the Lord, which testifieth of your sins and iniquities, ye are angry with him, and cast him out and seek all manner of ways to destroy him; yea, you will say that he is a false prophet, and that he is a sinner, and of the devil, because he testifieth that your deeds are evil. (Helaman 13:26)
How do most people react to those with greater truth? Do they rejoice at the opportunity to gain further light and truth at a dramatic discount paid for by the suffering of the truth holder? Do they get excited to let go of false traditions and embrace more accurate realities? They don’t. They get angry. They reject the person, and sometimes they try to kill him.
There are three reactions to the presentation of further light and truth. The most likely are anger, envy, and enmity: anger that anyone would dare contradict your beliefs; envy that they know these things and you don’t; enmity in seeing this person as your enemy instead of someone who is loving you by attempting to help you when they know it will most likely make you hate them. Some few will pay lip service to the teaching, admitting it is right, but only giving an obligatory response driven by a sense of duty. It is rare and unlikely that anyone will respond ideally, delighting at the teaching, absorbing it, and owning it. This response requires greater trust in God than trust in self. It comes when you genuinely believe that God loves you and that he knows everything. This belief will cause the holder to also believe that anything they believe is incorrect or incomplete, and that any new truth will lead to a far better experience than they previously had.
Joshua, Elisha, John, and few others have had a chance to really get to know someone who was vastly closer to the Father than they were. Why was it only a few? While it is obvious that men like Moses, Elijah, and the Son of God are few, what is less clear is why the thousands of other people that could have known them well did not. Because normal people hate men of God. They do not recognize what they believe as good. They do not see the light in these people, and they write them off as evil. This is because the vast majority of people never learn how to evaluate truth. Instead of judging it by its works, and thereby learning to recognize what generated those works as good, they focus only on how it compares to what they already know. They are damned by the literal definition of the word—eternally limited to the light they already have. These people vastly underestimate how much better God is than they are, and in doing so completely miss the obvious signs provided them of the divine source of what they see. This is why men of God end up living in caves rather than palaces. This is why their followers are few. This is why they are sawn in half and crucified upside down.
You think you would recognize someone who had vastly more light than you do. You wouldn’t. You think you would want to spend as much time as possible with such a person. You wouldn’t. You think you’d savor the drops of wisdom that would come from them like candy. You wouldn’t.
If you were like the vast majority of people, what would you do? You would assume that you knew about as much as they did, already, in spite of the vast differences in your lives. You would assume that they teach everything they know. You would assume what little you observe in them to be all there is to observe. You would fill in all the blanks in what you see with your own qualities, projecting upon them all of your own sins, assuming that the reason they do what they do is the same reason you would do what they do. You would find what they say to be incredibly offensive, because it would show you more clearly than you had ever supposed how you are less holy than you thought and how much of your suffering is in fact your own fault. Instead of attempting to enter into open-minded discussion with this person, to probe the depths of your and their understanding with the assumption that, either way, you will learn something, you will oversimplify their position and write them off in an attempt to shut them up. Then, when they quickly overcome you with reason, you will avoid any other interaction. You would avoid this person like the plague, and you would tear apart their reputation every chance you have. Depending on how much light they have compared to you, your hatred of them may be so extreme that you would try to kill them.
What is your rock?
What is your motive in searching for truth? Your motive will dictate your reaction to greater light and truth.
Some use their beliefs as a way to feel superior to others. They respond with envy to those who have greater light and truth than they do. They will be cut off from more light until they realize that without the light, they are nothing:
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (John 15)
Some use their beliefs as a way to cover their known inadequacies. They respond with deflection and defensiveness to those who have greater light and truth. They will be cut off from more light until they realize that light is always more valuable than darkness:
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. (John 3)
Some use their beliefs as false security to defend them from change. They respond with anger and emotion to those who have greater light and truth. They will be cut off from more light until they realize that the only sure foundation is truth, and truth is never final: “truth abideth and hath no end.” (D&C 88:66)
Your interactions with truth will try your foundation to see what it is built of: “Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.” (1 Corinthians 3:13)
If your motives are sandy, they will collapse in the storm. If your motives are sandy, they will collapse in the storm. If they are built on the one and only rock, they will endure and in fact cause you to rejoice at any chance to gain further light and truth:
And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall. (Helaman 5:12)
Rather than be offended by the idea that some people possess more light and truth than you do, you should rejoice and thank God. It means you will have the chance to receive the fruits of work orders of magnitude beyond what you were willing to do.
The Lord said “For of him unto whom much is given much is required.” (D&C 82:3) Those who possess more light and truth are expected to do more with it than those who have less. There are many who will find themselves in interactions with others where they possess more light and truth on some subject. If you truly believe that everyone is the same, why would you bother exerting the effort—let alone enduring the suffering that almost always accompanies such effort—in trying to help that other person adopt some of the light and truth you have acquired?
The value of light bearers
Paul taught:
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!
16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10)
In this passage, Paul highlights that while God is the source of truth, because of our limited awareness, we typically require a third party to help catalyze our recognition of further light and truth.
All truth comes from God. While it is more commonly the case that the light inside of us teaches us in response to the teaching of others, we can also obtain light and truth directly from him.
An analogy will help illustrate the relationship between finding truth directly from God and finding truth with the help of another person. When you look at the sun with your naked eye, you see an orb of light so intense that you can’t make out an exact shape or any details. You can’t look for very long because of the pain it induces. Because you can’t stare at the sun, you have to sense it indirectly: through ambient light, through heat that you feel on your skin, and through its effects on other objects. The sun actually has a tremendous amount of detail to it. We can't see it with our eyes because there is so much light flowing from it that it overloads our sight. In order to see it, you have to filter out a great deal of the light coming from it. Light bearers act like a wavelength filter through which we can see previously unbearable details of the sun. It is not a complete picture, but it is a marked advancement over what we previously had.
God's light and truth flows in and through all things, even those things that do not recognize him. The light shines at full blast, but we don’t comprehend or perceive it. What lies outside of our awareness is necessarily unknown to us. Those who have a greater awareness can help us obtain the same in ways that are much faster and forgiving than our direct attempts. The role of light bearers is to reduce God’s glory to something much easier to digest—a small chunk—and distribute it to the masses, in hopes that they can develop the capacity to recognize, comprehend, and endure God's glory directly.
While obtaining light directly from God is ideal, it is also the most difficult way. There are two benefits to obtaining truth from others. First, it is faster. Second, it is more forgiving.
The intercession of others makes truth available to you beyond what your own heed and diligence merits. God went through a lot of effort to make sure that there were noble and great ones sent to earth in order to make truth available beyond what an individual could get on their own (see, for example, Alma 13). An analogy is found in the relationship between established trees and new trees. The new trees have shallow roots, and the rain ensures that nutrients are washed deep into the soil. The established trees help the new trees grow to their stature by pulling the deep nutrients up from the earth and distributing them on the topsoil through shedding their leaves. This is how those with greater light and truth make these things available to those with less light and truth. People who possess more light and truth than most are rare but can provide access to light and truth that would take most people many lifetimes to acquire.
The pattern throughout scripture is that a human obtains light and truth, then shares it with others. For example, the apostle John taught others what he had learned from the Lord directly, giving a reason for them to believe it could be true: “We know this is true, because it was told by someone who saw it happen. Now you can have faith too.” (John 19:35, CEV)
The Lord uses those with greater light to help those with less light, because without them, those with less light would not have the means to obtain sufficient information to progress:
And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of men may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which he hath made unto the children of men. (Moroni 7:32)
Every step along our truth progression is like a ladder. The rungs of the ladder are composed of ever-increasing light. Some of these rungs come through people who possess the light we lack. You never know if the people you meet every day might be the source of the next packet of light in your progression. When you come across someone who might have more light, you investigate what they do and why they do it. You sift through what they have to offer, and test the things that pass the bar of what might be true. You assimilate what passes your tests, and then you move on. Every time you have sifted through a person’s light, and applied all they have to offer, you can return to God and say, “Lord, I have been true and faithful to everything you have given me. Give me further light and knowledge.” Then, he will send you someone else.
As a truth seeker, you are like a gold miner. You might discover a very rich seam of gold on your own in a virgin landscape. Odds are that you will not be as successful as those who have gone before you and have discovered, mined, and sorted tons of gold. The difference between light and gold is that light does not diminish with sharing. Imagine two people mining gold. They can’t share their gold without giving it away. Light and truth is also mined, but sharing it does not diminish it. Now, imagine one person, through their prolonged obedience to God and well-developed desire, has the equivalent of modern machinery in their mining operation, while you have the equivalent of a pick axe.
By paying attention to the light and truth obtained by that other person, you can gain all the benefits of having built up a modern operation without having expended any of the time and capital they required to get there. By perceiving the light in others, you can launch ahead in light and truth far beyond what you could on your own in the same amount of time. By finding human sources of light, one can acquire, evaluate, and integrate several lifetime's worth of light in much less than a lifetime.
Here we must make a note to say that salvation is not as easy as finding and mining light bearers. While the existence of those with greater light and truth is a tremendous blessing, it is a situation that must be navigated with care. It is rare that anyone interacts appropriately with this resource. When it comes to obtaining light and truth through others, we tend to do one of two things: we either set this person up as a guru, or we reject them out of hand.
Your objective is not to fixate on them, but to investigate and test their model. Acquire what is valid, and find the cracks in what is not. Eventually, you will rise to their level, and if you continue to hunger and thirst after more truth, you will overtake them, as the quantity of light that you obtain is determined by your “heed and diligence,” or effort in acquiring and assimilating it.
What does it mean to surpass them? You will have answers to questions they do not know the answers to, and you will have stronger answers than they do (answers that stand up to stronger criticism). These people are like landmarks. On a flat plane, you can only see so far. But you can see landmarks closer to you that you imagine are in line with your ultimate goal. As you walk towards those landmarks, you might be able to figure a more accurate bearing to your ultimate goal.
Light bearers are all around you to a greater extent than any other time in the history of the world thanks to modern technology. The internet gives us access to the entire population of holy men on the earth just as soon as we are ready to search for and hear them. What are you doing with this advantage? Are you screening more putative truth and obtaining more tested truth than prior generations? How much time and effort do you spend reading books and watching videos from great (whether popular or not) minds, testing their principles against what the Spirit tells you? Remember that when much is given, much is expected. You should ask yourself why God has made it easier for our generation than any previous generation to obtain more light, and ask what he expects you to do with it.
Be careful criticizing others
Here is a law of human nature: People project their motives onto everyone else around them, whether they are evil or not. In a parable, Jesus spoke the cryptic phrase: “Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” (Matthew 20:15) What he was referring to was the fact that people assume that the actions of others are motivated by the same motives by which they are actuated. A dishonest person assumes everyone is dishonest with them. A liar assumes everyone else is lying. A drunk assumes that everyone who drinks does so because they are addicted. A person who lusts after others assumes everyone else does, too. A person who has tried but failed to be selfless assumes anyone who claims to be selfless is lying. A person who thinks they are pious will venomously attack a person who demonstrates objectively greater piety. Those who are good, on the other hand, will project their good motives onto others. They will consistently be taken advantage of and negatively surprised by the evil in the hearts of men, when their assumptions prove poor. Inspecting your assumptions of the motives of others is one of the best ways to see what we typically can’t see about ourselves.
This brings to mind the story of a father and his confused son. A father notices his two-year-old son has begun tearing up books when left unattended. The father reprimands the child with increasing force with each repetition of the book ripping commensurate with the son’s presumed understanding that it is wrong to tear up books. One evening, as the father is concluding his first venture into a new book, he searches for some piece of paper to mark his place. Seeing a scrap, he reaches for it and tears a section off. The son runs over to the father, wide eyed, and says “Daddy broke it! Book!” In the son’s eyes, the father has just broken his own commandment not to rip up books. The father does not feel in the least bit hypocritical, knowing that the scrap piece of paper was already headed for the trash bin, and that it was not related to the bound papers making up the book. Considering it a simple thing to understand, he tries to explain it to his son. “This is just a piece of paper. Daddy didn’t break the book.” “Daddy naughty! Book broke!” No matter what the father tries, the son just doesn’t understand. Whether it is caused by a limited capacity to understand or simply a lack of teaching is irrelevant. The son simply cannot not see his father’s righteous actions as anything but naughty.
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he taught that we need to remove the beam in our eye before removing the speck in another’s eye. It is interesting that he used the word “eye,” which means awareness. Many times, what we most hate in another is actually what it makes us see in ourselves.
Our tendency to project our awareness onto others is one reason why we should exercise extreme caution when we judge others.
Isaiah described that the Messiah would have “no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2) He would be “despised” and without esteem (see Isaiah 53:3). He would be considered “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)
During his mortal ministry, the Lord Jesus received criticism from the Pharisees because he and his disciples did not fast. The Pharisees expected him to follow their understanding of what God expected, but the Lord was following a higher set of instructions. Similarly, he lamented how the Pharisees criticized John for not drinking, and Jesus for drinking (see Matthew 11:18-19).
One such example of this is found when the Pharisees pointed out to Jesus that his disciples were breaking the law of Moses by eating the wheat as they walked through the field on the Sabbath. The Lord provided a higher order set of truth:
3 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him;
4 How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?
6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.
7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
8 For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day. (Matthew 12)
Note the Lord’s comment: “if ye had known what this meaneth...ye would not have condemned the guiltless.” It is too easy for us to condemn those who may know more than we do.
While no one will have as much light as the Lord does, the pattern still holds at lesser levels of light.
It is quite dangerous to criticize other people. Since it isn’t easy to tell who has more light than you on a topic, you should always approach any difference in viewpoint carefully. In seeking to correct, you may actually find someone who knows more about something than you!
Because truth is many-dimensional, it is difficult if not impossible to produce an absolute ranking of people in terms of light and truth (though God can and does do this, see Abraham 3:19). For a simple example, consider that one person might be less patient than you, but you might be more willing to give to the poor. It turns out that where someone is in terms of truth is a complicated question, because that progress would need to be measured across every dimension. Luckily, we need not worry about that because our concern is in identifying specific truths along a specific dimension to recognize either an opportunity to impart to others, or acquire for ourselves, something more advanced.
How rare is the narrow path?
Light and truth are all around us. Why, then, is it so rare to find someone who possesses a great deal of it?
There are so few people with advanced light and truth because the people who are willing to exert the astronomical effort required to obtain advanced light and truth are rare. Most people settle for the light and truth they casually encounter. This is like collecting only the gold that you happen to find in large nuggets laying on the surface as you walk by on your way to work. Like gold ore, the vast majority of truth is not found lying on the surface in big nuggets, but is found distributed in hard to reach places in small quantities.
How rare is gold? It currently takes up to 100 tons of rock to mine one ounce of gold. That is hard to visualize. To put this into perspective, at this ratio, you would have to dig out enough rock to fill a very large living room floor to ceiling to get a coin roughly the volume of two quarters. Truth is also rare, strictly defined as “not found in dense abundance.” Truth may be all around us, but it requires extraction and processing. Like gold ore, it is encased in and distributed among ideas of far less worth.
Like the effort to acquire gold, the effort required to acquire truth increases exponentially compared to the amount you acquire. The exponential curve looks somewhat like the letter J. It takes much more effort to obtain a little more truth.
With gold mining, there comes a point where the cost to extract the metal exceeds the value of the metal extracted. The holes are too deep and the quantity of gold per ton of rock too low to justify the cost. With light and truth, the only limit is a person's willingness to suffer for others, because the value of light and truth is what you can give to another person. It is one's faith in the eternal worth of a soul’s unlimited potential for progression that determines how deep the mining will go, and what level of suffering is to be endured. Why do so few have great quantities of light? Because so few have true unconditional love for mankind, and because unlimited trust in God is so rare.
To sum up, people who possess vast amounts of light and truth are as rare as the amount of faith required to exert the enormous amount of effort and suffering required to obtain those vast amounts of light and truth. How rare are these people? There is no way of telling. But, if the proportion of gold to non-gold in the earth’s crust is the same as spiritually-advanced people to normal people, there would be about seven of them on the earth today.
Is this an absurd estimate? A spiritually-advanced person would not be living in obscurity, but would be under an incredible weight to do all they could to share their light and truth with all the people they could. Given the internet and other modern conveyances of information, these people would surely be producing materials that would be well-known. How many people do you know who are demonstrating all the fruits of the gospel of Christ and publicly revealing truths that have never been revealed since the foundation of the world? We can also analyze the scriptures for examples of the likelihood of spiritually-advanced people. Although technological limitations made it more difficult to spread information, we see people like Paul and Nephi who were able to preach the gospel face-to-face in every known land within much less than a lifetime. If people like this were teaching, the odds of their teachings making it into scripture are relatively high. And, out of the billions of people who have lived since Adam, how many have their teachings or stories recorded in scripture?
People with vast amounts of truth exist, but they are very rare. These people are reconciled to everything they have, and continue in that path for decades:
And now it came to pass that according to our record, and we know our record to be true, for behold, it was a just man who did keep the record—for he truly did many miracles in the name of Jesus; and there was not any man who could do a miracle in the name of Jesus save he were cleansed every whit from his iniquity— (3 Nephi 8:1)
The purpose of these truth bearers is not to be a light in the place of God. Instead, it is to provide you with more light and truth than you have merited by your efforts, through their suffering and condescension, in hopes that you will repent and take up the duty of mining truth directly from God. Also, they can rocket you ahead in the amount of awareness you have, since life provides us only with a finite amount of time.