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.