Humility requires a belief that others might have something to teach you. Whenever you dismiss someone out of hand, it is an evidence of your pride. Consider Moses, who in spite of dwelling in heaven for 40 days and parting the sea, humbly accepted advice from his father in law—who had had none of these experiences as far as we know (see Exodus 18:24). If salvation is a function of knowledge (and it is), and if correction from others is the primary mechanism for conveying light and truth (and it is), then how we respond to criticism is the key upon which salvation hinges.
There is no better example of a messenger who was rejected out of hand than Jesus. The Lord Jesus was the holiest man to ever walk the earth. He worked constant, obvious miracles. He unlocked mysteries and preached great wisdom. You would think that those who knew him best would most clearly recognize his divinity. They didn’t.
When he preached in his hometown, the people responded with derision, even while acknowledging his abnormal wisdom and miracles:
54 And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?
55 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13)
His own siblings rejected him—at least initially:
3 His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judæa, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.
4 For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.
5 For neither did his brethren believe in him. (John 7)
You would think that strangers who knew him only because his miracles and teachings brought him fame would recognize these abnormal acts as tokens of truth. They didn’t.
After he had fed 5,000 with miraculously-produced bread, the people murmured because he said he came from heaven:
And they said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven? (John 6:42)
These people had just eaten the bread that Jesus had produced miraculously, and still their first reaction to his claim of being from heaven was to doubt and get angry.
Interaction with a person with more light and truth than you will increase your awareness, revealing what was previously undistinguished in you. Because the natural man is an enemy to God, more often than not what they reveal in you is evil of which you were not previously aware. The Lord said: “The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil.” (John 7:7) A person whose eye is single to the glory of God will rejoice when someone corrects them. Most people, however, will recoil from light. The natural reaction to truth is anger. The devil makes you angry against that which is good (see 2 Nephi 28:20). The Lord taught about this interaction in clear terms:
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)
All of this serves as a strong caution. Our inclination is to recoil from greater light and truth, and to misjudge those who carry it to us.
Why do you think God had holy men wear weird clothes (or no clothes!), live in caves, and spend their time making strange object lesson signs (e.g. lying on their side for more than a year, publicly cooking their food on a fire made of feces, marrying a known prostitute, etc.)? Was it perhaps to make it blatantly obvious that because his ways are higher than our ways (see Isaiah 55:8-9), we should expect that these people’s ways would seem strange to us, instead of writing off what they teach when they are?
Well did Isaiah write: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) He correctly predicted that the Lord would be “despised and rejected of men” (Isaiah 53:3) and that “he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 52:2) If the greatest of all is despicable and without beauty to the natural man, how can we expect that lesser emissaries of truth will be desirable in any way?