The Lord needs valiant servants to do his work in the latter days . . . That's a line from a song in our church's children's songbook. Are we valiant servants?
When Satan is stirred up against that which is good, which he obviously is in our culture today, good people must be stirred up against that which is evil, as in being valiant. And yet what we see now is a lot of convenient silence.
We don't much stand or talk or preach against abortion anymore, even though unborn babies continue to be destroyed for no good reason. (There are seven abortion clinics in our state of Utah doing this evil work every day.) We don't dare mention traditional, natural gender roles, even though they are stated in our doctrine (The Family: A Proclamation to the World.) And we keep our mouths shut when it comes to homosexuality, even though it's wrong and harmful. All this because we've become conditioned, or we're afraid of offending somebody, or we think ourselves "enlightened."
The consequence of such behavior is obvious. When good men do nothing, evil triumphs. Of course we know that evil will triumph for a time. But in the eternal scheme of things, this doesn't matter. What will matter is if we were valiant servants of the Lord or not while we had the chance.
Chances to be valiant come often, in all kinds of ways. Parents, grandparents, teachers, leaders, citizens, public servants, all have opportunities to take an enthusiastic stand against these evils. Leaders especially seem to be in the hot seat because of their responsibility to make sure important and true (as opposed to false, vain, and foolish) principles are presented and followed. We are told that even those who are humble followers of Christ can go astray because their leaders teach them the precepts of men (2 Nephi 28).
It might be a good idea to think about what kind of person is the opposite of valiant. How about complacent, cowardly, afraid, shallow, hypocritical, selfish, blind, prideful, silly, ignorant, lazy?
Actually, the Lord doesn't need us at all. We're the ones who need him, his forgiveness, his redemption, and his Spirit to inspire and guide us, to make us valiant servants in our own stumbling way for the sake of our own eternal souls. Since none of us are perfect, it's safe to say we all have room for improvement.
Does anyone doubt that we will be judged according to how valiant we were in these crazy times?
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