*Stand Up*

I read an article this week by Elder Oaks called "Truth and Tolerance" from a talk he gave September 11, 2011. In this article he talks about what truth is and what tolerance is, and the balance of the two. We believe in absolute truth and in being willing to receive all truth, no matter the source. If it's true, it's true. We also believe in being tolerant to others and their beliefs. Being tolerant to others means being friendly and fair to different opinions and different people. We should be respectful of others, which can be difficult at times, but it is the right thing to do. We must learn to live with differences between people, because differences are real. We can't expect others to share every single one of our beliefs and to have all our same traditions, that would just be silly, and think about it, our world would be an incredibly dull place. However, while we should be tolerant of others, we can't use that as an excuse to stray from our beliefs. We must stand for what we know to be the absolute truth. Elder Oaks says,

     "Our tolerance and respect for others and their beliefs does not cause us to abandon our commitment to the truths we understand and the covenants we have made... We are cast as combatants in the war between truth and error.  There is no middle ground.  We must stand up for truth, even while we practice tolerance and respect for beliefs and ideas different from our own and for the people who hold them."

There is probably no harder thing than to stand up for what we know to be right, especially when the people around us are screaming for us to follow them in their ways. We can disagree politely and not make a huge deal out of the situation, but also not bend our principles. President Oaks quotes Gordon B. Hinckley in his talk, when he says,

     “Let us reach out to those in our community who are not of our faith.  Let us be good neighbors, kind and generous and gracious.  Let us be involved in good community causes.  There may be situations, there will be situations, where, with serious moral issues involved, we cannot bend on matters of principle.  But in such instances we can politely disagree without being disagreeable.  We can acknowledge the sincerity of those whose positions we cannot accept.  We can speak of principles rather than personalities.”

In my International Pakistan class, my teacher told me a story of a Christian boy who moved to college for his first semester. He was excited, but nervous to be moving to the unknown. After his first couple days in his dorm, some of his neighbors got all the boys living their together for an "initiation." The initiation, in order to be a "part" of the dorm, and to prove their manhood, they were supposed to take a smoke from a bong, then pass it on to the next person. The boy didn't want to, but in order to not make a scene, he quickly took one puff, then passed it on, choking. Life then continued, and he finished his first semester.

The next semester at the college, the boys in his dorm had the initiation ceremony once again. They began passing the bong around the circle of boys, and as it got closer and closer to this Christian boy, he made a decision. He decided once again not to make a scene, but this time instead of taking the smoke, he quickly and quietly passed it on to the next boy. Then the next boy quietly passed it on to the next boy without taking a puff. The next boy did the same thing. Miraculously, every single boy that followed the Christian boy passed the bong along without using it. Then the initiation was over, and the leaders of the ceremony didn't say a word.

This one Christian boy stood up for what he knew to be right. He didn't make a scene out of it, he didn't try to force his beliefs on others, he simply stood up for his beliefs quietly, and the other boys followed suit. I don't think we realize the respect that others will have for us when we do what is right, but we must make the decision today what we will decide in those situations. We can do it, and we will be glad when we do.