[A] mistake commonly made is that we play to the mortal galleries! We listen too much to the wrong peers... There is what I call the mystic “they,” who for some people become ascendant. In terms of the choices they make, they want to please the mystic “they.” We see this politically, in the corporate world, in academic life, and so on. Some people are so anxious, therefore, to be politically correct and to conform to the fashions of the world! What is worse, however, is when we see members of the Church try to conform eternal truths to the ways and thinking of the world, so that somehow they think they would please the world if they were so to do, but it won’t work! As Paul warned, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). For us to try to please the world is a terrible mistake-by twisting and conforming things that won’t fit in the secular matrix. Now these mistakes...keep us from fully applying the Atonement to our lives. They are not worthy of Jesus and what He accomplished in Gethsemane and on Calvary!
Neal A. Maxwell
