In his commencement speech at BYU, Elder Ballard encouraged us to avoid being defensive in speaking about our beliefs.
“In our interactions with others are we expecting always to have to defend ourselves? If so, I think we need to make a course correction...It is inconsistent with where we are today as a Church and as a great body of followers of Jesus Christ.”
I know I can be defensive -- not so much when people ask questions. But if I think about Elder Ballard's remarks and define 'defense' as the opposite of 'offense', I tend to play defense when it comes to my spiritual life.
Here's just a small example.
Last Sunday, Neal Robison asked the question from the pulpit, "When your colleagues ask you what you did over the weekend, do you say I went to church, or talk about what you did that was church-related or do you instead talk about your large-scale gardening project, for example?"
I'll wager (if I did wager) that 4 out of 5 of us said the latter.
He then asked, "What if today after church when we write on Facebook (which he did do, btw) or tomorrow when we speak to work colleagues, or parents of our children's friends, etc. and they ask what we did this weekend, we say, "I had a great day at church -- there were some really inspiring talks [and I just love playing the piano for the young children]?"
We're pretty good at defense.
Shall we throw in a little offense?
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