Ongofu - an LDS (Mormon) blog

I mentioned in my last post, the tribute paid to Gordon B. Hinckley by Glenn Beck.  While the tribute was genuine and touching, it was disconcerting to go look up the video on YouTube, and to read all the atrocious, false, uninformed, and appalling comments posted after the video. 

I fail to understand how so many people can be filled with such malice to take their time to berate and tear down the memory of someone so well loved (or anyone at all) -  particularly those who do it and call themselves Christian.  How do they reconcile that incongruity?  It’s a behavior so anti-Christian that the very act testifies against the speaker, confirming the lack of authenticity behind their belief, or at least how poorly they understand their religion.

You know a tree is good if it brings forth good fruit.  If a tree is bad, it will bring forth bad fruit.  They’re very actions condemn them.  That’s sad.

To those who find themselves caught up in such actions, I suggest you try to be a builder of things, and not a destroyer of things.  My father had a quote by Theodore Roosevelt framed and hanging on his office wall.  I memorized it early and reflect upon it often, and it has more appliance now than ever…

“It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbles, or how the doer of deeds might have done them better.  No, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat, and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again…  Who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Rusty