"A Life Founded in Light and Truth"

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Henry B. Eyring

...the enemy of righteousness also works in little steps--steps so small that they are hard to notice if you are thinking only about yourself and how great you are.  Just as truth is given to us line upon line and the light brightens slowly as we obey, even so, as we disobey, our testimony of truth lessens almost imperceptibly, little by little, and darkness descends so slowly that the proud may easily deny that anything is changing.

I have heard the boast of a man who walked away from the Church slowly.  At first he just stopped teaching his Sunday School class, then he stayed away from Church, and then he forgot to pay tithing now and then.  Along the way he would say to me:  "I feel just as spiritual as I did before I stopped those things and just as much at peace.  Besides, I enjoy Sundays more than I did.  It's more a day of rest." Or,  "I think I've been blessed temporally as much or more as I was when I was paying tithing." 

He could not sense the difference, but I could.  The light in his eyes and even the shine in his countenance was dimming.  He could not tell, since one of the effects of disobeying God seems to be the creation of just enough spiritual anesthetic to block any sensation as the ties to God are being cut.

Not only did the testimony of the truth slowly erode, but even the memories of what it was like to be in the light began to seem to him like a delusion.

(Excerpt from BYU Education Week Devotional Address, given by Henry B. Eyring, August 15, 2000)