Only by living His gospel can we find what is real

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Women's Session of the October 1990 Conference.

I've been thinking about how many things in this world we can't really know. There are so many voices claiming to have superior knowledge, superior information, superior reasoning or whatever. Just in the past week or so, I have encountered people who think they have a better idea of what the prophet should be saying to the church than the prophet does—people who think they know better than its current leaders what the government should do—even people who think they know what my own motivations are better than I do! Likely some of these people are even right in their assumptions (except those who think they know better than the prophet…pretty sure they are wrong)—but the point is that it's so confusing to know who is right and what is true! Suspicions and hints and accusations about conspiracies or sins or motivations are, by their very nature, impossible to check with any degree of accuracy—even if you had the time and energy to do the sort of checking they would require! Of course I believe bad things—secret combinations, even—can and do exist. And I don't believe in throwing up our hands and saying "No one can know anything." But I really liked the reminder in Sister Elaine L. Jack's talk:

The prophet Jacob said things as they “really are” and “really will be” are “manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.”

Sisters, how are these things manifest unto us? Plainly, through the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, through the example of our Savior’s life. Only by living His gospel can we find what is real. We can never accurately take the measure of our lives based on social, economic, ethnic, age, marital, or physical conditions. Ask yourself, are the comparisons you may make of yourself and others based on the model of the Savior’s life, or do they come from trying to fit your life into the pattern of others’ lives?

…No greater heroine lives in today’s world than the woman who is quietly doing her part.

She is talking here, decades before our social media age, of the dangers of comparison and the tendency to  idolize others and put our own efforts down. And I love that wisdom: that we need not compare with our peers and feel inadequate; that quietly doing our part is always enough. 

But I also love the reminder that knowing reality and truth in all parts of life comes not from obsessively researching—not from digging up articles that prove your point—not even from intensified efforts to self-analyze and get to know yourself—but from living the gospel of Jesus Christ! Serving others. Forgetting self. Obeying the prophet. Swallowing pride and avoiding contention. This is how we learn what matters and what is real! Anything else may lead us astray, but the sincere actions of living the gospel never will. And the reality we find there is also the only truth that has power "for the salvation of our souls!" What other truth could be more necessary? Surely the cost of living the gospel is worth such a great reward!

Other posts in this series:

Building up our Spirituality—by Jan Tolman