Standing for Truth
Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Sister Christine Gilbert: The next question we have been asked to address is how to stand for truth in a season of great confusion.
How many of you have text chains that you exchange with friends and family? Probably all of us, right? In one of my several text groups, there are some who are deeply committed to the gospel and others who struggle with issues around the Church. Does this sound familiar to any of you? What happens when someone you love says something you know isn’t true?
Elder Clark G. Gilbert: We have heard similar stories to this from young adults all across the Church. We know you feel this.
As we approach this topic, I note that we share the stand today with two ambassadors who model this and show us how you can stand both with kindness and conviction.
Elder and Sister Cook lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for much of their professional life. Elder Cook attended Stanford Law School, headed a law firm in the Bay Area and a major health care system. The Cooks worked and lived among many colleagues who didn’t always share their values. But they found ways to stand for truth while still being good friends and good neighbors. I saw this as I joined the Cooks in the Washington D.C. Temple open house with a group of prominent, national journalists and academic leaders. I marveled at how the Cooks articulately shared the truths of the gospel, including the importance of temple marriage, moral cleanliness, and keeping covenants, all while building bridges of understanding to other people.
I have had other opportunities to learn how to stand for truth with love. Last year, I received a call from President Oaks. He said, “Elder Gilbert, I’m speaking at an upcoming devotional, and I’d like you to be my companion speaker. Would you join me at my side from the podium as we speak together to address some of the challenging issues of the day?” He said we would discuss LGBTQ concerns, issues of race, and prophetic infallibility. He then suggested, “Let’s not speak from a script. Let’s just respond back and forth organically, interactively.” I quickly replied that “I’m sure this would work for his remarks, but for the sake of the entire Church, it might be better if we wrote out what I was going to say.”
In his remarks, President Oaks outlined five ways we can stand for truth with love.1
The first was to avoid overly contentious settings. As Elder Neil L. Andersen has taught, “There are times when being a peacemaker means that we resist the impulse to respond and instead, with dignity, remain quiet.”2
The second was to love others, to find common ground even when we disagree.
The third was to hold to truth, even in our outreach. There’s a temptation sometimes to walk away from what we know in our efforts to show love. We don’t have to deny what we know is true.
A fourth was be a light and a friend and service to others, and the last was to stay anchored in Jesus Christ.
Sister Gilbert: In this last general conference, Elder Cook spoke of the dilemma of standing for truth without giving in to the pressures of the world: “Peaceable followers of Christ do not [retreat from truth nor fail to love others]. We are warm, engaged members of the communities where we live. We [also] love, share, and invite all of God’s children to follow Christ’s teachings.”3
I think this is what President Nelson has been teaching us in his call for us to be peacemakers.4 He doesn’t want us to walk away from truth, but he does want us to do it with the love of the Savior.