"Growth is the only evidence of life." ~John Henry Newman
I have been spending a good deal of time reading lately, and it feels like my mind is expanding and discovering truths that it's never grasped before. I know God has guided me to certain understandings, especially this past week. Through study of the scriptures, and curiously through a novel I was reading, he opened my mind and heart to comprehend better the ability for people to change and progress. It was profound and my description can't do it justice. But so often people are locked in the minds of others as essentially unchanging. But we are not built to remain in one state! The determined soul is capable of becoming whatever he sets his mind to become, most especially with the help of God and his grace, and often with the help of true friends. Repentance and forgiveness are tools to perfection, and gifts from a loving Father to his offspring.
Anyone with a lofty goal is bound to have failures and setbacks, but aren't those what make us stronger and better in the long run? Anyway that is just a little of what I feel about this concept, but it has really helped me to release and let go of worries and problems in the past, and helped me feel more apt to forgiveness. People can change. I believe almost everyone wants to be better. We must not hold them back by holding onto old images of who we think they are.
Each butterfly you see did not start out so beautiful.
"If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One last thought: Some of the most revered men of the scriptures made some awful decisions growing up. I try to think about this whenever I am tempted to doubt someone. Alma the younger and the sons of Mosiah sought to destroy the church...(Mosiah 27) and yet they became some of the greatest missionaries in history and changed the lives of thousands.
I'm not trying to be nit picky, but I'm very particular about this quote since it changed my life in 10th grade, especially after writing a paper on him:
ReplyDelete"If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."-Goethe
Another man from the scriptures that we've been talking about in my NT class is Paul. I mean, he was so against Christ, talked against him CONSTANTLY just as Alma the Younger did, trying the best he could to destroy the church, until Christ came to him personally and asked why he was fighting him. It's crazy to think about how much he changed; I mean, he became an apostle right after! Ah, the ability to change. It's wonderful, isn't it?