Blindness

I had a long conversation with a man today. He was not a member of the Church, but had come with his daughter to attend our meetings.  One of the bishopric pointed him out to me as a potential investigator.  After the Gospel Essentials Class, I struck up a conversation with him. I learned that he is my age or sixty-five. From his blue eyes and fair complexion, I guessed that he was of European decent which he confirmed to be French, though he did not consider himself to be anything other than a Mexican. 

After talking to him for a while, it became very apparent that he had little interest in what I said in answer to his questions. He talked from a very worldly perspective about religion, saying that it was invented and that if there was a God he was the author of all the world’s religions from Buddhism to Muslim to Christianity. He considered Christ to be no more than a great philosopher and disbelieved the fact that he was the Son of God. Though much of his family had converted to the Church, he had no interest in reading the Book of Mormon or seeking any kind of ultimate truth. It was obvious that he was very content with his own perspective about our Father in Heaven. My testimony only caused him to reiterate points that he had already made. He did this many times in our discussion.

You need to understand that I never argued with the man nor strove to prove my points in an intellectual way. I very much wanted him to sense the truth and awaken his inner faculties, but he could not hear or understand the meaning of what I was offering him. We parted friendly, but with no meeting of spirits or minds. I had just witnessed free agency at work. I told him that we might have known each other in the preexistence and together looked forward to our short time on earth. We are of the same generation. He words reminded me of the philosophies I once used several decades ago until I found something so much better.