Aha! This week I've really made a discovery!
It came in Elder Marion G. Romney's talk, "The Light Shineth" - this time I got an actual quote:
The Quote
"This scripture (John 1:5) came to mind recently
as I read a statement attributed to Dr. Charles H. Malik,
former president of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
In it he said
that what is needed today is
“the challenge of a truly universal message,
a vision of something great and tremendous,
a call to an heroic mission. …
The immediate situation [he said]
presents the aspect of a final and total judgment:
everything is being weighed—
one’s life, one’s values, one’s culture,
the vitality of the whole civilization
to which one belongs.
“It is very much then like the last day.
And those who believe will tell you that God is there
and that most certainly He watches over His own,
even if He should sorely chasten them still.”
(Quoted in Public Speaker’s Treasure Chest [Harper & Row, 1964], p. 42.)"
Or so I thought.
At first I was exultant - I knew it! There's some kind of book with quotes that the speakers are pulling from for their quotations. I had one of my own when I was a kid - my parents gave it to me for my eighth birthday. Pretty sure I probably still have it somewhere.
The problem is, these quotable quotations books are historical telephone tag. The real quotes turn out to be something different when you look back at primary sources.
So I looked up the Public Speaker's Treasure Chest - and I found it! At least, I found the 1946 version.
It has lots of tips for putting together a talk, and wise and witty quotations for every occasion.
My guess is that at least half of them are probably misquoted. But honestly, AI's probably about the same rate of inaccurate, so before we start thinking of ourselves as better, we're probably not.
I found the 1964 version (which I'm sure I saw a time or two in my mother's bookcase) and then the quote as written in the talk on page 42 as he stated, but how accurate is it, I wonder?
Charles Malik was indeed an ambassador to the US, and played a pivotal part in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As far as I can tell, he never served as the President of the General Assembly.
Could he have said this? Absolutely. His writings currently occupy about 44 meters of shelves in the special collections area of the Library of Congress, if Wikipedia is to be believed.
Am I going to go through all that to find this quote?
Sorry...no.
The quote will have to be considered for its own merits, and not for who truly said it, in this case. The Public Speaker's Treasure Chest probably had good intentions, but for my purposes, the treasure is mostly clues to a little bit deeper investigation.
Not too deep though. You won't find me buried in the Library of Congress's Special Collections area anytime soon. Not that I'd mind. Sounds like a dreamy way to spend the days, but there are limits...
What Does It Mean?
It seems to me that there's certainly a longing here and there for some sort of universal guideline to go by on what is good and what isn't, and that's what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was attempting to do - to create a set of qualities that everyone would value, regardless of culture.
A consensus like that is very difficult to come by in any group.
John 1:5 talks about a light shining in darkness. To me, that's Jesus Christ - his love, his example, his influence - a light that shines in the darkness, and shows us what's around us and where the path is.
It also says that the darkness doesn't understand the light, or doesn't see it for what it is.
I think we will always have people with us who think differently, based on their own experiences and ideas. There were certainly those who didn't see Jesus for who He claimed to be, and those who did see.
So it goes back to that idea that we have our choice - do we choose to believe Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of all people, or is He simply more historical telephone tag? He did live a very long time ago, just like these quotes did.
The only way to know for sure is to try to believe Him, to do what He says to do, and see what happens.
I had to choose to believe, and test it all out for myself.
Then I knew. I know now who He is, and what He can do for me. What He has done for me.
 |
| Painting by Liz Lemon Swindle |
If you don't know, do what I did.
Test Him.
Spend a period of time believing and acting as if you believe Him. See what happens.
If you want to believe that there's good in the world...I could tell you there is...
But in the end, everyone has to find out for themselves.
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