I recently started reading Life’s Lessons Learned by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. In chapter 8 he uses a letter he wrote to his brother more than 50 years ago to highlight a challenge that is persistent today. A portion of the letter to his brother reads: “The open conflict against the Church [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] has largely disappeared. Indeed, we live in an era of good feeling toward the Church. But therein lies the great challenge of this day. We are now in a period of conflict with indifference, in many ways a much more dangerous enemy than open hostility. One might say we are now in a cold war with Satan, a time in which he has called off the active opposition to the gospel and substituted in its place indifference, indifference to the necessity for the one true church.”
“But beware” Elder Oaks continued “also of indifference among our own people. In this time of good feeling toward our church, we are not often called to its defense. We tend to become complacent and smug–to take pride alone in the esteem in which we are held by those around us. Our spiritual muscles weaken and we forget that our most priceless possession, our testimony, is neither obtained nor retained by inactivity. The indifferent among us soon lose it…The conflict with Satan goes on, but it is a cold war, where the opponent is indifferent rather than hostile.”
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