The Test of the Two Spirits

Yesterday, in Elder's Quorum, the teacher asked for three volunteers. Feeling slightly bored, I raised my hand first. I was followed by Trent, who is the other 11-Year-Old-Scout leader in our ward, and Michael, whom I don't know very well. I was handed a blindfold and asked to wait outside the room until someone fetched me. After a few minutes, I was led blind back into the room, where Trent and Michael guided me through an obstacle course made of the chairs we had all been sitting in. But here's where things got interesting: their directions sometimes disagreed.

I followed Trent more than I followed Michael, and it turned out that he was the one who was guiding me safely to where I was supposed to go. Since then, I've been trying to figure out why I decided to follow Trent rather than Michael. I think it may give me some insights into how we can discern between the Holy Spirit and the tempting ones.

When I first entered the room, I bumped into the doorway, and Trent apologized for letting that happen. It was my first hint that I was supposed to follow him, but at the time, I thought I was supposed to follow both of them. Michael gave me directions to not go so fast, which I thought was a good idea, so I moved more slowly, not realizing that I hadn't yet reached the part of the room with the obstacle course in it. When I reached the actual course, their instructions became more specific. Trent told me to come toward him, while Michael told me to go to the left. Following Trent, I eventually learned to mostly ignore Michael, though I still listened when he again told me to slow down (I think I had passed through the obstacle course at that point, and was being led by Trent to my destination, and Michael was trying to slow me down).

At first, I may have been following Trent more because I already knew (and thus, trusted) him better than I knew and trusted Michael. Or perhaps it was simply that he was being more vocal than Michael was. Going into the activity, I was pretty sure that my other quorum members would be the ones trying to mislead me, but while I could have mistaken Michael's voice for that of other Quorum members I didn't know so well, I already knew Trent's voice very well and easily identified him as one of the two people I could trust. By the time I figured out that there were only two voices and that they seemed to be in disagreement, I continued to follow Trent, figuring that he had led me pretty well so far up to that point, but I still sort of listened to Michael, thinking that if I bumped into something following Trent, I'd try following him instead.

The more I think about it, the scarier this experiment becomes. At first, I followed Trent partly because he was the more vocal of the two. Most of us know that the devil is more vocal than the Holy Ghost. If we decide to follow him, just because his voice is the one we hear more clearly, it would be so easy for him to lead us astray. On the other hand, I had a thought in my mind that I would start following Michael if I bumped into anything following Trent. If we decided to change course any time we run into opposition, we would likely end up following the path of least resistance, and that path won't lead us back home. Still, after following Trent for a while, I started to mostly ignore Michael, which would have been extremely dangerous if Michael had been the good spirit and Trent had been the evil one.

After having this experience, I thought about how we can discern between righteous influences and unrighteous ones. Familiarity, one of the first reasons I followed Trent more than Michael, isn't a good way to judge, because what if the group or individuals you're acquainted with are following the wrong path? You could easily end up following each other off a cliff like lemmings. There has to be some way to judge trustworthiness than by only trusting people you know.

One way to judge between good and evil influences is by comparing their instructions to what's taught in the scriptures. I'm reasonably certain that the scriptures contain the words of God, so anyone who teaches things contrary to what's in the scriptures is probably leading you astray. Then again, most people don't directly contradict the scriptures, but they interpret the scriptures in different ways.

We could, through careful examination, determine some people (like our church leaders) to be trustworthy, but then we run the risk of being misled by familiarity. It makes sense to pray to receive guidance, but if Satan plants a suggestion in our hearts after we've prayed, we might mistake that for God's answer.

I suppose the only real way to test between various influences is to guess and check. We may follow whatever suggestion feels right to us, and then check our results to try to determine if it was the right choice or not. The Holy Spirit will never lead us down wrong paths (difficult paths, sure, but never wrong ones), so we can know that if a spirit influences us to do something we know is wrong, we can know that's the wrong spirit to follow. The same thing goes for people. Good people don't intentionally mislead others, though it can be hard to judge people, since we frequently make mistakes.

Yesterday, I guessed that Trent was someone whose directions I could trust, and I was lucky enough to have guessed correctly. If I had guessed wrong, I probably would have bumped into a bunch of chairs and started following Michael instead. Either way, I'm sure I would have gotten to my destination eventually - it would just have been a matter of how long it would take and how many bruises I'd get along the way.

I'm not sure if this experience has taught me anything about discernment other than how important and difficult it is, but the importance of developing good judgement is enough of a spiritual message for this blog. If any of you figure out a good way to do it, let me know.