Individual Growth, Individual Responsibility

The text of the talks are up (already! Some of those talks were given only two days ago)! I can now quote President Russell M. Nelson directly: "We are each responsible for our individual spiritual growth." This is a responsibility that I always figured I had, but I hadn't considered the implications of everyone having this responsibility. Usually, when I hear about a bad person, I feel sorry for them, wondering how their life might have turned out if they had had better parents and teachers, but perhaps I had been putting too much weight on the parents' and teachers' shoulders and too little on the individuals'. While parents and teachers can, and sometimes don't, have a profoundly positive impact on people's lives, each person is free to make their own choices, regardless of how they were raised or what they were taught. Some people had the best parents and teachers they could have hoped for and still turned out badly, and even someone with the worst teachers and parents possible still has their own conscience. Ultimately, we are each responsible for our own decisions, including, apparently, our decisions that affect our spiritual growth. We can't blame anyone for anyone's lack of spiritual growth but their own, and we must take care to ensure our own individual spiritual growth, regardless of the influence of others.