Part 6: Gimme the Credit!

I covered this subject a bit in the introduction when I related why this issue got on my radar in the first place.

The Christmas programs my husband and I attended included an endless litany of people who were invoked for congratulations and adulation. This has resulted in the series and especially this part of the series.

As President Gordon B. Hinckley said:

It is so very important that you do not let praise and adulation go to your head. Adulation is poison. You better never lose sight of the fact that the Lord put you where you are according to His design, which you don’t understand. Acknowledge the Lord for whatever good you can accomplish and give Him the credit and the glory and [do] not worry about that coming to yourself. If you can do that, you’ll get along all right and will go forward with a love for the people and a great respect for them and [will] try to accomplish what your office demands of you.

There is nothing wrong with thanking people or expressing gratitude to them. But, shouldn’t this be done on a personal level instead of a meeting-wide level?

I tend to distrust the motives of people when they choose meeting-wide acknowledgment instead of extending it to the people involved on a personal level.

I’m not condemning all gratitude and thanks, but surely filling up our meetings with long lists of these expressions is not appropriate. Expressing thanks to someone personally is very different than announcing it in a meeting.

I thought this was being addressed well at the Church level. For example, secular titles, secular honors, church titles, church responsibilities, and so forth have been gradually dropped from articles written in church magazines. Only the name and location/country that the author lives in remains.

Sometimes a credential is listed but it is usually necessary to set the context for the article. That information can be crucial.

I remember reading a short piece and thinking, “But, that’s illegal in the United States!” I checked the country of the author and it was somewhere in South America. So, I do think the location of the author can be important information to retain for the article.

Sometimes articles about secular, psychological issues, for example, have authors with these secular credentials. That is important information to know when evaluating the content of the article.

I also noticed that any credits and accolades have dropped out of the church films and other broadcast productions. There are no lists of what actors played what character or who makes up the production crew and so forth.

Unfortunately, some of this stuff that had been dropped has crept back in, especially in little bios of authors who write the young adult stuff in the Liahona. I’m not certain why. I hope the Church has good reasons for including this.

We should not want or seek, glory for ourselves in this life. This is especially true when it comes to our service in the church. It’s better to receive our reward in the next life, not this one.

Anything we do in the church that accrues glory to ourselves is suspect. We should avoid it at all costs. We shouldn’t seek it. We shouldn't encourage others to seek it.

We shouldn’t endanger our own or other people’s rewards in the next life either.


Spiritual Vaunting and the Perils of the Rameumptom Syndrome

“As teachers, we may speak with the tongues of angels; we may entertain, delight, amuse, astound. But if we have failed in keeping our focus on Jesus Christ, we have missed the mark and our teaching is only a shadow of what it ought to be. Always keep the focus on our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.” Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Teaching in the Savior’s Way with Elder Uchtdorf”. Address given June 12, 2022. Accessed June 12, 2022 from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/broadcasts?lang=eng&video=19634698842979671470&mode=watch

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