WHEN IGNORANCE IS SIN

Opportunity Entails Accountability

IT is an aphorism of the courts that ignorance of the law is no valid excuse for crime. If this rule be just it must rest upon the assumption that knowledge of what the law demands or forbids is an inherent and natural possession, or that it is so readily accessible that no one is justified in failing to become informed.

The normal individual of a civilized community requires no specific instruction to know that theft, falsification, drunkenness, adultery or murder is fundamentally wrong, since each of these crimes is a violation of his conscience and a pronounced offense against public weal. If, however, he enter restricted territory within which registration is legally demanded, and he, not knowing of the requirement, fails to register, he is technically a law-breaker subject to the penalties prescribed. True, his offense is that of omission or non-compliance and his ignorance may or may not be taken into account as a mitigating circumstance, this depending, perhaps, upon local conditions and the discretion of the magistrate as warranting leniency or demanding the full measure of punishment.

As thus in the ordinary affairs of men so with regard to the laws of God, framed for the governance of souls and providing for their salvation. One's inherent consciousness warns him against criminal actions but fails to inform him of certain definite requirements, without compliance with which he is debarred from admission to the Kingdom of God. There is no inborn knowledge by which man knows that baptism by immersion in water, and the higher baptism of the Spirit through the imposition of hands are essential to salvation; nevertheless our Lord's words to Nicodemus are alike binding upon every soul: "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." (John 3:5.)

Is it less reasonable with respect to spiritual requirements than in secular matters to expect of every one an acquaintance with the law as it applies to himself, providing, of course, such knowledge is accessible to all? But some may honestly assert inability to apprehend the necessity of obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel, even though they had informed themselves as to the letter of the prescribed conditions. Such may ask: Are men to suffer penalty in the hereafter because they cannot understand what is required of them in mortality? The degree of their culpability is to be determined by the fundamental cause of their ineptitude in matters spiritual. Failure to comprehend may be due to bias or to lack of desire to know. The record of our Lord's ministry presents an instance in point, coupled with a remedy for the spiritual disorder by which ignorance was fostered and truth ignored.

It was at the Feast of Tabernacles. Read John 7:14-18. The Jews were greatly troubled over His teachings; a few believed, more doubted and questioned, and some were so resentful as to want to kill Him. The more honest in the multitude desired to know for themselves whether the Master spoke by the power and authority of God or as a man, for as a man only was He generally regarded. "Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

Are you unable to realize that baptism is essential to salvation? Perhaps the cause lies in the fact that you have never developed the essential condition of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; or, perchance, you have never repented of your sins. Faith and repentance, as the Scriptures aver, are prerequisites to effective baptism; and it is as unreasonable to expect a faithless unrepentant sinner to comprehend the essentiality of baptism as to expect one untrained in the rudiments of arithmetic to understand algebra.

Wilful ignorance of Gospel requirements is sin. Man is untrue to his Divine lineage and birthright of reason when he turns away from the truth, or deliberately chooses to walk in darkness while the illumined path is open to his tread. Positive rejection of the truth is even graver than passive inattention or neglect. Yet to every one is given the right of choice and the power of agency, with the certainty of his meeting the natural and inevitable consequence.

We learn of three principal states or graded kingdoms into which souls shall enter under Divine judgment—the Celestial, the Terrestrial, and the Telestial—and the inheritance of each soul shall be determined by his measure of obedience to the laws of God, as the Lord's revelation through the prophet Joseph Smith attests: "For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. And he who cannot abide the law of a terrestrial kingdom cannot abide a terrestrial glory. He who cannot abide the law of a telestial kingdom cannot abide a telestial glory; therefore he is not meet for a kingdom of glory." (D&C 88:22-24.)