Stating the obvious...because we all should sometimes

I really can't believe I've been fooled with this so long, so I'm putting this up in hopes of those who read it to see past the deception. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Screwtape Letters as the voice of senior devil Screwtape, explains that followers of the devil gain much more success from keeping things out than from putting things in, and I see the truth of that statement now as I have previously been a victim of this tactic. Although it's always been something that I've known, I have allowed myself to have been kept from the knowledge that we are definitely not put on this earth just to prove our righteousness to the Lord. Granted, that is a large part of our earth life and very important, but it will never be the only part of our mission (especially as we get closer and closer to the last days). We truly are part of the generation that has been held back for the final battle, the penultimate players in the great war for our souls. Because of this, we have an everlasting responsibility to ensure salvation not only for ourselves, but for the people in this world who did not have the opportunity to grow up in the Gospel. And in many cases, we are failing, myself included. I've gotten so caught up in being righteous just for the sake of being righteous that I've forgotten what I was supposed to be doing along with that. I believe that it's much easier for the devil to keep one righteous soul from converting others than to actually corrupt and defile that one. Satan knows that many of God's children on the earth today are so strong and pure that he is wasting his energy trying to bring them down. I'm not saying that we are immune to Satan's deceptions, but I believe that his efforts are much more effectively spent keeping these righteous people from sharing the Gospel with others. Why try to defile one steadfast child of God when it would be so much easier to keep thousands of others in darkness? It would be much more proprietary for Satan to tempt us to be idle (and oh, how simple that can be) so that we never get around to fulfilling our divine mission. It makes sense that Satan would try to get the children of God to be righteous, but be too afraid to tell anybody of their church. The problem is that the devil has convinced us that righteousness is limited to abstaining from conscious sin and what we believe to be "wrong", and those who fall under this deception (myself included) forget that a large part of righteousness is actually doing right! For the most part, people like me are fairly adept at not doing the things we know we shouldn't do, but that's only half the battle. The biggest flaw in my life is not that I'm doing too much wrong, it's that I'm not doing nearly enough right. The adversary has convinced me to be idle and passive enough to neglect temple work when I live a mere five minutes from the nearest temple, shun service when the opportunities are nearly forcing themselves upon me (especially here at BYU), and shy away from missionary work when I should be seeing and jumping at the chance of sharing this beautiful gospel with another. I hate that I was so stupid to be fooled like that! I used to wonder why parents could be punished for the sins of their children if they neglected to teach them, or why idle missionaries are blamed for the wrongs of the people that they could have converted if they had only tried, but it's so obvious now. Our potential consists of so much more than just going to earth, keeping the commandments, and leaving. It's as if the Lord was staring me straight in the face and saying, "You could have brought hundreds, no, thousands of My beloved sons and daughters back into the fold and you just sat back and did NOTHING?!?! Have you no regard at all for your brothers and sisters? Why have you failed Me?" And, of course, I will have nothing to say because I know it is all true. I don't want to be the person that the Lord has to chastise because I could have done more, so much more. I don't want to stand face to face with the person I kept seeing lonely on the sidewalk but did nothing and hear them weep because I was too busy with other things to show them how beautiful and true the Book of Mormon is. I don't want to stand at the judgement bar and hear the question, "Did you do your very best?" and have to hang my head in shame because I know that I didn't do half of what I could have. I could not handle the guilt. I'm only glad that I realized this deception this late in the game, because if I never had found this out, I shudder to think of what might happen to me and to so many innocent others. But it's over now. I can no longer say that I didn't know my responsibility; and, indeed, I shouldn't have been able to back then. I know my mission, and the only thing left to do now is to pursue it until the great Jehovah shall say, "The work is done."