By Zion author Jesse Fisher

Where Are You Standing?

As LDS people, we are under covenant with God to establish Zion, and under divine direction to “flee Babylon”. Let’s say you need to journey from point A to point B. Before you can successfully navigate between them, you need to determine two things. One, where each point is located, and two, where you are currently standing in relation to the two.

Zion and Babylon

One purpose of this column is to explore each of the two great archetypes of society and reason out the differences (and similarities) between the two that we might all see more clearly to successfully make the move from Babylon to Zion.

Pride:Babylon :: Humility:Zion

In the previous “Thoughts on Zion” column, it was shown that by applying a bit of logic to two statements about Zion made by LDS General Authorities, we can deduce two additional concepts:
1) Pride is the steppingstone to Babylon,
2) Humility is the steppingstone to Zion.

If we’re interested in establishing Zion and fleeing Babylon, these two concepts suggest we need to cultivate true humility and rid ourselves of pride. Again, we need to understand the difference between the two if we are going to move from one to the other.

The Two Sides of Two Coins

As a matter of fact, pondering President Benson’s landmark talk, “Beware of Pride” can help us make that transition.  His talk suggests that both pride and humility result from our attitudes about our two most important relationships: God and our fellowman.  

Two Sides of Pride

Furthermore, President Benson explained that part of pride is discounting God’s wisdom and elevating our own. We may choose not to believe in God, or, simply ignore His wisdom and rely on our own understanding. The other half of pride is manifested when we judge others to be either superior or inferior to ourselves. We think they’re “better-than” or “less-than” us because they have more or less _________ than we do. Both of these positions are in direct violation of God’s law (see Mosiah 23:7; D&C 38:24-25; Luke 10:27). Belittling others or ourselves is a sure indicator of pride.

Humility’s Two Sides Too!

Similarly, humility also has two elements: valuing God’s wisdom enough to act on it, as well as “esteeming” our fellowman of equal value as ourselves and as equally worthy of love. This makes sense that if we are to become “one” with our neighbors, we can’t be looking down on them or thinking them as being above us, even if they do have more ___________ (fill-in-the-blank).

In conclusion

We conclude that pride and humility are two sides of the same coin. Both affect our relationships with God and our fellowman. To successfully make the journey from Babylon to Zion, we must actively cultivate true humility. And we must actively rid ourselves of pride.  We do that by actively valuing God’s wisdom and actively esteeming our fellowman. Thus we can actively begin building the foundations of Zion in our own lives and in society as a whole. To sum up, it is essential for us to understand the difference between Zion and Babylon and strive to establish the former and flee latter.

Next time we’ll explore the question, “How can pride lead to Babylon and humility to Zion?”.
© 2013 by Jesse Fisher