Let me illustrate this with a story from the Church News:
“A group of religion instructors [were] taking a summer course on the life of
the Savior and focusing particularly on the parables.
“When the final exam time came, … the students arrived at the classroom to
find a note that the exam would be given in another building across campus.
Moreover, the note said, it must be finished within the two-hour time period
that was starting almost at that moment.
“The students hurried across campus. On the way they passed a little girl
crying over a flat tire on her new bike. An old man hobbled painfully toward the
library with a cane in one hand, spilling books from a stack he was trying to
manage with the other. On a bench by the union building sat a shabbily dressed,
bearded man [in obvious distress].
“Rushing into the other classroom, the students were met by the professor,
who announced they had all flunked the final exam.
“The only true test of whether they understood the Savior’s life and
teaching, he said, was how they treated people in need.
“Their weeks of study at the feet of a capable professor had taught them a
great deal of what Christ had said and done.” 8 In their haste to finish the technicalities of the
course, however, they failed to recognize the application represented by the
three scenes that had been deliberately staged. They learned the letter but not
the spirit. Their neglect of the little girl and the two men showed that the
profound message of the course had not entered into their inward parts.
James E. Faust, “‘Search Me, O God, and Know My Heart’,” Ensign, May 1998, 17
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