Full of Wickedness

Yesterday I wrote about the scriptures that invite us to be “full of” good things, including love, patience, goodness, and the Holy Ghost.  The scriptures also teach us about what we should not be “full of” and describe the kind of people who have rejected the gospel and turned to wickedness.  For example, the Lord rebuked those in our day who are “full of wickedness and abominations” (D&C 10:21).  To the Romans Paul gave a more detailed list of the kind of wickedness and abominations that fill the lives of so many: “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers” (Romans 1:29).  These descriptions of the wickedness of men and woman all around us stand as warnings of what we must not become. 

               One of the specific evils that the Doctrine and Covenants describes men being “full of” is greediness.  The Lord gave this condemnation “Wo unto you poor men, whose hearts are not broken, whose spirits are not contrite, and whose bellies are not satisfied, and whose hands are not stayed from laying hold upon other men’s goods, whose eyes are full of greediness, and who will not labor with your own hands!” (D&C 56:17).  He similarly lamented in another revelation: “Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are idlers among them; and their children are also growing up in wickedness; they also seek not earnestly the riches of eternity, but their eyes are full of greediness” (D&C 68:31).  In yet another rebuke, and this again to the Saints, He said, “But behold, they have not learned to be obedient to the things which I required at their hands, but are full of all manner of evil, and do not impart of their substance, as becometh saints, to the poor and afflicted among them” (D&C 105:3).  All three of these passages bemoan the greed and unwillingness to give of one’s substance, and this is surely a condemnation that is meant to warn us still today.  If we are not careful we may find that the world has too convinced us to be “full of greediness” for its possessions that ultimately cannot satisfy. 

            We find several other warnings in the scriptures about those things that we should not be full of.  The Lamanites were described as being “full of idolatry and filthiness” and being “full of idleness and abominations” (Enos 1:20, 1 Nephi 12:23).  We may not be tempted to be the kind of “blood-thirsty people” that they were, but surely idolatry of the things of the world and the idleness it seeks to offer us are still temptations today.  The Lamanites were also described as being “full of mischief and subtlety,” a phrase very similar to the way Paul condemned Elymas the sorcerer in the New Testament: “O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness” (2 Nephi 5:24, Acts 13:10).  Paul also described the wicked “whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness,” an apt description of so many today, even those in the public square (Romans 3:14).  The Savior gave this rebuke to the prominent leaders of His day which likewise could apply to many today: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess…. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity” (Matt. 23:25, 28).  Many in the world today are indeed full of iniquity, full of hypocrisy, and full of the idolatry, mischief, bitterness, greediness, and abominations that the Lord condemns.  These scriptures serve to warn the Saints that we must indeed be vigilant to “stand ye in holy places, and be not moved” as the world continues to fill up with wickedness (D&C 87:8).