Little kids do and say some pretty funny things. Like this picture–not sure how I feel this! Or, I heard once about children who were asked what people do on dates. An 8-year-year old girl said, “Dates are for having fun, and people should use them to get to know each other. Even boys have something to say if you listen long enough.” (Jane age 8). A ten-year-old boy said, “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” Ah…the wisdom of children.
As a missionary I heard a little girl say something funny that I still remember. My companion and I were knocking on doors. At one home, a 4 or 5-year-old girl answered the door. “Hello,” I said. “Is your Mom home?” She said, “My mom told me to tell you she’s not home right now.”
I said, “Okay, could you go ask your mom when she’ll be home?”
“Sure,” said the girl. She turned around and yelled upstairs. “MOM! When will you be home?”
I heard a lot of excuses on my mission and I still make some myself. But I try not to, because of something Jesus Christ said in the first section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It’s a simple one-liner: “What I the Lord have spoken I have spoken and I excuse not myself” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:38). Jesus Christ doesn’t make excuses. There’s a lesson in that for us. We shouldn’t make excuses either.
Think about your life—have you made any excuses in the past couple of days? I used to think it was fine to make excuses, but that changed when Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Quorum of the Seventy visited my mission. At a mission conference he taught us something I will never forget. He said something to the effect of, “Any time you blame [or] point a finger it will hurt you.” He went on to teach, “Even if you’re right it will hurt you to make an excuse.” I love that phrase. “Even if you’re right it will hurt you to make an excuse.”
There are many excuses we might be tempted to make. On one occasion, Alma was talking with his son Corianton. Corianton had made some serious mistakes by inappropriately pursuing a woman while he was on a mission to the Zoramites. While we only hear Alma’s side of the conversation, it seems like Corianton tried to justify his behavior. Alma told Corianton, “She did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son.” “Everybody else is doing it” was no excuse.
The opposite of making excuses is accepting responsibility for the choices we make. In this same father-son conversation, Alma told Corianton chapter 39:13, “Acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done.” “Acknowledge your faults…” In other words, if you’ve made a mistake, admit it! Take responsibility. Ultimately, Alma told Corianton, “Do not endeavor to excuse yourself in the least point” (Alma 42:30).
How can we tell if we are making excuses or taking responsibility? A major way we can tell the difference is in the language that we use. Language that accepts responsibility says that we are in control of our choices. For example, “I will do it.” “I choose not to…” or “I will do better.”
The language of excuses or blaming says that somebody else is in control, that we are not in control. For example, “I can’t.” “I have to…” “He made me…” “I don’t have time…” All of these phrases say, “I don’t have a choice.”
Notice what happens when we shift the blame elsewhere. If you ask me for help and I say, “I don’t have time” then what I’m really saying is, “It’s not my fault—I’m not in control of my schedule.” But in truth, I am in control. If I don’t help you it’s not because I don’t have time, but because I choose to do something different with my time. It’s my choice. And maybe in some instances the choice to not help somebody will actually be the right choice—because there is something else we need to do. In those situations we can own that choice and not make excuses.
Sometimes we try to shift the responsibility for our choices onto others. But Elder Dale G. Renlund taught, “Blaming others, even if justified, allows us to excuse our behavior. By so doing, we shift responsibility for our actions to others. When the responsibility is shifted, we diminish both the need and our ability to act. We turn ourselves into hapless victims rather than agents capable of independent action…. Instead of making excuses, let us choose repentance” (Elder Dale G. Renlund, Ensign, Nov. 2016).
We know that making excuses weakens us—what happens when we take responsibility? In his book, Love is a Choice, Elder Lynn G. Robbins wrote, “The day you eliminate [excuses] from your life is the day you take back control of your life and when positive outcomes begin to increase …We should be of the attitude, ‘I’m in charge of my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way.’”
I know that we find power and strength in our lives when we stop making excuses and instead take full responsibility for our actions. When I think about Jesus Christ, I remember that the night before his Crucifixion he could have made an excuse for why completing his atoning sacrifice would be too hard. But Jesus Christ didn’t make excuses. We will grow closer to him as we follow his example. I love that he says, “I excuse not myself.”
