The Gospel in Words: 'Guile'

"Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile." (Psalm 32:2)"Guile" means cunning in attaining a goal, crafty or artful deception, duplicity, deceit, treachery or insidious. As a verb, guile means to beguile or to deceive. Guile can also mean obtaining a desired end by a trick or stratagem.In the scriptures, guile generally comes up in two contexts: first, deceiving ourselves. For example, James teaches "if any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain" (James 1:26).More often, however, guile comes up in the context of deceiving others. Peter admonishes us "for he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile" (1 Peter 3:10). Peter further urges us, in words reminiscent of Mosiah 3:19, to lay "aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:1-2).In the enormously important teaching in Doctrine and Covenants 121, with respect to the righteous use of the priesthood, we are taught "no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile" (D&C 121:41-42).In 1988, Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin gave a masterful discourse entitled "Without Guile." "The practice of guile prevents the Holy Ghost from prompting, guiding and instructing us, leaving us ever more susceptible to the buffetings of Satan. When we break the commandments, we close ourselves to God's influence and open ourselves to Satan's influence. If we practice guile in small matters, we soon find ourselves entangled in an ever-increasing, unending spiral, because each lie or other deception often requires a larger one to cover the first. Moreover the practice of guile often leads to hypocrisy, which is the false pretense of virtue or righteousness and pretending to be something that we are not."What are the latter-day saints to do? The answer is plain. The saints are to be absolutely without guile in every aspect of their lives: in their homes and families, church callings, all business dealings, and, especially, the private and personal parts of their lives into which they and the Lord see. I suggest that we look into our hearts and see whether our motives and actions are pure and above reproach and to see whether we are free of deceit and fraud" (Ensign, May 1988).