arguments

70:1.3An­don taught his chil­dren to set­tle dis­putes by each beat­ing a tree with a stick, mean­while curs­ing the tree; the one whose stick broke first was the vic­tor. The later An­don­ites used to set­tle dis­putes by hold­ing a pub­lic show at which the dis­putants made fun of and ridiculed each other, while the au­di­ence de­cided the win­ner by its ap­plause.

25:3.31. Con­cil­ia­tors to the Worlds. When­ever the super­vis­ing per­son­al­i­ties of the in­di­vid­ual worlds be­come greatly per­plexed or ac­tu­ally dead­locked con­cern­ing the proper pro­ce­dure un­der ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances, and if the mat­ter is not of suf­fi­cient im­por­tance to be brought be­fore the reg­u­larly con­sti­tuted tri­bu­nals of the realm, then, upon the re­ceipt of a pe­ti­tion of two per­son­al­i­ties, one from each con­tention, a con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sion will be­gin to func­tion forth­with.

48:7.3028. The ar­gu­men­ta­tive de­fense of any propo­si­tion is in­versely pro­por­tional to the truth con­tained.

159:3.2Al­ways re­spect the per­son­al­ity of man. Never should a righ­teous cause be pro­moted by force; spir­i­tual vic­to­ries can be won only by spir­i­tual power. This in­junc­tion against the em­ploy­ment of ma­te­rial in­flu­ences refers to psy­chic force as well as to phys­i­cal force. Over­pow­er­ing ar­gu­ments and men­tal su­pe­ri­or­ity are not to be em­ployed to co­erce men and women into the king­dom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or over­awed by shrewd elo­quence. While emo­tion as a fac­tor in hu­man de­ci­sions can­not be wholly elim­i­nated, it should not be di­rectly ap­pealed to in the teach­ings of those who would ad­vance the cause of the king­dom. Make your ap­peals di­rectly to the di­vine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not ap­peal to fear, pity, or mere sen­ti­ment. In ap­peal­ing to men, be fair; ex­er­cise self-con­trol and ex­hibit due re­straint; show proper re­spect for the per­son­al­i­ties of your pupils. Re­mem­ber that I have said: “Be­hold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”

141:6.4That night Je­sus dis­coursed to the apos­tles on the new life in the king­dom. He said in part: “When you en­ter the king­dom, you are re­born. You can­not teach the deep things of the spirit to those who have been born only of the flesh; first see that men are born of the spirit be­fore you seek to in­struct them in the ad­vanced ways of the spirit. Do not un­der­take to show men the beau­ties of the tem­ple un­til you have first taken them into the tem­ple. In­tro­duce men to God and as the sons of God be­fore you dis­course on the doc­trines of the fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship of men. Do not strive with men—al­ways be pa­tient. It is not your king­dom; you are only am­bas­sadors. Sim­ply go forth pro­claim­ing: This is the king­dom of heaven—God is your Fa­ther and you are his sons, and this good news, if you whole­heart­edly be­lieve it, is your eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

178:1.17Through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of life, re­mem­ber al­ways to love one an­other. Do not strive with men, even with un­be­liev­ers. Show mercy even to those who de­spite­fully abuse you. Show your­selves to be loyal cit­i­zens, up­right ar­ti­sans, praise­wor­thy neigh­bors, de­voted kins­men, un­der­stand­ing par­ents, and sin­cere be­liev­ers in the broth­er­hood of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. And my spirit shall be upon you, now and even to the end of the world.

181:2.5As John Zeb­e­dee stood there in the up­per cham­ber, the tears rolling down his cheeks, he looked into the Mas­ter’s face and said: “And so I will, my Mas­ter, but how can I learn to love my breth­ren more?” And then an­swered Je­sus: “You will learn to love your breth­ren more when you first learn to love their Fa­ther in heaven more, and af­ter you have be­come truly more in­ter­ested in their wel­fare in time and in eter­nity. And all such hu­man in­ter­est is fos­tered by un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy, un­selfish ser­vice, and un­stinted for­give­ness. No man should de­spise your youth, but I ex­hort you al­ways to give due con­sid­er­a­tion to the fact that age of­ten­times rep­re­sents ex­pe­ri­ence, and that noth­ing in hu­man af­fairs can take the place of ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Strive to live peace­ably with all men, es­pe­cially your friends in the broth­er­hood of the heav­enly king­dom. And, John, al­ways re­mem­ber, strive not with the souls you would win for the king­dom.”

125:5.8And all the day through, those who lis­tened mar­veled at these ques­tions, and none was more as­ton­ished than Si­mon. For more than four hours this Naz­a­reth youth plied these Jew­ish teach­ers with thought-pro­vok­ing and heart-search­ing ques­tions. He made few com­ments on the re­marks of his el­ders. He con­veyed his teach­ing by the ques­tions he would ask. By the deft and sub­tle phras­ing of a ques­tion he would at one and the same time chal­lenge their teach­ing and sug­gest his own. In the man­ner of his ask­ing a ques­tion there was an ap­peal­ing com­bi­na­tion of sagac­ity and hu­mor which en­deared him even to those who more or less re­sented his youth­ful­ness. He was al­ways em­i­nently fair and con­sid­er­ate in the ask­ing of these pen­e­trat­ing ques­tions. On this event­ful af­ter­noon in the tem­ple he ex­hib­ited that same re­luc­tance to take un­fair ad­van­tage of an op­po­nent which char­ac­ter­ized his en­tire sub­se­quent pub­lic min­istry. As a youth, and later on as a man, he seemed to be ut­terly free from all ego­is­tic de­sire to win an ar­gu­ment merely to ex­pe­ri­ence log­i­cal tri­umph over his fel­lows, be­ing in­ter­ested su­premely in just one thing: to pro­claim ev­er­last­ing truth and thus ef­fect a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal God.

169:2.8When the Phar­isees who were pres­ent heard this, they be­gan to sneer and scoff since they were much given to the ac­quire­ment of riches. These un­friendly hear­ers sought to en­gage Je­sus in un­prof­itable ar­gu­men­ta­tion, but he re­fused to de­bate with his en­e­mies. When the Phar­isees fell to wran­gling among them­selves, their loud speak­ing at­tracted large num­bers of the mul­ti­tude en­camped there­abouts; and when they be­gan to dis­pute with each other, Je­sus with­drew, go­ing to his tent for the night.