Editorial May 18, 1974 Issue

Learning to Say "No"

Naomi Price

"People like me better when I say 'Yes.' " This was Ned's answer when someone asked why he always agreed to do things his friends asked him to do.

Ned's habit of saying "Yes" sometimes got him into trouble. It might be all right when the question was something like, "Will you have another piece of cake?" or "Coming to the ball game?" But sometimes his school friends asked him to do other things that he really didn't want to say "Yes" to—in fact, things he knew quite well he really ought to say "No" to. Things like, "Will you tell me the answer to the first question in the math test if I tell you the answer to the second?" or "Mr. Smith's away. He'll never know if we take some apples off the tree by his house. What about it?"

Maybe these things don't seem very serious, but however trivial they appear, you shouldn't do them. They're wrong, and you have to learn to "refuse the evil, and choose the good" ^{Isa. 7:15;} in the small things, and then you're ready to master mortal mind in bigger things. This is what the Bible prophesied Christ Jesus would do as a part of his preparation for the great work God sent him into the world to accomplish.

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