Psalm 105:15
Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.
David himself gave us a most indelible lesson in this matter when he refused to take the life of Saul, his anointed but adversarial king. It did not matter that Saul sought David’s life repeatedly and would have killed him if he could. The reverse was not to be. David honored the office, and in so doing honored the man who held it. Indeed, he was distraught when others were not as respectful of their king as he and lamented grievously the day Saul’s life was taken by another.
We have anointed prophets, apostles, and leaders in our day. They have never claimed to be perfect, as indeed only one human being in all of history has been. But imperfect as they are, they represent the One who was perfect—a staggering responsibility indeed. Trying to be the best they can be, these leaders have been called to perform certain functions and carry out certain duties in the name of God. No one is more conscious of that responsibility than these priesthood bearers themselves. No one feels the weight of it more, no one is more mindful of his limitations, no one worries more that however good he is, he needs to be even better. We who observe them know this and love them for their service. We see so few limitations. And while we strive to sustain them, to join in holding them up in their service, we also can at the very least not harm them, not detract or decry or destroy them in word or in deed.
President Boyd K. Packer has often quoted this account from the life of the much-criticized Abraham Lincoln as told by one of his biographers. Facing a delegation of adversaries critical of how he was waging the Civil War, Lincoln said:
“Gentlemen, suppose all the property you possessed were in gold, and you had placed it in the hands of a [man] to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. With slow, cautious steps he walks to the rope, bearing your all. Would you shake the cable and keep shouting at him, ‘ . . . Stand up a little straighter; . . . stoop a little more; go a little faster; lean more to the south; now lean a little more to the north?’ Would that be your behavior in such an emergency?
“No, you would hold your breath, every one of you, as well as your tongues. You would keep your hands off until he was safe on the other side.”169
In the much higher and more important world of spiritual service, we need to pray for and sustain our leaders. They are wonderfully good men and women, doing the best they can to know God’s will for the Church and to honor that will. And they have “an unction from the Holy One,” which adds sanctity to their honest efforts.170 We owe our loyalty to them in no small part out of devotion to that Holy One whose work they are called to do.
Notes
^169. John Wesley Hill, Abraham Lincoln: Man of God (1927), 402.