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But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. It seems to me that sometimes people condense the idea expressed in these verses to something like if its good, its from God, and if its bad its from the devil and that’s how we can tell if something is good or bad. My understanding of verses 12, 16 and 17 is that Moroni is saying that we can know that something is of God if that something persuades us to do good and believe in Christ. Put another way, Moroni is saying that if something is good, and persuades us to believe in Christ, we may thereby know that that something, whatever it is, is of God. Many people seem to accept that this scripture provides us with a way of telling whether or not something is good, or whether it is of God. I’ve always had trouble with seeing how this scripture provides us with a way of telling whether or not something is good or bad. I’ll try to illustrate why with the scenarios below. An atheist is meeting with LDS, Baptist and Buddhist missionaries. On the basis of what he hears and studies from the three sets of missionaries, he decides to become a Buddhist. Is this a good thing? Living a Buddhist life helps him to be a better person and surely that is good. But it does not lead him to believe in or serve God or Christ, so that might be bad. Then he goes back to the LDS and Baptist missionaries and he decides to become a Baptist. So now he believes in God, but in choosing the Baptists, he has chosen against the true God, and has chosen a false, Trinitarian concept of God. Maybe its good that he has now chosen to believe in a form of god, but maybe its bad because in choosing the Baptists he has turned away from a true understanding of God. How do we evaluate the scenario where someone does a small bad thing for the greater good, for example, an intelligence agent who corrupts a government employee of an enemy country in order to gain information that will lead to the lives of hundreds of soldiers being saved? If I render aid to a car crash victim and stop the bleeding, but in doing so move his body in the wrong way and thereby break his neck, is that good or bad? When a person practicing a modern day form of priestcraft persuades people to believe in Christ that he might have glory of men because of the number of souls he has brought unto Christ, or because he covets the increase in his personal wealth resulting from the offerings of his followers, has he done a good thing in persuading people to believe in Christ? If I am the doctor in prison who performs a lethal injection thereby killing a man, but making the rest of society safer by removing a mad mass murderer, is that good or bad? And if the injection is done by a vigilante, without the sanction of the State, does the same act then become bad? Because if so, it is the laws of the State that determines whether the act is good or bad, and the goodness or badness of the act is in no way dependent on Moroni 7:12. If a rich man gives a dollar to a beggar but retain the $99 that might for him be just be loose change, has he done good by giving, or bad by withholding? To what extent do motives need to be taken into account when determining the goodness or badness of an act? And if we do decide to take motives into account, how often do people act with more than one motive, or with only one motive at one moment, but over time, continuing in the same act, with a different motive at a later moment? How then would we judge the goodness or badness of their act? Moroni 7:6-9 does not seem to be helpful in answering this question because it seems to be based on the assumption that people, when performing an act, only ever act with the same motivation and doesn’t seem to take into account the common scenario of mixed motivations. And if there is any truth in the idea that one of Satan’s tools is to mix 95% good with 5% bad, does that 95% of good then become bad if it helps in furthering the Devil’s work? And if doing something good leads us to a sense of complacency, ie, all is well in Zion, and we are no longer motivated to do something better because we are already doing something good, does that good thing, by de-incentivising us to do better, become less good, or not good? The above types of scenarios lead me to some uncertainty about how helpful Moroni’s counsel in verses 16 and 17 might be when trying to decide whether something is good or bad. His counsel to rely on the Spirit of Christ is certainly good counsel for those who always have the Spirit to be with them and who always seeks its guidance, and always follow that guidance, but I believe that for most of us, that is something we are still working on. So how can we reliably tell good from bad and how helpful is Moroni 7: 5 – 17 when trying to answer this question? It seems to me that life is more complex with far more shades of ever-shifting grey than the approach suggested by Moroni.