"Recovering and Discovering Truth"

I often search the Ensign for various topics of interest to me. This morning I did a search on the word "seeking". I did not have a definite idea of what I myself was seeking, but I was curious about what I would find by searching for that one word.

While I found many articles and speeches from the Ensign, one that particularly caught my eye was by Edwin Brown Firmage and appeared in the April 1981 issue of the magazine. The title is "Recovering and Discovering Truth". Elder Firmage's topic is encapsulated in his first paragraph:

I had an experience some time ago that led me to think and to pray intensely. The whole incident caused me to reflect on the ways we gain knowledge from our Heavenly Father, and on the intimate relationship that exists between intellectual and spiritual means of acquiring knowledge.

That interests me--the intimate relationship between intellectual and spiritual means of acquiring knowledge. Here are two more paragraphs from near the end of the article:

This very process argues against the false idea that prayer, study, and meditation, or deep thought are merely attempts to convince oneself of a particular principle. To the person who is sensitive to divine communication, pure revelation floods the very being in a way that makes it unmistakable. Whether the truth be in science, philosophy, or religion, that knowledge is now his in a way that it was not before. Again, Einstein said of faith: “Real faith, either to a scientist or a businessman or a minister of religion, involves the problem and struggle of searching.” The Lord said to Joseph and Oliver that “you must study it out in your mind.”

and

Finally, I have learned that one must use the truth he possesses before asking for more. An ancient Tibetan proverb says, “He who knows and fails to practice the precepts is like a man who lights a lamp in the darkness and then closes his eyes.” We have a loving Heavenly Father who possesses all knowledge. He is willing to share it with us as fast as we are able to obtain it by worthy effort and then truly make it “ours” by living it.

In the article, Elder Firmage quotes various philosophers giving their thoughts about where knowledge comes from. It makes for an interesting article.

I believe that our Heavenly Father does bless mankind with intellectual knowledge as well as spiritual knowledge. He is not limited to only things of the spirit. I also believe that He expects us to put forth a lot of effort to learn as much as we can and to think about what we've learned and how it can be applied to solve a problem or to answer a question before He will send to us the necessary missing knowledge.

What are your thoughts about this?

The Blessings of Living in America

I hope we all appreciate the great blessing of living in the United States of America. In spite of attempts at government interference here and there, we still have a lot of freedom, not least of which is freedom to worship as we please. Religion was important in the founding of our country and it is important today.

Our religious beliefs give us a moral foundation and guidance as to what is right and what is wrong. The truth is that there is such a thing as right and wrong, good and evil. There are those who would have us believe otherwise, but God has taught us better.

The USA, because of its freedom, is strong enough to help others around the world in various ways, and is very generous in doing so. We help in various disasters around the world and we fight for freedom. We do our best to spread truth and goodness. We set an example. We are not perfect, but we are good.

There is much to be thankful for and much to be concerned about. We have important elections coming up on Tuesday, 4 November. Study the issues and the candidates, local and state and national, and vote, using your best thinking.

May God bless us all, in America and all around the world.

Spiritual Ramblings

I spend a fair amount of time contemplating spiritual topics and my own spiritual development. I also notice what others around the Bloggernacle have to say on various topics that connect to spirituality. I agree wholeheartedly with some and disagree with others and have mixed feelings about still others.

Everyone has their own viewpoint, developed over the years by their experiences and the teachings they've been exposed to. Sometimes it's difficult to sort out what is true and what are merely the philosophies of men. Since occasionally the philosophies of men might hit on a truth or partial truth, that makes it more difficult still.

I've noticed that on the Bloggernacle, there are fewer orthodox viewpoints than heterodox viewpoints. I suppose it is partly due to the nature of the beast--the younger and more computer literate people, fresh from the university, are more likely to blog and more likely to hold heterodox viewpoints. It is also a common trend that the younger people are more given to experimenting with different ideas and to thinking they have hit on solutions to various problems.

I am glad to have found other blogs that are orthodox--it keeps me company! The main thing that is frustrating about the heterodox blogs is that the bloggers there tend to shut down opposing viewpoints by saying that they are "Sunday School" answers or are mean-spirited or some such thing. Well, that is their prerogative--it is their blog, after all, and they can do as they wish with it. However, I feel they are missing some wise viewpoints that might prove helpful in the discussion.

As for "Sunday School" answers, they have become such because they are truth. It really does solve problems to pray and read the scriptures, provided that you put what you learn into action. It really does prevent problems to keep the commandments and to honor the covenants made.

Sometimes I feel that interpretation of the scriptures is stretched too far--parsing each word and looking through half-a-dozen definitions to find one that matches what the interpreter wants to find. We all do that to some extent at some point in our lives, but it isn't necessarily a good thing, if carried too far. There are ways to learn what the scriptures truly mean by relying on prayer and the gift of the Holy Ghost and listening to the prophets.

I am disheartened, too, to read comments indicating that the Church is racist and sexist and oppressive. I do not see that in the church--I see love and acceptance of people, but also an honesty about sin. I feel the negative view comes from not being willing to accept that sometimes there are things the Lord would have us do that we do not understand right now and may not understand until the next life, but we are wrong to label these things with man-made labels that have no eternal vision to back them up. It seems, too, that we find what we look for, and if we are looking for racism and sexism and oppression, we will imagine that we see it everywhere.

I suspect that I sometimes come across as "hard-nosed" about things. Actually, I am quite concerned about hurting people's feelings or upsetting them. However, I also feel that there are things that need to be said honestly and find it frustrating that there are those who say that those things cannot be said because they might hurt or offend. It's somewhat ironic that those who take that position often offend or hurt me with their viewpoints, but they defend their right to say such things because they are just being honest--in their view.

I don't know if we humans will ever totally resolve this dilemma of how we express ourselves and of thinking that we are always right and the other person is always wrong if they don't agree with us. Believe it or not, the "Sunday School" answers will come closer than anything else to helping us reach a resolution and a unity.

I am writing this post, not to hurt or offend, but to offer some thoughts for consideration. I am not perfect and neither is anyone else. We all struggle with one thing or another, and sometimes with several things. We each have to work our own way through these things, but it helps to discuss and share ideas--all ideas. Not just the ones we like. I realize that applies to me, too. I depend on God to help me find my way because I, too, am human with human frailties.

Edited to add:

There is a marvelously appropriate speech by Elder F. Enzio Busche titled "Unleashing the Dormant Spirit" that I want to link to here.

From the Archives: Religion and Science and Philosophy and...

I would certainly classify myself as a religious LDS conservative. At the same time, I enjoy learning about science, philosophy, math, physics, politics, history, and many other subjects. I do not feel that any of these things are off limits to the religious soul.

I know that I do not see eye to eye with a number of the citizens of the Bloggernacle, but I think that is a good thing. If there is diversity in thought and opinion and knowledge, then we have something to think about and to discuss.

I firmly believe that our Heavenly Father wants us to study and learn about many subjects. He wants us to exercise our minds and use our thought processes. That we may come to different conclusions is not a bad thing. There are any number of areas wherein the Lord has not given us definitive information yet. Some questions may well not be answered until the Millenium or later. I believe that the Lord meant for our learning to be a growth process. He means for us to think things through and reach the best conclusions we can. If others disagree, we can restudy and rethink, but if we are still convinced of our position, that is fine. We may be right about some things, the others may be right about other things. We will all have learned and thought and exercised our brains.

Being a conservative Mormon does not mean that I reject science or philosophy or any other subject. It may mean, though, that I do not agree with some statements or ideas. I would say that we should not jump to conclusions about one another. We should also enjoy the difference of opinion and idea. What would we talk about if we all thought alike?!

There are so many facts and ideas out there in the world. It is a neverending process to learn even one subject because there are always new discoveries, new ideas, and new information coming out.

I would hope that we do not neglect the gospel in our pursuit of secular learning. We are all here for a purpose--to learn and grow and become like our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This certainly includes secular learning, but does not mean that we should reject religious or gospel learning. We can apply our reasoning to the gospel as well as to other topics, but let us not forget that faith plays an important role in truly understanding the things of God.

There will always be room for differences of opinion as long as we are in this mortal life. These differences can help us learn to think, to sort out ideas, to make sense of a great many things. That what is sense to one is nonsense to another should not invite derision or dismissal, but rather respect and listening and learning.

Learning and study and education are very important to me, but not more important than the gospel. I consider those things to be a part of the gospel, as is all truth and learning. We cannot know everything now, but we can certainly learn a lot and we can learn to think things through.

What are some things that you have learned that are important to you? These can be secular or religous or some combination of the two. I am just interested to know what people think.

The Intellect and the Gospel

In the April 1993 Ensign is an article titled "The Inexhaustible Gospel" by Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Maxwell was always a favorite of mine--he was humble and intelligent and had a wonderful sense of humor. He offered marvelous insights into the gospel and was always enthused about learning and sharing what he learned.

In the article I linked to above, Elder Maxwell discusses the different kinds of knowledge and intelligence, where they come from, and why they are important. He refers to numerous scriptures to illustrate his points. The first two paragraphs are:

The title of my address, “The Inexhaustible Gospel,” is intended to convey the vastness and preciousness of that enormous body of knowledge we call the gospel, and—if I am at all successful—some of my ever-growing excitement over it.

Before using terms like truth, knowledge, intelligence, education, and wisdom, I stress at the outset that the scriptural insights concerning these terms or definitions of them give us, as Latter-day Saints, an added understanding of these concepts. These differ from those of the world—markedly, in some respects. Each is “added upon” by the relevant revelations.

He also says:

Therefore, gaining knowledge and becoming more Christlike “are two aspects of a single process.” (C. Terry Warner, in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4:1490.) This process is part of being “valiant” in our testimony of Jesus. Thus, while we are saved no faster than we gain a certain type of knowledge, it is also the case that we will gain knowledge no faster than we are saved! (See Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 217.) So in our different understanding of knowledge and truth, behaving and knowing are inseparably linked.

Thus defined, the gospel is inexhaustible because there is not only so much to know but also so much to become. The vital truths are not merely accumulated in the mind but are expressed in life as well.

One of the most intriguing things about the gospel is the way we gradually understand more and more and go deeper and deeper into all the meanings available in the scriptures. We learn what we are ready to learn at any given point in our lives, but there is always more to be learned.

I also like what Elder Maxwell says about how "behaving and knowing are inseparably linked". We learn the gospel as much by actually obeying the commandments as we do by reading them in the scriptures--perhaps more so.

I hope you will read his article. It's an interesting reminder of many gospel ideas and can give a sense of perspective to our learning and living.

One thing I want to mention here is that while I love to share gospel ideas, I am far from perfect. I hope I don't come across as someone who is "preaching down to the little people". What I am trying to do is share thoughts and ideas and links to articles that I find meaningful and helpful for myself and that I hope others will gain something from, as well. I am always interested in hearing other's thoughts and ideas about these topics--it helps me a lot and I am sure it helps all those who come here to read. We can all edify one another.

Considering Viewpoints

One of the things I struggle with is compassion and "tough love." As I consider viewpoints on a variety of topics, I come up against wanting to help people and wanting those same people to learn to help themselves. I see ideas that would immediately relieve suffering, but that would cause serious problems down the road. Case in point: welfare.

If we give people food, money, housing, and so forth, it can give them an opportunity to pull themselves together because they aren't totally caught up in wondering where their next meal is coming from or where they are going to live. However, too many people become dependent on welfare and come to expect these things to just be given to them. They aren't using the reprieve from suffering to improve their education and job skills and to look for jobs, or otherwise improve their lives and their prospects.

Immigration is this sort of problem, too. If we grant illegal immigrants all kinds of privileges and perks, we are rewarding their lawbreaking. National security issues enter into this situation also, something we can't ignore in this day and age. Yet most of us do feel compassion for the poor who want to come to America.

Environmental concerns can cause problems, too. If we rush into solutions that appear to solve the problem in the short term, we may seriously cripple our economy and cause much greater problems in the long run. Yet we do need to be good stewards of this earth.

War also brings into play many considerations and, in the heat of the moment, it is hard to think of long term consequences. Yet we must. Peace--real peace--cannot be bought with the price of genocide and oppression.

Throw into this mix trying to live as God and Jesus Christ would have us to live. We study the scriptures and pray and seek the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Somehow, though, different people come up with different answers as to what is right. My own take on the matter is that while we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, this does not mean giving in to whatever our neighbor wants or allowing our neighbor to lead us astray. There are lines that must be drawn. Waste is waste. Sin is sin. Foolishness is foolishness. These things ought not to be encouraged.

Charity isn't giving things away indiscriminately, but is the judicious use of reasonable help coupled with teaching the recipient how to do better in living their lives. Some would say that it is not our place to tell others how to live. To a point, this is true--each has his own agency and has to make his own decisions. However, you would not buy alcohol for an alcoholic, would you? There are some things that are just wrong and need to not be supported. Truth is not relative. Morality is not relative. And the greatest act of charity that we can perform is to help someone see a better way to live. We cannot force them to choose that way, but we can at least let them know it is there and that they do have a choice.

I also think that in choosing our viewpoints on various topics, we need to be aware that there are those who advocate for one viewpoint or another who have their own agendas. They may be seeking power, fame, or fortune. Be aware of that possibility. It is possible to be led astray by a good speaker/writer. Take the time to do your own research. It seems, too, that it is easy to obsess over some perceived problem to the point where one sees examples of that problem everywhere, even though in reality, the so-called examples are nothing of the kind. We need to use our God-given intelligence, discernment, and judgement in making our decisions about what to believe and what causes to support or disavow.

Ah, judgement. The new bad word. The truth is, though, that we have to use judgement constantly to make decisions. It is true that we should treat people kindly and tactfully, but it is not true that we cannot learn from the mistakes we see others make, and it is not true that we have to embrace wrong things just so we won't hurt someone's feelings. I certainly wouldn't recommend going around criticizing people or being rude, but we do not have to follow their leads.

It is not easy to do the right thing in all situations and to choose the right viewpoints to support, but we have to try. It is how we grow and learn and become better tomorrow than we are today. If we can learn to look down the road and see the consequences of this or that choice, we will be in a better position to make right decisions that won't cause irreparable harm.

Love thy neighbor as thyself is a commandment, but even before that one is to love God with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength. To me, this means to not only love God, but to follow His ways in all things, and to learn what His ways truly are, not just what we want them to be.

Choices

As we learn the gospel, we learn about agency. Agency is the gift our Heavenly Father gave us from the beginning. The question of whether or not we were to have agency, the ability to choose for ourselves, played a central role in the pre-mortal council. There Lucifer, or Satan, offered to be our savior, but his plan included no agency, no choice for us. Jesus, however, offered to be our Savior and included our having the agency to choose for ourselves. Naturally, God chose Jesus for the role of Savior to the world because it was essential to us to be able to make choices. That was the only way our lives could have meaning and the only way that we could progress and grow and learn.

Agency brings consequences, both good and bad, and there is always the risk of making mistakes. The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to repent of any mistakes we make and to reconcile ourselves to God. The plan of salvation makes possible both the possession of agency and the ability to return to our Heavenly Father, through the Atonement.

Mortal life is complicated by myriads of choices, some small, some medium, and some large. We choose what clothes to wear, what books to read, what career to pursue, whom to marry, and whether or not we will have faith in God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. We choose whether to obey God or to obey Satan. The latter choice is usually disguised as freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without regard to consequences, either to ourselves or to others. It is, nevertheless, choosing to follow Satan.

Our lives are the messy mix of the choices we have made through the years. Repentance and the Atonement allow us to clean up the mess and make progress toward a clean and orderly eternal life. Bringing a wholeness or a completeness to our lives is necessary. We cannot live exemplary lives on the surface and secretly rob banks. If we are to develop any virtue, it must touch every area of our lives.

In our efforts to reconcile every aspect of our lives and create a wholeness, we need some point on which to base our decisions. So do we choose to base our wholly integrated selves on the gospel, or on some philosophy of men? Our choice will have eternal consequences.

We can know, through our study of the gospel and the growth of our faith and testimony, that the correct choice is to base our lives on the gospel. Everything good comes from God. His gospel contains the truth. Therefore, if we base our lives on truth, we will be making the choice that will allow us to become whole and healed and to return to our God.

As we go through the world and live our lives, we learn many things and come in contact with many ideas and theories. Some of these are good and some are bad--some are even evil. How do we know which is which? We turn to the gospel for guidance. Thus we can choose the good and eshew the bad or the evil.

People are going to have some basis for making their choices, even if that base is subconcious. Sometimes we take a liking to some mortal philosophy and accept or reject other things based on whether it fits with that philosophy or not. Is it not better to choose as our basis something we know to be true, something that will lead us toward more truth and goodness and light and knowledge?

Of course, it isn't easy to do this. We want to do the right things and make the right choices, but we can get mixed up and make mistakes. Some of our mistakes come because we don't understand the teachings of the gospel thoroughly. It takes a lifetime to learn it all--an eternal lifetime. We don't always get complete explanations. We have to trust our God, trust that He knows what He is doing. We have to take some things on faith, not knowing the whys and wherefores until later, perhaps not until the next life. The philosophies of men don't give us all the answers, either, but they also do not have the promise that someday they will have the answers.

The gospel teaches us how to make right choices and how to correct our mistakes through repentance and the Atonement. What can the philosophies of men do?

When We Seek Knowledge and Understanding

Seeking knowledge and understanding is something we all do. We read and study voraciously in an effort to learn more about a given subject. The subject varies as our interest waxes and wanes. Sometimes we are frustrated because we cannot find answers.

I believe that there are some things that we will not find the answers to in this life. These are things that, contrary to our own opinions, we simply are not ready for. Other times, the answers could come to us in this life, but only after we are living up to the knowledge we already have. Our seeking seems to outrun what we are ready to receive.

Human beings are odd creatures. A part of us feels horribly insecure while another part of us fancies that we are able to know it all and handle it well. We are hardly objective observers of our own abilities. Our Heavenly Father knows us well and, while He loves us greatly, He also knows objectively and truly what knowledge we can effectively use and what will only confuse us more, or burden us beyond what we are ready to handle.

Asking questions to gain understanding is a good thing. As we grow in knowledge and then understanding, we can put what we know into action, thereby gaining wisdom. However, it seems to me that some questioning is more or less a waste of time. Perhaps it is our motive for asking that makes the difference. If we are asking questions in an effort to understand something better, something we already know, then we are making an appropriate effort. If we are asking in order to find fault or to argue against something, something that is true, then we are wasting time.

We have to be humble enough to understand that we are not ready for all knowledge at this time. We have to understand that our human view of things is not the be all and end all and that God knows what He is doing. In other words, we have to exercise faith, even when we don't understand all the whys and wherefores.

Sometimes we argue against putting some of our questions on a shelf in our minds. We say, "Well, I am a person who has to know--who cannot shelve questions. That's the way I am." My answer to that is that there are times when we have to change ourselves (and, yes, this can be done). We cannot always have what we want, when we want it. We have to exercise patience. We need to remember that we are eternal beings and therefore have all eternity to learn and understand. It will not hurt us to wait for some things. In fact, it is greatly to our benefit to have to exercise faith and patience. Again, we have to be humble.

I know that becoming truly humble, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, is not easy for us. We are arrogant, albeit sometimes insecure, human beings. We think our finite minds can grasp the answers to the universe. It is true that humans have learned a lot of complicated information over the ages. That doesn't mean it is complete information or that we are therefore able to handle all information. It means that God has blessed mankind with much knowledge that can help us in this life, but that to know all that needs to be known for eternity is not yet part of His plan for us. And so we need to be humble and to trust our Heavenly Father. We need to grow to prefer His will to our own. Not easy, but doable.

Perhaps we feel that submitting our will to the will of our Father will erase our individual selves. We have to find it in ourselves to trust that God's ways are better for us than our ways and that we will not only still be our individual selves, but we will be much better selves than if we went willfully down our own path. Heavenly Father's work is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (see Moses 1:39). He does this by doing always what is best for us in the eternal scheme of things.

I know it is hard to be humble and to be trusting, but it is eternally important that we learn to be so.

Seeking After Truth

In the April 1981 Ensign Edwin Brown Firmage writes an article called "Recovering and Discovering Truth." I thought this was an interesting article and I believe you will enjoy reading it.

Brother Firmage talks about seeking and finding truth--the methods we can use to go about it and where truth comes from.

As I read the experiences of others who were seeking knowledge, I found patterns similar to the ones I had discovered. Even more strikingly, I noticed remarkable similarities between searches for knowledge using the more obviously spiritual processes of prayer and fasting, and those using the rational processes of scientific inquiry. (Ultimately, our spiritual and rational characteristics are surely part of a whole.)

One point he makes is that:

But before we examine the process itself, we must deal with three questions: (1) Why must we rely on God at all? (2) Where do ideas come from? (3) How can prayer help us?

After a discussion of those three questions, Brother Firmage discusses the processes of inquiry. He writes:

Does this revelatory process differ markedly from the scientific method of getting knowledge or ideas or truth? In a lecture at Brigham Young University a number of years ago, Dr. Edmund D. Starbuck declared: “The scientist studies his problem, saturates his mind with it, puzzles over it, dreams about it, but seems to find progress impossible, blocked as it were by a black, impenetrable wall. And then at last and suddenly as if out of the nowhere, there comes a flash of light, the answer to his quest. His mind is now illumined by a great discovery.” (Quoted by Harold B. Lee in “Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity,” Instructor, June 1965, p. 217.)

Albert Einstein said: “When I think and reflect how my discoveries originated and took form, a hundred times you run, as it were, with your head against the wall (meaning a hundred failures) in order to lay your hands upon and define and fit into a system what, from a merely indefinable premonition, you sense in vain. And then suddenly, perhaps like a stroke of lightning, the salient thought will come to you and the indescribably laborious task of building up and expanding the system can begin. The process is not different by which the artist arrives at his conceptions. Real faith, either to a scientist or a businessman or a minister of religion, involves the problem and struggle of searching.” (Instructor, June 1965, p. 217.)

Einstein described this process of gaining knowledge like a “stroke of lightning”; Starbuck described it as a “flash of light.” Plato used almost the same language to describe his intellectual leap from frustration following deep thought to the resolution of a problem or getting an idea. Joseph Smith said, “A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas.” (History of the Church, 3:381.)

This very process argues against the false idea that prayer, study, and meditation, or deep thought are merely attempts to convince oneself of a particular principle. To the person who is sensitive to divine communication, pure revelation floods the very being in a way that makes it unmistakable. Whether the truth be in science, philosophy, or religion, that knowledge is now his in a way that it was not before. Again, Einstein said of faith: “Real faith, either to a scientist or a businessman or a minister of religion, involves the problem and struggle of searching.” The Lord said to Joseph and Oliver that “you must study it out in your mind.”

His final two paragraphs say this:

This may be at least partially what the Master meant when he admonished us to “search the scriptures” (John 5:39). The injunction was not merely to read the scriptures, but to search them, which implies a process of reading and rereading, studying, pondering, praying, meditating, and exerting all the mental and spiritual power we possess to obtain the deepest level of understanding of that which the Lord has given us. The same effort is implied in Alma’s description of how faith develops into perfect knowledge: “Swelling motions” enlarge the soul, growing until “your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand” (Alma 32:28, Alma 34:26–43).

Finally, I have learned that one must use the truth he possesses before asking for more. An ancient Tibetan proverb says, “He who knows and fails to practice the precepts is like a man who lights a lamp in the darkness and then closes his eyes.” We have a loving Heavenly Father who possesses all knowledge. He is willing to share it with us as fast as we are able to obtain it by worthy effort and then truly make it “ours” by living it.

Reading the entire article will give you a better grasp of what Brother Firmage is saying, but I wanted to include a few highlights to give you an idea of what it is about.

I found his last paragraph particularly meaningful--we need to use the truths we know before asking for more, before expecting to obtain more. You might say that truth is something we grow into. We use it and live it and put it into practice so that it becomes a part of us. Then we are ready to obtain more truth.