Students should beware missing the mark
House Editorial: approved by a majority of Scroll Editorial Board
- posted: 09 Oct. 2007
- scrollopinion@byui.edu
Last weekend, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered in Salt Lake City to be spiritually fed by the words of living prophets. Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin reminded us to love one another. President Gordon B. Hinckley asked priesthood holders to be sure to control their anger. In short, our leaders reminded us to keep the gospel simple — to have faith, repent and serve others.
But as we return to school and begin to live the things the gospel teaches, it’s easy to get distracted. We go to a church school where we are encouraged to uphold the standards of the Church and where we are given the opportunity to learn more about the message of Jesus Christ.
But in our constant search for deeper gospel knowledge, we sometimes miss the simple truths of the Gospel. Especially in more theory-based classes like religion, it’s easy to get sidetracked from the lesson and to ask questions that we don’t necessarily need answered.
We need to understand the Fall of Adam and how it applies in our lives. More importantly, we need to understand the role of the Atonement in redeeming us from that Fall. We heard testimony of these things at conference. But there wasn’t any mention of whether or not Adam had a belly button.
When we start asking obscure questions like this, we are in danger of slipping into the trap Jacob warned us of in Jacob 4:14:
“Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.”
But asking questions isn’t inherently bad. In a January 2007 Liahona article, Sunday School General President A. Roger Merrill addressed the importance of asking inspired questions:
“The Lord constantly instructs us to ask, seek and knock with the divine promise that we will receive, find and have doors of revelation opened unto us. Asking faithful questions is the pattern established by the Lord for us to invite the guidance of the Spirit in our lives,” Merrill said.
Of course we should ask questions. We are commanded in the Doctrine and Covenants to “seek diligently and teach one another words of wisdom,” and to “seek out of the best books words of wisdom, seek learning even by study and also by faith.”
But let’s be careful to remember exactly what the “best books” are: the scriptures. Let’s remember the words we heard last weekend: that the gospel is true, and that plain and precious truths are sometimes all we need. 
