It is a great privilege for me and my wife, Kay, to be here today at this great university which is doing so much to take education to the far reaches of the Church. Having served for the last five years in West Africa, where educational opportunities are eagerly sought but severely limited, we are most grateful for the reach of BYU-Idaho and its involvement with Pathway Connect.
Like so many of the rising generation hoping to improve their education, each one of you is here for the very purpose of gaining knowledge. When you have gained sufficient knowledge and when you know how to apply it properly, you will be granted the right to graduate. You can then go and start a career, and after some years, you will have evidence as to whether you have been successful or not. But the gaining of knowledge and the achieving of success in your careers are not the determinants of success in life.
You can have great knowledge but fail at life. You can have a great career but fail at life. Conversely, you can have little academic knowledge or a forgettable career but still have a very successful life—because life is about relationships with God and with others.
When people reach the final weeks, days, or moments of their lives, their concerns invariably turn to those people they should be close to—those they love—their family and their friends. If they have found and reciprocated joy and happiness in those relationships, and especially in their relationship with God, then they feel satisfied and at peace. They feel that they have achieved success at life. They have been wise.
So then, if this is the determinant of success in life, do we really need to learn knowledge?
Well, very clearly, yes!
The Lord’s admonition to us with respect to learning is very clear. He tells us:
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith. [1]
Here, He is saying that both knowledge and wisdom are necessary. It is stated simply in the words of this proverb from Guinea, in West Africa:
Knowledge without wisdom is like water in the sand.
A more complete explanation is given in the words of Jacob, son of Lehi:
O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God. [2]
Here, we have a hint at how to find wisdom, at how to build relationships: we must hearken to the counsels of God.
As the Lord has said concerning those who put their trust in Him:
And their wisdom shall be great, and their understanding reach to heaven; and before them the wisdom of the wise shall perish, and the understanding of the prudent shall come to naught. For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will—yea, even those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man. [3]
But most do not understand this or do not live it; and, for them, education is purely an intellectual pursuit. We are easily indoctrinated in modern society to believe that we can only really know something through our intellects and our physical senses. There is no tolerance in the modern world for things that can’t be proven scientifically.
The Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expressed the idea that the problems of the Western world began in the Renaissance. He indicated, in his speech delivered in June 1978 as the Harvard Commencement Address, that the thought processes enshrined during the Renaissance period “did not [see in] the existence of . . . man . . . any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. . . . [M]odern Western civilization [has developed] the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. . . . We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.” [4]
We understand that there are, instead, two different ways of knowing things: scientifically (through the use of reasoning and the physical senses) and spiritually (through revelation and the spiritual senses). The experiences that my wonderful wife, Kay, and I have been blessed to enjoy in West Africa have reinforced for us the power of knowing spiritually. Many West Africans dream dreams, or see visions, which have spiritual implications for them and for their families.
But like so many others, I have not always clearly understood what it means to know spiritually. As a young man, I met a beautiful young lady who was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She is now my wife of 44 years. In fact, let me digress with an African proverb, which I have found to be completely true. It says:
A happy man marries the girl he loves, but a happier man loves the girl he marries.
I was happy because I did marry the girl I love, but now I am happier, having grown more deeply in love with my wonderful and beautiful wife, each year of those 44.
Anyway, getting back to my story—I had never before heard of this church of which she was a member. Having grown up as a Catholic, and having embraced that religion, I felt that in order to accept the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I needed to be totally convinced intellectually that my previous, Catholic beliefs were mistaken and that these new teachings were truly teachings of the restored gospel that Jesus Christ had previously established. Several consecutive sets of missionaries taught me, but I always had questions for them. When they could not answer my questions, they would go away and then return the following week with the answers; but then I had more questions. This continued for several weeks as I tried to receive an intellectual conversion.
Then, one day as I sat in a church meeting, I felt clearly this message from the Holy Ghost: “Terry, all of your questions have answers. It is not important for you to know them all now. As the questions come to you, they will be answered. But I need you to act, and to be baptized now.”
Do you see what had happened? My study and pondering gave rise to revelation. I immediately acted and was baptized. Over the subsequent 44 years, the prophecy contained in that revelation has been fulfilled. All of my questions have been answered, including those I had not even considered 44 years ago.
President Dallin H. Oaks, in April 2008, spoke about the different ways of knowing:
What do we mean when we testify and say that we know the gospel is true? Contrast [the] kind of knowledge [that] “I know it is cold outside” or “I know I love my wife.” These are three different kinds of knowledge, each learned in a different way. Knowledge of outside temperature can be verified by scientific proof. Knowledge that we love our spouse is personal and subjective. While not capable of scientific proof, it is still important. The idea that all important knowledge is based on scientific evidence is simply untrue.
While there are some “evidences” for gospel truths (for example, see Psalm 19:1; Helaman 8:24), scientific methods will not yield spiritual knowledge. This is what Jesus taught in response to Simon Peter’s testimony that He was the Christ: “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood”—or, we might say, logic or the physical senses—“hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” [5] The Apostle Paul explained this. In a letter to the Corinthian Saints, he said, “The things of God knoweth no man, but [by] the Spirit of God.” [6]
In contrast, we know the things of man by the ways of man, but “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” [7]
The Book of Mormon teaches that God will manifest the truth of spiritual things unto us by the power of the Holy Ghost. [8] In modern revelation God promises us that we will receive “knowledge” by His telling us in our mind and in our heart “by the Holy Ghost.” [9]
This is revelation.
One of the greatest things about our Heavenly Father’s plan for His children is that each of us can know the truth of that plan for ourselves. That revealed knowledge does not come from books, from scientific proof, or from intellectual pondering. As with the Apostle Peter, we can receive that knowledge directly from our Heavenly Father through the witness of the Holy Ghost.
When we know spiritual truths by spiritual means, we can be just as sure of that knowledge as scholars and scientists are of the different kinds of knowledge they have acquired by [scientific means]. [10]
Although spiritual knowledge and intellectual knowledge are different, both are important. To comprehend the things of the world, one must be intellectually enlightened; to know and understand the things of God, one must be spiritually enlightened.
And revelation is an essential factor in knowing the things of God. The things of God cannot be learned solely by study and reason.
Please also note that study and reason precede revelation, and the intellect will confirm the revelation. But it’s not the intellectual confirmation that’s most important; it’s the revealed truth and our acting on it. We learn through study and faith. [11]
Some things of this world are unseen, as indicated by the Apostle Paul:
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. [12]
As we think about this, it makes perfect sense in a Plan of Salvation which is completely just and fair. You have all been in high school, or college classes, with people of greater or lesser intellect than yourself. A good portion of our intelligence is due to genetics. How fair would it be if God favored people of greater intellect over those with lesser ability by making the acceptance of gospel truths a function of our intellects? Why would He give some an advantage based on inherited intellect?
He would not and He does not! Rather, we learn spiritual truths as a function of our spiritual receptivity. Such is a spiritual gift, nurtured by individual faith, prayer, humility, and goodness, as well as a desire to respond and to act.
Despite the apparent conflict between reason and revelation, the rational and the religious views of the world are not the opposites of one another. The view of religion (at least the religion that is undiluted by apostasy) includes reason, as well as revelation, and embraces the truths determined by both. In contrast, the rational view excludes what is spiritually revealed.
Let’s examine in greater detail that earlier scripture from Section 88 of the Doctrine and Covenants:
And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith. [13]
The teachings of this verse are critical.
Firstly, the Lord is telling us that our basic human problem is a lack of faith.
Secondly, He says that we must seek diligently, not superficially. And we must seek—we must actively look.
Thirdly, we “teach one another.” This is an exercise in mutual help and mutual growth, one individual to another. [14]
Then our focus should not just be on acquiring “knowledge” but on the acquisition of “wisdom”—the practical application of knowledge for purposes of good.
And finally, the summary—that these things are acquired through both “study” and “faith,” with “faith” being a word which encompasses our acting on what we believe in order to gain this knowledge and wisdom.
Hence, very clearly, we have a responsibility to know by both “reason” and by “revelation,” with the second of those skills (revelation) being an essential component for spiritual knowledge and wisdom. That skill is held by man in its highest state, as exemplified by our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. I assure you that he is a man of both the highest intellect and the highest level of faith, who is dependent on revelation, and who receives it in absolute abundance.
The consequence of this is his powerful relationship with the Savior, and just as powerful a relationship with others. When you associate with President Nelson, you can both see and feel his love, just as we will all one day see and feel the love of our Savior as we stand before Him. Then, we will be overcome by His undying and incomprehensible love for us individually.
I have learned this truth through reason and through revelation. The more powerful of these two in knowing this and other spiritual realities has been the latter: revelation. My witness is born of the myriad spiritual experiences I have been blessed to see, feel, and receive. I testify of these truths in the sacred name of my beloved Savior—and your Savior—Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Doctrine and Covenants 88:118.
[2] 2 Nephi 9:28-29.
[3] Doctrine and Covenants 76:9–10.
[4] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “A World Split Apart,” Harvard University Commencement Address, June 8, 1978.
[5] Matthew 16:17.
[6] 1 Corinthians 2:11.
[7] 1 Corinthians 2:14.
[8] Moroni 10:4-5.
[9] Doctrine and Covenants 8:2; Dallin H. Oaks, “Testimony,” Ensign, May 2008.
[10] Dallin H. Oaks, “Testimony,” Ensign, May 2008.
[11] Doctrine and Covenants 9:7-9; 88:118.
[12] 2 Corinthians 4:18.
[13] Doctrine and Covenants 88:118; emphasis added.
[14] Doctrine and Covenants 84:106.