Thank you very much for being here today. I’m grateful for that warm and personal welcome. Students of BYU–Idaho: I am very humbled and happy to address you. For over forty years, my wife and I have been blessed by the full life of the mind offered by involvement with Church Education, first as we were students at Brigham Young University in Provo, and as we, for many years, have both served on the faculty. She and I met in the library, and were married in the Idaho Falls Temple 36 happy years ago. So, we hope you will go to the library and that good things will happen there.
Actually, Sister Welch is an Idaho girl, a descendant of Idaho colonizer and apostle Charles C. Rich. She grew up in Burley before going to study in Paris (France, that is). My own ancestors on my mother’s side are Hatches and Woodlands, who settled in Franklin and near Downey, Idaho; and my father was born in Jerome, while his father was working as a research agronomist in the Idaho state department of agriculture. So, we, too, are happy to sing, “And Here We Have Idaho.”
For over 25 years now I have taught at BYU and have been involved with scriptural research and Mormon studies, for which I am very grateful. During this time I have served in student wards and stakes. My wife and I love teaching the youth of the Church. We know of your goodness, your testimonies, and your deep commitment to the gospel; we also know of your challenges and struggles. We encourage you to think clearly, to be wise, and be not deceived.
I thank each of you for coming and bringing—not just your scriptures—but also the Holy Ghost with you. You may remember Brigham Young’s instruction to the original BYU faculty that they should not teach even the multiplication tables without the Holy Ghost. There’s a crucial corollary to that instruction: As students, you should not learn even the multiplication tables without the Holy Ghost. It does the faculty little good to teach with the Holy Ghost if you aren’t out there ready to receive with the Holy Ghost. I pray that you will listen attentively, and that what I say may sink into your memory, so that the Holy Ghost may call these words back to your memory in the moment in which you might need them.
Today, my talk is about loving God with your mind. When I began thinking about this topic two years ago, I was surprised to find that the topic of loving God with the mind has not been discussed very often. So, perhaps this subject will strike you as new and, I hope, will be stimulating and thought-provoking. I feel what it means to love God with my heart and soul, but what does it mean to love him with your mind? As I have asked this question to several people, I get several different answers. How would you answer this question?
At the outset, let’s turn to a passage in Mark, chapter 12, which I find terribly important. You may remember it. It begins with verse 28. A highly educated scribe, who had overheard Jesus reasoning with some Sadducees, approached the Savior and asked, “. . .which is the first commandment of all?”[1] Jesus answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. . .”[2] And giving the scribe a bonus he hadn’t asked for, Jesus added: “And this is the second, Love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no commandment greater than these.”[3] To which the scholar responded, “Teacher, you speak very well and in truth, for to love God with all of one’s heart and with all one’s understanding and with all one’s strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is more advantageous than all burnt offerings and sacrifice.”[4] Seeing that this person spoke discreetly (which in Greek means “with discretion or intelligence), Jesus said, “. . .Thou are not far from the kingdom of God. . .”[5]
Many things about this brief encounter should be deeply interesting to us. Since Jesus was dealing here with a scribe, a craftsman of words, let me mention its notable vocabulary. When Jesus stated the prime commandment, he carefully included the mind. The Greek word used in Mark 12:30 for “mind” is dianoia, richly meaning to love God thoroughly (dia-) with all your way of thinking and understanding (-noia). When the scholar answered, he used an even more dynamic word, namely synesis, meaning the holding of things together, of comprehensive comprehension, synthesis, and insight. And then, escalating a third step, Jesus told this man that he was not far from the kingdom because he spoke nounechos, literally “having vous,” the highest term in the Greek philosophical pantheon for true, even divine, intelligence. All three of these words in Mark 12, dianoia, synesis and nounechos, highly regard the mind, the last being especially strong.
How many lessons can we draw from this exchange between the Savior and this educated scribe who had devoted his life to the learning of words, texts, and ideas? Consider with me seven dimensions of loving God with our all our mind.
1. This scripture tells us it is possible.
We learn here with assurance that it is possible to get near to the kingdom of God with our intelligence intact. This smart man was close to the mark, and Jesus congratulated him for it.
Likewise, your faculty here at BYU-Idaho congratulates and encourages you. At this institution and in this religion, I assure you, you don’t need to check your brains at the door. To be a gospel-scholar, you’ll need all the brilliance you can muster, for we have the double challenge of knowing not only the ways of the world but also the ways of the Lord, and then, getting the two together. In this sense, the world actually has the lighter assignment, at least by half. Of course, in another sense, our task is the easier. Because we have the scriptures and temple of the Restoration, we have more pieces of the puzzle, as well as the advantage of the picture on the box.
In your building years, you have the opportunity to make BYU-Idaho the preeminent place where God is loved with all the mind. I hope you are excited and humbled to be a university student in this LDS community. Latter-day Saints boldly affirm that intelligence is the glory of God (Doctrine and Covenants 93) and that “to be learned is good”[6] so long as we avoid the vainness, frailties and foolishness of the world, and “hearken [instead] unto the counsels of God,” as Jacob taught in 2 Nephi 9.
Have you thought of ancient and modern prophets who offer role models of highly intelligent people who have loved the Lord with their minds? Isaiah was an amazingly brilliant writer. Paul, both before and after his conversion, was clearly one of the most educated people of his day. Alma, with profound articulation, went head on against the stubborn issues of his day. I understand that until only recently, President Hinckley has enjoyed reading the Classics in Latin and Greek, which he learned in college. It may not be easy, but as Ammon promised the people of Limhi in Mosiah 7, “if ye will serve [the Lord] with all diligence of mind . . . he will . . . deliver you.” [7] This indeed is possible.
2. Notice that we’re dealing here with a commandment.
The words of Jesus make it clear that we are commanded to love God with our mind. Pondering this, I wondered: Do I think of keeping this commandment when I partake of the sacrament? Do you think of it when you answer the recommend question about earnestly striving to keep the commandments?
Like keeping any commandment, this will surely take conscious effort. We don’t keep the Word of Wisdom by accident. We don’t keep the Sabbath day without planning and devotion. So, I ask, What do you do to keep this commandment deliberately? Do you earnestly strive to love God with all your mind? I doubt that a flimsy, “well, I guess so,” is going to be good enough. Jacob exhorted the Nephites to “look unto God with firmness of mind.”[8] And Alma made it clear that God will reveal his mysteries only “according to the heed and diligence” we give unto him.[9]
So what might you do to keep this commandment more diligently and deliberately? For starters, do you begin your scripture study with a prayer of loving gratitude? Might you take better notes and keep better files on important thoughts you wish to retain eternally? You might find publications like BYU Studies helpful in strengthening both your mind and testimony.
Also, you might wonder, how can we be commanded to love God? Isn’t love voluntary and freely given? So, isn’t it a contradiction in terms to be commanded to love God? Not if you understand two things: First, how gentle God’s commands. How kind his precepts are. His commandments are not orders, but invitations. The Hebrew that is translated “thou shalt not” is better translated in a pleading sense: “please don’t” . . . “don’t steal”, “don’t covet”, “don’t commit adultery.” And second, we’re not alone in this. God doesn’t command us to love him and then leave us alone to make it happen. I know that God will help you keep this commandment, for he gives no commandment save he shall prepare a way for us that we can keep it.
3. It says, with all thy mind.
The word “all” is all-important here. Keeping this commandment requires genuine completeness. You are commanded to love God with all thy heart, with all thy might, and with all thy mind. We have a word, “wholeheartedly”. Maybe we should coin a word, “wholemindedly.”
Elder Maxwell spoke often about discipleship, submissiveness and consecration, especially in an intellectual setting. He has sensitized us to the dangers of what he calls “holding back,” of not loving God with all the mind that we could. As he wrote in BYU Studies:
Whatever our particular fields of scholarship, the real test is individual discipleship, not scholarship. . . . We usually tend to think of consecration in terms of property and money . . . but there are so many ways of keeping back part and so many things we can withhold a portion of besides property. All things [including our minds] ought to be put on the altar of sacrifice. Our minds must bend, as well as our knees.
Our mind is often the last thing we are willing to let go of. We are so proud of ourselves as we latch onto certain ideas or slogans or trendy disciplines that become so all-important and persuasive to us. But our pet ideas are often the beginning of our undoing. A wise drama teacher once said, “Forget your best idea.” Clinging to it or becoming fixated on it will often block the flow of even better ideas and more expansive inspiration. Our objective is not to see things according to our minds and our inevitable personal biases but in accordance with God’s mind; to say, Not my idea, but thine be thought.
Fortunately, each of us has been blessed with definite mental talents, with plenty to give forth. It is true that some minds work better in one mode than in another, but that’s beside the point: you can and must love God with your weakest mental abilities (be they in math or music), as well as by playing to your strengths (be they in language or physics), for it says “with all thy mind.” Surely, in any given setting, God cares less about what we give him, than if we have brought the best we can, whatever that may be.
4. There will be many ways to love God with our minds.
Sister Welch and I have a pillow on our bed. On it are words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” With similar sincerity and fervor, let us count the ways we love God with our minds and love him “to the depth and breadth and height my [mind] can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and eternal Grace, . . . to the level of every day’s most quiet need, . . . freely, . . . purely, . . . with passion put to use, . . . and, if God choose, . . . even better after death.”
If you love a person, you notice and admire the fantastic things he or she has done. In 1958, Elder Howard W. Hunter said, “He loves God with all his mind who . . . sees God in all things and acknowledges him in all ways.”[10] Thus you love God with your mind by being observant of the things he has created—by appreciating the amazing things that he has given us in the worlds of chemistry or geology, scriptures, or linguistics.
We love God with our minds by caring about the problems he cares about. How can you say to your mom that you love her but at the same time say you don’t care about the things she cares about?
We love God with our mind by embracing his work, giving it the best of our planning, research and problem solving. Figuring out what you can say or do as a Home Teacher or Visiting Teacher to help someone to repent is as challenging an intellectual tutoring task as exists anywhere. Show me that you can do that and I’ll be truly impressed with your mind.
We love God with our minds by figuring how to forgive his children. It takes mental effort to forgive other people, which always begins by thinking considerate, non-judgmental thoughts about them. Nothing is more important than learning to forgive, the ultimate in human understanding.
When we love God we want to be like him. And it takes careful thought to process all that we can know of him.
Loving God means loving his words. I love the scriptures, although I admit that some chapters are harder to love than others. You love God with the mind by memorizing scriptures, knowing his words by heart. The conversation between Jesus and the Scribe was possible only because both of them knew their Torah passages by heart. We rely too much on our books and hard drives. Your mind can actually retain far more than you imagine. One of the best things I ever did was to take a challenge from my leader in the MTC to memorize all of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 in German. It’s not impossible, as any drama student will tell you. In an Honors Book of Mormon class, I had my students memorize most of King Benjamin speech. One of those students later recalled, “When we first got the assignment it was overwhelming, but it was probably the most rewarding assignment I’ve ever had. That text has been my most helpful scripture.” Why? Because it was known and deeply embedded in her remembrance bank.
We love God with the mind by skillful analysis of problems. It is often said that God is in the details. And, at the same time, don’t forget to love God with skillful synthesis as well, seeing things as one great whole. When I go to the temple, I give mental attention to the tiniest details and to the ceremonious choice of carefully deployed individual words; but at the same time, my mind sees the temple as a template, as a pattern and as a grand cosmic roadmap that tells me where I am and where I am going.
We love God with the mind by asking good and righteous questions. There is nothing wrong with asking. In fact, we are commanded to ask, seek, and knock. Joseph Smith responded to the invitation of James, “let him ask of God.”[11] Our scribe in Mark asked Jesus a good question, a much better question in fact than the unlikely hypothetical concocted by the Sadducees about a supposed 7-time widow who had remarried six of her husband’s brothers (get real! Did such a widow really exist?). We need to spend more time discerning between good questions and bad ones. It won’t do to be knocking on the wrong door. As examples of good questions, look at the fifty questions Alma asks in Alma chapter 5, or the many questions Jesus asked people in Galilee or Jersualem.
We love God by listening better to him and to those who speak for him. A good measure of people who love each other is how well they listen to each other. Listening is a mental process. It involves attentively understanding and processing what we hear. Notice that the scribe repeated back (a good communication strategy) what Jesus said, and then thoughtfully commented on its implications.
How do I love God, let us count the ways. I am sure that we could count many more. Here at BYU-Idaho you can learn to love God with your mind, as an integrated soul, with every fiber of your being.
5. With all thy mind.
Next, we learn from the conversation in Mark that Jesus cares very much about our minds. Let’s think a minute about the mind. We can see here that Jesus saw no irreconcilable conflict between the heart and the mind. Indeed, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ exquisitely harmonizes traditional paradoxes by embracing both study and faith, reason and revelation, truth and goodness, grace and works. The one is not without the other in the Lord. I was involved with the recent bicentennial conference in honor of Joseph Smith at the Library of Congress; among the presenters, some division arose over whether we should understand the Prophet through the Enlightenment lenses of science, rationality, and objectivity, or through the Romantic sensitivities of emotion, revelation, and subjectivity. Surely, again, the answer must be “both.” The gospel transcends and thus can unify both. For Joseph Smith, the gospel strives for completeness, abundance, and the fullness of eternal life, not just either half of it.
Getting the heart and the mind together is a wonderful experience. It is not easy to describe the collaborative workings of the two, but analogies can help. Getting the spirit and intellect together is like seeing with two eyes allowing depth perception lacking through a single lens. I find it is like playing a violin which requires two hands, each performing its own function to produce a transforming, harmonious melody. Or as one of my students suggested, it’s like chocolate milk: chocolate and milk taste fine alone, but even better together.
Just as Jesus carefully noticed that the Scribe answered with great intelligence, he also notices and cares what you think, what is taught and thought in each of your classes. I know that God cares and watches out for our intellectual endeavors. The surgical testimony of Elder Nelson shows that God will help things happen that far exceed our human ability. Have miracles ceased? No, in fact Mormon in Moroni 7 says that miracles are ministered “unto them of strong faith and a firm mind in every form of godliness.”[12]
I have a testimony that God helps us in our righteous academic pursuits, often through the help of other people.
For example, one day with no appointment, I hoped to meet with a museum curator in Florence, Italy, only to find that a faithful Church member of the local branch just happened to be substituting for a friend at that museum that morning and I was able to learn what I needed that day.
Another day, a person walked into my office with the precise skills I had been praying for, only to tell me she didn’t know why she had come but that she had felt impressed not to stay with another job and wondered if I needed any help.
Two months ago, as I hopelessly faced a delivery date two days away to send items to the Library of Congress, a professional photographer called me out of the blue with exactly what I needed—an answer to prayer.
Racing against a crucial year-end deadline after months of work, my staff at BYU Studies finally downloaded a huge, unprecedented collection of scanned Church historical documents onto 74 DVD production masters; with that only set successfully in hand, they watched as our custom designed system of linked hard drives crashed irrecoverably only a few hours later.
I cannot believe that these things were mere coincidences. I know that God inspires us, but often only after we have paid the price of study directed by the light of faith. As a missionary in Germany in 1967, I attended a few lectures at a Catholic theological seminary on what we called Diversion Day. There I heard about the writing style in the Bible known as chiasmus. My companion and I purchased a book that the professor had mentioned. We studied the book carefully and reread the entire gospel of Matthew with this tool of literary analysis in mind. Only after this effort and careful study was I awakened early one morning by the words, “If it is evidence of Hebrew style in the Bible, it must be evidence of Hebrew style in the Book of Mormon.” I wondered why no one had ever seen this feature in the Book of Mormon before; yet with faith that it might be so, I got out of bed and began reading where my companion and I just happened to have left off the night before. In a few minutes I discovered the classic chiastic passage in Mosiah 5:10-12, and soon after encountered several others. I never would have found this on my own. I don’t know that the Book of Mormon is true because I find these things; rather, I can find these things because I know that the record is true. As President Packer has cautioned, we should not say “I know the gospel is true, however . . . .” Rather, “I know the gospel is true, therefore . . . .”
I know that God will show us more than we can see by ourselves. I know that God rewards our minds after long hours of service. Some of my favorite scripture insights, making sense of intellectual and spiritual challenges throughout my life, have come at weary hours of the night during my service as a bishop. Ironically, my most productive years as a scholar have been those years when I have been busiest serving as bishop.
6. Loving God is not just any commandment. It is the first one.
What do we make of the fact that loving God is the prime commandment? It is first because all else follows from it. Loving God is the well-spring of all righteousness, and loving him with all your mind is the tap root of true intelligence.
True unity of purpose flows from loving God with our minds. By reaching consensus, righteous Saints echo the harmony of the Godhead itself. This is why contention and disputation are so abhorrent to God, and why, if we are not one, we are not his.
True obedience flows from loving God with our minds. John 14:15 reads, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” The Greek can also be translated, “if you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Thus, when you love God with all your mind, you will mind him and mind all his precepts. And in minding him always, you keep him always in mind. You think of him often. You want to share with him your whole day, and every day, Sundays and Fridays, days and nights, and everything you have said and done.
Likewise, love gives the benefit of the doubt. You do not believe false rumors or buy false assumptions about those you love. When you love God with your mind, you think kind and generous things about Him. These things flow from loving God first.
While you cannot talk yourself into loving God or anyone else, it is indeed possible to talk yourself out of love, so give heed first to what you think of him. Joseph Smith said that a correct understanding of God’s character and a reassurance that God approves of your conduct is foundational to a living faith in God. Loving God generatively leads to all else that is of the divine nature.
This is why the second commandment is like unto this, the first. When we love God first, we love those whom he loves, namely his children. Surely, Joseph Smith taught this principle as well. He embodied the love of God and of all mankind. On Oct 19, 1840, he said to the Twelve:
Love is one of the chief characteristics of Deity, and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the sons of God. A man filled with the love of God is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race. . . . Let every selfish feeling be not only buried, but annihilated; and let love to God and man predominate and reign triumphant in every mind.
Which brings me to my seventh and final point, a word of warning and encouragement: It is possible to break this commandment.
Because it is a commandment to love God with all our mind, we must also acknowledge that we may break this commandment. How does this happen, and if it does, what must we do?
We break this commandment when we act contrary to the degree of knowledge that we have received, for with increased knowledge comes an elevated duty to measure up to a higher degree of accountability.
We break this commandment when we promote ideas that injure other people. As Jesus said, it is inevitable that offense will come, but wo unto him by whom offense cometh.
You break this commandment when you harbor in your mind errors that implicitly deny the existence, love, power, or knowledge of God. As a bishop, I’ve heard people say, “Everyone is doing it.” But wait a minute, Is God doing it? They say, “I couldn’t stop.” But this denies the power of God. Couldn’t God help you stop? They say, “It’s my life, I can do what I want with it.” But doesn’t your life also belong to God? When they say “Every point of view is equally valid,” where does that leave God’s view? When you think, “No one will notice,” doesn’t God notice everything? Or “I have no friends.” Doesn’t this deny that He is your friend? These excuses are wicked, not so much because they are logically flawed or psychologically unhealthy, but because they deny God’s place in your life. They mentally reject the love of God, and thus break the first and greatest commandment.
We break this commandment whenever we believe Satan, the enemy of all righteousness. Beware: Satan is the father of lies. And he’s a good liar. I doubt that anything Satan ever says is true. At most, it is a half truth. When he says to Eve or any of us, “Ye shall not surely die,”[13] he is not telling the whole truth. And when he says, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,”[14] he is making a hollow promise on which he cannot possibly ever deliver.
Take his lie of pornography. Satan tells us we will find love and satisfaction by ogling enticing but lifeless pornographic images. This is simply a lie. Virtual reality is neither virtuous nor real.
And, even more than that, how can we possibly love God with all our mind, if even part of our mind is filled with pollution? When I entered college as a freshman in 1964, the world was just beginning to worry about environmental pollution. Previous generations had foolishly believed that the oceans could absorb an endless amount of garbage and waste. We soon learned that pollution didn’t just go away.
People are just as naïve today. They think that the human mind can absorb an endless amount of filth and violence, and that somehow we will just push a delete key in our brain and all that will be erased. That simply will not happen. The brain has incredible powers of retention. Whether or not you can recall information during a test, it is all still there. Old folks often find that their brains remember things they haven’t thought of for decades. Mental pollution sticks; there are no teflon brains. Just as it is true that “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection,”[15] so too, whatever degree of unrepented smut or cynicism we attain unto, it will rise with us as well.
Thus, Moroni says, “Come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourself of all ungodliness . . . and love God with all your . . . mind.”[16] Notice here that you cannot perfect your mind without his help. We often think of the effects of the Fall on our mortal bodies, but our minds are also in a fallen state. Our minds must also be redeemed from the Fall. This happens by repenting of our bad or erroneous thoughts, submitting to the will of Christ, and taking up the mind of Christ.
So, if you find that you have broken this commandment to love God with all your mind, as with any other sin, you must repent and be redeemed through the atoning blood of Christ the Lord.
You must recognize your mental sins. All of us involved in higher education must take particular care to repent of our academic pride. Pride is the main occupational hazard of scholars, who too quickly suppose “they know of themselves.”[17]
Next, you must feel remorse for your mental sins. Like Zeezrom, we must suffer spiritual migraines over our intellectual mistakes.[18] In many ways, their effects are the hardest to undo, but through Christ’s atonement, the human intellect can be transformed into an instrument for loving God.
Relying on the grace and goodness of God, we must overcome our rebellious thoughts every bit as much as our disobedient actions. We must pray, “and lead us not into intellectual temptation” as much as any other kind of temptation.
So the question ultimately becomes, Has your thinking been redeemed? Has your mind been justified and sanctified by the blood of Christ? Has your mind “yielded to the enticings of the Holy Spirit”? Do you have no more disposition to think evil? Or, to use the words of Paul in Romans 12, Have you been “transformed by the renewing of your mind (your nous)”?[19]
If so, the Lord will cause your mind to expand, as Alma promised in Alma 32.[20] He will write his laws and covenants upon your mind, as Jeremiah guaranteed.[21]
And in the end, if you love God with all your mind, you will be fit for the kingdom, as Jesus declared to the bright young lawyer. And what a promise! In this life, we are playing for keeps, “for as [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he,”[22] and in the day of judgment, even our unrepented thoughts will weigh against us.[23] But if you “worship him with all your might, mind, and strength,” Nephi promises, “ye shall in nowise be cast out”[24] and as Moroni assures, “the hope of his glory and of eternal life [shall] rest in your mind forever.”[25]
In conclusion, may I offer a blessing and testimony in your behalf? May you not just go through BYU–Idaho, but may BYU–Idaho go through you. May you know, as I do know, that it is possible to love God with all your mind, and may you let him help you to do so. May you love God with invigorating questions. May you faithfully and intellectually discern between truth and error. May your brain be keen and sharp, but may you never harm even the least intelligent of God’s children. In the exercise of your academic freedom, may you intellectually choose to spend time on subjects of “liberty and eternal life,”[26] not captivity and death.
May you pray over your books, as you would bless food for thought. May you pray as you go to class, and not just as you walk into a test. I testify that the love of God will give harmony and value to all that you think and do. I pray that your mind may become perfected in Christ, and that in all of this may you be found not far from the kingdom of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Mark 12:28
[2] Mark 12:30
[3] paraphrased from Mark 12:31
[4] paraphrased fom Mark 12:32-33
[5] Mark 12:34
[6] 2 Nephi 9:29
[7] Mosiah 7:33, emphasis added
[8] Jacob 3:1
[9] Alma 12:9
[10] CR Apr 1958
[11] James 1:5
[12] Moroni 7:30, emphasis added
[13] Moses 4:10
[14] Matthew 4:9
[15] Doctrine and Covenants 130:18
[16] Moroni 10:32
[17] 2 Nephi 9:28
[18] Alma 15:3, 5
[19] Romans 12:2
[20] Alma 32:34
[21] as quoted in Hebrews 8:10
[22] Proverbs 23:7
[23] Alma 12:14
[24] 2 Nephi 25:29
[25] Moroni 9:25
[26] 2 Nephi 2:27