Sources of Doubt (4 of 7): Educational Pursuits

I respect research and scholarship. I appreciate learning from those who have devoted themselves to painstaking examination of a subject. I delight in receiving new information that make sense of things that were once mysterious to me. I understand the blessings and benefits of our public and private educational systems. There is so much good that is brought about because of them. I have devoted myself to becoming educated and have maintained a systematic personal study program on a variety of topics. I want you to know this because I want to talk about the negative effects education can have on us without you thinking that I am against educational pursuits.

While I love learning, and while I know the Lord wants us to get as much education as possible, there is inherent in educational pursuits the danger of being misled—of being so smitten by the intellectual thrill of secular learning and the lure of human reasoning that we are powerfully enticed to be suspicious of the Church, to discount or even disregard the teachings of living prophets, and to doubt the Lord and His gospel truths. “To be learned” is indeed good, but only if we “hearken unto the counsels of God.”[1]

The intellectual growth and mental development that result from educational pursuits are powerful. They can lead us to become knowledgeable experts and contributing members of society. But they can also beguile us into believing we are so cerebrally sophisticated and rationally advanced that we no longer need religion or its naive thinking. Educational pursuits can reveal “the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness” of humans. For “when [we] are learned [we] think [we]are wise, and [we] hearken not unto the counsel of God, for [we] set it aside, supposing [we] know of [ourselves], wherefore, [our] wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth [us] not. And [we] shall perish.”[2] What an unfortunate and, most likely, unexpected result for those who favor their intellectual prowess over God’s eternal reasoning. Compared to the divine light or revelation, human logic is an unprofitable and perishable commodity.

Doubt that is caused by educational pursuits comes about in different ways. I once attended a graduate level class as a visitor in which the teacher allowed a free-flow of unconstructive dialogue about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It became evident rather quickly that there were several groups of people in the class. One or two were former members of the Church and quite willing to make militant comments against the Church. While they spoke with an authoritative air, their knowledge of Church doctrine and current research was woefully uninformed and out of date. Several others were not members, or inactive members, who were content to passively watch the folderol. Most surprising to me were the number of members who were equally content to sit as idle observers. Only one student, however, spoke up to provide more accurate information or to correct false and misleading statements. The atmosphere the teacher allowed to develop in that class cultivated the deleterious effects of doubt.

Negative and uninformed college classroom discussions about the Church, however, are not the only way doubt is stirred up among students pursuing education. President Joseph F. Smith identified “false educational ideas” as one of the “three dangers that threaten the Church within.”[3] In my own graduate courses, I was required to take a seminar on love. While the presenters showed no animosity toward the Church, their teachings were clearly contrary to gospel principles. What made their ideas compelling to some was that they backed them up with scholarly research and opinions of those who were considered authorities in the field. Young minds can be persuaded to doubt the Church and the gospel by the tantalizing teachings of authoritative figures and research that is uninformed by God’s revelations. These fuel the flame of false educational ideas.

These days, those who seek education in universities and other institutions of higher learning, or simply through a vigorous reading program, are met with spiritual, religious, and doctrinal opposition. Whether we like it or not, higher education carries with it the hazard of hostility toward religion which can stimulate doubt. To the students and faculty of one university, Elder Dallin H. Oaks declared, “The rejection of an unprovable God and the denial of right and wrong are most influential in the world of higher education. Secular humanism…is deliberately or inadvertently embodied in the teachings of faculty members in many colleges and universities.”[4]

After all, let’s not forget that Satan seeks to deceive the whole world in general and to persecute the Church and make war with commandment-keepers in specific.[5] Religion, especially that which invites people to come unto Christ, is his enemy. Campus-communities, including Church-owned campuses, are highly susceptible to the lure of secularist, agnostic, and atheistic philosophies stemming from human reasoning and the scientific method. These tend to downplay or even deny the existence of God and His absolute truths and perpetuate false educational ideas.

Information challenging our religious beliefs is found in biology, philosophy, geography, zoology, anthropology, history, psychology, chemistry, literature, politics, and more. Couple the incomplete and false philosophies of mankind with a faithless or scornful professor and you have a powerful combination that can vex with doubt even the brightest and most determined disciple.

A correct understanding of what our religion says and doesn’t say about various secular topics can help us maintain our faith as well as guide us in finding usefulness in the theories of secular studies. President Joseph F. Smith once taught:

“Our young people are diligent students. They reach out for truth and knowledge with commendable zeal, and in so doing they must necessarily adopt for temporary use, the theories of men. As long, however, as they recognize them as scaffolding useful for research purposes, there can be no special harm in them. It is when these theories are settled upon as basic truth that trouble appears, and the searcher then stands in grave danger of being led hopelessly from the right way.”[6]

So, according to President Smith, members of the Church can safely accept, for example, the theory of evolution, as just that—a theory, useful for learning about God’s creations and the history of their development. If professors teach things from the theory that contradict scripture, we are not bound to accept them even if we have to regurgitate them on a test. On the other hand, some members unnecessarily reject the theory of evolution because they believe it contradicts what Moses taught about the creation and age of the earth.[7] It may help these members if they realize that the accounts of the creation in scripture were not necessarily meant to explain “how” the earth was created or how old it is as much as they were meant to help us understand “why” it was created.

President Gordon B. Hinckley once explained the effects educational pursuits had on him as a young adult. He told how he received a testimony of Joseph Smith when he was twelve years old and then related the following: “It is true that during the years which followed there were times when that testimony wavered somewhat, particularly in the seasons of my undergraduate university work. However, that conviction never left me entirely; and it has grown stronger through the years, partly because of the challenges of those days which compelled me to read and study and make certain for myself.”[8]

While educational pursuits may include the hazard of generating doubt, we should not shy away from them. Prophets have encouraged us to get all the education we can.[9] The Lord tells us repeatedly to become learned, to seek for knowledge of all sorts, and that “the glory of God is intelligence.”[10] We can follow the examples of our Savior Jesus Christ and the Prophet of the Restoration, Joseph Smith.

Jesus Christ sought knowledge during his mortal life. He clearly grew exponentially quicker than the rest of us, but we can follow His process even if only at a comparatively snail’s pace. John bore record that Jesus “received not of the fullness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fullness.”[11] Luke tells us that He “increased in wisdom.”[12] The Savior’s neighbors and community acquaintances were “astonished” at his knowledge and rhetorically asked themselves, “Whence hath this man this wisdom?”[13]

Similarly, Joseph Smith was an intellectual sponge and grew quickly in knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Of the Prophet’s desire to learn, George Q. Cannon said, “He loved knowledge for its righteous power. Through the tribulations which had surrounded him from the day when first he made known to a skeptical world his communion with the heavens, he had been ever advancing in the acquisition of intelligence. The Lord had commanded him to study, and he was obeying. … His mind, quickened by the Holy Spirit, grasped with readiness all true principles, and one by one he mastered these branches and became in them a teacher.”[14]

Both Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith loved learning and grew rapidly in knowledge. They enjoyed it for its righteous power and set an example and a pattern for us to follow in our educational pursuits. The Lord’s prophets have encouraged us to get all the education we can. As we do so, we must, like Jesus and Joseph, learn to discern truth from error and especially to ward off doubt that can be so endemic to educational endeavors.

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[1] 2 Nephi 9:29.

[2] 2 Nephi 9:28.

[3] Gospel Doctrine, pp. 312–313; see also Improvement Era, Vol. 17, No. 5, p. 476, March, 1914.

[4] “Stand As Witnesses,” Ensign, March 2015, p. 31.

[5] JST Revelation 12:8, 13, 17.

[6] Gospel Doctrine [1939], p. 38.

[7] See Genesis 1–2 and Moses 2–3

[8] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Praise to the Man,” Ensign, August 1983, p. 2.

[9] Gordon B. Hinckley, “Stay on the High Road,” Ensign, May 2004, p. 113.

[10] 2 Nephi 2:29; Doctrine and Covenants 88:77-79; 88:118; 93:36.

[11] Doctrine and Covenants 93:11–14.

[12] Luke 2:52.

[13] Matthew 13:54.

[14] The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, p. 189.