Feedback on my proposed article

This is an article I am looking to send to the Ensign...tell me what you all think. Snide remarks welcome, as long as they are restricted to comments on my age, weight, physical appearance, or intelligence...

Article

“We sure got those Mormons at Waco!” a fellow student snarled in my graduate course.

“You know they aren’t members of our faith–at all?” I pressed.

“Well...”

“No, you know that, right?” my face almost certainly flushing with indignation. Nice work, Stevenson. The missionaries will have a fun time when they meet him. Gathering my books, I wearily prepared to discuss some matters with my professor. Another student stopped me.

“So Russ, do you really believe everything your Church teaches?” Dave asked, almost certainly believing that I must be a “cultural Mormon.” Batting a thousand!

“Yes, you might say I’m a card-carrying member...” Silence. But over the following lunch, we engaged in a friendly, intellectually respectable, and challenging discussion about the truth of the Book of Mormon and my convictions as a follower of Christ.

The world of the Latter Day Saint graduate student is a world fraught with intellectual adventure, danger, and even a touch of humor. During my time as a graduate student, I have talked about ideas with a broad array of scholars, all of whom espouse competing philosophies. As I sit in seminars with these distinguished thinkers, we toss around and turn inside out theories about government, freedom, culture, and even gender. While one might honestly debate the value of such discussions, such activities raise larger, even more significant questions for any Latter Day Saint seeking to judge the value of secular scholarship within our faith that is dependent upon a world which most have not seen or heard. While those outside of the academic profession might find such questions to be esoteric or even irrelevant, I have learned the more immediate urgency to Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s and Elder Dallin H. Oaks’ counsel to become bilingual in the thinking of men and the ways of God, to speak unto men in their own language “without losing the mother tongue of faith.” Even more significantly, I have learned that those of our faith have a unique contribution to make for those who pursue the “life of the mind.”


Homo Academicus

As I attended graduate school, I saw a culture that seemed at pains to define itself. On more than a few occasions, I have heard professors refer with a revealing light-heartedness that the academic profession was “all an act” and “delusional.” Even more, as I sat in the seminars of big, messy ideas, I could not help but wondering about these ideas’ capacity to transform a soul. They could answer the “whys” without addressing—even touching—the bigger question of “Why?” Concepts of gender, family, and social systems were discussed as though they were merely pieces of clay to be molded according to the whim of the scholar. To paraphrase one professor, when you’re a scholar, you write the definitions. Such an approach has often left me wondering what the value of such study is. I struggled with this problem—after all, the fundamentals of our faith, as Elder Bruce C. Hafen has suggested, are “potent, clear, and unambiguous.” Are we not simply encouraging an undue emphasis on the wisdom of man? Why, then, should time be spent even discussing the slippery secular doctrines has to share in the “unambiguous” gospel context?

In such circumstances, Elder Hafen notes, we to do with apparent paradoxes wherein Christ tells to “let [our] light so shine before men, that they may see your good works” while still warning us: “Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them.” Yet Elder Hafen insists that we should not merely avert our eyes from the awkwardness in such ambiguity; we should face it.

I have seen that the gospel actually provides the most robust ground for discussion and for the exchange of ideas. To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, the gospel fundamentals “may be walls but they are the walls of a playground.” But as with most playgrounds, even they can be dangerous places if they are not used in the ways they were intended.

Elder Hafen has argued that folks “use” these playgrounds in three ways: 1) we either filter out the problems, preferring instead the cure of a “firm handshake, an enthusiastic greeting, and a smiley button” or we become zealots, clinging to often unrealistic ideals with a white-knuckle grip; 2) we begin to idolize ambiguity as we are constantly looking for “somebody’s bubble…so that [we] can pop it with our shiny [intellectual] pin, and 3) we recognize the ambiguity without giving up our commitment to the principles and values we hold precious. As Elder Haften notes, “We not only view things with our eyes wide open but with our hearts wide open as well.” I have struggled to answer the problems of “Why” in the academic discipline through using academic methods; I soon learned that just as with any other gospel principle, ambiguity is best tempered by the Christ-like virtues of faith, charity, and fellowship. The engine of academic study performs its function well, but only when well-oiled with mercy and friendship

Academic Bilingualism

Yet, for much of my life, I often ignored such ambiguities in favor of the easier voice in insisting on drawing a hard-line in the sand—or more accurately, on carrying a chip on my shoulder. With a decisive flourish of the hand and a stiffened jaw, I found it easy to disagree with those who had differing–though equally valuable–perspectives of gospel principles. As might be imagined, such an approach—in both form and content—did not help me to win over many individuals to the offerings of the Restoration in nourishing both mind and spirit. President Hugh B. Brown quoted an ancient prayer: “From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths, from the laziness that is content with half-truths, from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth, Oh God of Truth, deliver us.” As I have pursued the study of church history, I have found that we really have nothing to fear, that as President Brown continued, “only error need fear the freedom of thought.”

Furthermore, I saw the examples of Joseph Smith during the School of the Prophets as they sought diligently to learn languages, history, politics, and other disciplines. I have seen that “speaking to men after the manner of their own language” does not simply entail using the vocabulary of a farmer but also the pithiness of the professor. Graduate education has helped me to develop a rock-solid insistence on documentation, context, and frankness in letting the evidence I examine inform the testimony I share. I have seen that we enjoy all the benefits of both individual reasoning and individual revelation. As Elder Maxwell has noted, while we speak of the disciple-scholar, we are, after all, without these hyphens in the kingdom for we are just disciples, “men and women of Christ.” Scholarship, it seems, can merely be another facet of one’s discipleship.

Conclusion

While academia can easily overcome a person’s mindset, neither do we need to cast it off as though it were a leech on the spirit. As Elder Maxwell has said, the gospel sheds light on all of the human landscape, so a good Latter Day Saint does not need to hide from truth or become overwhelmed by it. Graduate education in the liberal arts has provided me an ideal opportunity to learn how to intergrate spiritual truth along with the scholarly process. This experience has taught me that when secularly-minded individuals pose questions, they are not always seeking to destroy faith; they often do want to understand. And they can have some understanding provided that we learn some of their language "without losing the mother tongue of faith."