Time to Reset
Today’s message will be different. I won’t be exploring a gospel topic, per se. Instead, I will tell you about something I think is important to do as a thinker. I use the term thinker because I am not qualified in any academic discipline, nor have I been trained as a writer or philosopher. Another term I could use to describe myself is a questioner. In other words, I ask a lot of questions and I think about possible answers.
In my search for understanding I gather information from experts, artificial intelligence, scripture, prophets and leaders, and mostly from God through the Gift of the Holy Ghost. The priority I give these resources, I listed in order, with spiritual impressions at the top of the list. The reason is that all the prior resources are fallible. The closest one to the Holy Spirit to being infallible would be the united voice of all the prophets, seers, and revelators on a matter of doctrine.
Because I view myself as being prone to mistaken thinking, misconceptions, and biases that could send me down an errant path, I occasionally question myself and my patterns of thought. That is why I am taking time to stop and reset my thinking, reevaluate each of my information resources, and try to see things from a different angle. At times, I find myself blindly accepting the opinions of experts or information gathered from the internet because they fit my preconceived notions. I read into scripture things that are not there, or fail to accept new revelations or interpretations of them.
Prioritizing information sources and evaluating their relative reliability is part of this reset. I become more cynical about some and more accepting of others. The problem with that is that I have to rely on the opinions and scholarship of others to form my opinions. My level of trust changes regarding where the information comes from, its track record of reliability, and most importantly, if it aligns with the spiritual insights I receive from God.
In modern society, influencers are given far too much attention and credibility. Only on rare occasions do they say something useful. Academics are too invested in their own, usually narrow focus, on their area of expertise to integrate it into a broader context. Artificial intelligence only regurgitates a consensus of information gathered from vast amounts of information. Where I find this extremely useful is that it saves hundreds of hours of chasing leads that result in dead-ends.
The more I learn about the Bible, the more I see the problems Jesus had with the scribes who read things into the texts, or worse, intentionally changed them that altered their meaning and intent. Interestingly, this has strengthened my confidence in modern revelation and my testimony of Joseph Smith and modern prophets. This is why studying the scriptures the way we do in the church is vital to understanding them and applying the knowledge we can get from them. This has caused me to see the stories in the Bible as more symbolic than literal. Even the scribes didn’t understand the symbology in the text well enough to corrupt it, so they left enough of it intact to allow us to see the truth in them.
So, where do I stand on the shifting sands of my understanding? I need to dig deeper into the sand to find bedrock. There are three questions that guide me: Who am I? Who is God? And how does the Atonement reconcile me to God? This takes me to an exploration of reality and existence itself. There will be more to come on that as we study Sections 88 and 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants. A more fundamental approach to these questions will give me a sure foundation, upon which to build a framework that informs peripheral doctrines. If I can gain a more profound understanding of existence and reality, I can know where I fit in the economy of God and the cosmos.
I need to carve out more space in my day for deep reflection. A casual approach to spiritual manifestations cannot produce experiences with the divine. Time in the House of the Lord is possibly the best way for me to commune with God. Directing my mind in quiet times like the waking hours of early mornings is another time when clarity comes.
Have you ever been reading scriptures and thought that something doesn’t sound right? I have these experiences more often than I used to. I attribute it to recognizing that imperfect people wrote and translated them. I am not implying malicious intent to them, but rather letting predispositions guide their interpretations of some of the more ambiguous texts. Again, it makes me appreciate prophets with apostolic authority to guide us to the real intent of such passages. However, the scriptures are only a roadmap for our spiritual journey. The real quest is to have them help me ask the right questions, and then allow the Holy Ghost to reveal the truth to my soul.
I feel confident enough in the things I know to let myself doubt without fear of falling away from God and his kingdom. I don’t go into these time of resetting my thinking with the intent to prove myself wrong on the fundamental doctrines, but rather to understand the purposes behind them.
I have noticed that some people go through the motions of keeping the commandments without understanding why. The children of Israel are a great example of this. Some of them “got it”, but the broad society did not and were chastised and conquered several times because of it. When Moses came down from the mountain, desiring the people to see the face of God as he had, they did not want to. They wanted Moses to be their proxy in that regard. In our day, some people want to make a minimum effort and seem to expect God to reveal himself to them.
We want the prophet to tell us what to do without discovering God’s will for ourselves. That is not what I am looking for. I want to know what the prophets will say in General Conference before they say it. I do not want it so I can tell others. I would like to know so I can adjust my actions to meet God’s expectations. That is why I need a reset. I need to tweak things until I get it right.
I think we all need to reset from time to time. I hope I have given you something to think about.