These thoughts are coming to fruition (or rather, attempting to come to fruition, if I'm honest), because yours truly did something unfortunately ditsy today: she left her scriptures at church. And didn't realize until some time within the last half hour or so. While she grants the following: that a) the church is literally down the street from her house which b) means she could easily walk there to see if it's open and if her scriptures are exactly where she left them, she c) has already changed into her pajamas and d) knew that she had an older set of scriptures she has had since, well, forever (they preceded her current set) that she could turn to.
It should be noted, right now, that the older set--currently the only set of hers residing in her household--saw her through most of Primary, Sunday School, Young Women, and her seminary days. Doesn't make them ancient, but certainly makes them much older than the set she's used for the past couple of years or so.
And now to bust out of the third person: whenever anyone asks me what I used to be like when I was younger, I inevitably tell them that I was more or less the same except dumber than I am now. In all fairness, I think this assessment may well be true of most of us, except that I realized something as I read through various bits of my old scripture set: while yes, I was not as intelligent then as I am now, I had much much more confidence in matters of faith.
In looking through the notes and the testimonies and whatnot I found within the pages of my scriptures (both those which were glued in and those which were written in), I saw something of a different version of myself. She had a clear--if somewhat vague--plan for her life, her expectations for herself were high without being tremendously so, and she had firm convictions. Firm like a rock.
Over the years, some of those convictions have wobbled. Some of them have eventually been righted again. Some of them, alas, are currently more like jello than anything else. And I don't know if I can blame my education for this, although I do correlate a certain questioning attitude with some of the wobble-age... Well, perhaps not so much the questioning attitude as much as the stubborn refusal to accept anything too easily.
I suppose all of this is to say that if I was able to have more faith, if I was able to trust more, if I was steadfast because back then I was indeed a little dumber--I'd like to learn how to be that dumb again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Amen! I was just thinking about this same thing while I was sitting in church today. I miss those days of stead-fast faith. Maybe this is the year to reclaim it?
Well, teenagers also see things very much in black-and-white. It's easier to take things for granted when it's either Good or Bad. If anything, I think it's a great way to be to question everything at first. Even if you don't feel as confident about things, you don't get taken for a fool and there are some things we shouldn't be overly confident about, right?
.
I don't know. I'm not sure faith is necessarily a function of lack-of-learning. It might rather be an epistemology for sorting learning.
I don't know what to sacrifice my intelligence in favor of faith, I just sometimes wonder if I don't privilege my intelligence OVER faith in some ways... that said, I think you might be onto something, Th., with the sorting idea.
Part of my difficulty these days, Coila, isn't the questioning--I don't think questioning is a bad thing--it's the refusal to accept any answer that comes to me too easily.
And that, in its own way, is just dumb. Just because some things come more easily than other things doesn't make them any less true...
Speaking of being dumb, that should say that I don't know that I want to sacrifice intelligence in favor of faith. As opposed to the non-coherent remark I posted.
I've heard (but can't remember who said it or the exact wording) that some general authority has said that more educated we become the stronger our faith.
I don't think that 'being dumb' made you steadfast anymore than questioning makes you wobbly. We are MEANT to question. (see article here: http://www.newsweek.com/2005/10/16/the-mormon-odyssey.html) We are meant to think. Part of thinking is questing. Those with blind faith have not real faith. (imho.)
Interesting. The more educated I've become, the harder time I've had swallowing...certain things. While I wouldn't necessarily make a positive correlation between the education and the unswallowability, I sometimes wonder if some of the unswallowability has come as side effects of attitudes I've developed in the course of my education. If that makes any sense at all.
And perhaps I didn't express this well, but I've never felt that the questioning itself made me wobbly. I think the questioning is necessary. Especially for me. It's the easy answers that I struggle with--the ones that just seem right and knowable already. The ones I DON'T have to question.
Post a Comment