Doctrinal Security

My wife and I have come to recognize the responsibility we have to teach our children principles at a level they are ready to understand. Their individual stages of progression have recently been manifest to me as we’ve been reading the scriptures as a family more regularly. My two older children read with ease, but when the next youngest two children read they struggle to pronounce unfamiliar words.

After we read I like to ask what they learned and try to bring the lesson home to our general life challenges. Their responses often vary from hitting the doctrinal nail on the head to answers with no seeming relevance to the topic at all. About then, my wife and two older kids and I make eye contact and suppress a chuckle.

At other times when I want to connect with my kids, I have found that I need to share spiritual or temporal insights in such a way as to make sense to each of them at their individual places of understanding. While my older children can certainly handle more, my younger children need the simplified version, which is what we usually discuss in group settings.

Often as the night draws on and the little ones go to bed, I will try to catch my older children for a few minutes to give them the more advanced and personal message that I felt they needed to hear, but which would have been too much for the younger ones. Those moments of individual connecting at the right level for their understanding are priceless to me. The dynamics of my own little family have caused me to reflect on the dynamics of our heavenly family, which are undoubtedly much more complex.

In Abraham 3, a vision of heaven was given to Abraham through the Urim and Thumim where he was given an astronomy lesson of huge significance. He saw the way no two heavenly bodies are alike unto God in glory (Abraham 3:18-19), and then it was shown to him in verse 19 that the cosmic metaphor applied to the uniqueness and individuality of God’s children.

These insights have also caused me to consider the challenge it would be to lead an organization consisting of millions of people, each at their own places of understanding, their own unique learning patterns, and different rates of progression. I have concluded that such organizations must speak to their general audience at nearly the basest level of understanding among their people, in the same way we conduct our group family conversations.

While I believe this must be a challenge to any organization with a large membership, I write specifically with the challenge this must be for leaders of my faith. I admire the way they’ve found just the right level of doctrinal simplicity to meet the needs of its adherents as a collective whole. I will refer to this level of generalized teachings as the general level of discourse.

For some, I expect the general level creates a stretch in their ability to understand and live those principles. For most, I have personally observed the messages and doctrines spoken at the general level are just right for their level of understanding, rate of growth, and spiritual needs. There is also a third group who believe all that is taught at the general level, but who are ready for more. I will refer to the level of satisfaction by these three groups to the general level of doctrine as their doctrinal satisfaction, or doctrinal security.

Of the three general groups I’ve mentioned, the main central mass in the center of the curve who I will call Group 2 seem to be satisfied in terms of their doctrinal understanding. However, the first and third groups who comprise a relatively small portion of the whole, may not always have their doctrinal needs met. I have come to recognize that the Lord has a place for them and a way by which they may receive the individual direction and lifting influence they need.

For those on the side of being overwhelmed by the doctrines and principles of their faith, the Lord has provided scriptures, manuals and programs, friends, and spiritual advisors to help address their individual concerns and give them the guidance needed to assist in their progression. For those on the other side, he has largely only provided one resource – the Holy Ghost.

Like my older children who stay up a little later to get the individual attention and spiritual boost they are looking for, I believe there are thousands, who long to stay up late to get answers to their more challenging questions. For them, scriptures provide only general clues, books have not been written from trusted sources, and spiritual advisors at their own place of understanding don’t have the answers they seek. They usually discover the Holy Ghost is enough.

As members of each group observe those with less or more ambition for truth than themselves, there can arise a tendency to cast unrighteous judgment. Those in Group 3 should not judge those who are satisfied in Group 2, nor should they consider those in Group 1 as spiritually weak or behind some expected measure of spiritual progress. Those who are comfortable in Group 2 should not judge those who are struggling to grasp the general level of doctrine, nor should they judge those striving for more. Each group should allow all to progress in their own way and in their own time.

Having recently made a transition between two of these groups, I’ve arrived at a vantage point that is conducive to making observations of the three groups. Those in Groups 1 or 2 sometimes accuse those who are curious and hungry for more knowledge in Group 3 of ‘missing the mark’, ‘setting themselves up for a light’, or other culturally popular phrases.

These views remind me of a simple but profound story my dad often told me while growing up which I’ve come to think of as the parable of the crabs. It goes like this: There is a bucket full of crabs. Once in awhile a crab climbs up the side to see what it can find. When it approaches the top, the other crabs from below reach up and pull the crab back down.

Those among Group 3 who are pushing beyond the general level of doctrine into a realm the scriptures refer to as, The Mysteries of the Kingdom, may be following the scriptural admonition to ask, seek, and knock. Of this group Neal A. Maxwell offered comforting words of wisdom:

“The true disciple has an inborn questioning to know, personally, all that God is willing to teach us. Nephi could have accepted gladly the vision of his father, Lehi. But Nephi ‘desired to know the things that [his] father had seen.’ (1 Nephi 11:1.) Abraham sought, even though he had a father who had turned from the faith, ‘for greater happiness and peace’ and ‘for mine appointment unto the Priesthood.’ (Abraham 1:2, 4.) Abraham described himself as desiring ‘great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness’ (Abraham 1:2), questing for the word of Christ. Divine discontent in the form of promptings can move us to feast because we know that by feasting we can increase our knowledge, effectiveness, and joy”

(Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward [1977], 119)

Since I have taken a more public position in my views, it has been my privilege to know many from the third group, and to have received hundreds of emails from them. From this unique vantage point I have observed a miraculous thing currently taking place. These disciples stay up late, researching what limited resources are available and ask their divine creator the things they desire which are usually beyond the walls of the bucket.

Remarkably, their questions are being answered, and are answered in a surprisingly consistent way from incident to independent incident. What they share with me is often consistent with my own understanding, which leaves me marveling at the phenomenon. Truly the Lord’s admonition to ask, seek, and knock and the door shall be opened unto them, is inspired direction to those who follow it, and he meant what he said!

I now conclude on a remark made by the Lord to Nephi concerning the way the Lord teaches those of the various different learning styles and his way of rewarding them:

“…I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.”

– 2 Nephi 28: 30 (see also Matthew 13:12).

For those whose learning style is enhanced through visualization I have provided a graphic below depicting the three groups mentioned in this essay, along with some scriptural points of consideration. This graphic may be printed or distributed in its entirety without permission.