The Pain in Progress

I will write about Easter and spring break soon. I have some really great pictures to show you, so look forward to that in the coming days.

I am realizing that I have--or had--become complacent in my knowledge of gospel doctrine. In college I had a period of rapid intellectual and spiritual growth which sustained me until my calling as a seminary teacher. I think it might have sustained me my whole life. My strands of testimony were tightly wound into a tight ball. There was no room for knowledge to escape. No room for doubt to creep in. It seemed like the best way to safeguard my beliefs.

I didn't even realize this until I started studying the doctrines I knew so well. And because I was reading, researching, and preparing to teach church history and the Doctrine and Covenants in a way I hadn't before, an interesting thing happened. Instead of rolling my ball, hitting on the points of doctrine I already had stored, I found threads of truth not previously incorporated into my cohesive body of knowledge. A hole was poked here, a chunk blown out there. New information meant a shifting of interconnected strands. If this is true, then this is also true. But if this is true then what I thought I knew is incorrect. What I thought was false may be true at a certain point.

And . . . my nice ball unraveled in a messy pile.

It's like when you clean out your closet--finally boxes of things you love but never look at get sorted. Things you thought you needed, you realize you don't. And when you're done, you have a lot more space for new stuff! But boy, what a mess you have to clean up outside your clean closet's door. It would have been much easier to shut the door and keep things as they were.

Easier, but not necessarily better.

It is painful to readjust--to include some things I hadn't wanted to, and to throw out some that were merely practices and not principles. It is painful to realize that God is perfect but his people are not.

(Which shouldn't surprise me, because hello--I'm certainly not perfect.)

I won't go in to details but you have had similar discoveries, questions, challenges, or issues in matters of religion. I'm sure of it.

I am putting the ball together again, integrating the old and the new. But this time, I will leave a little room for growth--for my body knowledge to be dynamic and alive--growing and changing as my understanding increases. If the strands were all one color they wouldn't be very interesting, would they?

I do love the gospel of Jesus Christ. If there is anything I can hang on to it is the love of my Savior for me and all mankind. I feel blessed to have the opportunity to grow as I teach the young people in my seminary class, and I hope that I am helping them to draw closer to Him.

In my lesson today we read this quote from the straight-shooter Brigham Young:

"Why do people apostatize? You know we are on the 'Old Ship Zion.' We are in the midst of the ocean. A storm comes on, and, as sailors say, she labors very hard. 'I am not going to stay here, says one; 'I don't believe this is the "Ship Zion." 'But we are in the midst of the ocean.' 'I don't care, I am not going to stay here.' Off goes the coat, and he jumps overboard. Will he not be drowned? Yes. So with those who leave this Church. It is the 'Old Ship Zion,' let us stay in in" (Discourses of Brigham Young, 85).

I am grateful to be a passenger on the "Old Ship Zion," with many faithful and imperfect people trying their best to navigate this life. I am grateful that the Master steers the ship and leads me through rough and still waters so that I may appreciate the beauty in both.

There is pain in progress . . . but it's the only way to keep moving forward.