Should we try to understand God?

J. Hathaway

March 20, 2019 - 9 minutes read - 1789 words

Background

I think many of us are good at applying our daily reading to our lives. This application is essential and has eternal impacts on our lives and our relationship with Deity. We also need to pull scripture together to find a comprehensive meaning. We need to spend the struggle and time to see the big picture - not just the maps and storyline big picture, but the attributes of God big picture. How does He work with His children? The full canon of scripture and latter-day teachings are needed to build the correct view of His attributes.

It hurts the brain and spirit as this exercise is put forth. This type of growth pain takes effort and can push the best of us to give up. This post will allow me to share some great quotes related to this concept of understanding God. Should we try to understand God?

BH Roberts and Henry Drummond think so.

Early in my adult life, I read Mormon Doctrine of Deity by BH Roberts. I enjoyed the book and found BH Roberts to be very clear and direct. The quote below comes from The Seventy’s course in theology Fifth year. He pulls no punches as he explains our need to ponder God and His attributes.

Mental laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part. To escape this effort, this mental stress to know the things that are, men raise all too readily the ancient bar - ‘Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther.’ Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mystery. ‘Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salvation; why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh.’ So men reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud ’the simple faith;’ which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many good people regard this course as indicative of reverence - this plea in bar of effort - ’thus far and no farther.’

BH Roberts then quotes Henry Drummond from Natural Law in the Spiritual World. I have included a more extended version than the abbreviated quote from BH Roberts. Henry Drummond starts off describing the typical Christian which I think BH Roberts believes describes typical Latter-Day Saints as well.

The Churches have always held that Christ was the source of Life. No spiritual man ever claims that his spirituality is his own. ‘I live,’ he will tell you; ’nevertheless it is not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Christ our Life has indeed been the only doctrine in the Christian Church from Paul to Augustine, from Calvin to Newman. Yet, when the Spiritual man is cross-examined upon this confession it is astonishing to find what uncertain hold it has upon his mind. Doctrinally he states it adequately and holds it unhesitatingly. But when pressed with the literal question he shrinks from the answer. We do not really believe that the Living Christ has touched us, that He makes His abode in us. Spiritual Life is not as real to us as natural Life.

Now comes the section that BH Roberts quotes extensively.

And we cover our retreat into unbelieving vagueness with a plea of reverence, justified, as we think, by the ‘Thus far and no farther’ of ancient Scriptures. There is often a great deal of intellectual sin concealed under this old aphorism. When men do not really wish to go farther they find it an honorable convenience sometimes to sit down on the outermost edge of the Holy Ground on the pretext of taking off their shoes. Yet we must be certain that, making a virtue of reverence, we are not merely excusing ignorance; or, under the plea of mystery, evading a truth which has been stated in the New Testament a hundred times, in the most literal form, and with all but monotonous repetition.

BH Roberts stops quoting Henry Drummond with the above quote. However, Henry Drummond continues with a few more great quotes around mystery and knowledge.

What is mystery to many men, what feeds their worship, and at the same time spoils it, is that area round all great truth which is really capable of illumination, and into which every earnest mind is permitted and commanded to go with a light. We cry mystery long before the region of mystery comes. True mystery casts no shadows around. It is a sudden and awful gulf yawning across the field of knowledge; its form is irregular, but its lips are clean cut and sharp, and the mind can go to the very verge and look down the precipice into the dim abyss.

You can see BH Roberts take his riff on the above quote as he concludes his statement.

This sort of ‘reverence’ is easily simulated, and is of such flattering unction, and so pleasant to follow - ‘soul take thine ease’ - that without question it is very often simulated; and falls into the same category as the simulated humility couched in “I don’t know,” which so often really means ‘I don’t care, and do not intend to trouble myself to find out.’

Patrick Mason and Rabbi Heschel think so

Patrick Mason recently wrote the book Planted and presented at the FairMormon Conference in 2016. He is a vibrant thinker. In his FairMormon presentation he quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel from God in Search of Man, one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the 20th century:

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living foundation; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless.

Towards the end of Patrick Mason’s presentation, he concludes with some critical points about the future of religion.

As I wrap up, I will admit that I have two fears for the church that I love and am totally committed to. First, I fear for what I call the “juvenilization” of Mormonism, or the “EFY-ification” of the church, or the “Gospel According to Internet Memes.” When it’s adults in the room, let’s respect one another enough to talk like adults. Most people can handle complexity and nuance. We can stretch beyond what we learned in seminary, though we are so rarely invited to. I have a really smart colleague who once invited the missionaries into his home so he could learn more about Mormonism. When they finished their discussion, with frequent references to their accompanying flipchart, he thought to himself, “That’s it?” Indeed, I fear that in too many contexts we’re feeding our members and investigators a low-nutrition religious diet that leaves them not only with the unsatisfied feeling of “That’s it?” but also leaves them poorly fortified against challenges to their faith. I see signs that we’re starting to do better on this score, but frankly only in patchwork fashion.

My second fear is for the fundamentalist takeover of Mormonism. I’m not referring to fundamentalism in terms of polygamy—I’m pretty confident we’re totally past that phase of our history. Instead, this is a reference to what I think is the rather remote possibility [that some] … either push out liberals and moderates or make their lives in the church so miserable that they leave on their own, thus leaving only the fundamentalists to control the whole denomination. There are occasional signs that moderates and liberals are simply not wanted in the contemporary LDS Church.

…

We have a theology that empowers each of us to be anxiously engaged in good causes, to be co-creators and co-participants with Christ in the work of redeeming the world. … In our 21st-century secular age, Mormonism will succeed because it stretches people’s moral imaginations, and calls them to a life of faith that is not small and fearful, but rather creative, venturesome, open, and empowering.

Zion calls. Will we have the courage to get there?

Conclusion

I am starting to notice that my questions all can be answered in the affirmative. However, I am not trying to create quizzes. I am trying to ask questions that make us think. I believe that Zion calls and that our relationship with and our understanding of God will be the impetus that makes that call echo across the world.

It is our obligation to make sure we understand the uniqueness of each of God’s attributes.

What does it mean for Him to love me?
How can He and I grow in a loving relationship?

However, I would propose that our understanding of His attributes is limited until we understand their integration and relatedness.

It is essential that we struggle to understand Him. In this struggle, we should be careful not to imperfect him. Andrew Skinner shares this point. I will use it to conclude.

Thus everything of sacred significance connected with our future rests on both our coming to know about God the Eternal Father and, ultimately, our coming to know Him. “If men do not comprehend the character of God,” said Joseph Smith, “they do not comprehend themselves” (Teachings, 343). God and men are of the same divine, eternal species, and if we do not comprehend the nature of God, we cannot appreciate our divine parentage nor the very real potential we possess to become like our heavenly parents.

However, here a caution needs to be emphasized. We must always remember that God is exalted—we are not! He is perfect—we are not! He must never be treated casually. He possesses almighty power. His “brightness and glory defy all description” (JS—H 1:17).