Continuing from Excellence in Education (part 1), Elder Henry B. Eyring writes:
You have known students whose academic records have improved sharply on their return from a mission. Part of that change is a new confidence, born of experience, that they can learn. But at least as much is a hunger to know more to serve better. I spoke at a funeral of a young man who had returned only a few years before from a foreign mission. His companions told me that on the night before he was killed, he was studying the missionary lessons in the language of the people he had taught. He could not have expected to return to that country, but if the gospel is taught in the spirit world in the languages of this earth, he was well prepared. And he was prepared because his hunger to learn produced the power for sustained effort, even around a campfire on a mountainside.
If you overcome fear and indifference, you will learn. And if you learn well and compare your performance you will likely hit against the next—and most dangerous barrier to excellence is pride. Success in learning has in it the seed of failure. But it has other seeds as well. Whether the seeds of pride grows and chokes your learning will depend upon how you measure your success.
We are apt to judge our success by comparison. Schools encourage that by their grading process, which is done not to educate people but to certify them. And because those who certify want some ranking of students, your success will almost surely invite you to look down on others. That feeling of pride can close the door to learning from teachers, and even from God. Nephi taught; “O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and frailties and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, O they set it aside, and they set aside supposing they know of themselves, wherefore their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.” (2 Nephi 9:28.)
But the danger will be slight for you if you follow the counsel to “know for certainty the Character of God.” The source of you self-confidence in failure will also be the source of your humility in success. Your success will be put in perspective. First, your efforts to approximate the truth, which is the best human learning can do, will someday be shown to be approximate. The great Isaac Newton did not live to see his laws of mechanics modified by the theory of relativity, but he surely would have smiled at the arrogance of those who thought his laws so complete that man could do without God. And second, you can be confident that a loving Father, to whom your best work is merely child’s play, will be eager to help you move on to better approximations of the truth he knows perfectly.
The same scripture describes that possibility:”But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels to God.” (2 Nephi 9:29.) In fact, to hearken to the counsels of God is a good way to become more learned. It will take the fear out of failure and boredom out of General Education requirements and the risk of pride out of the honors of men.
If to know the character of God is the way to educational excellence, what should a student do about it? It will take more that academic study. You could master the multiplication of arithmetic facts and move on. But knowing God is another matter. Even those who once knew by the Holy Spirit that God lives, may, after neglect, become blinded and say that there is no God. So the study you needed is not primarily or even largely done, by logical powers. And it must be continuous, so that you have recent testimony that he lives. Elder Peterson described the testimony you need:
“Every one of us must do as the Presidency of the Church does, and that is to treat God as a person and not as an idea of any kind. He is a person and we need to deal with him that way. We must realize that he has feelings and we can offend Him or we can please Him, depending on our attitude.” Address at Brigham Young University 1983.)
You can know God as a person by communicating with him and serving Him. That cannot be done primarily in a classroom. You will need to pray, to fast, and to ponder the scriptures. The efforts and its result are described in this instruction:
Humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually that ye may not be tempted above that which ye can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit, becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and long-suffering, having faith on the Lord, having hope that ye shall have eternal life; having the love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest. (Alma 13:28-29.)
The first responsibility must be yours, not a teacher’s. And yet two things can happen to you from attending a class regularly that you aren’t likely to find alone. First you can gain confidence from expressed testimonies of your teachers and classmates. Coming to know God has moments of discouragement, like any learning. A teacher or fellow student who bears testimony that prayers are answered, for example, can help you keep trying, when the heavens seem closed to you. Second, your desire to contribute to a regular and frequent class can spur the scripture study without which you cannot stay close to God.
If you make knowing God the center of your education, you will gain the attitudes necessary to learn as well as you can. And that is excellence. It will not end all failure, but it will reduce the fear and self-doubt that failure can produce. It will not make every lecture interesting, but it will help you find ideas and feelings in them that matter enough to engage your full attention. And it will not blind you to comparisons with others, but comparison with the majesty of God will take care of pride. AS you come to know God better, you will appreciate more the teachers who nurture your testimony of God and his prophets, not only as part of your education but as the heart of it. . . . ~Henry B. Eyring, quoted here from the book “Excellence” (Salt Lake City) Deseret Book Company 1984) p.19-24
President Eyring was President of Ricks College for a number of years and is now in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
