Continuing their book “Faith is Not Blind (part II)”, Bruce C. and Marie K. Haven teach:
The best response to the gap of Uncertainty is to keep growing into Stage Three, where we don’t just see the real and the ideal; we also hold on to each perspective—with eyes and hearts wide open. Looking through the lens of this simplicity beyond complexity, we can take action even when we wish we had more evidence before deciding what to do. For instance, we can accept the value of accepting a Church calling even when we’re feeling too busy to take on more duties. Or we can follow the First Presidency’s counsel even when we don’t understand the reasons behind that counsel, or when others around us criticize it. We’re able to give the Lord and His Church the benefit of the doubt about our Unanswered’ questions.
The choice to be believing at this stage is very different from mere Blind’ obedience. Instead of asking us to put aside the tools of an educated, critical mind, this attitude invites us to use those tools, coupling them with our confidence in the ideal, so we can improve the status quo, not just criticize it. Call it informed faith.
G.K. Chesterton once distinguished between “optimists,” “pessimists, and “improvers,” a comparison that roughly corresponds with Holmes’s progression form early simplicity through complexity into mature simplicity. He concluded that both the optimists and the pessimists look too much at only one side of things. So neither the extreme optimist nor the extreme pessimist is much help in improving the human condition, because people can’t solve problems unless they are willing to acknowledge that problems exist while remaining loyal to do something about them.
Chesterton said the danger of the excessive optimist is that he will “defend the indefensible”. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, ‘My cosmos, right or wrong.’ He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing everyone with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world.”
On the other hand, he said, the danger of the pessimist is “not that he chastises gods and men, but he does not love what he chastises.” In being the so-called “candid friend,” the pessimist is not really candid. He is keeping something back—his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely help. . . .He is using the ugly knowledge which was allowed him [in order] to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it.”6
To illustrate “improvers,” Chesteron refers to the loyalty of women: “Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin . . . are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness or his excuses or the thickness of his head. . . .Love is not blind; That is the last thing it is, Love is bound and the more it is bound the less it is blind.
An entry from the journal of my father, Orval Hafen, illustrates Chesterton’s “improvers.” He had moved beyond the innocent idealism; his eyes were Fully open to uncomfortable realities. Yet he has also moved past the complexity of being consumed with realism. Now his mature, more complete perspective gave him a new form of simplicity that permitted him to think and act productively, subordinating what he saw with his wide-open eyes to what he felt in his wide-open heart.
A friend of my parents was called as the bishop of their ward and said he couldn’t do it unless my father was first counselor. Dad had earlier served in a stake presidency for ten years, and he was feeling very stretched with numerous obligations. So he wrote, “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He knew a bishopric’s work could feel like “a continual grind with no let up.” And “in some respects I am not humble and prayerful enough; I have not always been willing to submit unquestioningly to all the decisions of the Church.”
But because he didn’t feel he could “say no to any call that is made by the Church,” he wrote, “not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” He resolved to do his best even though he might chafe under the meetings.” But: the work of the Church will have to come first. It will not be hard for me to pay my tithing and attend regularly as I have been doing that,” But I will have to get to the temple more often” and “become better acquainted with the ward members and genuinely interested in them,” hoping “they might find it possible to be the same toward me. . . . His attitude makes me want to be as meek as my education has taught me to be tough-minded.~~Bruce C. & Marie K. Hafen, Faith is Not Blind (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2018) p.12-14