Blind in Our Minds

In D&C 8:2 we learn that the Lord will speak to us through the Holy Ghost “in [our] mind and in [our] heart.”  The scriptures speak of those who can’t feel the Holy Ghost in their heart because their hearts are hardened.  The analogous phrase for those who can’t hear the voice of the Lord in their minds is that they have minds which have been made “blind”.  We don’t typically think of “seeing” with our minds, but this idea is implied by the references to being blind in our minds that we see throughout the scriptures.  The first such reference to this is in the writings of Paul in the New Testament.  He spoke of the children of Israel whose “minds were blinded” (2 Corinthians 3:14).  Nephi used this same language when he spoke of the children of Israel to his brothers, saying, “They hardened their hearts and blinded their minds, and reviled against Moses and against the true and living God” (1 Nephi 17:30).  Paul likewise wrote of how the adversary “hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Corinthians 4:4).  One of the types of Satan in the Book of Mormon, Amalickiah, was described as doing the same thing to the Lamanites: “He had accomplished his design, for he had hardened the hearts of the Lamanites and blinded their minds, and stirred them up to anger” (Alma 48:3).  

We also read of those who were “blind” who had observed great miracles and yet still did not really see them for what they were.  For example, Nephi chastised his brothers saying, “Behold ye are mine elder brethren, and how is it that ye are so hard in your hearts, and so blind in your minds, that ye have need that I, your younger brother, should speak unto you, yea, and set an example for you?” (1 Nephi 7:8)  In a different account, after the miraculous event of the night without any darkness, Mormon said this of the people, “[They] began to be less and less astonished at a sign or a wonder from heaven, insomuch that they began to be hard in their hearts, and blind in their minds, and began to disbelieve all which they had heard and seen” (3 Nephi 2:1).  There’s also an interesting example in D&C 121 where the Lord spoke of the enemies of Joseph: “God hath set his hand and seal to change the times and seasons, and to blind their minds, that they may not understand his marvelous workings” (D&C 121:12).  Although God would work in “marvelous” ways through the “times and seasons,” still these persecutors of the Church “blind their minds.”

So if our minded are blinded as these scriptures describe, what are we “blind” to?  It seems to me that what is really being described is our ability to see the hand of God in our own lives and in the world.  Laman and Lemuel could not see the hand of God in the many miracles that accompanied them on their journey from Jerusalem to the promised land (such as seeing angels, eating meat that was uncooked without being harmed, having the Liahona miraculously guide them, etc.) because they let the difficulties of the journey blind their minds.  All they could see were their problems, and so they were blind to the miracles of God all around them.  Likewise the Israelites at the time of Moses were sometimes blind to the great miracles that Moses did because they suffered; even though they had miraculously crossed the Red Sea, they still murmured about their difficulties and complained at times saying, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt!” (Numbers 14:2)  As Elder Anderson taught us last conference we have to learn to “see the hand of God in [our] own life.”  If we don’t keep seeing the ways that God works in our lives, despite the good vision that we’ve had in the past we may find our minds are going blind.