Answering for Ourselves

I really liked the story that Brother Brough recounted in general conference about his parents’ call to preside over a mission.  He lived on a ranch in Wyoming at the time and he said that when he learned about their call, he knew he would have to give up his dog Blue.  He said, “I confronted my father, asking what I should do with Blue. I wanted to emphasize the unfairness of what God was requiring. I will never forget this response. He said, ‘I’m not sure. He probably cannot go with us, so you had better ask Heavenly Father.’ That was not the response I had anticipated….  I earnestly prayed to know if I had to give my dog away. My answer did not come in a moment; rather, a specific thought kept penetrating my mind: ‘Don’t be a burden to your parents. Don’t be a burden. I have called your parents.’”  To me this story emphasizes the importance of receiving our own revelation and finding solutions to our own problems.  His dad could have easily told his son that he needed to sell his dog and insisted that it was non-negotiable.  But then his son would have lost the opportunity to find a solution by himself and gain a spiritual witness that surely sustained him throughout the mission experience.  As parents, we have to resist the temptation to control our children and instead look for opportunities to allow them to use their agency and develop their own ability to understand right and wrong. 

               I think we see how God encourages our own independence and come to our own understanding in several examples in the scriptures.  Often the Lord does tell us the things we need to do, but in some cases He also gives us the opportunity to figure things out for ourselves.  The classic example of course is that of the brother of Jared when he went before the Lord telling Him that there was no light in their vessels.  Instead of giving him a solution, the Lord responded with a question: “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels?” (Ether 2:23)  This allowed the brother of Jared to figure out for himself a solution and go back to the Lord with the stones he had worked to molten out a rock so that the Lord could touch them.  When the Savior was on the earth we see other examples of this in how he taught the people.  He often asked questions and challenged the people to answer and think for themselves.  For example, on one occasion when there was a “great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?”  John adds that the Savior asked this “to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5-10).  He wanted to give Philip the chance to exercise his own faith.  He thought through it logically and determined that it would cost an enormous amount of money; Andrew chimed in and suggested a young boy had some bread and fishes but knew that wasn’t enough.  Understandably, the disciples couldn’t find a solution, but letting them think through the problem surely helped them better see just how miraculous it was that the Savior fed them all.   

At other times we see in the scriptures how the wicked are challenged to see and understand their own sinful behavior.  In Matthew 21:33-39 Jesus told the parable of the wicked husbandmen who had killed the servant of the lord of the vineyard and asked this question to the chief priests and the elders: “When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen?”  They responded, “He will miserably destroy those wicked men” and soon “they perceived that he spake of them” (Matthew 21:40, 45).  The Savior’s masterful teaching was such that these evil men who sought to kill Jesus pronounced their own condemnation and surely gained some very clear understanding of the wickedness of their own actions.  A similar kind of thing happened to David after he had committed adultery and killed Uriah.  Nathan told him the parable of the ewe lamb how a poor man who had only one beloved lamb had it killed and taken by a rich man, and David pronounced his own condemnation after hearing the story: “And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man….  And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man” (2 Samuel 12:1-7).  Because Nathan taught in a way that allowed David to figure out for himself what was just, he was able to see perfectly the folly of his own actions.    

               These stories and others remind us that we must seek understanding and solutions for ourselves—the Lord will not always just give it to us.  We have to also allow those over whom we have stewardship to do the same.  Perhaps one of the hallmarks of a great teacher is that they know when to teach with their own words and when to let the students teach with theirs.