Saturday, March 5, 2011

Learning is Pleasing to God

Today I read Doctrine and Covenants section 69. It is a very short section in the which John Whitmer was assigned as the traveling companion to Olive Cowdery as he traveled down to Independence, Missouri to publish the Book of Commandments and to bring some money to the Saints in that area.

The thought that came to me as I read this section actually has very little to do with this section at all. In verse 7 John Whitmer is commanded to travel from place to place so that he may more easily obtain knowledge. Now, I usually think about knowledge and the importance of obtaining it in section 130, which is another 2 months away for us at the pace we are reading. However, this just seems important to me to discuss today.

As I have mentioned before, I have a daughter. She actually turned 6 months old yesterday and she is an absolute treasure to watch and be around. She loves life and loves to explore her little world. It is so fun to watch her too. Some of the things she finds fascinating is SO strange. One of her favorite things is a decoration we have on the wall of our kitchen. It is a cast iron fork with 4 hooks on it with 4 cast iron cooking utensils hanging from it. It is purely decoration, but she LOVES that thing. As soon as we enter the kitchen her head immediately turns to where it is located to check and see if it is still there. And that's not even a 10th of the funny things she does. I remember one morning I was watching her to give my wife a break and I was eating cereal and she saw my mouth and started mimicking my mouth movements as I chewed my cereal. She is fascinated by everything around her and literally thirsts for knowledge. Anytime she is around something new, you can just see her little mind working and asking, "What is this and what is it for?"

All little children are like that. They love to learn new things. So what happens to us as we get early? Why do we stop learning? Why do we stop LOVING the art of learning? Part of me thinks it is because of the schools and institutions of learning. Now, I am most certainly pro-school but I think in a way, very unintentionally, schools tend to kill the fascination of learning for a lot of students. Partly because it is structure, which a lot of children don't like even though they need it I think, but they are also not allowed to learn the things they want to learn most of the times so they get bored with the things they ARE learning and it slowly kills the love of learning. Good parents will help supplement the schools and help the children keep that love of learning because it's hard to earn back as an adult.

Now, we are obviously not there yet, but Section 130 tells us that whatever level of knowledge we obtain to in this life will rise with us in the life to come and we will be that much further ahead. Another revelation tells us to seek out learning out of the best books. It is important to Heavenly Father that we learn all we can. Why do you suppose that is? Well, once again we have to examine our goals. Our goals are to become like God and be as He is one day. Well, we frequently say that God is omniscient, so if we are going to be like He is, then we are going to need to be omniscient as well. So we have our work cut out for us to learn all that there is to learn.

The good thing about learning though, is that the desire to learn is never entirely squelched. It's always there, sometimes it is buried really, really deep though. But everyone in this life will come across a concept or something new and will wonder to themselves, "Huh? I wonder how that works?" or "Why is that?". The problem is that is all most people will do, is wonder. Which is really sad because in this day and age of the internet, by some called the Information Age, information is EVERYWHERE and literally only a Google search away.

As with most everything else we talk about here, if you desire to increase in your love of learning, all you need to do is pray and the Lord will help you. Remember, if it is important to you, it is important to Him, as long as it is righteous. But in the case of learning, it is already important to Him and He wants it to be important to you too. Pray and ask that He help you to be more curious, more open minded, what ever your particular stumbling block against learning is and that it may be taken away. You will be glad you did. Until tomorrow.

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