B. H. Roberts on Education

Mental Laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part. To escape this effort, this mental stress to know the things that are, men raise all too readily the ancient bar — “Thus far shalt thou come, but no farther.” Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mystery. “Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salvation; why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh.” So men reason; and just now it is much in fashion to laud “the simple faith;” which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many good people regard this course as indicative of reverence — this plea in bar of effort — “thus far and no farther”. . . .

I maintain that “simple faith” — which is so often ignorant and simpering acquiescence and not faith at all — but simple faith taken at its highest value, which is faith without understanding of the thing believed, is not equal to intelligent faith, the faith that is the gift of God, supplemented by earnest endeavor to find through prayerful thought and research a rational ground for faith — for acceptance of truth; and hence the duty of striving for a rational faith in which the intellect as well as the heart — the feeling — has a place and is a factor.

But to resume: This plea in bar of effort to find out the things that are, is as convenient for the priest as it is for the people. The people of “simple faith,” who never question, are so much easier led, and so much more pleasant every way — they give their teachers so little trouble. People who question because they want to know, and who ask adult questions that call for adult answers, disturb the ease of the priests. The people who question are usually the people who think — barring chronic questioners and cranks, of course — and thinkers are troublesome, unless the instructors who lead them are thinkers also; and thought, eternal, restless thought, that keeps out upon the frontiers of discovery, is as much a weariness to the slothful, as it is a joy to the alert and active and noble minded. Therefore one must not be surprised if now and again he finds those among religious teachers who give encouragement to mental laziness under the pretense of “reverence,” praise “simple faith” because they themselves, forsooth, would avoid the stress of thought and investigation that would be necessary in order to hold their place as leaders of a thinking people. . . .

Surely in the presence of [the] array of incentives, instructions and commandments to seek for knowledge, taken from the revelations and other forms of instruction by the Prophet of the New Dispensation — taking into account also the scope of the field of knowledge we are both persuaded and commanded to enter — whatever position other churches and their religious teachers may take, the Church of Jesus Christ in the New Dispensation can do no other than to stand for mental activity and earnest effort to come to a knowledge of truth up to the very limit of man’s capacity to find it, and the goodness and wisdom of God to reveal it.