Giving Reason to Revelation
I used to teach Institute in the Washington, D.C. area. I loved the environment there in Northern Virginia with its historical and military influence, but I especially loved the students! They were a bright, fun, and amazing group of individuals.
Many were college graduates between the ages of about 24 and 30 who had moved there to work in some kind of government or military facet, and about 70% of them were female.
Often I would ask, “So, why Washington D.C.? What brought you out here?” Some would say a job or that they knew there was a lot of single LDS people in that area. More often than not, however, when I would ask that question, this is what I would get: “I don’t know. I just had a feeling to come here.”
As I would look into their faces, especially the girls, there would be almost a twinkle in their eyes. And I came to learn what that twinkle usually meant: “I think I’m going to find my husband here.” I would then watch an interesting thing happen throughout the semester: many of them would begin to struggle. They became frustrated or depressed. They would pull away from the ward, sometimes stop coming to Institute.
As I would reach out to them to see what I could do to help, this is what they would share: “Two years ago God told me to come here so I could get married. It obviously hasn’t happened. In fact, I hardly even date. I’m totally confused. I’m not sure if I was even supposed to come here.” Because this happened often enough, I became familiar with walking them through this series of questions: “What were the impressions you received when you first felt to come here. What was your experience like?”
Their stories and experiences would usually differ, but somewhere in their sharing they would say something like this: “Well, I don’t know. I just felt I needed to move here.” Or “I received a priesthood blessing and it said I needed to come here.”
I would then ask, “In the midst of those feelings, did the Lord specifically tell you that the reason He was sending you here was that you were going to get married?” After sitting and thinking for a moment, many would realize, “No, I don’t think so.” “So, where could that have come from?” I would ask.
“Well . . . I’m not sure,” they might say. “I don’t really know.” And some would even ask, “Could I have added that myself?”
As we would continue to talk through it, many would indeed realize they had somehow added that reason themselves.
In all honesty, I couldn’t blame them. Finding someone to share their lives with is a righteous desire.
The marriage covenant is something they have been taught to look forward to, rejoice in, and actively seek.
Yet, what I think often happened is that they had mixed up the revelation to move to Washington D.C. with some impatience, misunderstanding, maybe some loneliness or insecurity, and all of those hopes, dreams, and righteous desires.[i] The result? They thought they knew the reason they should move. However, many of them would discover it wasn’t necessarily God’s reason for them to move. Without meaning to, they did this:
Their experience is an example of another way we can hinder revelation in our lives: by “giving reason” to it. This hindrance basically involves jumping to our own mortal conclusions or adding our own meaning or interpretation to the promptings that God gives.
The danger in these interpretations is that they can distort the direction we’ve already received.
They can also take that revelation in a completely different direction than it was meant to go, even going so far as to inhibit further revelation. Indeed, our interpretations can even alter a revelation to the point where it becomes completely wrong.
A recently returned senior missionary once shared with me another example of what this can look like. While serving with his wife on their mission, Brother Langford would sometimes have the opportunity to give the missionaries priesthood blessings. One time, he was giving an elder a blessing right before he was to return home. As he was in the middle of the blessing, he could see in his mind a wonderful young woman with blond hair and felt there was something important about her. In fact, he was pretty sure it was the young man’s future wife.
When he concluded the blessing, however, Brother Langford felt to simply tell the young man to go home and prepare himself diligently for the next step in his life. Many months later, this senior missionary saw on the young man’s social media account the young woman from the vision. He was surprised to discover it was the young man’s sister.
It was then that he realized he had assumed he knew who the young woman was and had misinterpreted what the vision had meant. This faithful brother had no intention of giving reason to that revelation. Thankfully, he chose not to say anything specific to the elder at the time, but what an eye-opening experience it was for him.
Have you ever done something like this?
Have you felt a prompting and immediately started trying to figure out what it means?
Were you instructed to do something and instantly wanted to figure out why?
Sometimes blessings come and we immediately think we know why the Lord blessed us. Or we receive a calling and assume we know the reason that we specifically were called to it.
I’m not completely sure all the reasons we do this, but I think one could possibly be that we think we are supposed to. We believe it is our responsibility to know, or at least make an effort to figure out, the “why” behind the Lord’s working in our lives. Indeed, it almost feels wrong not to at least do something after we receive an impression. (Isn’t it interesting how the adversary will interfere with inspiration in whatever way he can, including planting misunderstanding in our minds about our role in it?)
We could also do this because of impatience or curiosity or the need to at least make sense of something in our lives. However, I’m thinking, more often than not, it is because of the false belief that being “anxiously engaged” means we are also supposed to use our agency to “run” with or explain revelation we receive.
And sometimes, it’s so hard not to, especially when we receive a distinct impression — even just a few words, or a short phrase — and then nothing else for a while, no explanation whatsoever. “Don’t take that class.” We follow it, thinking it must have been because it would have been too hard or unnecessary. “Ask him how he’s doing.” We ask, assuming we are asking because the Lord wants us to help him with something. “Tell her you are not going to force her to go to church,” thinking that impression must mean she might choose to go on her own. It is very difficult to not try to figure out what an impression means or why the Lord prompted us in that way.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks once shared a powerful statement that gives insight not only into why we are not expected to interpret revelation but also why we shouldn’t. He said:
“If you read the scriptures with this question in mind, ‘Why did the Lord command this or why did he command that,’ you find that in less than one in a hundred commands was any reason given. It's not the pattern of the Lord to give reasons. We [mortals] can put reasons to revelation. We can put reasons to commandments. When we do, we're on our own.
“Some people put reasons to [the priesthood ban] and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that. . . . The lesson I've drawn from that, I decided a long time ago that I had faith in the command and I had no faith in the reasons that had been suggested for it. . . . I'm referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon [those reasons] by others. The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. . . . Let's [not] make the mistake that's been made in the past, here and in other areas, trying to put reasons to revelation. The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent. The revelations are what we sustain as the will of the Lord and that's where safety lies.”[i]
Even though Elder Oaks was referring specifically to the priesthood ban in these remarks, he is teaching a valuable principle here that I believe can be applied to many other experiences we have with revelation: when we give a reason — or in other words, our limited, mortal opinion — for a revelation given to us by God, we can often be spectacularly wrong.
[i] President Henry B. Eyring taught that “we almost always have more than one motive at a time. And some motives may be mixtures of what God wants as well as what we want. It is not easy to pull them apart.” (“Gifts of the Spirit for Hard Times,” Ensign, June 2007)
[i] "Apostles Talk about Reasons for Lifting Ban," Daily Herald, Provo, Utah (5 June 1988): 21 (Associated Press); reproduced with commentary in Dallin H. Oaks, Life's Lessons Learned: Personal Reflections (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 2011), p.68-69.
