Scholars and scriptures that shaped my life in faith
“I learned that there was no God at age six, and I have confirmed it ever since,” were the first words of the professor’s talk as part of the Last Lecture series at Western Washington State College. It was 1961, and faculty members had been invited to speak as if it were the last lecture they would ever give to their students. Dr. Herbert C. Taylor, a brilliant Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago, was perhaps the most imposing figure to arrive on campus that year.
Sitting across the desk from him in his office each week was one of the school’s least imposing figures, me, a sophomore somehow thrust into an honors tutorial based on some potential never quite realized. One of the handful of students on campus who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I helped organize a small campus club of fellow Latter-day Saints. Our total church membership in Bellingham met in a house a block below campus as we hadn’t yet built a church building in town.
Learning to learn
Now almost 60 years later I don’t remember all Dr. Taylor patiently taught me during our weekly hour together, but the experience was good for me. I was learning to learn.
Dr. Taylor and I never talked religion, but personally I knew that there was a God — a very real Heavenly Father who had sent his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ to earth—to live and die for all mankind. Then, in 1820, God the Father and the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith to begin the restoration of The Church of Jesus Christ to the earth. The evidence was plain and overwhelming.
As a young boy the first “big book” I read was Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible, and in my teens I read the Book of Mormon, that incomparable witness of Jesus Christ and his gospel. In my senior year of high school Wally Pratt was my early morning seminary teacher for an entire year of Bible studies. His faith strengthened my own testimony, gained in my home from good parents. These beautiful scriptures, the Bible and the Book of Mormon, have blessed and strengthened me over the years since.
I recommend the Book of Mormon to anyone having the desire to draw nearer to God, to strengthen his or her faith in Christ, or to overcome the kind of disbelief that Dr. Taylor expressed in his “last lecture.”
One of the best ways to come to know God is with what the scriptures call “a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” suggesting a measure of humility.
A two-way street
Why the gospel of Jesus Christ? From another favorite scholar, Robert L. Millet, emeritus Dean of Religious Education at Brigham Young University, this insight: “The gospel is, in fact, a covenant—a two-way promise. The Lord agrees to do for us what we could never do for ourselves—forgive our sins, lift our burdens, renew our souls and re-create our nature, raise us from the dead and qualify us for glory hereafter. At the same time, we promise to do what we can do; receive the ordinances of salvation, love and serve one another and do all in our power to put off the ‘natural man’ and deny ourselves of ungodliness.”
If the Lord can do what Dr. Millet suggests, and I am certain He can, that gospel covenant—the fruit of the Christ’s infinite Atonement—is worth our every effort.
Get a Book of Mormon. Read the introduction telling of its miraculous coming forth, and read the testimonies of 11 witnesses to those events. Then read the book and pray to find out for yourself that it is true. These are things I was blessed to learn in my youth, and to my great joy have confirmed ever since.
Covid-19 note: The best way I can suggest to get a Book of Mormon at this time is at https://www.comeuntochrist.org/requests/free-book-of-mormon for a digital copy.
Alfred Gunn is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Gig Harbor. Reach him at alf.gunn@gmail.com.
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 1:22 PM.