It took me a very long time to write this
devotional address. Sometimes when I have
the opportunity to give a talk or teach a
lesson, I know immediately what I want to
talk about. This happened a few months ago
in my ward. The bishop came to my door and
asked if I would be willing to speak the following
Sunday, and I instantly knew what I wanted
to talk about. When I sat down to write that
talk, it felt as if the talk wrote itself.
This devotional was very different. I was
plagued with uncertainty about what to say
from the moment I was asked to speak. Two
months later, I had written and discarded
pages and pages of drafts and half-formed
thoughts. I did not know what the Lord wanted
me to say to you today. I did not know what
I wanted to say to you today.
And so finally, one week before I was required
to submit the text of my address, I accepted
that perhaps what I needed to talk about today
was not knowing.
Perhaps this will be strange to say, since
I have grown up in a church that encourages
members from a very young age to say the words
“I know,” but the thing I am most certain
of in this life is that we do not know all
things. In fact, on the grand scale of all
truth, it is quite possible that, statistically
speaking, we don’t know anything. And by
that I mean that because God and truth are
so vast and so big, the things we know are
so small in comparison as to render that knowledge
essentially nonexistent. So today I want to
talk about this idea of not knowing and about
finding God in our uncertainty.
I want to add this caveat: I am speaking from
my own perception and experience. Paul, in
his epistle to the Corinthians, talked about
spiritual gifts—the gifts of wisdom, of
knowledge, of faith, and of healing. I will
openly confess that I was probably not given
the gift of knowledge. At times in my life
I have had faith and I have had hope, but,
in general, my knowledge has often felt a
little tenuous. However, I have come to believe
that uncertainty can be a gift every bit as
much as knowledge is, so I will approach you
today in this spirit of uncertainty.
I would like to discuss several aspects of
not knowing. My hope is that in at least one
of them you find something helpful for or
of value to living your life, attending school,
developing your testimony, building relationships,
and going out into the world to do whatever
it is you will do on this earth.
First, I think it is helpful to talk a little
bit about knowledge itself. We use the phrase
“I know” in many ways, but they are not
all the same. Consider the following statements:
I know that 2 + 3 = 5.
I know that on a clear day, the sky is
blue.
I know that I love my parents.
All of these statements use the phrase “I
know,” but the way I know each of these
things is not the same. Take the first statement.
This one is easy for me as a math teacher.
If I take two distinct objects, say M&M’s,
and combine them with three more M&M’s,
I will have five M&M’s. Although I have
come to recognize that truth in mathematics
is far more complex than we usually imagine,
it is nevertheless very difficult to dispute
the statement that 2 + 3 = 5.
But now consider the second statement: the
sky is blue. On the surface it seems equally
indisputable. I believe that all of you will
agree with me that on a clear day, the sky
is blue. But I do not know if when we look
at the sky that we all see the same thing.
And if a person is unable to see the sky at
all, what does it mean that the sky is blue?
Scientifically we can speak about light and
wavelengths, but this does not reflect my
experience of seeing blue. In fact, I recently
learned that ancient languages did not have
a word for blue and that in lacking a word
to describe the color, people who spoke these
languages may have been incapable of even
seeing the color blue. To explore this possibility,
researcher Guy Deutscher decided to do what
countless researchers have done: he experimented
on his own child. When his daughter was very
young, he was careful to never describe the
color of the sky to her. Finally, one day
he asked her to look up and describe the color,
but she had no idea how to describe it. The
sky at first did not fit any ideas of color
to her.
This complicates the truth of my statement
that the sky is blue.
When I consider the third statement, that
I know I love my parents, I have to concede
that there is no objective way to measure
this. In fact, I have failed embarrassingly
on a few simple measures of love. Last year,
when my dad called me on his birthday, I didn’t
even say happy birthday to him! Still, I can
say that I know with 100 percent certainty
that I love my parents, and I truly believe
they know the same. It is just a different
kind of knowledge than the knowledge that
2 + 3 = 5.
When it comes to matters of the Spirit, we
­frequently hear the words “I know”:
I know that the Church is true.
I know that Jesus loves me.
I know that obedience brings blessings.
I think we sometimes assume that any “I
know” needs to mean “I know” in the
same way that I know that 2 + 3 = 5.
But we can’t know these things in the same
way, because they are different types of truth
and they are accessible to us in different
ways. What I think we usually mean is that
we are equally confident in those things.
Even then, some of us are and some of us are
not. Not all of us have been given the gift
of knowledge.
I believe it is important to understand the
kind of knowledge we should be seeking. Knowledge
that 2 + 3 = 5 is fairly set, but
knowledge about the color of the sky is born
of our experience with the sky. Not only is
the color of the sky ever changing, but, as
we gain experience, our ability to describe
what we are seeing and even our very ability
to see can change and grow—just as our ability
to know God can change and grow throughout
our lives. If I assume that knowing God is
like knowing that 2 + 3 = 5 and then
I experience something that conflicts with
my understanding, I have to go back to the
drawing board with all of arithmetic. But
if knowing God is more like knowing the color
of the sky, apparent conflicts with my current
understanding have the potential to expand
rather than shatter my view.
Knowledge of spiritual things is also manifested
in how this knowledge drives our actions.
It is far less important that I know I love
my parents than it is that I show this love
to them and continue to try even when my expressions
are imperfect. Knowledge that the Church is
true or that God lives or that Jesus loves
us is less important than what our faith and
hope compel us to do. Knowledge of God’s
love is important, but how I take that love
and allow it to change myself and the world
around me, even when my efforts are imperfect,
is far more important.
Knowledge that is complete and certain can
also be limiting and, quite honestly, not
all that interesting. A living knowledge that
changes, grows, adapts, and motivates us to
action is a knowledge that embraces states
of uncertainty and not knowing. These states
lead us toward change and growth. In fact,
as humans, we tend to move on quickly from
simple facts like 2 + 3 = 5 to complex
questions of what we can do with these facts
and then to questions that stretch our understanding
past its apparent limits. Math is much bigger
and much more open than 2 + 3 = 5,
just as God is much bigger than we imagine.
I want to turn in another direction now and
address another side of not knowing. I would
like to begin with a story.
One day while I was working on this devotional
address at home, my four-year-old daughter
was playing on the couch next to me. Our dog
Jin barked at the back door, wanting to be
let into the house.
“Can you let Jin inside?” I asked my daughter.
Because what are children for except to do
the small tasks you don’t feel like doing
yourself?
But instead of jumping up happily to help,
my daughter informed me, “Jin did not bark.”
“Well, I just heard him,” I told her.
“Jin is not outside,” she responded.
“Well,” I said, “I am actually looking
at the door, and I see him standing outside.”
“He is not outside,” she insisted.
Because I was working on a devotional address
about knowledge, I decided to do that “experiment
on your own children” thing and asked, “Do
you know that Jin is not outside?”
With great confidence she looked at me and
said, “I know that Jin is not outside.”
At this point I got up myself and let our
dog inside, and my daughter exclaimed, “Oh,
Mommy, Jin was outside!”
Her apparent genuine surprise convinced me
that she had not been lying when, in the face
of visual and aural evidence, she had informed
me that our dog was not actually outside barking
to be let in. I believe she really knew that
the dog was not outside because she wanted
him to not be outside. It would have been
inconvenient for her if he were outside because
she would have had to stop playing and go
let him in.
It makes for a funny little anecdote when
it is about my determined, headstrong little
daughter, but we do this all the time. When
we know something, we are likely to hold on
to that knowledge as tightly as we can, even
when we are mistaken. We usually don’t realize
we are doing this. Of course we don’t, because
we know!
Our human minds are built to make sense of
the world around us, to categorize, to evaluate,
and to put our experiences and observations
into simple boxes. The ability to create order
and organization out of the chaos that surrounds
us is incredibly important to our survival
and well-being. But a consequence of this
well-developed human ability is that we all
think we know and understand far more than
we actually do.
One of my favorite stories from the history
of mathematics is the story of the parallel
postulate. Around 300 BC, Euclid of Alexandria
wrote a book called Elements in which he essentially
built geometry on the foundation of five postulates
or statements that are accepted as truth without
needing additional reasoning or argument.
Four of his five postulates are pretty straightforward.
One, for example, was that with two given
points, we can draw a straight line connecting
those two points. But the fifth postulate
has given mathematicians grief for the last
two millennia. This postulate reads:
If a straight line intersecting two straight
lines make the interior angles on the same
side less than two right angles, the two straight
lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that
side on which the angles are less than two
right angles.
It is a mouthful, but essentially this postulate
allows us to believe some things about parallel
lines, or lines that never intersect, that
intuitively seem like they must be true about
parallel lines.
The problem is that mathematicians weren’t
convinced that this concept was conclusive.
The fifth postulate seemed like an idea about
geometric space that needed to be argued,
rather than a conclusion that could be put
forth without argument. For centuries, mathematicians
attempted to find a way to make this argument
using just the first four postulates and perhaps
a new, more self-evident postulate.
One person who worked on this problem in the
early eighteenth century was Giovanni Girolamo
Saccheri. He attacked the problem using quadrilaterals
and thought he had succeeded. In his Proposition
XXXIII he stated that a particular counter
result would be “repugnant to the nature
of the straight line.” Basically, Saccheri
knew what a straight line should do and knew
what parallel lines should do. Ultimately
his argument for the truth of the parallel
postulate hinged on the fact that without
it, straight lines ended up behaving in ways
that were “repugnant” to their nature.
But a century later and more than two thousand
years after Euclid wrote his book Elements,
a handful of mathematicians finally asked,
“What if we are wrong about the nature of
straight lines? What if in some spaces lines
behave one way, but in other spaces they behave
in a completely different way?”
By letting go of their knowledge, they discovered
something fascinating: if they reconsidered
the way parallel lines work, geometry did
not fall apart. In fact, by tweaking this
one condition, they managed to create or perhaps
discover a strange, new, wonderful geometry
that we now call hyperbolic geometry, which
is every bit as mathematically valid as the
Euclidean geometry you learned in high school,
although it is much harder for humans to wrap
their heads around.
Mathematics, when you spend time with it,
has a particular kind of beauty that is not
always conveyed well in our school experiences.
Hyperbolic geometry has its own beauty, both
mathematically and visually. But opening the
door to this beauty required humans to admit
that what they thought they knew could actually
be wrong.
I think it is important for us to question
what we think we know and to open ourselves
to the idea that it might be wrong, even (and
perhaps especially) when being wrong would
be inconvenient or uncomfortable for us. I
might ask myself some of the following questions:
Am I certain that I truly understand another
person’s heart and intentions, or could
it be that my own experiences make it difficult
for me to understand where they are coming
from?
When I disagree with someone, am I certain
that I am right and they are wrong, or might
I have blind spots?
Could I learn from someone else’s perspective?
When another person’s way of speaking, acting,
thinking, worshipping, etc., is unfamiliar
to me, am I certain that my discomfort is
a lack of the Spirit, or have I just not yet
learned how to see God in that particular
setting?
Am I certain that I have a full understanding
of a particular gospel principle or commandment,
or could I learn something from asking questions
or listening to another person’s experiences?
Accepting that we may not know what we think
we know does not mean we need to let go of
all certainty or conviction. Rather, openness
to being wrong can be a humble position of
faith in which “hope for things which are
not seen” can flourish as we allow ourselves
to accept that there are things that are not
seen to us.
Finally, it would be easy for me to frame
the topic of uncertainty as “uncertainty
until,” with the expectation that not knowing
is just a step in the process to knowing.
But while we might gain greater understanding
throughout our lives, there is also no end
to not knowing in mortality. In fact, there
will be many times in our lives when answers
do not come and when not knowing is a seemingly
permanent state.
One of the things I have always loved about
the gospel is the promise of answers and assurance
to those who diligently seek. The story of
our Church in the latter days could be said
to begin with James 1:5: “If any of you
lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth
to all men liberally, and upbraideth not;
and it shall be given him.” I myself have
experienced times in my life when I have felt
guidance and answers flow to me from heaven.
As we hunger and thirst after answers, we
can come to see the entire purpose of the
gospel as providing answers, and we can overlook
the mystery of God and the importance of questions.
When I was young, I believed in the God of
Lost Things. I have several memories of frantically
praying to Heavenly Father that we could find
that one last library book, the one that was
due today, because we couldn’t go to the
library until we had found every book, and
I was sure that I had literally looked everywhere.
In retrospect, it is easy to look at the low
stakes of the situation and see silliness
in my frantic pleas. It is easy to explain
away the fact that the book was always found
eventually. Still, I have had a small handful
of specific experiences in which I felt that
an inconsequential prayer was answered in
a way that was difficult for me to explain
away. Not long ago, I watched my young son
experience this for the first time himself
when, after his simple prayer, we immediately
located the keys we had been searching for
for days. I do not know if these are answers
to prayers, but at the times that they happened,
it felt like God was reaching out to me in
love.
A difficulty most of us face as we grow from
childhood faith to adult faith is the question
of why God would answer a prayer for lost
keys but not answer prayers that are far more
consequential: prayers about major life decisions,
prayers for answers to perplexing questions,
prayers for healing and recovery from terrible
illness, or prayers for peace in a world beset
by tragedy.
In spite of this, I still personally believe
in a God of Lost Things. I believe that God
sometimes answers those prayers not in spite
of their inconsequence but because of it.
I believe that an answer to a prayer about
lost keys can be a message of love from our
Heavenly Parents, who know that when it comes
to matters of more consequence, we will struggle
to see Their hands in our lives. This life
is not the time for us to receive all answers,
nor is it the time for everything to be made
right. Sometimes God will reveal His will
to us, but many times we are required to move
forward in uncertainty.
This time in your life is a time of decision-making.
I know from experience and from my work as
an academic advisor that sometimes it can
feel overwhelming. When I was in my mid- to
late twenties, I remember looking back over
the previous decade and realizing that I had
made a major, life-changing decision every
single year of that decade. It felt exhausting.
The pace of major ­decision-making has slowed
down for me, but it has not stopped. It turns
out that making potentially life-changing
decisions is just a part of adulthood.
The role God plays in making these decisions,
however, is not always constant. Sometimes
you will just know on your own what you want
to do, and God is there to play a supporting
role. This is how I felt about my decision
to come to BYU as an undergraduate. I had
no grand revelation; it was just where I wanted
to come. At other times you may feel that
God leads you in a very specific direction,
maybe even a direction that you wouldn’t
have chosen for yourself. When I was deciding
where to go for my doctoral program, I knew
where I wanted to go, but I had several powerful
spiritual experiences that sent me in another
direction. To this day I have great certainty
that, in spite of the challenges, it was exactly
where I needed to be for those five years.
But at other times you won’t have certainty.
You won’t be certain about what God wants
you to do and you won’t be certain about
what you want to do. When I finished my doctoral
program, I felt lost in both of those areas.
I thought that eleven years of higher education
should have left me with a clear sense of
what I wanted to be when I grew up, but instead
those waters felt muddier than they had ever
felt. I thought that, by that point of my
life, I should have felt more confident that
I could hear and know the will of the Lord,
but right then it seemed that the heavens
were silent.
In that moment, the only thing I could do
was move forward. I wanted to move forward
along the right path, but the only thing I
could do at that time was move forward along
a path. I wanted to know that everything was
going to work out for the best, but that was
not something I could know. Embracing uncertainty
is hard, but at some points in our lives it
is the only thing we can do.
I have long loved the story of the brother
of Jared. He experienced plenty of guidance
from the Lord as he and his family and friends
were led toward the promised land. But the
part of the story I love most is when the
Lord made him answer his own question. The
brother of Jared had followed the Lord’s
instructions to build barges, but there was
a problem. The vessels were sealed and windowless;
as a result, there was no light within the
vessels. When the brother of Jared approached
the Lord, he appeared to expect an answer:
O Lord, behold I have done even as thou hast
commanded me; and I have prepared the vessels
for my people, and behold there is no light
in them. Behold, O Lord, wilt thou suffer
that we shall cross this great water in darkness?
But instead of providing the brother of Jared
with a solution, the Lord told him what he
probably already knew: You can’t make windows
and you can’t have fire. And then the Lord
turned it back to the brother of Jared and
essentially asked, “What do you think?”
Most of the time, when I truly don’t know
what to do, I would just rather have God tell
me what to do, because I am pretty sure that
I might make a mess of things and that God
could keep me from making a mess of things.
When left to our own devices—as we so often
are—and when left to press forward in the
face of uncertainty—as we so often are—eventually
we will all make a ­decision we regret, hurt
someone we intended to help, ­follow a path
to a dead end, or find ourselves at the wrong
place at the wrong time.
The brother of Jared thought about the Lord’s
question and decided to produce sixteen stones
from molten rock for the Lord to touch so
that they might shine:
Do not be angry with thy servant because of
his ­weakness . . . ; nevertheless, O Lord,
thou hast given us a commandment that we must
call upon thee, that from thee we may receive
according to our desires.
And the Lord granted the brother of Jared
his desire and reached His hand out to touch
the stones and made them shine.
In embracing the uncertainties of life and
moving forward in spite of knowing that all
might not turn out as we would hope or like,
we create our own stones for the Lord to touch
and turn to light. Maybe something good will
happen when we move forward in darkness. Maybe
something bad will happen. Probably it will
be a little of both. But God can touch all
of those stones. If we make our decision and
offer our decision up to the Lord, He can
turn all of our stones to light. He can give
us opportunities to do good, build relationships,
find faith, change, and grow, even with the
stoniest of stones that we offer him.
As a teacher, I have spent a lot of time carefully
planning lessons. I articulate learning goals
and then create assignments, activities, and
discussion questions aimed at meeting those
learning goals. I try to anticipate student
thinking and figure out how to respond to
student thinking. But my best lessons are
often those that invite an element of uncertainty,
lessons in which I don’t know exactly what
students will say or how they will approach
a particular problem—and they don’t either.
And the truly transcendent lessons—the ones
after which I come home and can’t stop telling
my husband about the amazing thing that happened
in class—are always the ones in which something
happened that I could not predict or plan.
It is at the cusp of uncertainty that the
real magic happens. As the Master Teacher,
God would certainly allow for that uncertainty
in His lesson plans for our lives. And it
is as we let go of our need for knowledge
and certainty that God can step into our lives
in His expansiveness and work true miracles.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I took a trip
to Boston. There are many beautiful, old churches
in Boston, and on Sunday morning we decided
to take advantage of the opportunity and attend
a church service in the Old South Church in
downtown.
The service, the rituals, and the music were
all unfamiliar to me. Stepping outside of
the familiar helped me to pay a different
kind of attention than I often do in my familiar,
comfortable Sunday church experiences. One
hymn particularly struck me with its psalm-like
sentiment. It opened with an expression of
uncertainty: “O God, my God, O gracious
God, why do you seem so far from me?” And
as we sang through the four verses, I found
myself expecting a turning point that never
came, expecting the hymn to conclude with
something along the lines of “God, you may
feel far from me, but I know you are there.”
Instead, each verse continued its questioning.
Why is there pain and suffering in the world?
Is God even there and does God care? There
was no resolution, only ­questions, and for
days I could not stop thinking about the hymn.
For all the scriptures and talks that exist
about certainty and knowledge, we can miss
the mystery and wonder that come at the edges
of our certainty, the times when we do not
know. Nephi confessed, “I know that [God]
loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not
know the meaning of all things.” In Alma
we are reminded that “faith is not to have
a perfect knowledge of things” and that
“there are many mysteries which are kept,
that no one knoweth them save God himself.”
Jacob expressed this wonder at the mystery
of God:
Behold, great and marvelous are the works
of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths
of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible
that man should find out all his ways.
To me, it is a beautiful mystery that I can
fail to fully comprehend God but that, nevertheless,
in my own incomprehension I can feel that
I have some understanding of God’s infinite
love for me. I am not always comfortable with
uncertainty, but I now recognize that certainty
can be a constraint. When we are able to make
space for uncertainty in our lives and for
the possibility of things that lie beyond
our comprehension, we can come closer to our
God, who knows us intimately, even if our
human state prevents us from fully knowing
God. As Paul said so beautifully, “For now
we see through a glass, darkly; but then face
to face: now I know in part; but then shall
I know even as also I am known.”
In this life we know only in part, and, in
fact, the more I learn, the more I see that
I do not know. But I also believe that God
knows us completely and that in our uncertainty
we can accept God’s love for us as certain
and constant. We may not know how God will
turn our stones to light, but we can have
hope that God will turn our stones to light.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ,
amen.
