I've been asked to give a talk in Sacrament meeting this Sunday. The subject is "Fear Not," and I was asked to use Elder Bednar's talk titled "Therefore, They Hushed Their Fears." Knowing that I had blogged about that talk before, I searched my recent posts for "fear," and when I did, I found this. It was a draft of a blog post that I had written, but not completed or posted for some reason. When and almost-fully written blog post just fell in my lap like that, I thought I'd finish it off and post it, so here it is:
On Facebook, I saw a photo showing the cover of Dr Seuess's book, Green Eggs and Ham, retitled as "How Fear of the Unknown Hinders the Development of Informed Opinions." To me, this new title and the book to which it was given seem to imply that fear of the unknown and uninformed opinions are bad things, but I'm not sure how much I agree.
In the book, Sam-I-Am persistently offers a seemingly unnamed character green eggs and ham, despite sturdy resilience to the unprovoked offers, until the unnamed character relents and partakes of the green eggs and ham. The unnamed character is pleased to discover that the strange food is actually delicious, and he ends up thanking Sam-I-Am for sharing it with him, but what if the offering hadn't been so innocent? What if the green eggs and ham were poisonous or addicting? If Sam-I-Am had been a drug dealer, offering the unnamed character substances that would create momentary feelings of pleasure and then cause his life to spiral out of control, the unnamed character's initial resistance would have been seen as wise. He didn't need to try the green eggs before he could "just say 'no'" to them. And neither do we.
Fear of the unknown may still be somewhat irrational, but we don't need to experiment with something in order to develop an informed opinion about it. We have Prophets and the experiences of others to tell us or show us what things are bad for us. They can help us gain greater wisdom than we could have gained in our own lifetimes. They can help us know to stay away from mind-affecting substances and potentially poisonous foods. Not having experienced something doesn't necessarily mean that our fears about them are completely irrational or that our opinions about them are completely uninformed. We have more sources of knowledge and wisdom than just our personal experiences, and they can help us learn of things that we haven't personally encountered yet, and help us avoid things that would have turned out to be bad for us. We don't need to experiment with everything personally; when we learn about something elsewhere, especially from the prophets, our opinions about those things are no longer completely uninformed.
1 comment:
Smart thinking. Sometimes "just once" CAN hurt. Too many people fall into the "you don't know unless you've tried it" trap. It is wise to look before you leap. To check trusted sources. And above all to seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then on to adventure and discovery.
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