Truth is unknowably infinite. We can’t interact with the infinite. So, we approximate. Though necessary, approximation brings the unpleasant side effect of rounding error. Our awareness will always include things that are not correct or incomplete, and each example of this has the potential to cause unnecessary suffering.
The extent (and accuracy of) your approximation of truth defines the degree to which you benefit from it. Our approximation informs how we interact with life and provides the means for action, but also limits our thinking and prevents us from perceiving what is better.
We should always seek for more awareness: on things we think we know, on things we know we don’t know, and on things we don’t know we don’t know.
In order to expand our light and truth, asking questions is necessary. Jesus frequently taught his disciples by asking questions. Questions are the best way to obtain further light and truth on any subject. Questions are so effective at expanding awareness because they are the most direct way to leverage the light you already have within you.
It is vital to understand how you receive light and truth from God. It doesn’t come from other people or experiences. It comes as you pay attention to the light inside of you in response to the external catalysts. One way you can pay more attention to that light is to learn how to actively query it.
The light within you is a gift from God (see John 1:9). This light acts like an oracle. You ask it questions, it gives you answers. This mechanism is meant to be a central part of how you learn and grow. Ignorance of how it functions or voluntary failure to engage it is equivalent to turning away from the very purpose for which you were born.
You cannot claim to love light and truth and simultaneously despise, reject, or neglect the light within you. Those who do so demonstrate they are unfit, or “unworthy,” to receive more because they do not access greater light and truth even when given abundant opportunity to do so. Consequently, they are damned, which literally means stopped in their acquisition of knowledge.
31 Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.
32 And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation. (D&C 93)
Failure to ask questions, receive answers, and act in accordance with the light and truth received is likened unto burying one’s talent:
14 For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.
15 And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.
16 Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.
17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.
19 After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.
20 And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.
21 His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. 22 He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.
23 His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
24 Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed:
25 And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.
26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed:
27 Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.
28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.
30 And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 25)
Those who voluntarily neglect or refuse to receive more light and truth from God by failing to ask questions or by not acting in accordance with what they have received and believe to be true actually lose light and truth and are taken captive by the devil (see 1 Nephi 10:19; Alma 12:10-11; D&C 93:39).
God can only reveal as much truth to a person as they are prepared to receive. What happens, then, if one asks a question whose answer they are not ready to receive? God’s answer to such a person will be partial—it will consist of what they are ready to receive. To the person who is fully ready, the full answer will be given. This is one reason why two people can pray over the same question and receive two seemingly different answers.
We seek further truth by questioning our present understanding of things. If we assume we know everything, or that everything we know is true and final (which is the same), we shouldn’t be surprised if we are not given more light and truth. To counter the corrosive influence of confidence, Paul said, “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” (1 Corinthians 3:18)
Asking questions is among the most important skills we must develop in our quest to know God. Good askers have confidence in God’s willingness to respond. They are suspicious of what others say. They realize that the vast majority of people have no idea what they are talking about most of the time. They are also suspicious of what they already believe they know. They are willing to be wrong. They are able to suspend judgment on an issue until more facts are gathered. Because their belief is constructed based on their observations over time, they expect that their belief will change as they make more observations.
We ought to believe what we have found to be true, not evaluate what is true based on what we already believe. Moses’ journey closer to God was punctuated with moments where he learned things he had never before supposed (see Moses 1:10). We are no different. We progress towards God not only by learning new things but also by rejecting old things we previously believed in that are false. If we limit our investigation to what we already believe to be true, we will never approach closer to God than we currently are.
Jesus repeatedly said, “ask and ye shall receive.” Magnificent things happen when you ask why. “Why” questions have high information answers. They are very effective at triggering a conversation with God.
Scriptures are a fantastic generator of questions to the insightful reader. How much more could everyone learn if they would stop when they don’t understand something, and ask the Lord instead of skipping over mysterious portions! Learning truth while reading the scriptures is like ironing a shirt. If you pass over a wrinkle of misunderstanding you are assuring that the job will have to be done again. It pays to ask yourself why you are bothering to read the scriptures in the first place. If your purpose is to cross off the task of reading from your list of things to do, skipping questions fulfills what you are after. If you are reading to seek further light and truth, then smoothing that wrinkle is the reason you are reading in the first place.
Sincere questions are often responded to with advice from others to “just trust God.” This is equivalent to receiving advice to stop growing in your awareness. God will answer any sincere question. Beware of any who tell you not to ask questions or that certain questions are off limits. They are of limited understanding, and listening to them will ensure your understanding will never grow beyond theirs. “Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark.” (2 Nephi 32:4)
God doesn’t want you to just trust him. He wants you to understand. Don't stop at “trust God.” Ask him why. If you don't come to the point where you understand why something is as it is, you haven't derived the value God intended you to get out of the experience. You are paying the full price of experience without getting the most critical part of the bargain in return. If God really does all things out of love, and the scriptures are true, then you should be able to learn how it is that whatever you are experiencing is a part of that.
We take too much for granted. Relentlessly ask why. We ought to ask why for everything we believe, and if there is no answer, look for something better.
Questioning doesn’t just mean asking God. Asking “why” isn’t just about praying and asking God why something is the way it is. Asking “what” isn’t just about praying and asking God more about something. God has given us time, resources, and intellectual capability to reason things out. We should pray and ask God questions, but it would be foolish to think that he will answer us if we are not doing what we can to find the answers ourselves.
Information is rarely presented in terms of premises. Rather, information is almost always presented as conclusions. Premises—not conclusions—are the key to new truth. Asking questions is the key to investigating the premises that the conclusions we hear rely on.
Each principle stands or falls on its own. It is a false tradition to assume that because one principle is true, all principles bundled together by some person or group are also true. We must learn how to ask specific questions, which might have limited application.
Asking questions enables a person to break the conclusion handed to them into the premises it is based on and test each one of those premises for contradictions. Since all people hold different quantities of truth, it is essential to interpret premises in the light that you have, not rely on the light of another to do it for you. Furthermore, for the same reasons, investigating the premises of another’s conclusions can lead to your discovering that they have more light than you.
Try for something better than yes or no
The lack of sophistication and extent of our questions limits our learning far more than our actual observations do. The way we ask questions will inform what we believe more than anything else. So much more information is available if we would just ask better questions.
In forming questions, we should be specific. Ill-formed questions yield less-effective answers. Yes/no questions unintentionally frame the situation in a way that constrains what truth can be conveyed. “Should I do ____” type questions, for example, force the answer to be option one or two, but do not open the door to a better option three.
God is not limited to one-word answers. He wants to actually speak to you. Do not betray your lack of faith by asking yes or no questions. The pinnacle of experience with God is not his giving you simple yes or no answers. You are not a puppet. He wants you to not only know what , but why . He wants to reason with you.
Feelings versus facts
When truth evaluation is reduced to feelings, it becomes impossible to persuade, no matter how certain and clear the facts, because most often the believer feels bad when prior held beliefs are contradicted (this is called cognitive dissonance). Those dependent upon feelings to maintain status quo beliefs are thus compelled to defend those feelings, whether or not those beliefs are true. Consequently, instead of debating the correctness or incorrectness of doctrine, which can be established through scriptural, rational, and historical investigation, one must defend against feelings .
We have no right to feel strongly about something for which we cannot provide either charismatic or rational evidence. The ideas themselves should be the focus, not feelings (see the chapter, “Revelation”). The natural man is an enemy to God; finding truth requires us to yield our emotive response—which is carnal—to the voice of the Holy Ghost, the voice of reason.
Peter taught that we should “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15) “A reason” implies that there are true facts, evidences, or observations supporting a given belief.
A sincere search for truth must be a consistent rational evaluation of new evidences, both those that support and those that refute currently held positions. In order to search for truth, then, one must be able to enumerate the reasons for their currently held beliefs. A surprising number of people defend their own beliefs without any substance at all. Instead, their entire argument consists of a few tired logical fallacies. These ineffective attempts fail to persuade because one has no reason to consider something until they have been given a reason to believe the new idea is at least possible. Moreover, an individual whose beliefs are not substantiated cannot be convinced of higher truth because it is impossible to argue against an irrationally held position.
False ideas do not stand up to scripture, logic, or history. For example, Sherem taught both that man “cannot tell of things to come” and also that he knew that Christ would never come (see Jacob 7:7,9).
If you do not question what others automatically assume to be true, you cannot be any different than they are.
Reason
In the midst of his affliction, Job said: “Surely I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.” (Job 13:3) He got the chance, and you can read what that looked like in the final chapters of Job.
Job was not unique. The Lord desires to reason with each of his children. It is a critical means of conveying great quantities of information. He says: “Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons.” (Isaiah 41:21) He says: “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 1:18)
Reasoning with the Lord is a back-and-forth conversation where we present what we think is right and the Lord explains why something else is better. It is a process of searching for what best improves. The volume of information flow in this exercise is orders of magnitude greater than what can be conveyed in simple yes-or-no questions.
You should also exercise extreme care when it comes to vocabulary. Ideological jargon precludes open-mindedness. For example, every faith group has developed a vocabulary of words whose usage both invokes strong feelings and makes us think imprecisely. Words like authority, prophet, sustain, keys, and apostasy, for instance, have very charged meanings in LDS crowds. Using these words shuts down thought, making it very difficult for an adherent to think freely instead of along sanctioned lines. We should strive to use more precise words: instead of using nonspecific terms, use the meaning of the term that you intend. For example, when you say “prophet,” do you mean one who receives and announces predictions of the future from God, or do you mean someone who has been selected by a group of men from their ranks as the leader of a church? If you are asking “is so-and-so a prophet,” do you really mean “should I assume that everything so-and-so does is from you, God?”
How you frame a question makes a tremendous difference in the answers you receive. Say what you actually mean, and you will have a new source of questions to ask. A vague vocabulary makes for a vague awareness. Vague questions can only lead to vague answers. An articulate, precise question will lead to an articulate, precise answer.
One way to reason is to put questions into a hypothesis form, where observations or experiments might be designed to prove them wrong.
This technique is the essential way to control for absurdities while remaining open-minded. Before adopting this approach, realize that it requires you to be willing to accept that something you believe is wrong. If you don’t believe in the possibility of counter evidence to something you believe, don’t bother trying to question it.
Framing as a hypothesis goes something like this: think of a belief. Now, phrase it in a specific way. This is important, because the automatic reaction to identifying a belief as false is to claim that the original statement of the belief wasn’t what you meant. As long as you don’t explicitly define what you mean, you can’t actually evaluate it.
Now, for each specific point, search to see whether you have observed a contradiction. If there is, then that point is false, and unless you can rephrase your belief without it, your belief is, too.
Let’s take an example. Suppose I think college is good. I should ask myself why. Suppose my answer is, “college is good because if you get a college degree you will have a better career.” Now I ask what I mean by a better career, and rephrase more specifically: “College is good because a college degree earns you more money.” Now, I look for contradictions. Do all college degree holders earn more money than all who do not have a degree? No. Now I have to rephrase my belief: “College is sometimes good because sometimes a college degree earns you more money.” That one checks out, but it is much weaker. The first belief suggests everyone should go to college. The second suggests that more is needed before deciding whether it is a good idea. You can continue with this specific example, and eventually you’ll end up with something like “College is good if you want to major in computer science. Otherwise, you shouldn’t go to college.”
This idea of specification and testing is called falsifiability. While something can never be proven right, things can be proven wrong, and this is what falsifiability is all about. If something is proven wrong, it is wrong. If it is not proven wrong, it is right enough, for now.
An unfalsifiable position is always the last position you will ever hold on any given topic. This is, essentially, damnation, because you limit yourself to the glory associated with the current law you live. You have drawn a line in the sand beyond which you are not willing to move, whether or not greater truth exists.
Falsifiability highlights the danger of dogmatic assertions unattached from specific evidences. Consider the college statement above. It is obvious that one who embraces the first version of the college belief will live a very different life than one who holds the last version.
Challenge your assumptions. If you don't challenge what you have, you can never get more than what you have. If you don't have what you want, you have to get something different. Set out to prove yourself wrong.
Contradictions
Higher truth can be acquired through the recognition of the contradictions it tends to generate. Those who think critically about their present beliefs will enumerate areas that make no sense. These apparent contradictions are rich sources for further light and truth, because they expose the searcher to the need for a higher level of light and truth, as well as provide the motivation to obtain it.
One way to discover further light and truth is to ponder problems that persist in your current paradigm. Are you receiving the outcomes that you expected from your current beliefs? Do you have questions that seem to not have answers?
Abraham found himself unsatisfied in his inherited paradigm. He paid attention to the scriptures he was reading, and noticed that there were greater blessings available to him than those offered him by the theology of his father (see Abraham 1:1-2).
Every belief structure can be thought of as a map. Our observational experience is akin to the actual terrain. For whatever reason, most people of faith are not very apt at comparing their map to the surrounding terrain. Any difference in the two is contradiction.
Humans see the world as a narrative. We collect observations and build a story around them. Frequently, it is the narrative that forms the center of our understanding, not the observations. Therefore, when new, contrary observations arise, we tend to ignore them, because they don't fit our narrative. Narratives are stiff—they don't like to flex. Someone who has made up their mind about something is very unlikely to change their position, even when presented with clearly contrary evidence.
Moving forward tends to require letting go of what has served us until this point. Once we discover limited utility in a previously held belief, it is time to find something better.
Considering contradictions is like crossing monkey bars. Crossing monkey bars requires you to let go of what you held previously. Even though that trailing bar was perfectly secure, even though it was at one point exactly what got you ahead of where you were, you have to let it go. When you get really good at trusting the system, you might even get up some momentum and skip bars on your traversal.
The fullness of God’s truth cannot be possessed while we retain our prepossessed feelings and notions. We must advance step by step from where we stand to where he stands.
To live open-mindedly, to live like a child, you have to be completely willing to let go of what you think you know at any moment. You have to be completely skeptical of everything you think you know, unsure of anything. How does this work with faith and hope? You act as if what you believe is absolutely true, but you walk in a constant willingness to learn that it is not. This is living on a razor's edge, living contrary to everything that is human nature.
So few people cultivate this ability that finding someone who does it— someone who is truly open-minded—may be the rarest thing on this earth. But this is what it means to be humble. To be willing to live zealously for your current perspective yet turn from it in a moment when presented sufficient reason to is to be willing to be the biggest fool. You will experience indescribable humiliation constantly as your previous best ideas turn out to be incomplete or even incorrect. Still, if you hold anything back, you will find that your partial effort is insufficient to uncover the next level of truth.
Not asking
What does it mean to love darkness rather than light? The Lord said:
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. (John 3)
It is not totally clear from this passage what it means to “hate the light” and not come to the light. This passage lays it out more clearly:
20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that Satan has great hold upon their hearts; he stirreth them up to iniquity against that which is good;
21 And their hearts are corrupt, and full of wickedness and abominations; and they love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; therefore they will not ask of me. (D&C 10)
Hating the light and not asking questions are the same thing. Avoiding the light and not asking questions are the same thing.
Does this characterization seem extreme? Consider why someone would shy away from asking questions.
Isaiah was sent to king Ahaz to tell him to ask for a sign to prove that what God was saying was true:
10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying,
11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? (Isaiah 7)
Ahaz declined to ask for a sign because he wanted to ignore the other things God had said. If he had asked for a sign, and received one, he would no longer be able to ignore the other things God had told him.
Some would counter by saying “but why should I question something I already know? Isn’t that sowing the seeds of doubt?”
Asking questions should not be considered as cynicism or negative criticism. There is a difference between taking a toy apart to see how it works, and smashing it into pieces because you want to destroy it. This is still true if, despite your best and most careful effort, you are not able to reassemble the toy after taking it apart.
We make a grave mistake when we assume that questioning leads to doubts. In reality, questioning not only leads to faith, but it is the only path that leads to faith, since faith cannot be had in false principles, and the only way to establish which principles are true is to ask God.
Any level of awareness will present questions whose answers require a higher order of awareness. This is a key principle. In this case, generating questions identifies the limitations of the present level of understanding and invites a conduit of further light from God in the revelation of a higher order of understanding. Without questions, you are literally damned— limited to your present level of understanding.
This is the one and only reason you would decline from asking questions: because you love a lie. Instead, you should come “to the light” and “have your deeds” reproved, to see whether “they are wrought in God.” (see John 3, quoted above).
Questions are the mechanism for God revealing more light and truth to you. Asking questions can only lead you closer to truth and to God, not farther away.
Questioning present understanding, having an open mind, and being willing to let go of lesser truths for greater ones will greatly improve the measure of wisdom God is able to impart to us. God will increase the revelation he gives a man commensurate with the increase of questions he has.
Anyone who encounters God will have his paradigm shifted. A man whose mind doesn't change has not encountered God, or has turned away from him.
Anyone who encounters God will have a stronger thirst for truth, and many more questions continually. A man who has no questions does not know God, or has turned away from him. A man without questions is not receiving revelation.