Religion belongs to the people

We believe prophets receive revelation from God. But we get to receive revelation, too.

I recently saw a thread from a pastor online, about atonement theories. He and others in the comments were bemoaning “TikTok theologians,” and others who dig into gospel topics without the proper training or reading the right ancient documents first. They weren’t wrong. Making unfounded theological assertions, especially to a large social media following, can have consequences.

But this gatekeeping also rubbed me the wrong way. Asserting that there are prerequisites for gospel study or discussion has its own set of consequences, and one we’ve seen repeated in history. It also may have hit particularly close to home for me, as I’ve made a habit of exploring gospel topics online. I don’t know what these pastors envisioned would be the qualifications for posting about theology; I don’t have formal training in Greek or Hebrew (and my Latin is downright rusty), though I do tell my friends of other faiths that I attended seminary.

Church leaders have warned—and with renewed fervor recently, it seems—about “speculating” on gospel topics. Elder Dale G. Renlund famously gave this warning about speculating about our Mother in Heaven:

You too may still have questions and want to find more answers. Seeking greater understanding is an important part of our spiritual development, but please be cautious. Reason cannot replace revelation.

Speculation will not lead to greater spiritual knowledge, but it can lead us to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed.

I get his point, although this is a “Yes, but” situation for me. My personal experience is that speculation absolutely does lead to greater spiritual knowledge. That’s how I grow in gospel knowledge, and in testimony: I read and study, come up with ideas, and then explore them to see if there is any meat on the bone. It’s what we’ve been taught to do all our lives. It’s “search, ponder, and pray.”

So it’s possible that I misunderstood Elder Renlund (and again, his exhortation was specific to a certain topic). Other warnings about speculation in General Conference have associated it with apostate/unauthorized voices, worldly ideas, questions that cannot be resolved, and even Satan’s views. These warnings feel like they’re about something more dire than simply pondering and reflecting on the gospel. I don’t think anyone is actually trying to clamp down on personal revelation¹, and Elder Renlund does say that we should seek greater understanding through personal revelation.

This bit from Elder Henry B. Eyring in 1999 gives a different angle on it:

Doctrine gains its power as the Holy Ghost confirms that it is true. … Because we need the Holy Ghost, we must be cautious and careful not to go beyond teaching true doctrine. The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Truth. His confirmation is invited by our avoiding speculation or personal interpretation.

This jives a little more for me; teaching speculation as though it is settled, sustained doctrine isn’t a good idea. Generally, in talks and lessons on Sundays, speakers and teachers teach the things that have been taught repeatedly by Church leaders. This holds plenty of value, as it’s not like we’ve mastered these basic concepts.

But what makes my testimony get up and dance is when I find something in the gospel that I didn’t expect, I get curious about it, and I plant the seed to see if it’s good. The best talks, to me, are the ones that add a personal application that makes scripture come alive, that takes the Early Modern English of both the Bible and the Book of Mormon and puts it in the hands of the people. Sometimes seeing core doctrines from a new perspective gives them new life.

When we ask questions, speculate, and look for answers, we are not doing more or less than what Joseph Smith did. When we lack wisdom—and we always do—God will give liberally, and not upbraid.

This has always been a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We all have access to personal revelation. This is an enormous gift. Communication from the divine is not just for the prophet and the apostles, and it doesn’t stop at stake presidents or bishops. We have loving Heavenly Parents who want us to understand Them and Their gospel. President Nelson has made this clear:

I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life.

B.H. Roberts believed this too. He believed that there’s a lot more that needs to be revealed, and that each of us can play a part in that continuing restoration. He split us, as Saints and disciples, into two different camps. Both types of people exist in the Church:

Disciples… are of two sorts. There are, first, the disciples pure and simple, — people who fall under the spell of a person or of a doctrine, and whose whole intellectual life thenceforth consists in their partisanship. They expound, and defend, and ward off foes, and live and die faithful to the one formula…

This is most of us in the Church, and this was me for most of my life. It’s probably me at certain times or on certain topics, and not others; this is a mindset, not a diagnosis. This is having childlike faith. It’s having certainty and clarity in a world that lacks both of those things. This type of faith is refreshing, and wholly appropriate.

But Elder Roberts continues:

On the other hand, there are disciples of a second sort… Disciples of the second sort co-operate in the works of the Spirit…

I believe “Mormonism” affords opportunity for disciples of the second sort; nay, that its crying need is for such disciples. It calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of its truths, but will develop its truths; and enlarge it by that development. Not half — not one-hundredth part — not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the Church has yet been unfolded, either to the Church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun… The disciples of “Mormonism,”… will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church; and, departing from mere repetition, will cast them in new formulas; co-operating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression, and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of its development.”²

Elder Roberts’s exhortation is spiritually motivating and inspiring. Not only is there space for people who want to explore, the Church has a crying need for them. There are profounder and broader views of doctrine available to us when we depart from “mere repetition.” There’s even a sense of urgency here—we need more people who are willing to study, learn, and open up new avenues for personal revelation.

That can be you, that can be me. We have more access to the world’s collective knowledge of the gospel than ever before in the world’s history, but it pales in comparison to the open heavens. There is revelation waiting for us. Read everything you can, have ideas, study them out, and grab hold of the ones that draw you closer to God. Then write them down, so the rest of us can benefit from them, too. Be that person.

These are the people that Hugh B. Brown talked about, and applauded—those who seek truth, and have a questing spirit³:

I admire men and women who have developed the questing spirit, who are unafraid of new ideas as stepping stones to progress... we should be unafraid to dissent -- if we are informed. …

Revelation may come in the laboratory, out of the test tube, out of the thinking mind and the inquiring soul, out of search and research and prayer and inspiration. We must be unafraid to contend for what we are thinking and to combat error with truth in this divided and imperiled world, and we must do it with the unfaltering faith that God is still in his heaven even though all is not well with the world.

We should be dauntless in our pursuit of truth and resist all demands for unthinking conformity. No one would have us become mere tape recorders of other people's thoughts.

Top-down revelation can seem like a trickle when we sit and wait for it. And that can make us miss the possibilities for personal revelation that we are constantly swimming in.

Not every one of us is a gospel scholar, or an expert theologian. But the Holy Ghost does not check your credentials before confirming what is true. Instead, like the scripture says, anyone who diligently seeks will find.

1. Even though personal revelation famously can’t be controlled. From Hugh Nibley:

That was the classical education which Christianity embraced at the urging of the great St. Augustine. He had learned by hard experience that you can’t trust revelation because you can’t control it—the Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and what the Church needed was something more available and reliable than that, something, he says, commodior et multitudini tutor—“handier and more reliable for the public”—than revelation or even reason, and that is exactly what the rhetorical education had to offer.

2. Elder B.H. Roberts, The Improvement Era, Vol. 9 No. 9, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 1, 1906. Online here.

3. Hugh B. Brown and Edwin B. Firmage (Ed.), An Abundant Life: The Memoirs of Hugh B. Brown (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 137-138.

Note that this quote is cited incorrectly throughout the unkept fields of the Internet. This citation was checked and is correct.