Renowned Mormon scholar Terryl Lynn Givens outlined the importance of having passion for the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ during his devotional address at BYU-Hawaii on February 3. He drove this point home by stating that the tragedy for those that leave the gospel "out of apathy, boredom, or indifference … is … the most incomprehensible … [because] they came to the feast, but they never sat down, … never supped, … never tasted the banquet."
Givens' love of learning was displayed through rich story layers woven seamlessly into his talk. One such story described a drive he took through the New England countryside; while passing a small church, he noticed four simple words on the marquee recruiting new parishioners: "Soft pews, no hell." He assumed that the pastor lost members because, in quoting Thomas Carlyle, offering ease "is a [slander] on men … [that were meant] to do noble and true things." He called this "ease" a paradox because "we all aspire to fill the measure of our creation, [our] divine potential within." Furthermore, he cited that men are not just meant to have life, but to have life abundantly (John 10:10).
Givens moved from scripture to a poem by Robinson Jeffers through the medium of the Greek word perisone, meaning "full to overflowing"; he spoke of God as "a God of superabundance" and described nature as a testament of God's abundance. In Jeffers's poem, a rhetorical question is asked: "Is it not by his high superfluousness we know / Our God?" The poem went on to describe shades of beauty wedged in to all of God's creation; within the poem is the title for Givens' talk, "Rainbows over the rain." With such pervading hope vested on to creation, Givens moved closer to his point.
"The gospel Joseph restored," Givens stated, "is not for the faint hearted, or for those who are moderately hungry for knowledge, for joy, for the possibilities offered by an infinite universe. The gospel is for the voracious." He continued, stating that the Lord can work with passion, but there is little he can do with apathy. "It all reminds me," he stated, "of the great play ‘Peer Gynt' by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Gynt is a rascally anti-hero looking for meaning in life, but he is a person of half-measures and petty vices. In the end, he is accosted by a stand-in for the devil, the figure of the button-molder, and he is told—to his shock and horror—that his fate is to be melted down with other mediocre villains in the button-molder's cauldron. Only proper sinners, he is told, deserve the more heroic end of a torment in hell. His apathetic existence more fittingly deserves simple oblivion in a pot of melted buttons."
Givens moved on, extending his main challenge to students–to be voracious in all that they do and seek; he quoted Bertrand Russell's admonition: "The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible." Furthermore, he noted his love for "a gospel that challenges us to expand, rather than contract our tastes, to righteously satisfy, rather than ascetically renounce, our passions [because] the human body and human soul alike just seem to be constituted for the amassing of experience in ever greater variety and intensity." Fittingly, a man interested in many things has more to explore.
He continued to challenge students to be "anxiously engaged in [their] education. You are living this core feature of the restored gospel." He quoted Brigham Young, stating, "Our religion takes within its wide embrace not only things of heaven, but also things of earth. It circumscribes all art, science, and literature pertaining to heaven, earth, and hell." Thus the abundance Givens initially mentioned in poetic form becomes the concrete directive with which we should all seek to live life, to be engaged.
Givens then contrasted the abundance of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we have today with the pre-restoration darkness that Edward Beecher fumbled with. Beecher, a contemporary of Joseph Smith, sought to restore his sister's faith and in doing so found his own after much struggle. In a time that was not ready for his "paradigm-shattering epiphany about our pre-mortal existence," Beecher felt he found faith after "groping in some vast cathedral, in the gloom of midnight..." He kept this vision of premortal existence to himself for nearly fifty years, and when he finally shared it, he was dismissed as a heretic.
Givens then continued: "The Holy Ghost, wrote Nephi, is the gift of God unto all those who diligently seek him [and here I remind you of Edward Beecher's example of what diligent seeking means] (1 Ne 10:17)." In closing, Givens encouraged students to seek "the gospel with passion and with curiosity, [to be] more excited by the opportunities we have to grow, to learn, to experience..." He then extended a final challenge: "May we strive to become more like him, more purified and sanctified through the atonement of the Savior… [L]et us reach out to embrace whatever is good and true and beautiful, wherever we may find it, that we may be, in the admonition of Moroni, the children of Christ."
–Photo by Ian Nitta