Another great Bruce C. Hafen talk. Bro. Hafen gave this talk at BYU Provo when he was President of Ricks College. I'm hoping this is the complete transcript. If not I would love to get the complete transcript since sometimes the Ensign does not print the complete transcript.
On Dealing with Uncertainty - A Brigham Young University devotional address, delivered 9 January 1979.
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/08/on-d ... y?lang=eng
Turning to one more fertile field to illustrate the naturalness of ambiguity, I remember Arthur Henry King’s statement that most truly great literary works will raise some profound question about a human problem, explore the question skillfully and in depth, and then leave the matter for the reader to resolve. He added that if the resolution seems too clear or too easy, the literature is perhaps not very good or else those reading it have missed its point. Take, for example, Dostoevsky’s novel, The Idiot, where the question is seriously raised whether it is possible for a true Christian to love unselfishly. The main character of the story is a pure and good person who loves two different women in two very different ways. One he loves as most men love women—she cares for him, she helps him, he is attracted to her romantically, and she could make his life very happy. The other woman—a pathetically inadequate person—he loves primarily because she needs him desperately and he has a compassionate heart. Posing the dilemma of which of these two the man should marry, Dostoevsky seems to ask if it is possible for mortal men to be totally devoted to the unselfish ideals of Christianity. As you might expect, he leaves that huge question unresolved, forcing the reader to ponder it for himself.
I have intentionally tried to suggest a wide variety of instances in which the answers we may seek are not as quickly apparent as we might have expected. My suggestion is that some uncertainty is characteristic of mortal experience. The mists of darkness in Lehi’s dream are, for that very reason, a strong symbolic representation of life as we face it on this planet. There are, of course, many things very certain and very clear, as so beautifully represented by the iron rod in Lehi’s dream; but there is enough complexity to make the topic of ambiguity worthy of discussion.
Given, then, the existence of a gap for most of us between where we stand and where we would like to be, and given that we will have at least some experiences that make us wonder, what are we to do? I think there are three different levels of dealing with ambiguity.
At level one, there are two typical attitudes, one of which is that we simply do not—perhaps cannot—even see the problems that exist. Some seem almost consciously to filter out any perception of a gap between the real and the ideal. Those in this category are they for whom the gospel at its best is a firm handshake, an enthusiastic greeting, and a smiley button. Their mission was the best, their student ward is the best, and every new day is probably going to be the best day they ever had. These cheerful ones are happy, spontaneous, optimistic, and they always manage to hang loose. They are able to weather many storms that would seem formidable to more pessimistic types, though one wonders if the reason is often that they have somehow missed hearing that a storm was going on.
I invite you then to step up to level two, where you see things for what they are, for only then can you deal with them in a meaningful and constructive way...
Despite the value of a level-two awareness, however, there are some serious hazards at this level. One’s acceptance of the clouds of uncertainty may be so complete that the iron rod fades into the receding mist and skepticism becomes a guiding philosophy. Often, this perspective comes from erasing the outer circle representing the ideal, or what ought to be, and focusing excessively on the inner circle of reality.
As a teacher in the BYU Law School, I noticed how common it was among first-year law students to experience great frustration as they discovered how much our legal system is characterized not by hard, fast rules, but by legal principles that often appear to contradict each other. I think, for example, of one new student who approached me after class expressing the confusion he was encountering in his study of the law. He said he had what he called “a low tolerance for ambiguity” and had been wondering if part of his problem was that he had only weeks before returned from a mission, where everything was crisp and clear, where even the words he was to speak were provided for him. To feel successful, all he had to do was follow the step-by-step plan given him for each day and each task on his mission. Law school was making him feel totally at sea as he groped for simple guidelines that would tell him what to do. His circumstance was only another example of what I have previously tried to describe as typical of college and university students in the early years of their experience. However, by the time our law students reached their third year of study, it was not at all uncommon for them to develop such a high tolerance for ambiguity that they were skeptical about everything, including some dimensions of their religious faith. Where formerly they felt they had all the answers, but just did not know what the questions were, they now seemed to have all the questions but few of the answers.
I found myself wanting to tell our third-year law students that those who take too much delight in their finely honed tools of skepticism and dispassionate analysis will limit their effectiveness, in the church and elsewhere, because they can become contentious, standoffish, arrogant, and unwilling to commit themselves.
The dangers of which I speak are not limited to our relations with others. They can become very personal, prying into our own hearts in unhealthy ways. The ability to acknowledge ambiguity is not a final form of enlightenment. Having admitted to a willingness temporarily to suspend judgment on questions that seem hard to answer, having developed greater tolerance and more patience, our basic posture toward the Church can, if we are not careful, gradually shift from being committed to being noncommittal. That is not a healthy posture. Indeed, in many ways, a Church member who moves from a stage of commitment to a stage of being tentative and noncommittal is in a worse position than one who has never experienced a basic commitment. The previously committed person may too easily assume that he has already been through the “positive-mental-attitude” routine and “knows better” now, as he judges things. He may assume that being submissive, meek, obedient, and humble are matters with which he is already familiar, and that he has finally outgrown the need to work very hard at being that way again. Those are the assumptions of a hardened heart.
The English writer G. K. Chesterton once addressed questions similar to those I have raised today. He distinguished among “optimists,” “pessimists,” and “improvers,” which roughly correspond to my three levels of dealing with ambiguity. He concluded that both the optimists and the pessimists looked too much at only one side of things. He observed that neither the extreme optimist nor the extreme pessimist would ever be of much help in improving the human condition, because people can’t solve problems unless they are willing to acknowledge that a problem exists and yet also retain enough genuine loyalty to do something about it. More specifically, Chesterton wrote that the evil of the excessive optimist (level one) is that he will “defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, ‘My cosmos, right or wrong.’ He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing everyone with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world.”
On the other hand, the evil of the pessimist (level two), wrote Chesterton, is “not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises.” In being the so-called “candid friend,” the pessimist is not really candid. Chesterton continued: “He is keeping something back—his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. … He is using the ugly knowledge which was allowed him [in order] to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it.” (Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Garden City, N.Y.: Image Book, 1959, pp. 69–70).
In going on to describe the “improvers,” or level three, Chesterton illustrates by referring to women, who tend to be so loyal to those who need them. “Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin … are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. … Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 71.)
Perhaps President Harold B. Lee was thinking of Chesterton’s point about women when he used to say, “Behind every great man, there is an amazed woman.”
"Condemn me not because of mine imperfection,... but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." Mormon 9:31
