Not Knowing It All

My name is Brian and I am a chronic know-it-all.  The character I most relate to from Harry Potter is Hermione Granger.  I built an academic and professional career out of being the guy with all the answers. For the last few years I have struggled with my faith, and landed in a place where I no longer know it all and I am beginning to feel like that is OK. 

I already wrote about my 11th grade English teacher, Mrs Olic-Hamilton.  She made us write and write, and we flew through a novel every couple of weeks.  She sent me home with her type writer so I could type my essays. I was way into that class.  Part way through the year she pulled me aside after class and asked me if I could do her a favor.  I was eager to help.  She asked if maybe I could wait to make comments in class until she called on me, that she appreciated that I had such "insightful" opinions, but that it would really help my fellow students if I would keep quiet most classes.  She promised me that if I waited for "especially tricky discussion points," she would call on me for "my insightful ideas."  I ate that stuff up, because I was also an insufferable know-it-all.

In college, my favorite class was Genetics taught by a graduate student (Polly Randall), while the professor was on leave.  It was such a great class.  Before each class I read all the chapters, did the homework, and came eager for the lecture.  Leila and I were in a study group together for the class. We usually sat together.  She used to wack me on leg and shoot me dirty looks during class because, and this is embarrassingly bad behavior, I would answer questions from students before Polly had a chance to.  That and I would roll my eyes and sigh when people had dumb questions.  Because I was also an impatient and annoying know-it-all.  

There are many other examples, but mostly as a grown up I try not to be an obnoxious know-it-all, but to leverage it to be a successful researcher and scientific leader in my very small and narrow field.  

Regarding religion, I did serve a mission for the LDS church and taught people that it was the one and only true religion on the face of the earth.  I had prayed about this and it felt . . OK.  I can't say I was totally sure even then, and I struggled to find where I believed.  I wanted to know.  

Sometimes I felt like I did.  And other times I certainly did not.  I almost didn't serve a mission.  I was at BYU and that seemed like the thing to do so I put in my papers. When you got your mission assignment and call in those days you were supposed to send back an acceptance letter.  I wrote mine declining the mission call, because I wasn't sure I was sure enough.  I didn't have the guts to actually mail it in though.  It sat in my backpack in the folder with my notes for a week or two.  One night my orchestra gave a fund raising concert for the BYU foundation and Pres. Hinckley was the keynote speaker.  I sat behind him with the letter like the telltale heart beating loud in my mind all night.  I felt so strongly that if he was a prophet, and he had called me on a mission, that I should go.  So after the concert I rewrote my letter and I went.  

I got to Nicaragua and dove into learning the language and teaching.  My mission was hard in lots of ways - I was sick a lot from parasites, living conditions were sometimes primitive, and there was always danger from crime and plenty of other risks from a country that was just getting on its feet after years of civil war and strife.  For example, the tallest building in Nicaragua then was a rather short skyscraper that was still broken and empty after the earthquake in the 1970's.  We didn't always have electricity or running water.  I was robbed multiple times, saw a lot of protests, and sometimes had to walk because the roads were blockaded.  But, we never lacked people to teach.  We were welcomed into people's homes and they were eager to learn about our religion.  Many did join. I loved teaching and felt like it was the right place for me to be, but even then there were questions and doubts that I had and set aside.  I saw the church grow from just a few members to be ready to have stakes in the short two years I was there. 

Then I came home, back to BYU, met Leila in that fateful genetics class, and flew through school.  I got a masters at BYU, then a PhD at TAMU. We had five daughters and one son stillborn and buried in Bryan, TX.  That was a low point in my faith.  I took that really hard.  My journal is silent though.  I didn't write.  I don't even have super clear memory of that time, but my memory of the feeling of the time is one of anger, bitterness, and not really finding comfort in my religion.  My bishop at the time made come comment about he knew that our son was in a better place and that he knew that we would see him again.  And if there was one thing I knew at that time it was that I didn't know that.  I felt like I had lost and I didn't feel the comfort of faith - the surety of knowing that there would be a second chance. 

But, life keeps churning and somehow I am now 43, and pretty sure that I don't know what I thought I knew about many things.  I look at my personal history and my church's history and there are many things that I find faith in, but then other things that are jarring.  I have doubts or problems with pretty much all of the LDS church essay problems: polygamy, the Church's racist past, Book of Mormon historical evidence, Book of Abraham translation and others like LDS 100+ billion dollar endowment or the church's LGBT policies or the crazy Adam-god stuff Brigham Young used to teach.  It shakes me.  I don't know today with the surety that I seemed to have when I was a 19 year old missionary.  I read some of my journal entries from those years and I was so sure of so much.  I have wanted to know with that kind of surety again, and I have felt guilty for doubting - for not doubting my doubts. 

I guess where I am now, after living with that guilt for a couple of years, is to let that guilt go. I can remember the sense of relief when I came to the simple conclusion that I didn't have to squeeze my beliefs into the box I felt like the Church had given me.   Maybe, it was OK not to know, or agree. Maybe not believing, was OK and I didn't have to doubt my doubts to have my faith. Though the consequence would be that accepting my beliefs that didn't fit in that box and not ignoring that or feeling like I should force them to. And I am beginning to feel like that is the right thing. It means I can disagree with the Church's stance or policies or doctrines.  I get to decide what I believe is true.  

Some of my doubts aren't really doubts even.  They are beliefs in themselves - like evolution.  For example, I don't really have doubts about Adam and Eve or Noah being real people, I am pretty sure that they were not.  That as myth there is meaning there, I believe, but I don't know if it is the same one I once thought it was.  Evidence shows that the earth is old, that plants and animals evolved over time, and that protohumans evolved in Africa and then spread throughout the world.  I don't know for sure, but that is what makes the most sense with what I know now. 

In true Know-it-all anonymous fashion, I am not sure where this will lead, but I think it is better to not know it all, than to be a know-it-all.