During an annual university conference at BYU, Elder Bruce Hafen stated:

 

I know that some BYU students and other members of the Church are too trusting, too reliant on authority figures, and they expect the Holy Ghost to do their thinking for them. We must rouse them from their dogmatic slumbers, teaching them to love the Lord with all their heart, might, mind, and strength. They need education that liberates them from ignorance and superstition, developing the tough-minded independence on which self-reliant people and democratic societies utterly depend....

 

We move them from dogmatism through healthy skepticism toward a balanced maturity that can tolerate ambiguity without losing the capacity for deep commitment. By example as well as precept, we teach how to ask good—even searching—questions, how to trust, how to know of ourselves. This university’s vitality is a continuing witness for the proposition that within the broad gospel framework, robust faith and healthy skepticism are not mutually exclusive.

 

Bruce C. Hafen, “The Dream Is Ours to Fulfill” in Educating Zion, eds. John W. Welch and Don E. Norton (Utah: BYU Studies, 1996), 225-227.

 

Share your insights.