What Motivates Us
“If we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?”
– Apostle Dieter F Uchtdorf at the 2012 Leadership Training
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I have sympathy for questioners because I am a questioner too. Settled as faith is in my own life, I understand why people doubt. I see in questioning something deeply religious as well as deeply human.
– Richard Bushman, Joseph Smith Biographer and Patriarch
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I rejoice in hearing the testimony of my aged friends. You don’t know me; you never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it: I shall never undertake it. I don’t blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself.
– Prophet Joseph Smith Jr.
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I firmly believe that a person may be a converted Latter-day Saint and a competent and honest historian of the religion. That others support us in this calling, even while criticizing some products of our labors, is suggested by the remark of [eleventh president of the Church] Harold B. Lee to me before his sudden death [in 1973]. ‘Our history is our history, Brother Arrington, and we don’t need to tamper with it or be ashamed of it.’ Paraphrasing a remark of Pope John XXIII, [the late member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles] Bruce McConkie said to our executives: ‘The best defense of the church is the true and impartial account of our history.’
– Leonard J. Arrington, Church Historian
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“I promise you that if you will respond to invitations to share your beliefs and feelings about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ a spirit of love and a spirit of courage, will be our constant companion for ‘perfect love casteth out fear.
–Apostle L. Tom Perry
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Truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.
– Doctrine & Covenants 93:24
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After disagreement between President Brigham Young and Bishop Edwin Woolley, Brigham told Woolley, “Now I suppose you will go off and apostatize.” Woolley replied, “I might if this were your church, but it’s just as much mine as yours.”
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Some people think the ideal is to not look at the past. Or to only look at the past and present the past only if it reinforces the present. I see that as a head-in-the-sand distortion that is ultimately self-defeating because it creates unrealistic expectations—not only about the present but also the past.
– D. Michael Quinn, LDS Historian
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My long interest in Mormon history (I’ve been working in it for 33 years) has only served to build my testimony of the gospel and I find the same thing happening to other Latter-day Saint historians as well.
– Leonard J. Arrington, Church Historian
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And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
–Alma 32:21, The Book of Mormon
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We believe in all truth, no matter to what subject it may refer. No sect or religious denomination in the world possesses a single principle of truth that we do not accept or that we will reject. We are willing to receive all truth, from whatever source it may come; for truth will stand, truth will endure.
— Joseph F Smith, Gospel Doctrine.
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Do what is right; let the consequence follow.
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What motivates you?