Matthew G's Response to "Zeal Without Knowledge"

I think that there were valid statements and principles in this article, but I also feel that Hugh Nibley was a little bit extreme. Yeah, people do tend to take the path of least resistance, which can often include things like denial of truth and self-delusion, but I don’t think that most people are mad men gallivanting about without brains in their heads.

Most members tend to know what is in the scriptures, but they lack the faith and the determination (zeal?) to study it and find out what they need to do to use it in their own lives. I don’t think that we have too much zeal, I think we just tend to use it in the wrong ways. As he said, people focus way too much on the things of the world. They set their hearts on the things of men and fail to give up their vain desires to learn how to become truly Godlike (no one is exempt, I include myself). We put so much effort into learning what we need to know to make a great career for ourselves so we can have 3 cars and a garage full of junk and really live “the American dream.” If we were humble, meek, and submissive as to the things of the world, but had the zeal to go forth and seek the words of God and testify of their truthfulness with much boldness, maybe this world would be in better shape.

I also think that this ties in with the idea of getting a C for the experience of it. We focus so much on doing exactly what we have to do to get an A that we really let the knowledge we could glean from the course slip past us. We
sacrifice opportunities for growth in order to obtain gold stars and sleepless nights full of stress and anxiety. The lessons we learn best are the ones that we learn not because we are enticed, but because we either want to learn and we seek it out, or God eventually drops it in our laps with some huge crisis that makes us panic and fret because we’ve lost the “control” over our lives that we thought we had. Maybe if we just sat down and listened to see what God has to say, we wouldn’t end up stuck in the ridiculous situations we find ourselves in so often.

I think zeal is a great thing. It has led men to do heroic things that they would never have been able to do without it. The key is channeling that zeal like Nibley says, so that is causes us to seek more knowledge, which will then give us greater zeal. Our zeal should flow in this cycle. If we interrupt this cycle, we damn ourselves with a sinful, prideful zeal instead of a zeal that gives us determination to bring light into the world.

Nibley said that universities are nothing more or less than a place for people to show off, which I think is also rather extreme. This is only true when people are filled with the prideful zeal. Universities can be filled with people whose greatest desire is to learn and enrich their lives. People learn how to be wiser, hard working, and knowledgeable people when they use their zeal appropriately in the university setting. We should embrace our zeal, but make sure that we don’t create a zealous culture that does nothing to move society forward, but squanders itself in pride and boasting.