The purpose of this essay is to consider human learning in an LDS frame of reference. We begin with a review of the essential theology.
I. Why we are here.
Every human being is born into this mortality because he or she was a faithful child of God in the pre-mortal existence. Each is born to receive a full opportunity to become as God is. To become as God is to learn to love our Father with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength, for that is what he does for us.
II. How we must love.
First we must learn to love our Father with our minds. To do so we must seek diligently to know and understand his mind and will. We find them in the holy scriptures, in the words of his holy prophets, in the promptings of our own conscience. Having found his mind and will we must begin to think, to believe, and to will, as God does. This obedience brings understanding of God’s mind and will and of the creations of his hand. Thus does man learn to have a firm mind in every form of godliness, which is to love the Lord with all of our minds.
We must learn to love our Father with our hearts. To do this we must learn to love righteousness as he does. Righteousness is to relieve the sufferings of other persons in the way which will best help them to become as God is. That is what our God does. He is a god of righteousness. His heart reaches out in selfless concern to every other being in the universe. By accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its ordinances, we too can learn to love purely, selflessly, fully. We learn how to do this from our Savior, who is for us the fountain of all righteousness. Through faith in him we may learn to feel pure love for all others and to know and to choose the path of righteousness. In this faithfulness, our esteem, our worship, our reverence for our God grows into a fullness of love. Thus may we learn to love the Lord with all of our hearts.
We must learn to love our Father with our strength. Our physical body is our strength. As we discipline it to eat, to sleep, to cleanse, to dress, to work, to struggle, to endure as god does, our strength grows. He would have us develop our skills until we are excellent, as He is, in every thing we do. He would have us guard in purity and chastity that special strength we share from him, the power to beget children. We will live as faithful husbands and wives to conceive, to bear, and to nurture the precious souls sent to us by God. Thus may we learn to love the Lord with all of our strength.
We must learn to love our Father with all of our might. We will use our influence upon those around us to promote God’s order, decency, and happiness among men. We will use our time to bind up the hurt of the wounded. We will use our substance to create opportunity for our fellow beings to become as rich as we are. We will use our property to create beauty, productivity, orderliness and sanctuary. All of this we will do as the Lord guides our mind, our heart, and our strength. We do this to create celestial order in whatever environment we find ourselves, a heaven on earth to add to our God’s glory. Thus may we learn to love the Lord with all of our might.
III. The way to love.
The means by which we learn to love our God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength, is the law and ordinances of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The law is to put our whole faith and trust in the merits of our Savior, looking to nothing and no one else to become as the Father is. He is mighty to save. He will teach us to love the Father, perfectly, as he does, if we can but learn to make our mind’s eye single to his glory. As we put our whole faith and trust in him, he teaches us how to repent, how to turn away from everything that is worldly and ungodly to the way of godliness.
The way of godliness is entered only by taking upon us the blood of his atonement. We do this in baptism, that he might take away those sins which encumber our heart, might, mind and strength, and keep us from loving purely. He bestows upon us the right to the constant companionship of his Holy Spirit, that this unseen messenger might teach us the way of godliness in all things. He commends to us that we endure to the end, until we are full of truth, purity, power, and love, even as he his. The path to that end leads through the temple. He is the way, the truth, and the life.
IV. The way to learn.
Armed with the law and with the saving ordinances of the Restored Gospel, we learn from the Savior all that pertains to purity and godliness of heart, might, mind and strength. Lest we be ensnared and diverted from our goal, we need to be fully aware that Satan, the adversary, has prepared a counterfeit for every good gift of God. The counterfeit in the area of learning should be fully understood by all who would love the Lord.
The Lord’s learning process has two dimensions, a horizontal one and a vertical one. The horizontal mode of learning is the opportunity to learn from our fellowmen. God sends good men and
women to us to teach us language in order that we may think, communicate, and learn the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He sends us scriptures which are the recorded testimonies of godly persons who would share with us what they have learned from God. He sends us living prophets to warn us of the folly of unrighteousness and to invite us to follow in the way of Christ. He sends us priests to administer the ordinances of salvation. In the mouths of two or more human witnesses, the Lord teaches us of faith and power.
This horizontal mode is important and necessary, but it is preliminary to a greater mode of knowing, which is the vertical mode. Vertical learning is to learn directly, for ourselves, not through the witness of other human beings. It is to learn by personal revelation from the Holy Spirit, from angelic messengers, from God himself. It is to learn directly about nature as we observe it carefully and as the Holy Spirit reveals to us the handiwork of God. Vertical learning is spiritual learning. Without it, horizontal learning could never come to full fruition. By this vertical learning we come to know from God that the gospel, the church, the scriptures, the living prophets, the holy ordinances, and all of nature truly are from him. By it we learn to understand all of these things. Only through it can we exercise full faith in Jesus Christ and live by the law and the ordinances of the Gospel. As the spirit of man is the life of the physical tabernacle, so the spiritual, vertical learning from God is the life of the horizontal learning we receive from the good men and women around us. Both are necessary to a fullness of learning, just as both spirit and body are necessary to a fullness of life.
Satan’s counterfeit of the Lord’s horizontal learning is lies, half-truths, degraded values, and inferior skills as taught by men and women who do not know the Lord. Not knowing the Lord, they are shut up unto error and misery. Whether this is a deliberate rejection of God or not, the result is the same: damnation and unhappiness instead of progress and peace, pleasure as a paltry substitute for joy.
Men who know not God fill the world with words of opinion. Even with the best of intentions they distort history, create dubious science, prescribe dreadful remedies and reign with blood and terror. These lies inflicted upon mankind are called by the scriptures the chains of hell. As men believe these false ideas, their ability to love God and each other is fatally impaired, even should they desire to do what they think is good. That fatally impaired love is the central theme of the history and current events of human society from the beginning until the present moment. He who would escape from those chains can do so fully only by repentance and by taking upon himself the power of the law and the ordinances of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then godly vertical learning will enable him to separate truth from error, right from wrong, aptness from ineptness, and godly dominion from satanic dominion. Only thus can he serve God with all of his heart, might, mind, and strength.
Satan’s counterfeit has its spiritual dimension also. His form of vertical learning is to give personal revelation to every human who is accountable. He has permission to tempt each accountable person. His temptations take three main forms. The first is the temptation of the flesh, to take physical pleasure in a way and time and place that God does not authorize. The second is the temptation to power, to use one’s stewardship to force the obedience and service of other human beings for one’s own benefit. The third is the temptation to glory in man and self, to set oneself up as a light unto the world rather than to give the glory to God. In each of these temptations, Satan’s success rests on a single thread. We are tempted only as Satan touches what we already desire. The force of Satan’s revelations and temptations is to encourage each of us to fulfill our own desires rather than to seek the will of him who is righteous. The only cure for succumbing to our own lusts as encouraged by Satan is to repent through the law and ordinances of the Restored Gospel. We then will say: “Lord, not my will, but thine be done.” If we then do the Lord’s will, that is salvation.
These two necessary kinds of learning, horizontal and vertical, each with its Satanic counterfeit, create four possible kinds of human beings in the possible combinations. Those who use godly vertical learning to learn horizontally from godly men and women are the children of God, heirs to the celestial kingdom. Those who are responsive to God spiritually in the vertical dimension but who subscribe to the lies of evil men and women horizontally are the honorable men of the earth who are blinded by the craftiness of men and are terrestrial. Those whose vertical learning comes from Satan and whose horizontal learning comes from evil men and women are yet natural; they are carnal, sensual, and devilish, and are telestial. Those of a satanic vertical learning who profess the words and doctrines of good men and women on the horizontal level but do great evil are the hypocrites who have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof, and are perdition.
V. Public Knowledge, Private Learning.
Public knowledge is what is transmitted among humans by way of horizontal learning. It has three overlapping levels which correspond to the societal groupings of a culture. First is family learning. Here we learn language, religion, values, beliefs, skills, manners, culture, hygiene, discipline, etc. Second is societal learning. We learn in our public schools and through the media about history, politics, economics, science, etc. Third is the expert or occupational learning gained in universities or on-the-job training in which we learn to earn our living as professional persons, craftsmen, laborers, businessmen, etc. The public knowledge we learn in each of the social settings becomes the bases of all our communications and cooperation with others in that area, and thus the basis of the success we have in the social ventures of our life. In each level there are sanctions which reward the individual for conformity and punish him for non-conformity. A stress on public knowledge and horizontal learning is a stabilizing pressure. It tends to establish the status quo. Some public knowledge is good in that it enables civilization to be sustained from one generation to the next. But at the same time, that same public knowledge transmits falsehood, inefficiencies, and gross incivilities from generation to generation. The factor of prime importance in public knowledge is the goodness or evilness of the persons from whom one learns.
If the men and women we learn from are men and women who know and worship the true and living God, we are blessed indeed. For then we will learn rapidly and easily in their love many good things essential for us to know. The most essential thing which they will teach us is the reality and absolute necessity of vertical learning from God himself.
Should we be less fortunate and be born and raised among men and women who themselves have no vertical learning from God, we are in trouble indeed. We can then only stumble and grope in the darkness, hoping for light. But God is good. Before it is too late he sends to every human being messengers who horizontally teach him or her of light before the final judgment. They witness of the truth and reality of vertical learning from the true and living God. All who accept and live by this message partake of the law and the ordinances of the Restored Gospel, which empowers them to have a fullness of vertical learning from God. Having that vertical learning, they then can separate truth from error in all the horizontal learning and public knowledge of mankind, treasuring out all that is virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy.
It is noteworthy that there is no such thing as public learning. All learning is private. Learning is change of one’s nature in response to experience; it is change of heart, might, mind and strength. All horizontal learning is done by individuals, each with his own way, rate, and result. All vertical learning is private learning from unique personal experiences. All learning is a personal, individual adaptation to the horizontal and vertical learning opportunities one has.
Private learning and private knowledge are the source of all creativity, of progress, of change. They are the revolutionary force in human learning. They flower in the task of problem solving. They are that precious part of human knowing which can never be taught horizontally but must be learned by everyone who will be successful in this world.
All public knowledge is but private learning which has gained social acceptance through being communicated. The great problem is to separate good from bad, which can be done only by people who can accurately separate godly vertical learning from satanic vertical learning. The progress or decline of a civilization is measured by its private learning, not by its public knowledge. That private learning is measured by the vertical learning pattern chosen by the people.
An example will help to clarify the relative value of public knowledge versus private knowledge, horizontal learning versus vertical learning. Let us use the topic of nutrition. Most persons acquire their basic eating patterns from their family. In school they are taught about the basic food groups and other ideas. If they are relatively healthy, the matter usually rests there. If they become ill, they probably will go to an expert who may attempt to teach them different eating habits. So far they are operating entirely in the realm of public knowledge, horizontally learned. Should they now turn to the Lord for guidance in all that they eat and should they become careful observers of how what they eat affects them, they may develop new eating habits through vertical learning. These new habits will solve their health problems much better than public knowledge ever did. That is because they have left the realm of averages and types which is the realm of the best human public knowledge. They have another source, the Lord Jesus Christ, who not only knows all about human body chemistry and physiology, but who also knows all of the particulars of the genetic and somatic peculiarities of each individual. He thus can give every person perfect advice for his own personal situation. All who follow that advice will have the health needed to fill their mission. Otherwise, they have no such guarantee. But they must be careful not to suppose that they can then impose their private learning about their own nutrition on anyone else. If they are to help anyone else with their nutrition, they will send them to the Savior to try to receive their own personal vertical instruction.
VI. Conclusions for learning.
Horizontal learning is the learning of continuity and steadiness in a civilization. In the hands of good people, it transmits all that is good to the next generation. In the hands of evil people, it becomes the means of enforcing oppression and slavery on a population. But no human tyrant can keep any man from some vertical learning from God, no matter how great his power. That vestige of truth and light, that light of Christ, will some day become the Holy Spirit as the Restored Gospel comes through good horizontal learning to the souls who cherish that vestige. Only in the law and ordinances of the Restored Gospel do men become free to learn the truth of all they need to know.
Vertical learning is the learning of progress, of creativity, of revolution. If it is of Satan, it creates revolution for tyranny, control, and degradation. If it is of the Lord, it creates revolution for freedom, beauty, holiness, and practicality. The work of the Lord Jesus Christ is to foment a revolution of vertical learning which will by peaceable and honorable means bring the light of truth and hope to every human being and establish a celestial kingdom here and now. That revolution is the revelation as to how one can love the Lord with all of one’s heart, might, mind, and strength. Repentance is the great revolution for human learning.