All who have been missionaries, or who have been involved in
the conversion process of friends or of acquaintances, must have
asked the question, "Why this person and not another?" We all have
known wonderful people, people who live fine Christian lives, who
love their wives and children, but who are indifferent to the Gospel
message. And we've all known others--often equally fine--who catch
fire with the first missionary lesson, or with a casual Gospel
discussion after a golf game, on the battle field, or while riding
home from work in a car pool.
I remember as a missionary a fine part-member family; the husband
was distantly related to American President James Buchanan and took
an extraordinary interest in us as American missionaries and representatives
of the only purely American church he knew of. He came to know as much gospel
doctrine and church history as most members. But the message of the Gospel
never seemed to find root in his soul.
Another investigator was a compassionate, broad-souled socialist who took
an exceptional interest in the Church's welfare program, remarking that in many
ways it exceeded the accomplishments of the Socialist Party in his
own country. He invited many friends and neighbors to our cottage
meetings with him and his wife, and invited us to various adult
education meetings in the local schoolhouse, where he thought we
might make useful contacts. But the gospel message never took root.
Another contact disappointed us when we found she had been meeting
us regularly only to learn to imitate our American accent for a part
she was playing in a neighborhood theatre.
At least since missionary days, I've thought, pondered, and
puzzled over why some heed the gospel message and others do not. I
early realized that it takes a certain amount of luck as well as
hard work by missionaries to convert someone. To learn anything
sufficiently well to understand it takes a certain "critical mass"
of exposure. And many people are initially too busy to find time
for such critical exposure. And, as we all know by experience, we
are more open to spiritual thought at certain moments in life:
after marriage, the birth of a child, the death of a loved one, or
recovery from serious illness.
I never took a valid statistical sample, but I remember being impressed
as a missionary with how many young-marrieds, divorcees, widows (widowers),
and upwardly mobile new parents were among our Scottish converts. Another young
couple was "rescued" from conversion when a Minister uncle was called in by
the family to divert the missionaries into meetings with members of
his congregation who were learning about the African missions from a
returned African missionary of his flock, and later into an
accompanied tour of the country's major cathedral (built on the
banks of a hill where, we were assured, St. Mungo had performed the
first baptisms in Scotland--by immersion, no less). How many times,
taking the concept of "critical mass" into account, did I wish I
could take off the top of my head and simply pour my accumulated
scriptural and historical knowledge, spiritual experiences, and
testimony into the head of people I had come to love and appreciate
and whom I'd have given anything to see in the Church, but for whom
the Gospel message had no transcendental importance. I felt then,
as I feel now, that with the knowledge and personally experienced
power of the Spirit I have, anyone would rush to join the Restored
Church of Jesus Christ. But more below on why this is not part of
the Gospel Plan.
I remember hearing the Archbishop of Canterbury in a Christmas
sermon given in the American Cathedral of Paris say that for those
mature adults who have experienced one of the spiritual "highs" of
life (he thought most of us could count them on one hand), the
thought of substituting a cheaply acquired "drug high" would be out
of the question. Insights come but rarely in life. I feel blessed
that I recently experienced two such rich spiritual insights in the
brief compass of two weeks. The first had to do with the importance
of repentance. As I said in my account of this experience, it was
all old knowledge--things I already knew--but with a flash insight,
things fell into place in a way that gave me a deeper perspective
than I'd ever had before and brought me to a realization of the
importance of repentance such as had never previously occurred to
me.
The attempt to share such insights is often impossible, either
because the one with whom one is attempting to share either has the
deeper perspective or because he is not yet prepared for it.
Nevertheless, I intend to try to share my recent insight on why
some, as the Shepherd once said, "know my voice" and heed the Gospel
message and why others do not. There is nothing new in this and I
do not know why this answer had not occurred to me earlier. But the
fact is that we all lived with our Heavenly Father (and Heavenly
Mother) in the Pre-existence prior to coming to this earth.
Earthlife is a probation, a test to see whether we will walk
according to the inner light of fairness and decency, or whether we
will allow ourselves to become so preoccupied with the temporal
distractions of life that we will forfeit exaltation in the life to
come. This is perhaps the most critical element of the Gospel since
only those so inner-directed will develop the God-nature and so can
be trusted with the infinite powers of godhood. It is noteworthy
that before entering into his ministry, Jesus was tempted of the
devil--first with temporal riches, next with temporal power. He had
the fortitude to withstand these temptations. Many of us do not.
While in the Father's presence, our First Probation, surrounded
by light and knowledge, all who passed the test and were found
worthy of coming into this earthlife were faithful and loyal
followers of Jehovah. The English poet Wordsworth had an inkling of
this when he wrote, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; the
soul that rises with us, our life's Star, hath had elsewhere its
setting, and cometh from afar. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not
in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from
God, who is our home" (Ode on Intimations of Immortality). Now, as
in this life, it is highly probable that we were of different
degrees of commitment in our pre-existent state. Some were more
studious, some more philosophical, some more poetic or musical.
Some were more "inner-directed" and some were more "other-directed".
Living in a well-ruled, harmonious society, only the most crassly
rebellious and ambitious participated in Lucifer's attempt to
create dissension.
If, as Wordsworth thought, and as the early
life experiences of my children confirmed, we do enter this world
"trailing clouds of glor"--i.e., with half-remembered experiences
of the pre-life experience--it is probable that for the more
committed, the more involved, the more active, the more studious,
the more philosophically inclined, the gospel message, which is the
Philosophy of Heaven, Eternal and Unchanged worlds without end,
would have a familiar ring. As Heber C. Kimball used to say, the
doctrine "would taste good". Such people would know the Shepherd's
voice and rally to his standard.
If, again, this is a correct understanding of why some react
positively to the missionary message while others, equally friendly
and superficially interested, do not, the recipe for effective
missionary work is just what my Mission Presidents Selvoy Boyer and
Stayner Richards said it was: work hard to contact the greatest
number possible. If missionaries contact the maximum number
possible and preach as effectively as possible with the help of the
Spirit, the hearers will self-select themselves. In other words,
trying to convert certain contacts because of similar backgrounds or
interests, or because of the amount of time already invested in
them, or feeling sure that if you could only pour your acquired
knowledge into their heads (in other words, restore the conditions
of the Pre-existence) only attempts to short-circuit the purposes of
our earthly probation.
As I once, more wisely than I then knew, told my missionary daughter
who was discouraged by lack of converts in the very difficult Franco-Belge Mission,
"Cathy, it is just as important to leave a witness against those who refuse to listen or
believe as it is to convert the righteous. The Lord cannot justly
judge the world until all have had the opportunity to react one way
or the other to the message of Salvation, either in this world or
the next. So preach, and consider your work of equal importance
whether you baptize or not."
I think this is a message which all of our missionaries should
understand: contact the maximum number of individuals you can so
that as many of the sheep as possible will have the opportunity to
hear the Shepherd's voice; work with the Spirit as much as you can,
hoping to say the appropriate thing to catch spiritually sensitive
moments in the lives of your contacts; and consider your work
equally essential whether you baptize few or many.
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