Love Is Not Blind
A reflection on a talk by Bruce C. Hafen
First of all, thank you to everyone who commented either on the post or directly to me on last week’s post. I really appreciate your insights and your support. One from Katie actually prompted this week’s post:
There's a balance we need to hit, of accepting and loving ourselves the way we are now, realizing it is okay to be that way *for now*, while at the same time not being okay with staying that way, and continually striving for the ideal.
I’m kind of obsessed with this talk from Elder Bruce C. Hafen (then president of Ricks College back before it became BYU Idaho) called “Love is Not Blind” (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-c-hafen/love-is-not-blind-thoughts-college-students-faith-ambiguity/). And when I say kind of obsessed I mean I’ve shared it with I don’t know how many people, read it at least once every few years for over a decade, and even bought the book he wrote with his wife, Marie, called Faith is Not Blind, which is pretty much an expansion of this talk and which I would openly recommend to anyone interested as well.
I seriously could write extensively on nearly every part of this talk, and feel it applies very well to the overall point of this blog. But in the interest of brevity (and realizing that my obsession won’t necessarily translate into everyone else’s obsession), I’ll just include a few excerpts.
His basic premise is that there is a gap between the real and the ideal in our lives and that it is important to acknowledge not only the reality but also continue seeking for the ideal.
In pondering how to discuss this topic for this particular post, it occurred to me that one of the reasons this talk has resonated with me for so long is that it is applicable to so many different aspects of our life. There is uncertainty and ambiguity in every choice we make: what to study, where to go to school, whether to go to school, what jobs to apply for or take, who to marry, whether to have kids, whether to remain active in the church. And for each of these there is no guaranteed outcome. We have no promise that we’ll be brilliant scholars, have jobs that are fulfilling and lucrative, have toddlers that are model citizens (ha), find a spouse that is perfect in every way, immediately have all our gospel questions answered. In some ways, we’re kind of guaranteed that the ideal won’t be true—that’s what mortality is all about. So how do we go on making decisions? How do we keep moving forward in a world that is far from perfect? How do we keep striving towards the ideal, including in our personal behavior, when we see the gap so clearly? And how, in every step on our journey home to Heavenly Father, do we continue to believe in the home we’re striving to go to?
Our encounters with reality and disappointment are in fact vital stages in the development of our maturity and understanding.
I think this very concept is key in all of this. Realizing that life is far from perfect isn’t a flaw in the plan—it is part of the plan! God didn’t send Adam and Eve to the garden of Eden hoping they’d stay there forever; and when they left, there was never an intention that that’s where they should return. Our mortal lives are all about confronting reality and still moving forward.
It seems to me that the most productive response to ambiguity, then, is at level three, where we not only view things with our eyes wide open but with our hearts wide open as well.
This, I think, is hard. Hard in part because having an open heart leaves us open to that very pain and disappointment that we are facing. It leaves us vulnerable. But it also leaves us open to discoveries that we could not find any other way. I think about this from the perspective of having children, which leaves one vulnerable in about every way imaginable (which does lead to real pain), but also opens one’s heart to some of the purest love and joy I think humans are capable. I also think of it from the perspective of scientific research. Proposing to pursue new knowledge is audacious and opens you up to the possibility of…well, failing to discover the thing you set out to find. But it also invites learning on a whole new level.
When we do that, there will be many times when we are called upon to take some action when we think we need more evidence before knowing just what to do. […] I stress that the willingness to be believing and accepting in these cases is a very different matter from blind obedience. It is, rather, a loving and knowing kind of obedience.
Here he’s talking more from the perspective of obeying the commandments, but I think it applies both there and in all of these other areas of ambiguity. When we choose to move forward in reaching towards light/the ideal, even when we don’t have all the answers and even when we know how imperfect life is, we do so not out of oppression or ignorance or idiocy, but out of faith and love and hope. To make this a little more concrete, one of the things that bothers me when I read society-at-large’s discussions of stay-at-home moms or religious women (or even moms in general) is that many of them (though not all) either outright say or strongly imply the ideas that they (we) are in some way blind, oppressed, dumb, ignorant, prevented from reaching their true potential or otherwise missing out. I’m not going to cite examples right now, but suffice it to say that I do have specific articles in mind when describing these attitudes. Further, there have been some members of the church (probably in the minority, but I don’t know that) who have in the past said or implied that higher education or employment was unnecessary or undesirable for women. I think both of these viewpoints are missing the real-life struggles many women experience as they make their choices about how to approach their own lives. I chose motherhood and stay-at-home motherhood the same way I approached a PhD: with eyes wide open, with a totally inadequate idea of just how hard it would actually be, but also with a full commitment to do my best, with a heart “wide open,” and with confidence that it was the right path forward for me. I continue to choose my faith in God in much the same way.
If I use this talk more than the average human refers to their favorite novel, this particular quote from the talk (which is actually from G.K. Chesterton rather than Bruce Hafen) is present in my mind far more often.
Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind. [G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy(Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1959), pp. 69–71.]
If that isn’t the best way to describe real love, then I don’t know what is.
Additional resource: In reviewing this I also came across a website with personal stories (podcast format mostly) of dealing with uncertainty and gospel questions and thought it was worth sharing. It appears to be made by Bruce and Marie Hafen and their daughter and son-in-law: https://www.faithisnotblind.org/
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, including (but not limited to) any choices or ideas you faced ambiguity with and how you approached them.