Western Academia vs. "Spirit-does-all laziness"

Ronan expressed frustration with an attitude that many people have in the church that they don't need to study the gospel. The Spirit can manifest the truth to them and they are satisfied. Or even, they believe their parents or leaders know and so it sufficient for them to simply have faith in the testimony of people that they love.

Ronan was actually recommending the reading of Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling, even for a person who has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith, "simply because I despise this kind of Spirit-does-all laziness." Because of a post I wrote yesterday on our other blog, I saw this comment in the light of colonialism in Africa.

The European colonialists believed that they had a better way of life than the primitive natives and so they imposed much of their society upon the indigenous peoples of that continent. For example, the concept of a nation-state was overlaid on a society deeply ingrained in tribal philosophy. Trying to gather many, often enmity-ridden, tribes together into a single nation proved to be a very difficult and bloody affair that still remains unsettled to this day.

As problems in Africa worsened, the solution seemed obvious to Westerners: education. However, according to an article by Theodore Dalrymple, the addition of education to the culture has failed to permeate the previously held culture of tribalism. Instead it gave people a vehicle to get to positions of power where they could exploit other members of their nation for the benefit of their tribe. The underlying culture was too deeply ingrained for education in a single generation to have the desired (by Westerners) effect.

The intention was noble and benevolent, but the effect was surprising to the colonialists because they were working from a different set of assumptions that didn't hold up in this new world.

Would we make the same mistake in Mormonism? Would we seek to impose the life of the mind on those with a pure belief of the heart? I was about to write "pure and simple belief," but thought that might sound condescending. But then, that only shows my own bias toward learning that I should fear that the word "simple" would be understood as pejorative.

In spite of all the language and urging of Joseph Smith on the importance of intelligence and knowledge in coming to God, I am wondering if such a path might be inappropriate for many people on the earth today because of the cultural history they carry with them. To be sure, I believe that all must eventually come to knowledge, but I suspect that it is entirely acceptable if we come to that knowledge in the next life because we were unable to do so in this life.