professor walker and sunday thoughts

March 25, 2018

Years ago, (although sometimes it feels like yesterday), I took a British Literature class from Dr. Steven Walker at BYU. Years before that, my Dad had also taken similar English classes by Professor Walker, and credits him to this day for his love of literature and why he pursued law. Needless to say, he's somewhat of a hero between us and we both continue to admire him. (In fact, the picture above is from a college quote book I kept, in which I realized he was one of the first men I quoted... clearly, I love him, and his kissing assignments and crying quizzes.)

Anyway, my dad sent these excerpts from Professor Walker to us the other day and it was too good not to share, especially lately as we've talked a lot about some of the things he discusses:

"The pattern in every loss of faith I've observed is not overreaching into too much learning. It is, rather, uninformed expectations. It is an insistence on perfection in anything religious that sets up over-idealizing believers for inevitable disillusionment. Far from being too much learning, the consistent cause of the loss of faith I have seen is in fact too little learning,..." 

He goes on: "So when I hear unbelievers claim that "knowledge undermines faith," I only half believe it, believe it for them, but not for me. Awareness has clearly disillusioned some of my friends, but it appears to me the facts may have disillusioned them from their own uninformed expectations. And when I hear that same "facts threaten faith" assumption from the faithful, sharing the faith as I do, the notion seems to me nonsense, or worse: defensive, a little cowardly at best, not having done its homework." 

And finally, Professor Walker's earliest remembered experience and testimony of the Book of Mormon:

"When I was six, showing off my newfound reading abilities to my Uncle Clyde, I seized the Book of Mormon, nearest book at hand, to read aloud to impress him. Hardly aware of what I was reading, reading for audience effect only, I was stunned to find how moved I was by such unprepossessing words as "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents..." (1 Nephi 1:1). Not half a dozen verses into that quiet prose, I found myself in tears. Chagrined at having failed to impress my Navy-tough uncle, and nonplussed at such a reaction to any words on any page, I asked my mother what had come over me. She said then, and I believe her still: "It's the Spirit, Steve. God is in that book."

Professor Walker, you continue to make my heart grow three sizes.

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