“All truth is worth knowing. Some truths are more useful, but there are truths that are most worth knowing.” - President Boyd K. Packer, November 6, 2011

Isn't the internet helpful? Not only are summaries of President Packer's talk available in several places already, but there are pictures of the actual event.

But that's not really a subject from this semester of our class.

What I really wanted to talk about was something rather interesting that President Packer said, something that later reminded me of our discussions here about oral and written knowledge. Near the beginning of his talk, he asked us to 'listen' rather than 'take notes'.

He said if all we took away from his talk was what was said, we had entirely missed the point.

The gospel, and more particularly the Holy Ghost, brings an important new aspect to the idea of this comparison of knowledge mediums.

"When a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men." - 2 Nephi 33:1

We know from several sources that the scriptures we have written down are a primary source of personal revelation (Wherefore, I said unto you, feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do” (2 Ne. 32:3, emphasis added)). We also know that the words of the modern prophets can, through the spirit touch each of us personally, especially in General Conference, where we are often promised that we can receive through revelation a spiritual message for our circumstance:

"If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you." - Jeffrey R. Holland, April 2011 General Conference.

I know that both of these methods are viable and true, since I have received inspiration or revelation through both ways.

So my question at first was why President Packer asked us to listen more than to record, and I think that this has answered it for me - if we merely "parrot" all that he says onto the paper, it might be more of an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other situation. I know that sometimes taking notes during a lecture or a talk or whatever can actually be detrimental to our overall comprehension.

Here's another point: I believe that he wanted us to listen more to the Spirit's voice than to him. That's a sign of a true servant of the Lord, in my opinion. All missionaries learn that it's really not them that converts people to a knowledge of the truth:

"If ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach." - D&C 42:14

The Lord knows all things, including which way is best to teach His children. He makes use of both orality and literacy to bring us the knowledge of His gospel, since each has its own separate applications. I think it's very interesting to note, as I mentioned in this post, that the Lamanites lost their written language for a time, and therefore declined as a society - and in their religious beliefs as well, of course. The Lord knew well beforehand that this would happen without a way to preserve EXACTLY certain truths. Oral knowledge, while incredibly applicable to the here and now, can be ephemeral when it is transmitted through the generations.

(In fact, look what some scholars believe happened to the story of Jesus's visit to the Americas, which, while recorded, was lost except in orality to those who became wicked and lost their records. The story changed quite a bit over time: http://www.crystalinks.com/quetzalcoatl.html)

This also relates to what I thought after reading Marc's post about the First Vision. If we'd only had an oral version of that critical event, it might have been altered slightly despite our best efforts.

Therefore, while the Lord knows how critical it is to have written knowledge of the gospel, the orally transmitted knowledge of His modern prophets is also necessary to the functioning of the Church.

And beyond this, a kind of knowledge that we can't really quantify as easily - spiritual knowledge, the kind communicated directly to us by the Holy Ghost. That's the most important of all, and can be facilitated not only by our faith but also by our study of what has been written or what is being spoken to us now. It allows us to know SPECIFICALLY what we need to know for ourselves.

Isn't the gospel great? :)