07 September 2015

Maintaining Trust When God’s Ways Seem Inscrutable, Part 2: Reflection vs. Reality

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” I Corinthians 13:12 

In the verse above, from a letter the apostle Paul wrote to the relatively new church members in Corinth, he used an analogy that was particularly meaningful to them when he described how we  understand God and his ways. That analogy becomes clearer for 21st century English speakers if we know that the words translated into English as “glass” and “darkly” have slightly different meanings in the original Greek. “Glass” meant a looking-glass, or mirror, many of which were manufactured in Corinth out of polished brass. Those mirrors often revealed a distorted or discolored image of the thing being reflected. The Greek words translated as “darkly” meant “in a riddle or puzzle, by an enigma.”[1]  Paul’s analogy helped the Corinthians resolve questions that were creating disunity in their congregation. I believe it can help us, in our day, to deal with questions about spiritual matters that some find puzzling, or even disquieting.

Maintaining Trust When God’s Ways Seem Inscrutable, Part 1: Understanding the Meaning of Revelations

While a student at Brigham Young University, my husband had a very intriguing personal experience with President Hugh B. Brown (an apostle and a counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS church at the time), his wife, and one of their granddaughters who was a good friend of David’s. The four of them had lunch together in a restaurant in Salt Lake City sometime in 1963 or 1964.

Considering himself a lowly university student, David remembered feeling very much in awe of President Brown. One part of the conversation in particular stuck in his mind, and he told me about it after we were married in 1966, because it raised such interesting questions and possibilities regarding the policy of Priesthood ordination not being available to men of black African ancestry at the time.