To Seminary or Not To Seminary
“The soul knows who we are from the beginning.”
– Plato
When I read 1 John 4:16 in seminary during my freshman year of high school, my mind was blown: “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” God is love? God is not a man but some magical thing that can live inside us? Whoa. In an incredibly awesome moment, I realized that I knew God: I knew God because I knew love. I was stunned to tears. God finally made sense.
I ran my finger over the words: “God is love” as I looked around at the Provo High seminary students who held God inside them.
When it was time to share and discuss, the class discussed apostasy and spiritual darkness. The seminary teacher made a list on the board: “How to know when someone is experiencing spiritual darkness.”
The juxtaposition between my reading and the seminary lesson was jarring; the same scriptures that healed me condemned me and my friends, brothers, aunts, and uncles – some of the most loving people I had ever known.
I raised my hand, “It says right here, that God is love.” God is love! God is in us.
“You need to be careful,” my teacher warned.
I don’t remember exactly what the seminary teacher said but I remember it crushed me and involved the word “antichrists.”
Looking back on this story, I recognize my budding self. Teen me struggled with a lot but I love this story because, even though I spent the next class period crying in the bathroom, I see the strength of that girl who found herself in verses of love.
My testimony was like an unidentified sapling with roots that grew and expanded, and I didn’t even know it existed until I felt it when I read those words, “God is love,” and I recognized its wispy little shape and the deep roots that made me. “Ah,” I thought, “there you are, that is what you look like.”
It surprises me now that I didn’t question the personal revelation I received my freshman year when I first read those words and felt God bursting within me and the people around me. I questioned the man teaching the class. I recognized that what was being taught in seminary was not my experience.
I didn’t return to seminary again until my senior year of high school when I loved it. I loved hearing how peers prayed and what they prayed for, hearing stories where God appeared, learning how others read scriptures as their sacred texts, and being forced to question myself and preconceived notions. My seminary teacher was missing a thumb and made me laugh all the time.
Every year, I receive an email asking me to register my teens for seminary and every year I sit with it for a while and then delete it. My teens choose not to seminary which is both relieving and sobering. Where will my teens discover who God is to them? What stories will they remember about finding the saplings in their souls?
Sometimes, other people’s ideas are like sunshine and spring, and sometimes like a tornado – seminary teachers were both for me. Often we can choose the environments we allow our soul trees to thrive or die in and sometimes we can’t. But I have learned that, sometimes, the only way to recognize our soul tree is to find new outside sources that feed us, a new environment where we can say, “Ah, there you are, that is what you look like.”
What is your sapling made of? What feeds it? What hacks at it? In what environments does it thrive?
Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash
Photo by Kasturi Laxmi Mohit on Unsplash
