I've Got Company

It's a relief that I'm not the only active LDS woman that has questions/ponderings about the Old Testament.  My blogging friend sent me this post:

http://segullah.org/daily-special/the-fear-of-god/#more-7414

I truly enjoyed the different comments and takes on the subject and found most of them comforting.

Article - faith and science

(using old computer with broken keys -- cutting and pasting -- and the "good" computer has been completely dead)

Danny emailed this to me today.  I liked it and wanted to keep it somewhere handy.  This Old Testament business has been discouraging.  I have no desire to sacrifice hours/days of time reading it right now.  I do the minimum that I must do for Sunday's class when it is my turn to teach.  I have too many exciting things going on in my life right now to put the OT on the front burner.  I really look forward to the NT and to some good news.


Anyway, here's the article:

No 'believing gene,' just faith and work, says LDS doctor, scientist

By Sara Israelsen-Hartley

Deseret News

Published: Monday, July 19, 2010 1:06 a.m. MDT

PARK CITY — It may not be easy to be an LDS scientist, but it can be one of the most inspiring combinations, said Dr. Anne Osborn Poelman, a renowned neuroradiologist and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"We are fortunate indeed to have the gospel of Jesus Christ to give us a foundation from which we can be free to fly, investigate and ask, because as we know, all truth is circumscribed into one great whole and there is no difference between science and religion," she said Friday at the LDS Life Science Research Symposium, sponsored by BYU.

While some want to credit a specific "believing gene," Poelman said she favors the idea of spiritual instinct, or the light of Christ, which is given to everyone.

Yet despite a desire to believe, it's not always easy, she said, referencing the Bible story in Mark, where a father brings his ill son to the Savior and asks that he be healed, then tearfully pleads, "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief."

"No matter how much we believe, how hard we believe, we still have that element of unbelief in us," she told the group of scientists.

Poelman shared a conversation that she and her husband, Emeritus General Authority Elder Ronald E. Poelman, had with a woman who was learning about the church. Eventually the woman told them, "It's wonderful what you believe. I wish that I could believe. Where's the bridge between doubt and belief, between hope and faith?"

The bridge is built step by step through our faith, Poelman said, referencing her days as a Stanford medical student being taught by LDS missionaries.

She said she prayed to know if the church was true and received a "big, cosmic zero" for an answer. But she realized she had asked the wrong question, and prayed again, this time informing the Lord she had decided to get baptized and that he should stop her if this was a mistake.

It was only after she made the leap that Poelman felt the Lord confirm her choice and her faith, she said.

There's no reason such faith cannot coexist with science, added students and professionals during a subsequent discussion.

Dixon Woodbury, a BYU professor of physiology and developmental biology, said he views the counsel to pray over his "flocks and herds" a bit differently as a scientist.

"I've come to understand there's nothing wrong, and it's actually appropriate for me to pray over my experiments, that I will have insight and wisdom in directing them appropriately and interpreting the results correctly," he said. "It's a little different, but still appropriate to ask for the Lord's help in that."

Poelman's sister, Dr. Lucy Osborn, talked about inspiration in her work as a pediatrician.

"It happens to you once, and you go, 'What a coincidence,' " she said. "It happens to you twice and you say, 'Isn't that odd.' It happens to you over and over and over again and you realize that we have a source of information that isn't something you are going to find in your textbooks, or in your laboratory or in the laboratory tests. It simply comes from the Lord, … and it happens when you're open to it and when you're willing to listen."

Yet sometimes, answers to questions may not come quickly or even in this lifetime, Poelman said.

"One of the great things in the gospel is to feel comfortable enough in our spiritual skins, to say 'I don't know,' " she said. "But I do know that the Lord is consummately fair and that in the end, as C.S. Lewis says, 'All things will be fair, and there will be wonderful surprises,' (and that is) enough for me."

It boils down to faith, said Phil Low, a renowned LDS biochemist at Purdue.

"When we were in the pre-existence, there was no opportunity to develop faith," he said. "As a consequence, this is our one and only opportunity to really take that step forward in the darkness and experience the joy that comes by seeing the promises, which we believed in faith might be fulfilled, actually come to pass."

"There isn't a bridge," Poelman concluded. "We do our homework, we pray, we use all the resources we have, at the end we simply trust and step into the dark time after time after time again. And do we do it because we inherited a believing gene? No, we do it because we have something even better, which is hope and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ."