Making Realities Real

By Lawrence R. Flake

Near the close of the last century in a small English village, two boys who had been friends since they were children parted company to begin their chosen careers. Thomas Townsley, who loved the theater, joined a repertory company. Robert Westfield went to London to study for the ministry.

Many years later, the Reverend Westfield, now the pastor of a large London congregation, read of a dramatic production to be staged in a London theater. He was overjoyed to learn that the director of the play was his boyhood friend, Thomas. As he attended the Saturday night performance, the minister was deeply impressed with the play’s effect upon the overflow audience. At the close of the drama, they clapped through five curtain calls.

Backstage, Robert congratulated his old friend and invited him to attend his church the next morning. He admitted to Tom that the play had moved the audience far more than his sermons had ever moved his parishioners.

At the parish chapel the next morning, after witnessing the unresponsiveness of the congregation, Thomas pointed out to Robert the difference between the previous night’s play and this morning’s sermon: “In the theater, we make imaginary things seem real. In your preaching you make real things seem imaginary.”

One of the greatest challenges facing us as teachers is to make the realities of the gospel appear real to our students. Our teachings can be more effective in the lives of our students as we succeed in meeting this challenge.

Because of the faith and purity of little children, unseen realities of the gospel are often very real to them. A three-year-old girl whose parents had taught her that Jesus was in heaven and watching over her was playing by herself. Unaware that her mother was listening, the little girl, looking up from her toys, whispered, “Peek-a-boo, Jesus.” To her, the Lord was not an abstraction, but a loving friend to whom she could speak. Unless we help our students sustain their faith in these realities, they may outgrow this priceless childhood certainty of unseen things.

Recently the bishop of a college ward visited an inactive graduate student. As he talked with him, the bishop learned that this young man had been very active in the Church as a youth. To the bishop’s question concerning the reason for his present inactivity, the student said, “Well, bishop, when I came to college, I made a great discovery. I found out that Jesus doesn’t really want me for a sunbeam after all.” It is apparent from this young man’s allusion to a childhood song that his testimony of Jesus and his understanding of the Savior’s love for him had not matured since his Junior Sunday School days. How different his perception of the love of Christ might have been if during his teenage years he had been helped by a dedicated teacher to develop his early faith in the concept that this little song teaches.

A young man, perhaps no older than this graduate student, serves as an excellent example of one whose faith in the Lord and commitment to the gospel covenants were definitely not imaginary. While serving as a slave in the house of Potiphar, Joseph, the son of Israel, firmly resisted the evil designs of his master’s wife. His valiant answer to her shows how real his covenants were to him: “How,” he asked, “can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” He felt the reality of these covenants so strongly that he would not break them.

As students begin to feel the reality of gospel teachings, they too can derive great strength from their commitments. What are some of the ways in which we can make real things appear real to our students?

The acute suffering of the pioneers is one aspect of Church history that is often difficult for modern youth, blessed with so many comforts, to appreciate. One teacher used a powerful example to help his students feel the reality of these trials. On a chilly day he spent the first few minutes outlining for the class the tremendous suffering and hardships of the pioneers. He told the students about the more than six thousand sad, hasty funerals conducted on the plains between 1847 and 1869. Then, with a commitment to complete silence, members of the class went outside without their coats and encircled a pile of stones that had previously been placed in the most secluded spot available. The teacher asked them to pretend they were the parents of a child who had just been buried. He explained that stones had been placed over the grave to protect it from the wolves. The students stood silently in the cold for a few minutes to meditate before returning to the classroom.

Without further discussion, the teacher invited each student to express on paper the thoughts and emotions he had just experienced. Then they sang “Come, Come Ye Saints.”

If this kind of experience is conducted effectively, the students may gain more insight into the hardships of their forefathers in a few minutes than in many hours of listening to lectures on the subject, and they will remember it for a long time.

The importance of keeping the commandments may be made real to students by having a well-chosen speaker visit the class. An hour spent with a struggling member of Alcoholics Anonymous could be very effective. Likewise, a visit from someone who had been trapped by smoking or drugs could impress the students with the reality of the value of the Word of Wisdom. In many states, prison officials will bring inmates to classes to tell students how their unhappy lives of crime began.

If we are sensitive and creative, we can find opportunities on every hand to break away from the over-used techniques that have sometimes made real things seem imaginary to students.

Even in giving an examination, we can provide an experience that will help the students feel the reality of real things. For instance, after a unit of study on the life of a great leader such as the Prophet Joseph Smith, rather than giving a factual test on names, dates, places, and events, why not ask the students to write a response to this question: “If you could spend fifteen minutes with the Prophet Joseph, what things would you discuss with him?” In answering this question, they will think of him as a real person to whom they can talk rather than a name or a picture in a book.

A lesson on temptation could be made real by having the students formulate a step-by-step plot from Satan’s viewpoint of how he would discourage a young person from going on a mission or from marrying in the temple.

Nearly every one of us, as teachers of the gospel, can improve our teaching by using ideas that are suited to our own personalities and will help our students discover the reality of real things. The gift of the Holy Ghost and continual revelation make it possible for us to know and teach the realities of Jesus and his gospel. This was illustrated by an incident connected with the 1964–65 World’s Fair in New York City.

The president of New York Stake, the late G. Stanley McAllister, had occasion to visit with a Catholic priest associated with the Vatican Pavilion. As they discussed the exhibits of their respective churches, they observed that each displayed an impressive sculpture of Jesus. The Catholic pavilion housed Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta, which shows the lifeless body of the Savior in the arms of his mother. The Mormon pavilion contained the sculpture Christus by Thorvaldsen, which portrays the resurrected Savior with his arms outstretched to man. In pointing out the difference between these two exhibits, the priest noted, “We have the dead Christ, but you have the living one.”

What a privilege to teach the reality of this living Christ and to belong to his restored church—the only true and living church upon the face of the earth.

• Dr. Flake, director of the institute of religion adjacent to the Cornell University campus, is a member of the Ithaca (New York) Ward, Susquehanna Stake.