Life must be lived forwards, however, it can only be understood backwards.

In the life of every person, who receives a higher education, in or out of schools, there is a time when there seems to be opposition between science and religion; between man-made and God-made knowledge. The struggle for reconciliation between the contending forces is not an easy one. It cuts deep into the soul and usually leaves scars that ache while life endures.

Man has, through the richness of the intellectual quest, become more knowing, more clever and more skeptical. But we have not become more profound or more reverent. Nor have we found a way to put our learning in the context of the eternal.

There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars ... about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show a vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but the people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books and matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learned from experience in the light of reason?

If an Elder shall give us a lecture upon astronomy, chemistry, or geology, our religion embraces it all. It matters not what the subject be, if it tends to improve the mind, exalt the feelings, and enlarge the capacity.

Our leaders urge us to be active in politics—and yet think it very important to keep the Church out of politics. Is this a contradiction? Consider:

Brigham Young encouraged the people to dance, even while proclaiming, "Dancing [is] no part of our worship."43

He says, "I labor for my own dear self," and in the same breath adds that men have no right to work for themselves.44

We practice shrewd economics even while being told to take no thought of what we shall eat or wear.

We should constantly be storing our minds with knowledge, yet take no thought of what we are to say when we teach the gospel.

We are told to be provident and thrifty—but to ask and trust our heavenly Father for our daily bread.

We are told to be industrious and independent, yet "if the laborer in Zion labor for money, he shall perish" (cf. 2 Nephi 26:31).

We are told to go to with our might—and consider the lilies of the field who toil not neither do they spin.

We are told to hold the Sabbath most sacred as a day of rest, yet it is the day on which many of us work hardest.

We are told to acquire worldly learning and told that worldly learning is nothing.

Joseph Smith said he would have nothing to do with politics and ran for president!

The Savior, speaking with the woman at the well, was thirsty and asked for a drink, and even as he was drinking she asked him for a drink, because he told her that he could give her water of which whoever drank would never thirst again.

We could go on and on, but what is wrong here? Nothing. If we were to examine each of the above apparent paradoxes we would find them all falling into the pattern of Moses' declarations, both uttered on the same occasion and as it were in the same breath. First he said, "Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed" (Moses 1:10). And then he adds: "But now mine own eyes have beheld God; . . . his glory was upon me; and I beheld his face, for I was transfigured before him. . . . I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten" (Moses 1:11, 13). Which is it? Is man nothing or everything? It all depends on which existence we behold him in, temporal or eternal.

Critics within the Church have done the same thing; they still take the position of high academic advantage. There were always those among the Brethren themselves who, resenting Joseph Smith's towering ascendency in view of his limited education, tried to bring him down with terrible affidavits, which they later admitted were false. Some of "the first Elders of this Church," reported Brigham, "decided that Joseph did not understand temporal matters." The first bishops of the Church said they believed with all their heart that they understood the temporal matters far better than the Prophet Joseph. "I have seen men who belonged to this kingdom, and who really thought that if they were not associated with it, it could not progress." So the critics magnanimously volunteer their superior intellectual powers and put them at the disposal of the Church.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.