Mistaken praise

I have given praise unjustly to the things that led me to truth, which were various and sort of inconsequentual.

The truths were there and waiting to be discovered and they would come through whatever I happened upon at the time.

For example, in high school English I learned that lyrics were the natural development of poetry and music, like resees peanut butter cups. The two were destined to go together as a natural evolution. It was not the Dead Head teacher who made us study lyrics with our poetry.

Or my consumer economics course, I praised the teacher for teaching me that there are multiple approaches to the same end goal, when he taught us to choose our product to be cheap and plentiful or take more time and sell something more expensive and lasting. He did not teach me that but he put me on a computer that suggested that to me, while making a choice competitvely what I wanted to sell.

In church, one of the most influential things was said, a Sunday School president mentioned something he learned from his son. His son was struggling with the reason he was chosen to go serve a mission in Mississippi. But, as he listened to a story by Hugh B. Brown about having to cut a tree back to preserve the garden, the important phrase was, "I am the gardener here." So he was able to see that at times we are chastened or mistakingly assume we are wronged, but it was because we were being blessed and prepared for something so much better.

The thing our Sunday School president learned was that all of his fretting over who to teach or what lessons, etc. Because, though the representative teacher changes he or she is never the real teacher anyway.

I am not belittling the methods in which truths were presented, there are those designated to lead us to truth, like parents, but they are performing a service, not actually creating the ideas in your mind.