I’ve always thought it interesting that Alma 32 refers to his listeners taking even a portion of his words, and starting with that. He doesn’t specify which portion. And I find it important that in discussing the different harvests from the same seeds [words] Jesus in Mark says, “Know ye not this parable? How then will ye know all parables?” So yes, individuals are going to pick and choose which portion upon which to nurture, experiment upon, and there will be differences in the harvest, ranging from nothing to a hundred fold. So soil, nurture, time and patience matter in the long run even more than selection, assuming that we select the good seeds and do not cast them out, or let them succumb to predation or the cares of the word, and plant them in good soil.
I’ve observed that the Perry Scheme for Cognitive and Ethical Growth notes that in the first four of of the nine positions pole “feel abandonment in unstructured learning environments.” From position 6 on, “people feel frustration in too structured of an environment.” Personally, once I started looking for information on my own initiative, rather than passively waiting to be fed on Sunday, personally “seeking out of the best books, words of wisdom” (something very different than seeking out of “approved books words of orthodoxy” and also very different than “seeking out of critical books words of self-justification”), I’ve had an ongoing positive experience, a constantly deepening faith, and the kinds of enlightenment, fruitfulness, and soul-enlargement that Alma promised.
So, for instance, I’ve found inspiration in the LDS scriptures, LDS scholars, and from a wide range of non-LDS writers, including Eliade, Girard, Campbell, Smart, Frye, Barker, Alter, Moody, Zaleski, Kuhn and many others, from whom I learned to see things in LDS scriptures that I did not know was there. I’ve even managed to contribute now and then. I’ve noticed the LDS scripture that said that all things that are given from him are “the typifying of Christ” and noticed such typifying going on in Harry Potter, and even Buffy, giving me license and encouragement to grow spiritually there. (I once commented to you on that at an Salt Lake City Sunstone panel years ago.)
It’s important, when dealing with the LDS community as a whole, and the various subgroups and streams, and temperaments, and Perry Positions within, to look up “sustain” in a good dictionary. It means a lot more than we may suppose, unless we give it a closer look. And what it actually means is something that any community requires to survive and thrive, and corresponds with what Brigham Young was thinking about when he asked the Saints to “understand people as they are, and not as you are.”
https://religionnews.com/2018/07/31/for ... -lifeline/