"Ten Points for Gryffindor" - Combatting the Hermione Granger Syndrome in a Gospel Setting

I am Hermione Granger

Recent studies have suggested that children are at risk of developing what researchers call "fixed mindsets"when they are praised at an early age for being innately intelligent.  A "fixed mindset" means that a person believes "that their intelligence . . . is what it is and isn’t going to change. It comes from their genes, perhaps, or their early experiences (thanks Mom and Dad!) but that was determined a long time ago and now their brains are set." In other words, they don't believe that they can get any smarter over time. One study divided fifth graders into two groups and had them solve a series of identical puzzles.  At the beginning, the puzzles were tremendously easy and could be solved in just a few seconds.  After completing each puzzle, the investigators would compliment the students. Those students in Group A were told things like, "Wow, you solved that really fast - you must be really smart" while students in Group B were told, "Wow, you solved that puzzle really fast - you must have worked really hard."

The difficulty level of the puzzles was then ratcheted up significantly.  Interestingly enough, students in Group A expressed greater levels of anxiety during this part of the test than their counterparts in Group B. Then, when students were given the choice between returning to work on the previous set of easy problems, or continuing to toil away at the difficult puzzles, students in Group A overwhelmingly chose the easy problems, while students in Group B stuck to the more challenging set. 

I call this the Hermione Granger Syndrome. For those of you who don't understand the reference (i.e. those of you who have been living under a rock for the last decade and a half), Hermione was the know-it-all best friend of Harry Potter in the Harry Potter series.  She was a natural at magic, and even before she started at Hogwarts had learned a few basic spells.  She was the first student in her class to successfully transfigure a match into a needle, thus establishing her reputation early on as the "smartest witch in her class."

Most subjects came easy to her . . . but those that did not, she quit.  In Prisoner of Azkaban, she completely rejected the entire discipline of divination and then failed to finish her Defense Against the Dark Arts exam because the boggart proved too much to handle.  Then, in Deathly Hallows we learn that she never even mastered how to fly a simple broomstick. Despite her brilliance, she avoided those few subjects that were truly difficult for her.  

In high school - I was Hermione Granger (except for being American and muggle . . .  and, you know, male). I was naturally gifted at a lot of things, and tended to prefer those subjects that came easy to me.  I sailed through English and Social Studies, and took home prizes in classes that I didn't even have to try very hard in. But I didn't like math. And I hated Spanish. They didn't come easy to me, and I didn't particularly enjoy doing things that were hard.  Year after year I accepted Bs because I didn't want to have to exert any more energy than I did in my other classes where I got As. I would offer excuses and say "I'm just not a math person" or "Spanish just isn't my thing."  It made me feel better, but it was a lie.  In truth, I just didn't know how to put in the work necessary to master those subjects.  I also didn't think I should have to.

Some us struggle with this Syndrome in a gospel context as well.  As children, we quickly picked up on the pattern: every Sunday School question could be answered by either "Jesus Christ," "pray," "read the scriptures," or "go to church." We quickly memorized the major stories in the scriptures, we could draw the various circles involved in the Plan of Salvation, and could regurgitate them at the drop of a hat.  Without breaking a mental sweat, we knew all of the answers, and were praised at a young age for knowing our stuff.   Maybe our leaders even called us particularly "spiritual."

The problem is, God wants us to break a mental sweat.  In fact he has commanded us to do so over and over and over again.  For example, Doctrine & Covenants 4 states: "O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day." Did you catch that?  The part about the mind.  God does not just expect us to serve him mentally, he expects us to serve him with all our mind.  Knowing the right answer is not the same thing as serving the Lord with all our mental capacity.  We therefore should not be surprised when understanding certain doctrines does not come easily to us, but instead requires a real mental effort to figure out.

Unfortunately, some us don't know how to exert this kind of mental energy.  Having been raised on a diet of simple puzzles, many are unaware that a complicated set even exists.  After all, how many times have we been told that the gospel was "simple?" How could such a simple plan include anything so complicated? Others become so accustomed to being a "scripture scholar" that they become seriously disturbed the first time they think of a question that they don't know the answer to.   Like Hermione, this leads them to dismiss new areas of knowledge that they are uncomfortable with.

I have a close friend who teaches religion at BYU.  He is an amazing teacher, and I had him as both an institute teacher and religious studies professor while he was getting his PhD at UNC.  He once had a student tell him, "Brother Grey, I just can't accept what you're teaching because I've never heard it before." 

While that sort of "fixed mindset" may be the practice of certain Christians inside and outside the Church, it certainly does not square with the actual teachings of Jesus.

God doesn't want you to understand

In Matthew 13, the Savior recounts one of his best known parables: the parable of the sower.  You know the story.  A man goes forth to plant his crops and sows seeds all over the place.  Some fall by the wayside and are eaten by birds.  Some fall on stony soil and are subsequently scorched by the sun.  Others fall among thorns and are choked by the other plants.  And a select few fall on good ground and bear fruit.

Chances are good that as you read that story, you went ahead and filled in the symbolic explanation subconsciously: the sower is Christ, the seed is “the Word,” the thorns are the “cares of the world,” etc. The explanation seems so obvious to those of us who have heard the story since birth, who have sat through a hundred Sunday School lessons and sacrament meeting talks on this very subject, who cannot even remember ever hearing the parable without already knowing what Christ was driving at before hand.  But if we had been there on that Galilean hillside, and with our neighbors heard this parable for the first time without any preconceived understanding, we would have no idea what Jesus was talking about.  Our first thought would probably have been something like: "Why is this guy sowing seeds among thorns to begin with?  Couldn’t he tell it was stony ground?  What’s he doing planting seeds by the wayside anyway? Martha, remind me not hire this Jesus guy as a farmhand."

Even his closest disciples were confused, and required an explanation. They asked him straight up, “Why speakest thou unto them in parables?”  The answer may surprise you: “Because it is given unto you [i.e. the apostles] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them [i.e. the people he was actually teaching] it is not given . . . therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”

You see, by his own admission, Jesus did not intend for his listeners to understand him.  At least not all of them.  At least not right away.  He taught about fish and sheep and weddings not because they were effective teaching tools that facilitated learning (as we sometimes suggest), but because they were effective teaching tools that facilitated confusion.  Only those who, like the disciples, were compelled to ask him for further light and knowledge were brought into the inner circle and able to understand the message. Everyone else was kept in the dark (whether they realized it or not).

This message is reiterated in the Book of Mormon.  To the lawyer Zeezrom, the prophet Alma explained, “It is given unto many to know the mysteries of God; nevertheless they are laid under a strict command that they shall not impart only according to the portion of his word which he doth grant unto the children of men, according to the heed and diligence which they give unto him.  And therefore, he that will harden his heart, the same receiveth the lesser portion of the word; and he that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full.” (Alma 10:9-10).

This concept can be uncomfortable for some Latter-day Saints.  At least it was for me.  We believe in a personal God, one who is willing to reveal himself in all his majesty to a fourteen-year old farm boy, and who is willing to do the same to each of us as soon as we are ready.  We believe in personal revelation, and often revel in the beautiful simplicity of the restored Gospel.  To believe that Christ would intentionally hide the ball and be purposefully enigmatic seems antithetical to other aspects of the Savior’s character which we discuss more frequently.  Nonetheless, it is true. The Lord is not always straightforward. 

Recognizing that God not only allows his scriptures to be confusing but at times intends for them to be so is an important step in understanding the revelatory process. As Neal A. Maxwell has said, “Puzzlement . . . is often the knob on the door of insight.  The knob must be grasped with firm faith and deliberately turned in order for one to see and to experience what lies beyond.”

No really guys, pondering IS necessary

While teaching the Nephites after his resurrection, Jesus taught how to handle this inevitable confusion. "I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words which I am commanded of the Father to speak unto you at this time. Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again." (3 Nephi 17:2)

The prophet Joseph F. Smith provides us with a wonderful example of this type of meditation in action.  On October 3, 1918, he was sitting in his room struggling to understand the meaning of some confusing passages in 1 Peter 3-4.  In particular, he said he "wondered at the words of Peter -- wherein he said that the Son of God preached unto the spirits in prison, who sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah -- and how it was possible for him to preach to those spirits and perform the necessary labor among them in so short a time." (D&C 138:28)

Dang, that is a good question.  Most people probably never even considered it.  They probably either just accepted the fact that "God is all-powerful and can do all things" and moved on, or used this passage to prove that "logically" believing in the gospel just doesn't make sense.

But Joseph F. Smith took a different route.  He says that he "sat in [his] room pondering over the scriptures; and reflecting" and that as he did so "the eyes of [his] understanding were opened."  He then beheld in open vision the great hosts of the dead, and the mysteries that were explained to him by the Spirit that day are now canonized in Doctrine and Covenants 138. Go read it.  No really, right now. All that revelation and outpouring of new doctrinal insight came because he was willing to ponder and chew on a scriptural passage that by his own admission did not make sense. Joseph F. Smith's namesake, Joseph Smith, received many of his revelations the same way.

Perhaps the reason that the scriptures are sometimes contradictory, the reason doctrines are sometimes so paradoxical and confusing, is because the Lord wants us to receive revelation more than he wants us to win ten points for Gryffindor.  Perhaps making some of the right answers unobvious is the only way that the Lord can convince us to exert all of our mental energies, a necessary pre-requisite to understanding all of the mysteries of God. In other words, confusion is the carrot the Lord uses to help us to chase inspiration, instead of "lean[ing] unto our own understanding."

The Lord has commanded us to "[t]reasure up in [our] minds continually the words of life" (D&C 84:85) and to "[s]tudy it out in [our] minds."  (D&C 9:8).  We can choose to do so by tackling those gospel subjects which we do not understand, chewing on them slowly as Joseph F. Smith did, believing that there is a mystery out there which the Lord is waiting to reveal.  Or we can choose to ignore the Lord's admonition, stick to the "milk," and grumble when certain doctrines do not seem to add up.

It's your choice, Hermione.  You choice.