On Being Teachable

In the Book of Mormon we read, “And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls.”¹

There is in this scripture, and in others, a particular spirit of meeting one with another—a mutual caretaking, a spiritual reciprocity—even as the apostle Paul entreated: a kindness, a desire to be tenderhearted one to another.²

In preparing for today, I felt I should focus on what readies us to be taught. And why, when we as a people are engaged in teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, should we also be concerned with being teachable?

We sometimes only think about learning when we are in a classroom. We associate being teachable with being in attendance. In a campus setting, we further link learning to a required curriculum, specified prerequisites, sequenced electives, and defined areas of study. So as students, when we finally get into the classes we want, it is fairly easy to adopt the attitude “Well, I’m here. The rest is up to you.”

As a teacher, I accept that there is a responsibility and a requirement to be ready to teach, but today I want to focus on that powerful part of the interaction that we influence as learners.

What are we like as learners? Over the years I’ve watched and had students describe to me (usually after the grades were in) their roles as learners.

Some would take the posture “Go ahead, get my attention if you can” or “I already know about this subject.” Some would say, “I don’t want to know about this subject—it’s required” or “I need to know exactly what I’m supposed to learn here” or “You’ve got my attention, but I don’t understand you.”

There are also those who come inquiring, ready to risk asking the “dumb question,” ready to contribute to the learning of others. My point is: Are we willing and able to look at what we are like as learners? Are we paying attention to how we ready ourselves to learn—our style, assumptions, expectations, and attitudes? Are we aware of how much we really influence, if not control, how teachable each of us really is?

Now, if the place of learning is not the traditional classroom but a congregation or an interdenominational community and the curriculum is not math or English but the gospel of Jesus Christ—what, then, does it mean to be teachable? This is a difficult concept. Because of our individuality, the expression varies. The common characteristics seem to be a sense of one’s incompleteness—a gnawing awareness of a desired, divine, and future state; a contrite spirit; a humble heart; a knowledge of one’s worth; a reverence for the worth of others; the trusting readiness often most apparent in little children; a belief in one’s abilities and one’s capacity to grow and to contribute; and an acknowledgment of our interdependency as sons and daughters of our heavenly parents.

Perhaps, fundamentally, being teachable means that we daily open ourselves to the consistency of God’s love for us. We accept that we are loved and make real in our complex, earthly lives the cornerstone commandments to love our God and our neighbor as ourselves.³

We can acknowledge that no matter who we are or where we are, encoded into each of us are two things: (1) this common language of learning that is love and (2) a most common bond of purpose: We came to learn and “to speak one with another concerning the welfare of [our] souls”—in fact, to progress eternally.

Our capacity to be taught is infinite—whatever our current circumstances, whatever the conditions of our physical abilities, and whatever status we may hold in the eyes of others. It is often easy to move away from such a compelling awareness of our potential. We can find for a variety of reasons—fear, doubt, convenience, comfort—ways to deny our capacity for learning, to lose faith in ourselves, to lose faith in the love of those around us, or to lose faith in God’s love for us. By not believing in our capacity to learn (even from our mistakes), by not believing in our capacity to influence others for good, we attempt to deny the power of God in us.

This condition of being teachable is fundamentally linked to God’s love for us and ours for Him and for one another. Now I would like to suggest five things that can have an impact on this quality of being teachable and comment on three areas in which we can currently edify each other as we speak one with another.

To Improve Our Teachableness

First, let us demonstrate what we say we already know so that our preparation to learn even more is evident to our earthly parents, to our Heavenly Father, and to others around us in the congregation.

Why are we constantly reminded of things? Why are the basic principles repeated so frequently? Perhaps we have not demonstrated in our daily behavior our ability to do those things. Long ago, King Benjamin advised, “If you believe all these things see that ye do them.”⁴

If we are demonstrating what we have learned, even a reminder will be heard without offense. When I was sixteen, I backed out of our steep driveway directly into the only car parked on the other side of the street. I think that over the decades I’ve now proven I can navigate my parents’ driveway, and because of that, their reminders are not heard the same way they were the first few times after the accident when I had not yet “proved myself.”⁵

Sometimes we treat requests to prepare for ministering, meetings, or even to be compassionate as things we could do if we really had time or really wanted to do them. I have experienced the deception that can come when we confuse thinking about the possible actions with the actual effort required to do them. I don’t learn as much from thinking about opportunities to be charitable as I do from exercising charity.

In discussing the glory of the city of Enoch, Elder Neal A. Maxwell presented a narrative progressively illustrating the readiness of a people and included these observations:

Our unity is not the unity born of compulsion or of mindless rapport, but of the realization that such unity is a necessity. . . .

It helps greatly to do first things first, not only because these are most important, but because the order of things does matter. . . .

. . . In our meetings we recount our own blessings, and as we hear the blessings of others, we both feel and see the accumulations of affection from God to his people.⁶

As Alma said, “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.”⁷ Let us demonstrate our ability to do even small and simple things.

Second, we learn about being teachable when we seek to balance being directed and being “anxiously engaged.”⁸ There are absolutes in life—things we are not supposed to do. But there is also ambiguity—several possible ways to do good and influence others and multiple avenues in which to excel. In the face of ambiguity, some of us will be directed and will know for certain what to do; for others, it will be up to us to figure out what to do!

Sometimes what I personally should be learning is painfully obvious to myself and to others. Sometimes I have struggled for years to understand, to discern the meaning of an experience, or to embrace a principle.

Being receptive and being active are both ways to enhance our teachableness. There is probably a little bit of both Julia Child and MacGyver in each of us. Some of us want the recipe: We want the ingredients explicitly identified and their relationships clarified. On the other hand, some of us just want the basic principles and will make do with whatever materials or conditions are around us. Our differences in how we approach learning should invite interest from each other and not judgment.

If we err in the extreme—either thinking that if we are not told we don’t have to try or “I resent being told. I can figure it out myself”—we diminish our ability to be taught.

Third, we can seek to increase our capacity to discern. Our lives are complex, our circumstances varied. Failure to develop our spiritual capacity to discern could leave us overwhelmed, overdependent on others for meaning, overcommitted, or overreacting to the next thing that pops up. We are here to make choices. This was made evident to me quite powerfully in a priesthood blessing in which I was told in essence, “You will know what is good to do if you do not reason
it away.”

I believe we develop discernment by exercising it. We can combine our efforts with the guidance of the Spirit. We can compare our experiences with those of others without feeling we are competing. We can rejoice in their excellence and still know there are ways in which we can also excel.

I am indebted to a wise old friend (both in years and association) of another faith who taught me to take an active interest in learning about the patterns in my life and how temptations occurred. He struggled for a long time with some of his temptations and finally decided to take a proactive interest. He would try to anticipate where in his life he might encounter that “ole trickster devil” again. He watched the terrain of his life and could tell where his own form of quicksand might be. He rerouted and gave up trying to see how close he could get to that quicksand without getting caught.

Fourth, we are teachable when we can trust in the Lord. Sometimes we won’t know in advance; sometimes in our lives we will “wait upon the Lord”⁹ for a long time. But we still need to ready ourselves.

I gained an appreciation of this point a few weeks ago when I accompanied my sister, Diane, to St. George, Utah. Her three children sing in the Utah Valley Children’s Choir, and she wanted to hear their concert.

The kids had worked hard, paying attention to Beverly Thomas’s direction, learning lyrics, rehearsing harmony, and trying to show up at performances in the appropriate outfits. After their last concert, the kids had a chance to stop in Zion National Park on the way home. Diane and I pulled up alongside the bus as it unloaded 60 noisy kids who raced up the path to Weeping Rock. We decided it would be safer to wait in the parking lot.

All of a sudden it was strangely quiet in the canyon. We couldn’t see the kids. And then truly angelic sounds filled the canyon. People in the parking lot who were not with our group stopped. We all heard words echoing in the canyon:

We will sing, for the Lord is list’ning,
He hears the praise of our hearts.
We will sing, for the Lord is list’ning.
We lift our voices and start to sing for the Lord.¹⁰

It was a beautiful moment of clarity and harmony.

When the song ended, there was a joyous shout followed by the more familiar chaotic noises of kids racing back to the bus. When they got back, their excitement and joy were tangible. They relayed the story of an older couple who were nearby as the group started hiking. When they offered to sing to them, the couple smiled and started to back away, only to stand transfixed as the kids began singing.

Now when these kids started choir, nobody promised them a perfect moment in Zion National Park, but there it was. If they had not been ready—individually prepared and collectively willing to participate—they could not have had that experience. It is one thing to arrive at a place like Zion’s Weeping Rock and realize, yes, this could be a great place for a group of kids to spontaneously experience the product of their learning and the Lord’s love through music—and quite another to feel “Oh, here is the place you have prepared, and, having been taught, I am ready.”

Earlier, in describing the qualities that contribute to being teachable, I listed self-worth. How we understand self-worth greatly impacts the degree to which we are teachable.

Fifth, then, self-worth is different from self-importance. God loves us, and we are of value to Him. If we do not care much for ourselves, then to love our neighbor as ourselves doesn’t mean much. Loving ourselves can magnify our charity toward others. If we overvalue or undervalue ourselves, we are less able and ready to learn from others. We either think we can’t learn much from them or we don’t trust their motive for interacting with us.

Helping someone to love himself or herself is harder than just telling that person that you love them. We each have a gift. We can learn how to remind each other of the value of our part and the contribution we can make to the whole.

Strengthening Our Interactions

Now I want to suggest three aspects of our interactions in which being teachable seems to be a very needed goal.

First, that we might better know the experience of being a woman or a man in our congregation. What is it like for someone who is different from us? If we are women, what can we know of the experiences of men as fathers, husbands, siblings, and brothers in the gospel? If we are men, what can we know of the experiences of women?

If we too quickly assume we know what the experience of someone else is or should be, then we are less prepared to learn from speaking together “concerning the welfare of [our] souls.” I can imagine that Elder Maxwell’s description of the quality of conversation in the city of Enoch is instructive to us as both men and women: “You should observe . . . how . . . they listen to each other instead of seeking to display their own learning. They are more willing to be impressed than they are eager to impress.”¹¹

We have much to learn from one another in living the gospel, and we can best do that by staying in relationship to each other. I know in my own life it is easier to talk about somebody than with them—but my learning is different when we are speaking together. I have learned to listen without fearing that others will think my listening means agreement. And I have learned that being too anxious to tell others where our differences exist hasn’t helped me understand them.

Second, being teachable can strengthen our interactions as well as improve the quality of our service to one another. Having heard that where much is given, much is expected,¹² I have sometimes allowed my own need to serve to determine what I did rather than paying close attention to the needs of others. Seeking to meet the needs of others is more of a challenge.

By truly paying attention to others around me, I can place myself in their service and I am taught what is needed. I saw a very pragmatic example of this a few semesters ago when a study-group member who obviously had better computer skills than the others didn’t take the attitude “I learned it, so can they” or “I’ll do it since you’ll never learn this anyway.” Instead he watched, he made himself available, he answered questions, and he encouraged. In his daily interactions with his study group, he was taught how he could best teach them—and he did.

Third, and last of all, the best expression of our willingness to be teachable is to be ever ready to say at any moment in our lives, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine.”¹³ Elder Maxwell stated, “The Lord loves both the teachable and the unteachable, but it is through the obedience of the teachable that God can help these helpers, that all might be bene-fitted thereby.”¹⁴

For each of us and for myself, I pray that we will realize that our obedience; our agency; our acknowledgment of God’s love for us and our love for Him, for our neighbor, and for ourselves; our testimony of the truthfulness of His gospel; and our willingness to trust His further instruction are never more evident than when we can echo in a small way in our lives the words of our Elder Brother: “Here am I, send me.”¹⁵

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Adapted from a BYU devotional speech given by Kate L. Kirkham on May 19, 1987. Kirkham taught in the organizational leadership and strategy program from 1978 until 2008. She passed away in December 2024.

Artwork by Brian Kershisnik

Notes

1. Moroni 6:5.
2. See Ephesians 4:32.
3. See, for example, Matthew 22:36–39; Mark 12:30–31; Romans 13:9; Doctrine and Covenants 59:5–6.
4. Mosiah 4:10.
5. See Doctrine and Covenants 98:12; Abraham 3:25–26.
6. Neal A. Maxwell, Of One Heart: The Glory of the City of Enoch (Deseret Book, 1975), 44–45.
7. Alma 37:6.
8. Doctrine and Covenants 58:27.
9. Psalm 37:9; Isaiah 40:31; see also Psalm 27:14.
10. Steven Kapp Perry, “Sing, for the Lord Is Listening,” in A Child’s Prayer: Children’s Songs (Prime Recordings, 1986), 15–18.
11. Maxwell, Of One Heart, 15.
12. See Luke 12:48; Doctrine and Covenants 82:3.
13. Luke 22:42.
14. Maxwell, Of One Heart, 48.
15. Abraham 3:27; see also Isaiah 6:8; 2 Nephi 16:8.