Though it is difficult to convey all of the details of my changed opinions, I think that the principles that guided the shifting of my opinions are easy to understand (though, perhaps not adopted nearly as well).
When I was a child, my dad collected matchbooks. He had a job that required a lot of travel and he had quite a stash of matchbooks that were souvenirs of all of the places he had been. We had a wood-burning stove and my dad frequently used matchbooks that were not part of his collection to get a fire going. As a young child, it wasn’t difficult to think that I had figured out how to light a match just by watching him. The matchbook made it very simple—put the head of a match on the striker, fold the cover of the matchbook over on itself so that the match was in between the striker and front cover, apply some pressure to the head of the match by pinching the striker and front cover together, and then pull on the match. Light the fire. Simple. And there was a whole collection of matchbooks to tempt a curious kid to practice lighting a match herself. But, like any good father, my dad told me to never attempt to light matches (especially the ones in his collection).
Now, my dad was the type to always have his children watch him demonstrate something over and over again before we did anything ourselves. That was as true for making an omelette as it was for lighting a match. He wanted to make sure that we understood why he did what he did the way he did. As I grew older, my dad explained to me the ins and outs of, what I thought was, an easy process. For a little kid with no match-lighting experience, it proved to be more difficult than I thought it was going to be. Turns out that the amount of pressure when you pinch the matchbook has to be just right. Too little pressure and the match just slips right out. Too much pressure and the head of the match rips off. Once he explained to me how to light the match, he taught me how to hold it, how to build up the stack of fuel for the fire in such a way that lighting the fire would be easy with a thin, 1 1/2”-long piece of rapidly-burning paper in your hands. When the flame got too close to his fingers, he would drop the match in the stove and shake his hand back and forth. The danger of being burned became an obvious reality and he was humble enough to admit when he knew he could have done something better and pointed it out to me so that I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
And, of course, the day finally came when I was allowed to try my hand at lighting a match and starting a fire on my own.
Now, what would have happened at that moment if I had dug in my heels and told my dad that I would absolutely not attempt to light the match simply because he had previously told me that I was never to attempt lighting a match? That would have been ridiculous, right? What good would have all of his instruction been to me? Some, perhaps, but not nearly as much as it could have been. Holding on to lower levels of truth has the inevitable result of lower levels of existence.
My dad gave instructions to me based on both the level of understanding I had and the degree to which I could advance that understanding. Having never been taught how to light a match or start a fire, his rule to never light a match was completely appropriate at that point. But once I understood the process involved and the potential dangers at play, asking me to light a match and start a fire was just as appropriate. In fact, it was necessary in order for me to experience that what he was teaching me truly aligned with reality. Void of my own experience, I would never know, for sure, to what degree his teachings were actually true and correct.
What led to massive shifts in my beliefs and actions was my understanding that God does the same thing with us. He carefully leads us into new truth as soon as we are able to benefit from it and we shouldn’t be surprised that our introduction to new truth might require us to abandon presently-held truth. We are supposed to grow in truth and Godly character. If we really believe that we have the potential to inherit all that God has, does that not include his truth? Does that not include his character? Shouldn’t we be anticipating paradigm shifts? Shouldn’t we be expecting changes to our thoughts and beliefs and, consequently, our actions?
Ask yourself if your religion today looks any different than your religion did ten years ago. And by “religion” I mean your own personal interaction with and understanding of God, not a system or institution of organized religion to which you belong. Religious institutions will often change things up in order to conceal the lack of progress had by individual members. Look for rebranding (e.g., logos, fonts, public image). Look for renaming (e.g., dropping “Mormon”, changing “Ensign” to “Liahona”, changing “Home/Visiting Teaching” to “Ministering” (which, I might add, is a complete travesty when one understands what it means to “minister” as laid out in the scriptures)). Individuals who see these things as weighty evidence of progress do so because they are likely devoid of any progress with God themselves.
We shouldn’t be happy to stay at one level of truth. We shouldn’t expect God to keep us at the same level of understanding we are at right now (or that we have been at for years). We should believe that progress with God will enable us to understand and apply more of his truth. We should expect him to require more of us as he introduces us to new principles. We should expect those principles to undergird our future decisions so that we can test them and learn for ourselves that they are true and correct. He can teach us how to safely build and light a fire for ourselves or we can choose to sit and stare at a matchbook for the rest of our lives.