Seek First to Understand
By C.S. Bezas

One day I was fairly discouraged after having taught a challenging seminary lesson. One student in particular had been defiant. This student, for whatever reason, had decided he would not participate.

Understandably, I was concerned for the student and frustrated with the impact his attitude had on the overall class. It was during that moment of frustration after the students had left, that the Spirit whispered one small phrase: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

I could see the significance of that statement, even though (at the time) I didn’t particularly want to hear it. Truth be known, I was bugged at how hard I’d tried to reach the kids and how some of them had pushed back that effort (especially the one student in particular).

Seminary teachers make sacrifices to teach other people’s kids. Seminary teachers generally are sleep-deprived — for example, most early-morning seminary teachers rise at about 4:45 a.m. or earlier. They also are away from their families in the morning, when perhaps they’d prefer to help their own kids get ready for school. And early-morning seminary teachers take time from their families reading, studying, and preparing lesson materials for other people’s kids the next day.

Whereas most volunteer early-morning seminary teachers are stay-at-home moms, many are not; many are moms (or dads) who work at another job and then arrive home in the evenings, needing to make dinner, help their kids with homework, keep the household running, and still find time to prepare a seminary lesson that will inspire sleepy teens!

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tremendous privilege to serve in these capacities. But it can make for heart-challenging moments when this level of sacrifice is met with defiant and/or ugly attitudes.

There are a lot of things that kids do not comprehend when they see their seminary teacher standing in front of them each morning, working to love them and be there for them, even if the kids have surly attitudes or defiant natures.

Yet on that morning so long ago, the Spirit did not “support” me in my frustration with all this. Rather, the Spirit quietly taught me a profound principle: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”  And during that moment, I learned an important truth. It does not matter how much a person sacrifices, per se. What matters is where that person’s heart and mind are during the sacrifice.

As I began to work towards understanding my students first, rather than worrying about “me” being understood, magic began to happen with my interactions with those seminary kids.

Understanding Begins With Seeing

We as adults often cannot see the pressures and levels of temptation these seminary kids face each day at school or elsewhere. There are days that my own son will come home from school shaking his head. When I ask “What’s up?” he’ll simply reply, “It’s so worldly out there.”

I’d have to agree. For example, girls now wear to school what in my era constituted underwear. Not only must it be tough on a young man to have to sit behind or in front of those girls in class, but there are other considerations. Even if a kid is not tempted being around immoral or lascivious lifestyles, it still can be quite the “downer.”

Been to a high school dance recently? Just ask your students about the kind of dancing that is called “freak dancing.” It’s pathetic what our kids have to face.

Another example: it is all too common now to hear teens at school talk openly about their “pharming” parties and “trail mixes.” And no, they are not talking about a farmer’s lifestyle nor are they referring to health food.

No, what’s going on in many teens’ lives (that our seminary kids have to associate with, by virtue of being exposed to this verbiage in school hallways) often is far darker. For example, “pharming” is a teen’s term for the prep each kid does prior to a party. They go into their parent’s medicine cabinet and swipe two pills from their parent’s prescription medications. They bring these two “Russian roulette” pills to the party and contribute them to what the kids now call a “trail mix.”

The teen host/hostess then swooshes all the pills around to mix them up. The teens sit around that bowl of colorful little pills in various shapes and sizes. Each kid randomly draws two out of the bowl and cavalierly swallows them whole. The purpose is essentially to watch each other in the circle to see what happens next.

I learned of this practice from our high school principal at a recent back-to-school night for parents. He was exerting great effort to inform apparently clueless parents. He told the parents in the audience that night that the high schools of today are a far cry from those of just years ago when he first began as a principal.

He told the parents they would not believe what the kids now talk about blatantly in school hallways. He also warned the parents, “If your kid goes to a party and then calls home, asking to spend the night at a friend’s, say no. It might sicken you to find out what’s going to happen. You just need to say no.”

He also talked about how, if parents would just enforce an 11 p.m. curfew for teens, how many sad situations could be avoided. All this from a principal who is not a member of our faith, but someone who associates with the kids out in the world on a daily basis and who is alarmed at what he is seeing.

Consider the hours each day this principal is with the teens at his school, observing them and listening to them for nearly six hours a day. Now think about the average parent who maybe steps onto his kid’s campus only twice a year. Who is going to have the clearer picture as to what is going on in our children’s lives today?

In fact, other than perhaps parents who homeschool, principals and teachers are generally with our seminary kids for more hours than even their parents. Thus, this principal ― and others like him who are sounding similar alarms ― need to be listened to as witnesses for the times about our young men and women.

Yes, this is the world that most of our seminary kids walk through and associate with, on a daily basis. And since they’ve grown up immersed in this culture, they know no difference. All of this seemed to be what the Spirit wanted me to understand when I was quietly told on that morning some time ago: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

The hardcore rap music that so many of our seminary students listen to takes an additional toll. The cumulative weight of all this that they face is heavy ballast indeed. Is it any wonder then that sometimes these students act up or out?

Even the finest of our young men or women will be influenced by their peers, if they associate with them long enough without any counter-pull. Our youth must have fine associations with those who would build them up spiritually, not with those who pull them down into demeaning activities, activities that tear down their morals, their perspectives, or which ridicule the very standards the Lord would have them live.

Summary

If a student is surly in seminary, if a student appears disinterested, our job is first to seek to understand his world and his paradigm, before we ever consider trying to be understood ourselves. I think when we do this sufficiently, we might be surprised just how valiantly these kids are fighting, even though on the surface it may not appear that way.

Yes, may we forever learn that we must “seek first to understand” before being understood. Our teens’ lives depend on it.

Watch for C.S. Bezas book, POWERFUL TIPS FOR POWERFUL TEACHERS: Helping Youth Find Their Spiritual Wings, in LDS bookstores or at http://deseretbook.com/store/product?sku=4977585.