One fine Sunday afternoon I was sitting at someones house when the corner of my eye caught something that intrigued me. There, sitting under a birdcage, was an old accordion. Since I love music, and as I had never in my life actually seen a real live accordion before, naturally the first thing I wanted to do was go play with it. So, after having a marvelous dinner, I did exactly that. My excited hands carefully lifted the hand-held organ out of its storage place, placed my fingers in what seemed to be the correct areas, and began to mess around with it. The ancient instrument sounded like it was still in tune (although I have absolutely no idea how a properly tuned accordion is supposed to sound). I could already see it in my minds eye: People dancing with joy as I performed vibrant melodies on that accordion. However,despite its good condition, it took no longer than 5 seconds for me to realize that accordions are complex and challenging instruments. There was a keyboard on one side, and a whole lot of little black buttons that do who-knows-what on the other. It proved to be a little more than my simple brain could handle. My efforts were noble, but the sound quality of my performance could be considered dismal at best. Eventually I was able to work out a coherent rendition of "Scarborough Fair", but only just barely, and it came after several failed attempts. Needless to say, I was considerably less optimistic about my career as an accordionist as I returned it to its spot on the shelf.
I think my main problem with the art of accordion playing was that I didn't know the basics. In order to become an expert, I would have to learn some simple things first. Things like how to hold the instrument, what the little buttons do, the names of the notes on the keyboard, ect. Once you have the basics down, you can begin to handle more complicated things, such as playing a song or practicing your technique.
Learning the Gospel is like learning how to play an accordion. Sometimes we get excited about something that we don't fully understand. We might dive ourselves into a 'deep' doctrine with expectations of how that knowledge will affect us. However, if we don't know 'the Basics', we may quickly find confusion and frustration with something because we don't really know how to apply it.
Simple lesson learned: When learning the Gospel, start with the Basics. Faith in Jesus Christ, Scriptures, Prophets, ect. The deeper knowledge and understanding will only come after we have got the simple things down.
