A Certain Idea of BYU | Justin Collings | 2022

Justin Collings shares six things we should seek in order to come unto to the Savior and fulfill BYU’s divine destiny as a school in Zion.

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“All my life,” said Charles de Gaulle, “I have had a certain idea of France.”1

My own life has also been profoundly shaped by an idea—not of a nation but of a school. All my life I have harbored a certain idea of BYU.2

An idea, that is, of “a school in Zion” (Doctrine and Covenants 97:3).3

A school conceived in revelation and dedicated to the proposition that “the glory of God is intelligence” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:36).4

A school whose roots run deep in the rich soil of the Restoration—a thrilling theology thundering to all the world that “it is impossible . . . to be saved in ignorance” (Doctrine and Covenants 131:6).

A school relentlessly concerned with “education for eternity”5—education of the whole person, the eternal soul.

A school that insists emphatically and unflinchingly “that we [can indeed] have it both ways, that superb scholarship and rock-solid faith” are not only compatible but “inextricable.”6

A school where teachers keep their “subject matter bathed in the light and color of the restored gospel” and “occasionally . . . bear formal testimony of the truth.”7

A school where not even the alphabet nor the multiplication tables are to be taught without the Spirit of God.8

A school that aspires, “in the process of time,” to “become the fully anointed university of the Lord”9—a school in Zion indeed.

With all my heart, I yearn to keep faith with this idea of BYU. But I don’t know where to keep that faith if not in the hearts of you ­students.10 And so, during our brief time together, I hope to transmit to you something of the heritage that others have bequeathed to me. I intend, if you will, to raise the banner of BYU and let it ­flutter in the breeze. In the language of two former BYU presidents, I want to “nail our colors to the mast.”11

Before you and I were born, President Spencer W. Kimball charged BYU to “become”12 and “remain a unique university in all the world.”13

Many on this campus have pondered and prayed concerning the source and substance of such singularity. I believe that the beginning and the end of our uniqueness must be you, our incomparable students. We will never, I submit, be unique in the sense that prophets have enjoined unless your experience here is uniquely transformative.

This morning I hope to help you translate the idea of BYU—the visions of prophets and the dreams of professors14—into an experience as transformative and transcendent as I believe the Lord and His servants expect it to be.

When I was a BYU freshman, President Gordon B. Hinckley outlined six B’s:

1. Be grateful.
2. Be smart.
3. Be clean.
4. Be true.
5. Be humble.
6. Be prayerful.15

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