Called to Love: Stories of Compassion, Faith, and God's Amazing Grace Book

I loved this book. And I highly recommend it to anyone who has trouble balancing "logic" with "faith."

I am typically not one to read biographies, but this one sounded really good to me and came with a good recommendation and I'm glad I read it. While giving the story of Henry Eyring and his life, it showed how it's possible to a scientist, believe in scientific things, believe in logical things, but still have a strong and vibrant faith.

Eyring was a high caliber scientist who worked with Einstein and other famous scientists throughout his life. He spoke out on science and religion often for the Church with the hush hush support of its leaders (they often called on him to give such talks).

Being a contemporary of Joseph Fielding Smith, it showed in various parts of the book, how they disagreed (quite vehemently at times) but still remained friends. This being because Smith believed in a literal interpretation of scripture i.e. 7 days of 24 hours for the creation period; and Eyring believed what Science, specifically geology, showed to be the facts of a much older Earth.

He lived by the credo that the Church only requires its members to believe truth and that if the members feel threatened by science, they should change realize that they should not, if it is true science they it shouldn't conflict with the gospel, and if it does then we don't fully understand what's going on yet.

What I really like was that he said that religion's fear of science is often misguided because when great scientific changes have happened in the past, they have not affected religion as religion thought they might. When the Earth was finally accepted as being round and not flat, or when it was discovered/accepted that the Earth was not the center of the Universe (both ideas strongly opposed by religion), religion wasn't adversely affected! Nothing changed other than philosophies of man, and this had no bearing on the gospel truths that matter to man's salvation. Eyring pointed out that it is the same with many scientific things that religion fears today.

Although the book never states whether Eyring believed in organic evolution, it does point out that he studied organic evolution a lot, and that he certainly entertained the idea that that was how God achieved creation, though he obviously couldn't be sure.

Great stuff with too many quotes and parts I liked to pick just one or a few to put in this review.