Hugh Nibley asks, What is our obstacle? Why don't we have the faith and the revelations that go with it? Moroni 7:43-44 tells us--it's because we're not honest. We are not meek and lowly: "I say unto you that he cannot have faith and hope, save he shall be meek and lowly of heart" (Moroni 7:43). That's what being honest is, recognizing what you don't know, not what you do. Forget degrees and everything else. "The glory of God is intelligence." Intelligence is problem-solving ability. . . . How do you go about solving a problem? You always, step by step, find out what you don't know. "This is where I'm ignorant." "This is what I don't know." And so I have to fill that gap. There are no fields; there are only problems to solve. If you have a particular problem you have to work on and it requires a certain language, you've got to get the language. If it requires certain math, you've got to get the math. See, it's not the field you're in that makes it; it's the problem you have to solve. You have to get whatever you lack. You can't fall back on your degrees and your reputation and all this sort of thing and say, "well he's an authority on the subject." There are none such. You have to be honest and smart enough to realize where the limitations are and where we're supposed to go. But only by a systematic and progressive revelation of your own ignorance can you do that. That's a humiliating process, and very few will face it. They must be meek and lowly.
The greatest classical philologist who ever lived, Joseph Justus Scaliger, lived back in the sixteenth century. He went to Rome and lived in the ghetto to learn Hebrew. They spoke Hebrew in those days. The little children laughed at him when he'd make mistakes, and his fellow colleagues disowned him. He wasn't scholarly about it at all. You don't go down and mix with vulgar people. His colleagues wore fur-lined robes and everything else, but their knowledge of Hebrew was less than elementary. That's the difference, you see. You have to be meek and lowly if you're going to learn anything or do what the Lord wants you to do. Realize your situation and what you really are. [Hugh W. Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 4, p. 283]