The world has
its counterfeits for faith. One way to decide what faith is, and why it is
becoming so scarce in our world, is to first explore what it is not.
1.
Faith is not gullibility or falling for anything.
Faithless
people are sometimes quite critical of those who possess what they do not. They
assume that people who live their lives by faith are naïve, easily swayed, and
simple-minded. That is not faith. A faithful person is a thinking being, one
who can judge, assess, and reason, one who can distinguish clearly between good
and evil, light and darkness, right and wrong. A faithful person does not fall
prey to either the foolish or the perverse. Faith can be exercised only in that
which is true.
President N.
Eldon Tanner explained that faith “will avail us nothing unless it is based on
true principles. This is illustrated in a story about the meeting of the
Indians with the Europeans when they first began their explorations in the New
World. The Indians were amazed at the power and explosive qualities of
gunpowder and asked many questions about how it was produced. Taking advantage
of the ignorance of [these people] and seeing an opportunity to increase their
wealth through deception, the Europeans told them it came from the seed of a
plant. The Indians believed them and purchased some seed in exchange for gold.
They carefully planted the seed and watched it grow, but of course they did not
get any gunpowder. No matter how sincere one’s belief may be in an error, it
will not change the error into truth.”
2.
Faith is neither weakness nor ignorance.
True faith is
anything but weak. The early Brethren of this dispensation were, in fact,
taught that faith is a principle of power, the same power by which God created
the worlds. Further, “the principle of power which existed in the bosom of God,
by which the worlds were framed, was faith; and . . . it is by reason of this
principle of power existing in the Deity, that all created things exist” (Lectures
on Faith 1:15–16). Nor is faith the opposite of knowledge. A certain level
of knowledge and understanding is needed before an individual can exercise
faith. The School of the Elders learned, for example, that in order to exercise
faith in God unto life and salvation, a person must (1) believe there is a God;
(2) have a correct understanding of the character, perfections, and attributes
of that divine Being; and (3) possess an actual knowledge that the course in
life that he or she is pursuing is according to the will of God.
“Faith is the
child of knowledge,” Elder Bruce R. McConkie wrote. “It is reserved for those
only who first have knowledge; there neither is nor can be any faith until
there is knowledge. No one can have faith in a God of whom he knows nothing.
Faith is founded on truth; it is the offspring of truth; it can never exist
alone and apart from the truth.”
3.
Faith is not blind.
In fact,
those with faith are frequently able to see and discern things that a faithless
person could never perceive. That is why some say believing is seeing, not the
reverse. Nor are Latter-day Saints, who are presided over by prophets, seers,
and revelators, expected to follow their leaders like blind sheep. President
Harold B. Lee said, paraphrasing Brigham Young: “The greatest fear I have is
that the people of this Church will accept what we say as the will of the Lord
without first praying about it and getting the witness within their own hearts
that what we say is the word of the Lord.” One of the great strengths of the
Church is that there are millions of people throughout the world who exercise
bold, intelligent obedience.
Adam and Eve
were commanded to “offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto
the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord.” The Mosaic
account indicates that “after many days” an angel appeared to our first father
and inquired as to why he was making an animal sacrifice. His answer was
beautiful: “I know not, save the Lord commanded me” (Moses 5:5–6). Was Adam
obeying blindly? Not at all. Adam and Eve had already had a great deal of experience
with the Almighty. “God conversed with him face to face. In His presence he was
permitted to stand, and from His own mouth he was permitted to receive
instruction. He heard His voice, walked before Him and gazed upon His glory,
while intelligence burst upon his understanding, and enabled him to give names
to the vast assemblage of his Maker’s works” (Lectures on Faith 2:18).
No blind obedience there.
4.
Faith is not positive thinking, nor does it consist in willing something into
existence.
Obviously it
is a good thing to be positive, to be upward-looking, to be optimistic about
now and the future. But faith is not positive thinking. Nor can one with a
positive attitude will things into being.
Imagine a
full-time missionary, a zone leader, serving, let’s say, in France, who turns
to the missionaries under his charge and says, “Come on, elders and sisters, if
we just had the faith we could baptize this whole country!” The Gospel of Mark
records that while in His hometown, Nazareth, the people heard the Savior’s
preaching and asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother
of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with
us? And they were offended at him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not
without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in His own
house.” Now note this astounding verse: “And he could there do no mighty
work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them”
(Mark 6:3–5; emphasis added). Now imagine that we heard someone standing 50
feet away from Jesus say, “Come on, Lord, just exercise your faith!” No, that
would never be appropriate, not just because He is the Son of the living God,
the second member of the Godhead. Jesus could not and did not reward faithlessness
with a display of signs and wonders because “faith cometh not by signs, but
signs follow those that believe” (D&C 63:9).
The Book of
Mormon records that approximately 350 years after the birth of Christ, Mormon
sought earnestly to lead his wayward people back to faith. He had been
appointed the leader of the Nephite armies and at about this time won a battle
against the Lamanites. Mormon explained that “the Nephites began to repent of
their iniquity, and began to cry even as had been prophesied by Samuel the
prophet; for behold no man could keep that which was his own [see Helaman
13:37]. . . . Thus there began to be a mourning and a lamentation in all the
land because of these things, and more especially among the people of Nephi.”
Mormon was thrilled,
hoping against hope that something, anything, could bring about a conversion
among his people. “But behold this my joy was vain, for their sorrowing was not
unto repentance, because of the goodness of God; but it was rather the
sorrowing of the damned, because the Lord would not always suffer them to take
happiness in sin. And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and
contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die” (Mormon 2:10–14).
Now picture some positive-minded, goal-driven, 21st-century person on the
sidelines sounding off: “Mormon, Mormon. Come on, you’ve got to put your heart
in it. Let’s exercise some faith!”
In all three
of these scenarios are factors over which the missionary, the Master Himself,
and the prophet-editor Mormon had no control. One of these factors—and a deeply
significant one at that—is the moral agency of the people, their right to
choose what they will do with their lives. Being positive and upbeat is great,
indeed so much better than being deflated or living like Eeyore the donkey. But
it is not faith.
5.
Faith is not absolute certainty as a result of tangible, observable evidence.
Alma remarked
in his marvelous discourse on faith: “Yea, there are many who do say: If thou
wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we
shall believe. Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a
man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it” (Alma
32:17–18). These verses are crucial to our understanding what it means to have
faith in these latter days, a taxing time of spreading unbelief. Far too many
people today—and some of these people are Latter-day Saints—want tangible,
empirical, scientifically verifiable evidence for the truthfulness of the restored
gospel. If we could demonstrate through DNA research that the Nephites and
Lamanites were actual, pre- Columbian people and that the Lehite colony did in
fact come from Jerusalem, then this critic will believe. If in the near future
adequate and substantial archaeological evidences for the Book of Mormon
peoples could be found, then the naysayer would be persuaded of the historicity
of this testament of Jesus Christ. If we could just prove convincingly that the
11 Egyptian papyri fragments held by the Church have something to do with
Abraham the prophet, then that doubter will accept the book of Abraham as
ancient holy scripture.
In using
Thomas the apostle as an illustration, President Howard W. Hunter explained
that “in a sense, Thomas represents the spirit of our age. He would not be
satisfied with anything he could not see [John 20:19–29], even though he had
been with the Master and knew His teachings concerning faith and doubt. . . .
Faith does not take precedence over doubt when one must feel or see in order to
believe.
“Thomas . . .
wanted knowledge, not faith. Knowledge is related to the past because our
experiences of the past are those things which give us knowledge, but faith is
related to the future—to the unknown where we have not yet walked.” President
Hunter wisely observed: “Thomas had said, ‘To see is to believe,’ but Christ
answered, ‘To believe is to see.’”
If we were to
take Thomas’s approach, we might well demand physical proof or a rational
explanation for what Jesus did when He healed the lepers, the paralyzed, the
woman with the issue of blood, blind Bartimaeus; when He multiplied the loaves
and fishes and fed five thousand men; when He calmed the raging storm on the
Sea of Galilee; when He raised from the dead the daughter of the Roman
centurion, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus, the brother of Mary and
Martha. Can we provide scientific evidence for such miracles? No, we cannot.
Then how do we know that they actually took place?
Professor Hugh
W. Nibley was a beloved 20th-century Latter-day Saint apologist, a defender of
the faith. As many Saints know, he was a man of extraordinary intellect, but,
perhaps more important, he was a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and a man of
deep and abiding faith in the restored gospel. “The words of the prophets,” he testified well over a
half century ago, “cannot be held to the tentative and defective tests that men
have devised for them. Science, philosophy, and common sense all have a right
to their day in court. But the last word does not lie with them. Every time men
in their wisdom have come forth with the last word, other words have promptly
followed. The last word is a testimony of the gospel that comes only by direct
revelation. Our Father in heaven speaks it, and if it were in perfect agreement
with the science of today, it would surely be out of line with the science of
tomorrow. Let us not, therefore, seek to hold God to the learned opinions of
the moment when he speaks the language of eternity.”
Faith is NOT
many things. We must be grounded and settled spiritually to exercise faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ, faith in the power of redemption that comes only through
the sufferings and death of Christ, faith in the Father’s perfect plan of salvation,
faith in the restored Church of Jesus Christ and its apostolic leadership. This
is vital, for it is only a solid faith, an enduring and fruitful faith that
will empower us to “withstand the evil day” and to “quench all the fiery darts
of the wicked” (D&C 27:15, 17). It is only through acting on a faith built
on truth—“things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come”
(D&C 93:24)—that deep conversion takes place. Then we are able to face
opposition calmly, encounter enemies kindly but boldly, and make our way
through the mists of darkness to the tree of life.
