In recent years, the world has begun to accelerate rapidly in its digression from the knowledge of God. In the process, the world has lost its understanding of the concept of faith. People increasingly think faith is a blind belief, preserved only by passing down through generations, without evidence or inherent substantiation - the "foolish traditions of [our] fathers". (Alma 30:14)
I think it's time to have a fresh discussion about faith, from those who have experienced it. I don't consider myself to be a religious authority of any kind. I only claim to have experienced faith for reasons far stronger than the world is now aware of.
In this article, I'll offer my perspective and tell you of my experiences and reasons for clinging to my faith. Make of them what you will.
Why?
The big questions that seems to drive science at its core is, in its very essence a religious one, if not philosophical: why? For its advances and tools and techniques telling us the processes by which the earth and the universe and life came into being, science has been utterly unable to answer that profound question: Why?
Why do we exist? Why does life exist on Earth? I don't know for sure if it's possible to be curious, intellectual - and human - all at once, without eventually asking yourself this question. I defy any scientific means to provide an answer that satisfies the soul.
People are Wired for Spirituality
When my wife and I were considering taking a job in Indiana, my non-believing grandfather counseled me not to stay if I got there and it "didn't feel right". I was quite astonished to be receiving what I knew to be spiritual guidance from an ardent atheist.
Have you ever felt a premonition and acted on it? What was the consequence? Were you glad you did? Did you regret not having done what you knew you should have? Have you ever survived something that could have caused serious harm or death, and caught yourself acknowledging that something must have been watching over you?
Have you ever thought to yourself, "There's got to be more to life than this!" Have you ever wondered what your purpose is, or what your mission in life should be? Have you ever had a desire to feel something big you couldn't put your finger on?
I dare say there's never been a person born who didn't think or feel these things at some point in their lives.
To entertain these questions and allow yourself to be guided by such things is to begin a process that, if followed, will eventually lead to some kind of faith in something - be it Fate, a Universe, a Force, an Intelligent Designer, a Supreme Being - even God. To allow this to happen is not all that far removed from observing stars moving too quickly around the perimeter of a galaxy and, for want of a better explanation, ascribing this behavior to something called "dark matter".
Think about it: in the decades since the first hypotheses came from Lord Kelvin, Jan Oort, Henrie Poincare and others, scientists have been scarcely able to define and describe the characteristics dark matter, much less get their hands on some for testing and analysis. And yet, it would be unscientific to deny that something is causing those stars to behave in that way.
So, what things have you seen moving in your life that you couldn't explain? What things have seemed to echo unanswered in your soul?
The Necessity of Faith in Everyday Life
Let's put a discussion on faith in God aside for just a second. Let's look at the concept of faith by itself, outside the concept of religion.
As I understand it, faith is a belief in something that results in a willingness to experiment. The world mocks the concept of faith as being unfounded - blind. But in my own experience as well as that of thousands of people I've known throughout my life, faith - whether in God or in anything else - is trust in something that comes about through experiment and experience. Faith is a hope that something may be true, a conviction that grows as a result of repeated confirmations of the validity and usefulness of that hope.
The reason depressed people struggle to get out of bed in the morning is that they've lost faith in the notion that it will do any good. Such loss of faith is, although complex in its causes and not entirely to be helped, a moral decision to acquiesce to the burden of despair. Most faith decisions are, in fact moral decisions, because they constitute a choice between courage and cowardice, work and idleness, industry and indolence, victimhood and acceptance of responsibility for one's future.
But, moral implications aside:
A child cannot learn to ride a bike without exercising faith in the hand holding the bike vertical, faith in the words of the person giving instruction.
A detective cannot follow a line of deductive reasoning without faith that doing so may lead to a solution.
A pilot cannot follow cockpit instruments through low visibility or comply with the instructions of air traffic controllers without faith that these things provide information he or she cannot know without them.
A people cannot get along together without good reason to have faith in each other.
A scientist cannot hypothesize and will not find sufficient motivation to experiment without faith in a new idea, a hope that it just might be true. Usually, such faith or hope comes about as a result of studies or results obtained at the periphery of this burgeoning new idea.
Faith facilitates life on Earth. The minute we stop exercising faith - religious or otherwise - we stop learning. We stop growing. We stop discovering. We stop doing. We stop becoming. We cease to be human, and we revert to base animal instincts incapable of raising us beyond the lifestyle of cave dwellers.
A Spiritual Experiment
Faith facilitates the use of the Scientific Method.
One of the things that most surprises people who begin to visit with missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is that these young kids ask them to run a spiritual experiment! The objective of this experiment is to duplicate the results of others who have gone before, to see for yourself whether or not the experiment works.
What is this experiment?
A Book of Mormon prophet by the name of Alma taught:
"27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge."
(Alma 32:27-29)
The missionaries invariably ask you to "plant a seed" of some kind. Are you willing to form a spiritual hypothesis and run a spiritual experiment? Are you willing to gather spiritual evidence, analyze spiritual data, and reach a spiritual conclusion?
If so, then let me suggest an experiment for you to try:
Try "acting as if" for ninety days. Decide that for the next ninety days you will temporarily place Jesus Christ at the top of your universe. Read a few verses from the Bible or Book of Mormon each day. Attempt to communicate with Him. Don't expect angels or voices or anything else likely to merit psychiatric help. Just let your soul feel Him whisper. Be open to those whisperings of soul, should they occur. Listen with your heart, not your ears. See with your mind, not your eyes. Begin making choices on the basis that Jesus is at the top of everything. Watch what happens to the way you feel about Him, about yourself, about the choices you are making, about your potential place on Earth. Watch to see if you begin to experience for yourself the "swelling motions" Alma described. Ask God a question. You don't need to do anything special. Just place him sitting next to you in a chair in your mind's eye. Ask Him a question you've been aching to ask such a Being. Then wait. Watch to see how those "soul whisperings" start to correlate to your question.
If you are earnest about it, you will not get through those ninety days without feeling God's desire to introduce Himself to you by way of His quiet whisperings in your soul. If you are earnest about this, you will begin to notice the seed is starting to grow, that light is coming into your mind and heart. You will begin to notice a Force affecting your desires, so that doing good is no longer the result of restriction, but a swelling motion that comes from within, a swelling motion that was put there by a Force not your own.
The longer you allow this seed to stay planted, and the longer you nourish it, the more you will continue to experience God blessing and guiding your life, helping you find and feel things you didn't know were available to you. You can only experience this light for so long before it becomes unscientific to deny the operation of God in your mind and heart.
This is seeing the stars move in a new way. This is the truth about faith, from the perspective of a believer.
