I received a text from a friend tonight. She had dinner with
a few close friends who have left the church, apparently because the church
doesn’t have all the answers, there are things in its past that are not
explained and people within the church make poor decisions. She was texting me
because she wanted to express to someone that she knows there aren’t answers to
everything and the church is not perfect, but she believes it, it makes her
happy, she feels the spirit through living the gospel and it’s what she wants
in her life.
I have been thinking a lot about faith recently. As often
happens, the past few months haven’t been exactly as I had hoped or planned.
Answers that I’ve been seeking haven’t come, relief that I’ve been praying for
hasn’t arrived, and I’ve felt overwhelmed with my own insecurities and
disappointment. And, as often happens in my life, this has led to introspection
on what things in my life I need to improve. Better prayer, more sincere
fasting, stronger temple attendance, seeking greater opportunities to serve,
etc.
I’ll admit that from the outside, my faith probably doesn’t
seem very rational. I’m typically a rational person – emotional, but rational.
Even if I am hurt or offended, you can always talk me back into sense. When
something in my life is bringing me unnecessary pain, I start seeking a way to
change it. So when I am feeling frustrated with the apparent silence of the
heavens, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to keep prodding and trying and
believing. Albert Einstein said that insanity is trying the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results. And for someone who loves
literature and knowledge, clarity and reason so much, there are certainly a lot
of things within the scope of faith that I don’t understand. So wouldn’t this
behavior of mine appear to be slightly insane? Actually . . . no.
I feel my faith is rational based on very simple logic. It
makes me happy.
Believing I have a loving Heavenly Father looking out for me
makes me happy. Believing that He knows me perfectly, loves me, and has a plan
for me makes me happy. Communicating with him and having him communicate with
me brings me peace and joy and clarity. Obedience to commandments designed to
make me a better person makes me happy. Believing that I will see my mother
again, that I can be with my amazing family forever, gives me a reason to keep
going. Fasting . . . well, I’m not always happy while I’m doing it, but I love
the cleansed feeling I receive.
There is a lot I don’t understand and a lot of questions I don’t
have the answers to, but it doesn’t frighten me. Quite the opposite, actually.
Terryl Givens, in “A Letter to a Doubter” wrote, “I am grateful for a
propensity to doubt, because it gives me the capacity to freely believe… The
call to faith is a summons to engage the heart, to attune it to resonate in
sympathy with principles and values and ideals that we devoutly hope are true
and which we have reasonable but not certain grounds for believing to be true.
There must be grounds for doubt as well as belief, in order to render the
choice more truly a choice, and therefore the more deliberate, and laden with
personal vulnerability and investment.”
One of my most life-changing professors wrote his thoughts
on faith as it relates to experience vs. understanding. (He’s much more
eloquent than I – to read his amazing blog, go here. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/homewaters/2015/01/experience-and-understanding.html)
To quote him, “I would rather experience life than understand it. And I would
rather experience God than understand Him. Understanding matters and it comes
but it doesn’t matter most and it doesn’t come first. Miguel de Unamuno in his
inimitable masterpiece, The Tragic Sense of Life, says, ‘the primary reality is
not that I think, but that I live.’ Or: ‘the end purpose of life is to live,
not to understand.’”
The true marks of faith are not gaining perfect
understanding, delivering perfect sermons, or memorizing long passages of
scriptures. True faith is shown in consistent effort, obedience, and utilizing
the atonement in our lives. C.S. Lewis wrote, “[The Devil’s] is never more in
danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God’s]
will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have
vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” We will fail and
fall short again and again, but we just have to keep trying and asking for
forgiveness when we come up short. Elder Jörg Klebingat said, “Establish an
attitude of ongoing, happy, joyful repentance by making it your lifestyle of
choice… and don’t expect the world to cheer you on.”
But I will be.
