Another great value is faith or trust.
As human beings we need a relationship to the whole. We need a relationship
that is something of which we are only a part. In our Latter-day Saint faith,
that relationship is mostly to God and to Christ, I believe. Joseph Smith
entered the Sacred Grove and found his God, and built a very close and
wonderful relationship with him through the years. Through Joseph Smith, we
know about God, but each of us must also find him and find our
relationship to him. We have to find our own Sacred Grove. And it’s not
easy. I confess that there are times when I have a hard time getting through to
my Father in heaven. He leaves me to myself a great deal; he even left Jesus
upon the cross. You remember, “My God, why has thou forsaken me?”
I think that our relationship to him
can be different from our relationships person to person. Let me mention one
thing that has a lot of meaning for me in my relationship to Deity. I get this
from a philosopher called Montague. He said, “Religion is the faith that the
things that matter most in life are not ultimately at the mercy of the things
that matter least.” Think about that for a moment. The things that matter most
in life—and I have named some of them tonight, beauty, truth, goodness, love, integrity—are
not ultimately at the mercy of the grave. If there is no God in heaven, and man
should destroy himself on earth, all the beautiful music, all the great ideas,
all the aspirations of man, all the human relationships that we cherish, would
perish with man.
Religion is the faith that God exists
and is on the side supporting, giving cosmic support to, the things that we
cherish most in human experience. I have that faith. I don’t know absolutely,
but I know for myself, and I have faith and trust that when I live by
integrity—it’s hard to do so always—and when I express Christian love, and when
I stand up for freedom, and when I am creating human relationships, I have the
faith that God is supporting me, that he is there, that he is on my side. Whether
he answers my prayers or not, he is with me when I am with him, when I am
working in his interest, in harmony with his attributes. And I get a lot of
comfort out of that. It sustains me—that faith, that trust. (Lowell L. Bennion,
“The Things that Matter Most,” in The Best of Lowell L. Bennion: Selected
Writings 1928-1988, ed. Eugene England [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988], 39-40)
Faith
There is a second way to be creative
in religion. It is the way of faith. We live in a world where many have been
greatly disillusioned in their faith. There are intellectuals who prefer to
live by knowledge and who distrust faith, especially the kind that is
associated with religion. I, too, wish to live by knowledge whenever and
wherever I may gain it. I would rather have knowledge of the character and
cooking ability of a prospective wife than just faith in these things. But I
have learned that knowledge is not sufficient to meet the demands of life.
Knowledge we gain through past and verifiable experience. Life is dynamic and
every day is a new day, and people who live by knowledge only often becomes
cynical and conservative and afraid. Their hearts and minds are not equal to
the creative possibilities of life. Faith is an attitude of mind by which we
live as though the possibility were already a reality, and by that very process
we create reality out of things we carry in our hearts. Let us not live by a
blind faith—a faith without works, one that is in contradiction to our
knowledge and experience, or one that has no meaning or value because of the
things in which we have faith. Let us be true to the first principle of the
gospel, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in Christ means faith in his
Beatitudes, in the two great commandments. It means faith in our Father which
is in heaven. It means faith in one’s self and in every man who is our brother
and a child of God. Living by faith is a great and creative adventure, if we
have faith in the right things.
To the Prophet Joseph, as already
indicated, religious faith was an instrument through which is to realize Zion
and the Kingdom. Let us keep it as such. Theology is not the end. Religion is
not something to be preserved. The Church is not something to serve simply as
an organization. Life is the end: to bring to pass the immortality and God-like
life of men. Self-realization toward a more Christ-like life for all men is our
goal. Like the Prophet Joseph, let us keep people in mind, use our theology,
live our religion, and serve our church, as great instruments through which, by
faith, we may help to realize God’s eternal purpose. Such a faith will bring
its own reward and its own satisfaction. To be creative in religion, we must
look upon it as an opportunity and not a possession. We must not be afraid to
live by faith, faith in Christ that makes a difference in every walk of life,
in our homes and in our business, in government.
There is a third way in which we may
be creative. No one is truly creative anywhere in life unless he loves that
which he does. No one is creative in religion unless he rises above fear, duty,
reward, and compulsion of every kind and lives his religion because he believes
in it and loves it.
In the Bible we are told that “perfect
love casteth out fear”; and Jesus and the author of Deuteronomy both said,
“Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy soul.” This we cannot do if our religious life is impaired by
the love of other things or by the love of ourselves.
There is one last passage I would like
to read to you from the works of the Prophet Joseph, a little gem that many of
us have passed over for decades without appreciating. In chapter 32 of Alma,
Alma is speaking to some people who have been cast out of their synagogues because
of their poverty, and do not know how to worship in their condition. In rather
a direct and blunt way, Alma says to them, “I say unto you, it is well that ye
are cast out of your synagogues, that ye may be humble, and that ye may learn
wisdom; . . . for it is because that ye are cast out, that ye are despised of
your brethren because of your exceeding poverty, that ye are brought to a
lowliness of heart; for ye are necessarily brought to be humble.
“And now, because ye are compelled to
be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble,
seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and
he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved.
“And now as I said unto you, that
because you were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that
they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?
“Yea, he that truly humbleth himself,
and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed-yea,
much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their
exceeding poverty [or of any other circumstance, we might add]. Therefore,
blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble; or
rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is
baptized without stubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the
word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.” (Alma 32:12-16.)
It is only when we love humility and
take delight in it that we have a chance to learn its deeper meaning. And this
is true of every principle of religion. (“Joseph Smith: His Creative Role in
Religion,” in ibid., 66-68)
The Essential Elements of Faith
I
While one of the most essential ingredients
of faith is feeling, it cannot be confined to feeling alone. Faith also
includes and presupposes rational factors such as belief, the power of imagination,
and the ability to construct hypotheses. However, unlike knowledge, which is
abstract and symbolic of reality, faith is concrete experience. Faith is felt.
Belief and hypothesis are swallowed up, as it were, by feeling, which becomes
the dominant emphasis in the experience of faith.
To say that faith is essentially
feeling does not discredit it. Life itself is experienced more in feeling than
in thought. Motivation to work, play, love, and create is born largely of
feeling, and all of life’s satisfactions are felt.
A freshman student became considerably
upset one day because her psychology teacher had said in class that if feeling
were taken out of religion, there would be nothing left. The student, of
course, had interpreted the statement as a criticism of religion. But whether
or not it was a criticism, it needed amplification and qualification. In the
first place, religion is more than feeling. The great religions of mankind
contain ideas which relate concretely to human behavior. Anyone who has read
Deuteronomy, Amos, Isaiah, or Luke would know this. But—and this is equally important—if
religion did nothing more than help man feel right and feel deeply about life,
it would be justified, because feeling is a large part of living. Humility,
faith, and love are essential feelings, or attitudes; and they make their rich contribution
to life. No apology need be made for faith because it is, in good part, a state
of feeling.
Because faith is linked with feeling,
it need not be evanescent and whimsical, without substance and, like a soap
bubble, easy to burst, even though the faith of some people is of this kind—blind,
inconstant, and without foundation. A strong, solid, and enduring faith is grounded
in knowledge and experience. And, like aesthetic feeling, Christian love, and
other emotional states, faith may not only abide, but may increase in strength
and richness. . . .
II
Faith varies in strength and character
from person to person, and even from time to time in the same person’s life.
This is to be expected of something so personal and subjective as faith. Faith then
is not cut and dried, is not fixed and static, but is something as dynamic as
life itself. It may lie anywhere between ere hope and certitude, which is a
feeling of complete assurance. Between these two extremes, faith of various
degrees is experienced by almost everyone. In some things, a person’s faith is
as strong and sturdy as an oak true; in other things, it may bend with the wind
like a weeping willow tree. Faith is a product of one’s total life-experience. As
this experience increases, one’s faith in certain people and in things and
ideas is bound to increase or decrease.
III
Faith relates to the unknown, to
things unseen or not yet realized. This is evident in many definitions quoted
above, including the two from Hebrews and Alma. Here again faith is different
from knowledge, for knowledge relates to the past. Knowledge is awareness of reality
through repeated and verifiable experiences. If one knows a thing, he no longer
needs to have faith in it, as Alma declared: “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.)
Faith is the sphere of the possible. It
is an hypothesis, suggested by the existence of some facts, but projecting
beyond these to the realm of what might be or could be. The characteristic of
faith is readily illustrated in a couple’s feelings about marriage. The typical
couple approaching marriage will say that they know they will be happy. This they
cannot possibly know from experience or logic. Having never been married to each
other and being aware of the unhappiness and the divorce statistics for married
people today, a couple can only believe and feel that they will succeed.
Marriage is consummated in faith, and this should be recognized by the participants.
The success of each marriage is only a possibility envisioned by faith.
IV
Faith is adventurous and creative. It
not only is the sphere of the possible, but is also the power which often makes
the possible come into being. Faith is that remarkable quality of the human
spirit which first envisages the possibilities of life, then lives as though
these possibilities were realities, and by this action often makes them real.
In the realm of knowledge, one conforms to what is; in the realm of faith, one
creates life after the image carried in his heart. Faith adds another dimension
to life. Recognizing the borders of knowledge, it transcends them.
Jesus recognized this wonderfully
creative, dynamic power of faith. He likened it unto a mustard seed and said
that he who had faith even as a grain of mustard seed could move mountains;
that nothing would be impossible to him. Faith is like a seed because of its
great potential to multiply itself, to increase reality. Faith is like yeast in
its capacity to expand and enlarge whatever it becomes a part of. Faith is like
a tree that takes root, grows, buds, blossoms, and bears fruit. . . .
V
Faith impels action. In the language
of James, “Faith without works is dead.” One might also say that faith without
works is not faith, but mere belief. Then belief is not feeling, or assurance,
but is a thing of the mind. A person says he believes something is so when he
thinks it is, but is not sure. Belief may be called uncertain knowledge, or one’s
best guess about something. Many beliefs do not compel action; they are merely opinions
concerning things. For example, even though he attends the University of Iowa,
a student may believe that Ohio State University will win the conference
football championship. This is purely an intellectual conclusion; no action is
taken to support the belief. Such a person may even cheer against the team he
believes will win. Faith, in contrast to belief, is a conviction which leads to
action. And actions mirror quite accurately the character and strength of one’s
faith. (“Faith: Values and Limitations,” in ibid., 180-82)
