Thursday, May 1, 2008

Faith as a Choice

Faith means so many things.  It is much more than a passive belief in something (and believe me, I will discuss this further).  It is also more than what our actions show (although that would be a pretty good indicator).

I want to discuss faith, but in particular an understanding of faith that has helped me believe.  When I say believe, I mean in everything.  From an omnipotent creator, to Urim and Thumim.
I haven't always believed.

I feel like others could benefit from this understanding of faith.

And what do I have to say about faith?

In the end, faith is a choice.  

Spiritual manifestations, however significant, remain in the realm of the spiritual.  It is our desire to give credence to those impressions that cause us to act, or make choices in the physical world.  This desire is what faith is, and why choice is a fundamental characteristic of faith.

Faith is both a mental affirmation of things unseen, but felt, as well as the actions and choices that follow such belief.  The bridge that connects the two is choice.  Attitude is important, and what we make of what we see, hear, and feel in the world around us is up to us.  If the Holy Ghost whispers to us, we still must decide whether we like what we are hearing.  This was important for me as I gained a belief in God.  I learned that I couldn't with any physical certainty know if God was real or not.  I had certainly felt things that suggested He was there, but until I realized that I could - that I had to - choose to believe did belief come.  I had to say to myself, "I want God to be real, I want to live in a universe where God is real."  At that point, faith came.

I have to note that that desire to believe wasn't desire alone, but rather a culmination of distinct spiritual impressions and resulting thought.  There was something external,
but it meant nothing to me until I wanted and chose to believe.

For church members, too often we expect to know something's truth absolutely, because we have been promised that the Spirit of God will make it known unto us.  We indeed can know, but I believe that without faith there is no bridge between spiritual confirmation and practical knowledge.  This means that even a clear spiritual impression requires a certain amount of blind trust - if you will - to be acted upon.

This might seem perfectly correct to many, but there are some who concern me.  It seems like some people I have met are held back by a desire to absolutely know the truth of something.  Many have convinced themselves that they know something that they don't know.

Is it bad for a person to feel like they know something for a certainty that they have discerned spiritually?  Absolutely not.  My concern is for those who have not exercised faith, and whose certain knowledge is susceptible to doubt.

We can know things that are spiritual as certainly as we know things that are physical.  It is a personal matter, but faith must be part of the equation.  What I mean is that until we accept that our spiritual knowledge has been made certain because we have made the choices - have had the faith - to believe it, we don't have true spiritual knowledge.

For lack of a better way of describing this, I suppose I mean to say that spiritual knowledge must be accompanied by a certain amount of uncertainty.  If it were not so, we could not exercise faith, and then we would not be making the sort of choices we need to be making to demonstrate our true character.

If a person has spiritual knowledge, but cannot identify a time in which faith was exercised so that that knowledge might become certain in that person's life, then perhaps that knowledge isn't spiritual.

Maybe it came from that person's upbringing.  Maybe the person believes because they feel obligated to believe so.  Maybe strong emotions have been mistaken as spiritual evidence.  

My purpose is only to discuss the importance of faith as a bridge to unite our temporal lives with our spiritual lives.  Specifically, that faith is a choice, and that we must make choices about what we want to believe and how we view the world around us.  We cannot expect someone else to know that God is there on our behalf.  

More specifically, we can choose.  When it comes to belief, we can be active, and given the right promptings, make the choice to believe.