A Belief in Things Unseen
I was brought up as a member of the Church. I learned about the gospel by attending Sunday School classes, listening to my parent’s teachings, and spending time with the youth of my ward.
One by one, most of the kids I grew up with stopped attending Church. I stayed, mostly because of the faith and testimonies of my leaders and parents. I had yet to develop my own testimony.
As we go through mortal life, we often need to defend and explain who we are, and why we are members of the Church. I experienced this many times as a child, moving from one school to the next, and then later as a freelance design engineer moving from one contract to another. Many of these experiences were not pleasant, with people challenging my beliefs in public and suggesting I was crazy to believe such things. They would invite me to join them at a pub so I could be the source of entertainment, as they challenged my beliefs one by one, and expressed amusement at my answers as they pulled apart my faith.
I found myself looking for facts and proof to satisfy my desire to believe; evidence that I could find that would allow my critical mind to continue believing in the Church, which so many of my old friends had left and new work colleagues made fun of. But, for every piece of evidence I found, there was always another negative response to balance the scales.
One summer’s day, whilst sitting outside having lunch with some work colleagues, the beginning of a new insight came. I was asked why I always had a soft drink with my meal, rather than a beer like the rest of the group. I answered that it was a life choice, hoping that would suffice. But on this occasion, my interrogator would not let the matter go. The conversation continued, and it wasn’t long before I was being asked questions about what I believed as a member of the Church. My contract was coming to an end that week, so I took confidence that I could weather the inevitable storm of questions for a few more days. I gave them deep meaningful answers to all the questions they asked.
While giving an answer, the penny dropped for me. All my colleagues wanted empirical evidence to be able to believe in God, and I was offering all the evidence I had learned, to help convince them I was right—but it wasn’t enough. I then bore my testimony about what I believed, but that wasn’t enough for them either. I pointed out that proof and faith are on opposite sides of a scale. If you are looking for proof, you are not exercising faith. If you are exercising faith, you don’t necessarily need proof. I realised that if you want to look for reasons to prove or disprove your belief in the gospel, you will find both, but neither one will build your faith. The more proof I found that challenged my belief in the gospel, the more faith I would require to continue believing it is true. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11).
The questions people have asked me about my beliefs have remained with me; I still do not have the answers for some of them. But if I had all the answers, I wouldn’t need faith.
I tell people that they cannot prove the existence of God with questions. If they could, there would be no need to have faith; we would have knowledge instead. There would be no need for the veil or this earthly challenge; it would all have to end. Faith and knowledge (or proof) are opposite sides of the same coin. You can have them both in your pocket, but you can only look at one side of the coin at a time.
Faith is a belief in things unseen. My experience has taught me that faith cannot be based in fact. So, I encourage all to stop looking to prove or disprove the existence of God and instead focus on faith!