President and Sister Clark, colleagues and students, it came as a startling surprise when I received the invitation to speak at this devotional. I was truly humbled and am further humbled as I stand before you today. I pray that our collective attitude and preparation may invite the Holy Spirit to teach each of us who participates today.
Immediately upon accepting this assignment, my mind raced with thoughts of what I would discuss, as no topic was assigned. Not knowing what I would talk about was quite disconcerting to me. So I solicited input from some of my students. Their suggestions included: dealing with distractions, humility, unity, temple preparation, music, honesty, tolerance, and how to maintain individuality within a group, among others--all very worthy subjects. Ultimately it was inspiration that led me to my topic. One morning I awoke earlier than usual, before my alarm clock sounded. The thought came into my mind, not audibly, but as words that were silently spoken directly into my mind, "Talk about what you know."
What I know--with regard to the Gospel, of course. What I know. I was absolutely certain that these words were spoken to me as a revelation, as an answer to my prayers about my topic for this devotional address, but to be honest, I was not exactly sure what they meant.
I've struggled at times throughout my adult life with the connotation of the word know, especially as we use it to share our testimonies of Jesus Christ and the restored gospel. When we say we know something is real or true, what do we really mean? What does it mean to know? How do knowledge and belief differ? How do we gain knowledge? These are questions that people have wrestled with for centuries. Plato's definition of knowledge as "justified true belief" was the product of one of the earliest secular attempts to understand the nature of knowledge. The pursuit of understanding the nature of knowledge eventually grew into its own branch of philosophy, known as epistemology.
Although a thorough look at the history of epistemology would be fascinating, and even uplifting, our weekly devotionals are times of worship. Hence, appropriate to the occasion, today let us examine knowledge through the lens of the gospel, taking as our texts the words of prophets and personal experience to address the concept and acquisition of knowledge, particularly knowledge of the divinity of our Father in Heaven, of our Savior Jesus Christ, and all attendant aspects of their existence. I hope to illustrate the roles of faith, belief, and the Holy Ghost in our pursuit of gospel knowledge.
In our own scriptural canon there exists a distinction between knowledge and belief. In the thirteenth and fourteenth verses of Doctrine and Covenants Section forty-six, it says:
To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.
To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful. (Emphasis added.) [1]
These verses suggest that both belief and knowledge are gifts from God. They also suggest that those blessed with belief must exercise faith. Knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is a gift of the Holy Ghost, and differs from belief.
Let's look at these teachings in more detail.
First we will discuss faith and belief, and then knowledge, as it pertains to knowing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Elder John K. Carmack provides a masterful discussion on the nature of faith. I quote:
"What is faith? Like a nugget of pure and precious gold ore, faith has many surfaces and defies a one-dimensional definition." The Apostle Paul's statement that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (JST, Heb. 11:1) is a classic statement where we can begin our dig. Often in the scriptures, faith seems almost to be a synonym for belief, albeit a strong belief that leads to righteous living and action.Yet faith is based in the truth, whereas belief alone may be in what is true or false. (Emphasis added.) [2]
Alma also teaches this important principle in his landmark lecture on faith and belief in the thirty-second chapter of Alma. In verse twenty-one, he teaches:
And now as I said concerning faith--faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.[3]
We are familiar with Alma's sermon. In order to determine if the things that we hope for are true, we must "arouse our faculties to an experiment upon the word [of the Lord, as found in the scriptures, or in the testimonies of the living prophets and apostles], and exercise a particle of faith." Alma encourages us that "even if [we] can no more than desire to believe, [to] let this desire work in [us], even until [we] believe in a manner that [we] can give place for a portion of [the word of God]."
Elder Carmack continues on this topic:
Achieving the gift of a strong belief is one aspect of faith. The belief part of faith may start as merely a desire to believe but can grow ‘brighter and brighter until the perfect day' (D&C 50:24). Then one could say about the person whose belief has progressed to perfection, ‘your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know' (Alma 32:34).[4]
Elder Carmack also teaches that even when our belief is perfected through faith into knowledge, there is yet another aspect of faith, the poweraspect, which can remain active even after belief has progressed to knowledge. "Such faith," taught Elder Carmack, "is a great tool to do the Lord's work. Men and women can grow in spirituality to the point that they can do mighty things in the cause of the Lord, and when they do them, they operate by the power of faith."
The scriptures are replete with illustrations of such faith. One of my favorites, and certainly one of the most exciting, is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of First Samuel in the Old Testament, where the Israelites and the Philistines faced each other in battle across the valley of Elah. The Philistine army produced the infamous nine-foot giant Goliath, who taunted the Israelites, bellowing:
... choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us. And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid.[5]
For forty days the two armies battled and the giant continued to intimidate the armies of Saul, until one day when the young David was delivering provisions to his brothers at the front lines and happened to witness firsthand the heckling of this obstreperous barbarian. While the tone of David's inquiries regarding the giant foreshadow the hubris of his later career, his faith in God, in this situation, is nonetheless remarkable:
And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying, What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God? [6]
David's older brother overheard his inquiries and was angry with him for not watching the family's sheep and for sneaking to the front lines to glimpse the battle. Word of David and his curiosity regarding Goliath reached Saul, who then summoned the boy. David said to Saul:
...Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine. And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father's sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God. David said moreover, The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee. [7]
David, unarmored and armed with only a sling and five smooth stones, proceeded to face the heavily armored Goliath, who challenged David, saying:
Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field. [8]
David's response to this mortal threat further illustrates the faith he had in his Father in Heaven:
...Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands.[9]
We know how the story ends. David's faith in his God moved him to action, the stone from his sling striking the Philistine with such force that it sunk into his forehead, knocking him to the ground. Thereupon David finished the job by slaying Goliath with his own sword.
It is unlikely that many, or any, of us will be required to demonstrate our faith in such a harrowing and dramatic way. Nevertheless, David's actions in this situation provide a model for us as we seek to exercise faith. David, as a youth, believed that the Lord was aware of him as an individual and had protected him from perils he faced previously in his life. He believed that it was the Lord who blessed him to overcome the attacking lion and bear. These experiences strengthened his faith in the Lord. Past blessings produced present confidence that the Lord would again bless in the future. When he was preparing to face Goliath in mortal combat, a seemingly insurmountable, impossible task, it was prior experiences of his youth that allowed him to exercise faith to represent the army of Israel in the one-on-one bout with Goliath.
I doubt that many of you have had to defend a flock of sheep from a lion or a bear, as David did, but I am certain that each of you has had an experience, or multiple experiences similar to David's--experiences that have led you to believe in your Father in Heaven, and in his son Jesus Christ. These experiences can become powerful agents in the development of your faith. And faith, as we have witnessed in this story of David and Goliath, can be a powerful principle of action.
I joined the Church as a convert in 1976, just a few days after my ninth birthday. I was baptized on the same day as my parents. Together my mom, dad, younger sister and I made the transition from being non-attending Presbyterians to active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And what a transition it was! Sundays, in the 1970s, consisted of at least two trips to the church-one for Sunday school and one for Sacrament meeting. And Primary was held after school on a weekday! While I am sure I learned quickly, I still remember feeling awkward when I didn't know the answers even to the easy questions in Primary. It was not until I had children of my own that I realized how much gospel learning could take place in the first eight or nine years of a child's life.
Perhaps due to my late start, I've often felt somewhat less spiritually mature than many of my LDS peers. Nevertheless, like David of the Old Testament, I had experiences in my youth that to me, particularly in hindsight, have allowed me to believe in a loving Heavenly Father who knows me personally.
I am certain that if each of us thinks carefully enough, we can recall an experience in which we felt--even knew--that Father in Heaven was cognizant of us as an individual.
One of the more powerful such experiences of my youth occurred in late August or early September of 1985, just a few days before I was to begin my freshman year at BYU. I had worked hard to fit my schedule together--you know how tricky it can be to get into each of the classes you need at the times you need them. Having completed this tedious task, I don't know why I was still perusing the course schedule. Nevertheless I still vividly remember sitting at the kitchen table in my parents' home, flipping through the pages, when my eyes landed on the bold-type word "Chinese"--the catalog heading for the Chinese courses offered that semester. At that moment I experienced a feeling quite unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It was almost as if I'd been shocked by some unseen electrical source--not a painful shock, but clearly some sort of physical feeling. Not simply an idea or brainstorm or a thought popping into my head. I knew--I knew--at that very instant that I must study Chinese.
Prior to this profound impression to study Chinese, I had only a small handful of remote recollections of even hearing references to China. The first was a memory of a radio news broadcast announcing the death of Mao Zedong, leader of the People's Republic of China. That would have been in September of 1976, when I was eight years old. I remember a high school classmate writing a report on Genghis Khan, whose progeny overthrew the Chinese empire in the 12th century. And finally, I remember overhearing a friend of another classmate talking about a trip to China he and his brother planned to make after they graduated. That's it. So this crazy compelling feeling to study Chinese was really "out of the blue."
Lacking confidence, I made my way to the office of Professor Gary Williams, then chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at BYU. Professor Williams was patient with my naïve inquiries and encouraged me to sign up for Chinese 101.
My life has been richly blessed because of my decision to follow the promptings I felt to take that first Chinese class. I was better prepared to serve the Lord in Taiwan, where I was called as a missionary a year after taking that first Chinese class--to serve under Mission President Gary Williams, coincidentally! Upon completing my mission I taught Mandarin in the MTC. And there are many other experiences that resulted from that decision to register for Chinese 101. I would not likely be a professor of Chinese at BYU-Idaho today had I not followed that initial impression.
In hindsight, I recognize that it was my belief and my faith that a loving Heavenly Father had spoken to me that gave me the courage to follow the inspiration to begin studying Chinese. But from where did that feeling come? And why was it so powerful to cause me to take such seemingly baseless action?
As Latter-day Saints, we believe that the Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead, also composed of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Unlike Father in Heaven and our Savior, the Holy Ghost does not have a body of flesh and bone.
In 1839, the Prophet Joseph Smith met with then President of the United States, Martin Van Buren. The account in the History of the Churchreads, "In our interview with the President, he interrogated us wherein we differed in our religion from the other religions of the day. Brother Joseph said we differed in mode of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands. We considered that all other considerations were contained in the gift of the Holy Ghost."[10]
One of the missions of the Holy Ghost is to inspire.[11]
Inspiration from the Holy Ghost is open to all people. The First Presidency has taught that
the great religious leaders of the world such as Mohammed, Confucius, and the Reformers, as well as philosophers including Socrates, Plato, and others, received a portion of God's light. Moral truths were given to them by God to enlighten whole nations and to bring a higher level of understanding to individuals. ... We believe that God has given and will give to all peoples sufficient knowledge to help them on their way to eternal salvation.[12]
Though all are entitled to feel the influence of the Holy Ghost, not all recognize it. Learning to recognize the influence of the Holy Ghost, and furthermore to purify our lives to be worthy of such influence, is imperative if we are to avail ourselves of inspiration and revelation graciously given us by God. Elder James E. Talmage wrote eloquently on this topic:
Subtler, mightier, and more mysterious than any or all of the physical forces of nature are the powers that operate upon conscious organisms, the means by which the mind, the heart, the soul of man may be energized by spiritual forces. In our ignorance of the true nature of electricity we may speak of it as a fluid; and so by analogy the forces through which the mind is governed have been called spiritual fluids. The true nature of these manifestations of energy is unknown to us, for the elements of comparison and analogy, so necessary to our human reasoning, are wanting; nevertheless the effects are experienced by all.[13]
When we are baptized members of the Church, we have the opportunity to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, which entitles us to numerous precious blessings, not the least of which is revelation, yet another mission of the Holy Ghost. Elder Dallin H. Oaks has taught that one of the primary purposes of revelation is "testimony or witness of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ and that the gospel is true."[14] Such would be the gift of knowledge referred to in the forty-sixth section discussed previously.
So it seems that today, so far, I haven't yet told you what I know, but have rather taken you with me on a close reading of a scripture containing priceless counsel on belief, faith, and knowledge. I believe that the Lord gave us this inspired counsel because He knows that the degree of certainty we feel about various aspects of our understanding and testimonies of the Gospel will vary throughout our lives.
Just as the Holy Ghost can give us the gift of knowledge and testimony, so too can he inspire us in other experiences that strengthen our belief and our faith, allowing us to draw closer to our Father in Heaven by availing ourselves of the atoning and enabling power of the Atonement of his Son, Jesus Christ.
As Elder Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles has taught, "we don't know everything, but we know enough."[15]
I know, unequivocally, that the experience I had that impelled me to begin my study of Chinese nearly twenty-five years ago, was Heavenly Father informing me, through the power of the Holy Ghost, of a path I could choose that would bring many blessings into my life. Having followed that powerful prompting and made that decision, and personally experiencing its consequences, I have come to know with certainty that we are children of a loving Heavenly Father; that he communicates with us, that our life on Earth has purpose, and that these principles I have discussed today are true. Just as David recognized that it was the Lord who helped him to overpower the lion and bear, I too recognized the hand of deity in my life in the experience I shared today, as well as in many others. These have been a great strength to me throughout my life. Many of you have already had, and all can yet have, and have again and again, experiences that will strengthen your belief and give you courage to act in faith, just as David did when he recalled experiences from his youth that gave him courage to fight Goliath. I pray that we will not become mired in concern over the depth of our knowledge, if we find it lacking; that we will remember that both knowledge and belief are gifts from God. And that those who remain faithful in their belief can have eternal life.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes:
[1] D&C 46:13-14
[2] John K. Carmack, "Lord, Increase Our Faith," Ensign, March 2002
[3] Alma 32: 21
[4] John K. Carmack, "Lord, Increase Our Faith," Ensign, March 2002
[5] 1 Samuel 17:8-11
[6] 1 Samuel 17:26
[7] 1 Samuel 17:32-37
[8] 1 Samuel 17:44
[9] 1 Samuel 17:45-47
[10] History of the Church, 4:42 cited in James E. Faust, "Communion with the Holy Spirit," Ensign, March 2002
[11] Faust, "Communion with the Holy Spirit."
[12] "Statement of the First Presidency regarding God's Love for All Mankind," 15 Feb. 1978 as quoted in Faust, "Communion with the Holy Spirit"
[13] James E. Talmage, The Articles of Faith, 161-62.
[14] Dallin H. Oaks, "Eight Reasons for Revelation," New Era, December 1983
[15] Neil L. Andersen, "You Know Enough," Ensign, November 2009