YWValues: Faith

As a teenager, I did not earn my Young Women's program medallion because the tasks required were not meaningful or helpful to me. But I do still have the (new) YW theme memorized, including the list of values. And I still believe in them. These are core values of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are: Faith, Divine Nature, Individual Worth, Knowledge, Choice and Accountability, Good works, Integrity, and Virtue. I don't know how these values are taught anymore, since I've been in Relief Society for nearly twenty years (probably taught with lots of kitch from Deseret Book - because nothing says "meaningful" like commercialism).

But the values themselves are still in my thoughts, and are relevant to cultural concerns every day.

Our Sacrament Meeting speakers today gave some wonderful thoughts on Faith. Because I was in the choir, I didn't get a program and so I don't know the sister's name, but her words touched me deeply. She pointed out that having faith is a choice.

I can remember when I chose faith. I still do on a regular basis, but I can remember when the pressures around me forced me to make a decision, and my experience has taught me a few things about the implications of making that choice consciously.

Having a choice means looking at at least two opposing options. At its simplest, this choice is between faith [functioning before proof] and skepticism [requiring proof before action], although socially there are often shades between those two poles. You can be a social churchgoer, for instance, without buying into religious thought. Or you can be agnostic, which means admitting the possibility that some religious concepts function, but not committing yourself to religious behaviors or adhering to a single organization.

Choosing faith does not mean blind belief in everything, despite television's horrifying depictions of "believers." Choosing faith can be as specific as saying a prayer. It can be simply agreeing to test a new religious concept you've learned, or that somebody suggested. Choosing faith means admitting and acting on the possibility that skeptics aren't always right. But eventually, it means standing up and being counted. It means letting your name be written down in the book.

Religious experiments are different than science experiments, in that in order to see results, you have to act first as if it has already been proven to you. Like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: you have to take the step first to find that the earth has appeared beneath you.

In my experiments since I finally consciously chose faith, only faith in Jesus Christ holds up. If I were Indiana Jones, after two thousand years that bridge would have worn away into nothing, and I would have stepped off into empty air and died, impaled on a stalagmite. Everything and everyone (because people are people) else eventually disappointed me. Especially me. I disappointed myself. Still do. Everything else falters or fails, like a fad diet. Every ideology, even science will break your heart (when you find someone has falsified a study, or exaggerated their results). I believe in science as a truth-seeking ideal, and respect scientific process. I believe science. But we're all just people.

Faith in Jesus Christ, in his Atonement, his life and teachings, the Resurrection, the Plan, the Fall, the Restoration of the gospel and organization of Christ's church in this dispensation (just a bit longer than an era but not as long as a geological epoch), the translation of the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, and the power of a personal relationship with the Savior are the only things that I have tested, and found they bear fruit - they hold my (not inconsiderable) weight. Always. So far. And not just that: this is the faith that makes miracles possible. It bears impossible fruit like a mango sprouting from a glacier.

Faith in Christ is the faith I chose twenty(ish) years ago. I looked down the road at the life of skepticism, and a life of faith, and I had the courage to take this risk and to test the Word. I have revisited that decision often, but I have never regretted it.