(The following is written from a perspective heavily influenced by my Latter-day Saint upbringing, but I believe that it is applicable to people of all religious perspectives. I hope you find it useful.)
How do you come to know whether or not your opinion is actually true?
It’s a fair question, and if you ask some people, the answer is that you don’t. Philosophers have all sorts have concluded that uncertainty is the natural state of things, and that the best we can do is to shrink that uncertainty but never destroy it. (This little comic from Existential Comics, A Brief History of Philosophical Skepticism, gives a silly but still fair introduction to the many ways in which people have come to be uncertain.) Logic and the scientific method work well, but never perfectly.
Other people do not agree with this, and say that we do have a sure way of knowing what is true and what isn’t. They say that we can tap into the divine and receive pure truth. I quote from Lawrence Corbridge’s speech, Stand Forever:
How can we know the answers? There are different methods of learning, including the scientific, analytical, academic, and divine methods. The divine method of learning incorporates elements of the other three but ultimately trumps everything else by tapping into the powers of heaven.
Lawrence Corbridge, “Stand Forever”, January 22, 2019
He goes on to explain the gift of the Holy Ghost, which he says is the power by which we “may know the truth of all things”, quoting from the Book of Mormon, specifically Moroni 10:5. The tenth chapter of Moroni is worth focusing on, as it describes the divine method, with special emphasis on using the divine method to confirm the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Let’s take a look at the relevant verses:
Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts.
And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Moroni 10:3-4
So, after studying, focus on God and open your mind to God, having full confidence that God will give you an answer and preparing yourself to act on God’s word, and God will reveal the truth to you. This is said to work for all things, and the church teaches that this is the only way to know the mysteries of God.
But what if you practiced this method and you got a wrong answer?
Before I continue, I want to emphasize that the LDS church teaches the importance of teaching by the Spirit. Whenever you teach the principles of God, you need to do so with the Spirit’s direction, “and if ye receive not the Spirit ye shall not teach.” (D&C 42:14) You are supposed to pray for and carefully follow God’s guidance, and if you do, God will guide you in your teaching so that you teach what is true. With that in mind, let’s look at some instances where some prominent church leaders didn’t seem to get God’s guidance while speaking.
Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 10, p. 110
[D]o not ever let that wicked virus get into your systems that brotherhood either permits or entitles you to mix races which are inconsistent. Biologically, it is wrong; spiritually, it is wrong.
J. Reuben Clark, Plain Talk to Girls, June 8, 1946, reprinted in the August 1946 issue of the Improvement Era
We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.
Joseph Fielding Smith, stake conference talk, May 14,1961
The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 11, p. 269
They set out to declare God’s truth and they got it wrong. How did this happen? Did they forget to study and pray? Did they just decide not to listen to the Spirit? I think that’s highly unlikely. It is more probable that these men were actually trying their best to listen to God and make known God’s truths, and that they spoke these words with full confidence that God was guiding them. They did their best, and they got it wrong. It is entirely reasonable to conclude that they got bad direction that felt like good direction. How, then, are we supposed to trust the divine method, when people who use the divine method come up with wrong answers?
It gets worse. Thus far, I have only focused on LDS members practicing the divine method. Latter-day Saints are far from the only ones who practice this method. Listen to people of other faiths and you’ll soon see that they claim to be receiving knowledge by this method, and what they’re receiving doesn’t match up with what Latter-day Saints are receiving.
Consider this advice from a convert to Islam:
May I suggest to the seeker of truth do the following NINE STEPS to purification of the mind:
1. Clean their mind, their heart and their soul real good. 2. Clear away all the prejudices and biases. 3. Read a good translation of the meaning of the Holy Quran in a language that they can understand best. 4. Take some time. 5. Read and reflect. 6. Think and pray. 7. And keep on asking the One who created you in the first place, to guide you to the truth. 8. Keep this up for a few months. And be regular in it. 9. Above all, do not let others who are poisoned in their thinking influence you while you are in this state of “rebirth of the soul.”The rest is between you and the Almighty Lord of the Universe. If you truly love Him, then He already Knows it and He will deal with each of us according to our hearts.
Yusuf Estes, A Christian Minister’s Conversion to Islam
Yusuf followed his own advice and came to the conclusion that the Quran is God’s word. He’s not alone in this experience. Ask around and you’ll find plenty of people testifying that God told them to be Muslims. While you’re visiting that blog I just linked to, you might also check out the many testimonies of Catholics, or Baha’i, or Hindus. Lots of people are opening their hearts and minds to God and getting responses, but their responses aren’t consistent.
My own experiences with the Spirit have been inconsistent. I have received confirmation that the LDS church was true, and confirmation that the LDS church was false. They can’t both be right. So which one is it? What’s going on here?
Here’s what I think is going on: when people are opening their hearts and minds to God, they’re getting certainty in response, but not necessarily truth. Study and prayer will cause you to feel that something is right, but that feeling is independent of whether or not that thing is actually right.
When the various LDS prophets and apostles prayed for guidance, they got certainty – certainty, that is, that what they were going to say was right. What they didn’t get was actual revelation. When Yusuf Estes prayed to know God’s truth, he got certainty that the Quran is the word of God, but he didn’t get an actual message from heaven. When you or I pray and we feel that burning in our bosom in response, we’re getting certainty, but we’re not necessarily getting truth.
This is consistent with my own experiences. I’ve had several profound moments of feeling a divine presence in my life, but for now I’ll focus on just two of them.
The first was during my mission. I had been struggling for months with not much to show for my efforts. I was depressed and starting to seriously doubt. After several weeks of heartfelt prayer and diligent but fruitless tracting efforts, I attended an all-mission conference, in which a fellow missionary sang Sally DeFord’s “I Have Not Seen, Yet I Believe”, and it hit me hard. I wept and shook, and I felt a total certainty that I was doing the Lord’s work, and that I just needed to keep going.
The second was just a few years ago. I had read the CES Letter, and I was reeling from trying to process it. It made a case against the church that my rational mind could not ignore. The evidence against the church was too sound to ignore. But what was I going to do about it? What would happen if I left the church? And were my own spiritual experiences really as dubious as the letter implied they were? In the midst of all this serious doubting, I said this prayer: “If the Mormon church is true, I want to believe that it is true. If the Mormon church is not true, I want to believe that it is not true.” Just after saying that, I felt total peace, and I was sure that the church was not true, and I was ready to live like it wasn’t true, no matter the risks and costs.
So what’s going on here? I think that in both instances, I was craving certainty, and I got what I wanted in response to prayer, because that’s what humble prayer and faithful listening gets you. What I did not get was truth, because that’s not how it works. The divine method can give you strength to act on your beliefs, but it cannot give you actual knowledge.
I know that this will be hard to accept for many of you, but I urge you to listen. Listen to people who do not share your faith, hear their certainty that what they believe is true, and think about what that means for you. Consider the many testimonies in videos like this one, and realize that their experiences are just as profound as yours. Realize that they have had visions and revelations and mighty changes of heart, and yet they have come to conclusions that simply cannot match with yours.
You have prayed, and you have received certainty, but certainty without knowledge is dangerous. If you are certain that you’ve locked all your doors behind you, but they are in fact unlocked, then you will leave your house vulnerable to thieves, and you may not find out until it’s too late to protect your property. If you are certain that your gas tank is full, but it is not, you may find yourself stranded far from a gas station, unable to drive anywhere. If you want to make good decisions, you have to use methods that produce actual knowledge, and only then seek certainty. Certainty with knowledge is a good thing, but you have to seek knowledge first, and you have to be ready to change your mind when presented with sound evidence.
Voltaire said “Le doute n’est pas un état bien agréable, mais l’assurance est un état ridicule.” (Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.) I hope that you will have the courage to live with doubt, even when it is painful, and not retreat to the false certainty of spiritual experiences.
Lodo the Bear 