Faith and Certainty

President Linda K. Burton spoke of "certain women," meaning women who were certain in their testimonies of Jesus Christ and His gospel. However, I'm not sure if such certainty is possible, seeing as the idea of certainty seems to conflict with the idea of faith. Given that the existence and divinity of Jesus Christ is a matter of fact rather than opinion, it is theoretically possible for a person to have a certain knowledge concerning that fact, but I'm not sure if anyone on Earth (except perhaps a select few) would be granted the opportunity to gain that knowledge. After all, God does expect and require the vast majority of us to develop and exercise faith. Yet, if our faith grows strong enough, it may become much like certainty in that we can act on our faith as though it was actual certainty. We may not know what will happen if we follow the Gospel plan, but we can be certain that it will turn out well, and, apparently, some people are. Those people make good role-models, even if their "certainty" is really just very strong faith.

The word "certain" has many definitions, and perhaps it would be wise for us to not get those definitions mixed up. There is a certainty that concerns the absolute knowledge of objective facts and there is a certainty that stems from incredible faith. Few people on Earth right now have an absolute certainty of Jesus' existence and divinity, but many people have certain faith in Him, and that's the kind of certainty we should strive for. We're not striving for a certainty based on knowledge; we're striving for a certainty based on faith.