Alma 32:21 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.
There's a weird semantics issue involving faith and doubt. Some have said that faith and doubt cannot exist at the same time, but the way I see it, faith cannot exist unless there is also room for doubt. When I roll a die, I can't be certain what result I'm going to get. That's the whole point of rolling a die. Sure, God could tell me that I'm going to get a particular result, but that doesn't mean that I know that I'm going to get that result. If I knew it, without a shadow of a doubt, then it wouldn't really be faith; it would be knowledge. Conversely, if I don't have a perfect knowledge of what result I'll get, that makes room for both doubt and faith. I can have faith that I'll get the result that God said I'd get, but unless I acknowledge the possibility of getting a different result, that's more like knowledge than it is like faith. If I know that God will give me the result He promised, I can't have faith that He will.
I believe that it's important to have faith, but to that end, I believe it's important to acknowledge that there is also room for doubt.
No comments:
Post a Comment