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I sometimes read that faith is irrational.\u00a0 And sometimes I even hear that said by committed Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n
I strongly disagree.<\/p>\n
I readily concede that faith goes beyond the evidence and that, sometimes, it will even seem to go, or will really<\/em> go, against<\/em> at least some<\/em> of the evidence.\u00a0 I\u2019ve long appreciated this quotation from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr:\u00a0 \u201cFaith is taking the first step, even when you don\u2019t see the whole staircase.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In the long term, though, I believe that a solidly-grounded faith will accord with the relevant evidence.\u00a0 It will be consistent with that evidence.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not talking merely about eschatological confirmation, in the life to come.<\/p>\n Permit me to illustrate what I mean by talking about \u201ctrust,\u201d or even perhaps about \u201cconfidence,\u201d which I regard as essentially the same thing as \u201cfaith.\u201d\u00a0 When we trust somebody, we typically do so for reasons<\/em>.\u00a0 Not simply whimsically or irrationally.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t<\/em> do it because we have rock-solid knowledge<\/em>.\u00a0 We can\u2019t usually peer into the future to see for certain what will happen, but we feel confident that we know.<\/p>\n When, sending her out on her first solo errand to pick up groceries, you toss the keys to your car to your sixteen-year-old daughter who has just received her license to drive, you can\u2019t be absolutely certain that she won\u2019t wreck it.\u00a0 However, based on your years of experience with her (and perhaps on your initially white-knuckled times in the passenger seat when she had her first learner\u2019s permit), you trust her to be responsible and to drive carefully.<\/p>\n When you invest a substantial chunk of your life\u2019s savings in the Acme Megahuge Digital Widget Corporation, you can\u2019t be certain that the price of its shares won\u2019t take a tumble.\u00a0 But, if you\u2019re a responsible and even minimally prudent investor, you\u2019ve looked into the company a bit.\u00a0 You\u2019ve read about its past performance, and you\u2019ve researched its new Model 666 Laser-Enhanced Digital Widget and Toothbrush.\u00a0 You\u2019re not just gambling, at random.\u00a0 You have reasons for your confidence that the stock of AMDWC will perform well.<\/p>\n When you accept Prince Charming\u2019s offer of marriage, you don\u2019t do so blindly.\u00a0 He might, it\u2019s true, eventually turn out to be a philanderer or a poor provider.\u00a0 He might someday become abusive.\u00a0 You can\u2019t know for certain that that will never happen.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve spent time together.\u00a0 You\u2019ve watched him and come to know him.\u00a0 You have a really good sense (though admittedly not an infallible one) about who he really is, how he acts in various situations, what kind of character he possesses, how he responds to stress and interacts with children and with your family.\u00a0 You have grounds for trusting him.<\/p>\n Parenthetically:\u00a0 My wife sometimes points out in conversation with others that it suddenly hit her, just a few weeks after our marriage, that she didn\u2019t actually know me all that well.\u00a0 And, now, here she was living with me in Cairo, Egypt, thousands of miles from family and friends.\u00a0 We hadn\u2019t dated all that many times before we became engaged, and for six months of our engagement I had been off in Jerusalem as a student before I swooped back through the United States to marry her and take her back with me to the Middle East, to a huge and very foreign northeast African city where we knew virtually nobody.\u00a0 It was a (mercifully very) brief crisis of faith.\u00a0 What on earth had she done?\u00a0 Fortunately, thus far I haven\u2019t turned into a serial adulterer or a wife beater, and I think that, under the right circumstances \u2014 perhaps involving the judicious use of sedatives \u2014 she might acknowledge that our decades together have gone reasonably well.\u00a0 But she was absolutely correct, for those few moments of concern in Cairo, to realize that, well, she didn\u2019t know for absolutely certain that her faith in me, which took her to the temple with me on that fateful day, was well-placed.<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s another observation about faith considered as trust or confidence.\u00a0 The longer our experience with the person in whom we\u2019ve placed our faith, the more opportunities we have to test it.\u00a0 And if our confidence or trust is repaid, we come to have ever more solid grounds for it.\u00a0 The more times sixteen-year-old Petunia Jane takes out your car, returning safely from ever longer drives, the more confident you are when you hand her the keys.\u00a0 The longer that your investment in the Acme Megahuge Digital Widget Corporation continues to grow in value, the more reason you have to be satisfied with your purchase of AMDWC stock.\u00a0 The more Prince Charming proves himself kind, self-sacrificing, honorable, sober, and a good husband and father, the more confident you are that you made the right decision in rejecting the advances of his rival, the handsome hunter Gaston LeGume.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m suggesting here is that religious faith isn\u2019t merely assent to a list of propositions \u2014 though such assent is definitely a part of most professions of faith.\u00a0 It is also, and I think at least as importantly, a committed confidence in a Person and in a relationship to that Person, which will likely entail something that might be termed a \u201clifestyle.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes, that relationship will run into problems.\u00a0 (Sometimes, share prices in AMDWC will fall, and sometimes they will decline for more than a day or two.\u00a0 Petunia Jane may well have a fender-bender.\u00a0 Prince Charming may sometimes be grumpy, or forget your anniversary, or leave dirty socks in the living room, or spend a little more time than he should out drinking root beer and playing tic tac toe with the boys from his macram\u00e9 factory.)\u00a0 Perhaps your prayers haven\u2019t been answered how and when you wanted them to be.\u00a0 Perhaps you\u2019ve run into historical or ecclesiastical problems.\u00a0 If your confidence was well placed, though, such things will resolve themselves.<\/p>\n How long, though, to hold out for such resolution?\u00a0 That is the question.\u00a0 And there is no neat answer to be had.\u00a0 Perhaps, though, the testimonies of others, people who have been through your trials, or analogous trials, and nevertheless found<\/em> resolution, can sustain and strengthen you.\u00a0 And never fail to go back and recall the basis for your faith in the first place.\u00a0 You know<\/em> Petunia Jane.\u00a0 You have grounds<\/em> for trusting her.\u00a0 You had reasons<\/em> for your decision to invest in Acme Megahuge.\u00a0 You have solid experiences with Prince Charming, of his basic decency and of his love for you.\u00a0 There may come a time for withholding the keys from your daughter, selling your shares of AMDWC, or even divorcing Prince Charming.\u00a0 But don\u2019t do it lightly, on a whim.\u00a0 Those relationships weren\u2019t built<\/em> on a whim, lightly.<\/p>\n