Knowing God vs. believing ideas about Him

The Prophet Joseph Smith once declared, “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject.” This profound statement captures the core difference between knowing about God and truly knowing Him. When we view truth as a divine person instead of a set of abstract ideas, this also changes how we think about testimony. Our personal testimonies become centered on the Savior Jesus Christ, since He is the truth. From the person view of truth we “know” truth in the same way we might know a beloved friend. It is one thing to know about something, and quite another to know someone. A man knows his wife in a very different way than he knows the dates of the French Revolution.¶

In Spanish, for example, the words saber and conocer are both translated in English as the verb “to know” but mean different things. We would use saber when we know something is the case. We would use conocer when we know a person. A story from an old Latter-day Saint Young Women’s manual may illustrate the difference:¶

The first man in the story treated truth as a set of ideas (or doctrines). The second man, however, had spent his life developing a personal relationship with the Truth. He could do far more than testify that he knows that Christ is real—he could claim to know Christ. From this perspective, when we bear witness of God, we do far more than list doctrines that we claim to know are true. We share experiences we have had with God. We bear witness of His hand in our lives, of His goodness to us, of His saving grace and transforming love.¶

The primary agent in this transformation from knowing about God to knowing God is the Holy Ghost. We often talk about the Holy Ghost confirming to us that the doctrines of the Church are true. When we adopt a person view of truth, the Holy Ghost becomes more than a tutor who points us towards abstract truth. He represents and points us towards the divine personage of God. He serves as our Divine companion in lieu of God’s actual physical presence with us. Instead of saying, “The Holy Ghost has confirmed these doctrines to me,” we might say, “Through the Holy Ghost, I have come to know God.”¶

The distinction is important. When we seek a testimony, our goal is not to add to a list of doctrines that the Holy Ghost has told us are true. Rather, our goal is to develop a relationship with Divine persons. Sometimes, we treat prayer like a Magic 8-Ball, where we ask abstract questions looking for “yes,” “no,” or “maybe” answers. From this view, we feel doubt when our specific questions do not find answers. But from a person view of truth, our hope is to encounter God’s hand in our lives and to witness His grace working in our hearts and minds. Our prayers become less focused on confirming abstract doctrines and more on inviting God into the details of our families and communities.¶

Spiritual face-blindness

One of the signs that we have inadvertently embraced idea-truth is that we become over-reliant on rules—and the need for those rules to be without exception or complications. In other words, we might feel the need for everything to be systematic, and we find comfort in the feeling of certainty and the lack of ambiguity. Elder Robert M. Daines once told a story in General Conference:¶

When we have not formed a relationship with God (or drifted from that relationship), we can experience a similar form of spiritual “face-blindness,” where we too rely on rules for recognizing God in our lives. We then see scripture and the teachings of modern prophets not as an invitation into a covenant relationship, but rather as a set of rules that we must systematically (or perhaps even robotically) apply in our lives. Because of this, we can come to treat the Gospel almost as if it were a programming language.¶

Elder Daines taught that when we lose sight of our covenantal relationship with God, we can seek to reclaim that covenant relationship. He explained:¶

Elder Daines's experience perfectly illustrates the shift: he knew the idea that God loves everyone, but he did not yet know the Person whose love he could feel—so he settled for rules and formulas. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the commandments of God are unimportant—being in covenantal relationship with God requires that we be faithful to Him. The word for faith in the New Testament, pistis, implied “deference to one’s patron.” A covenantal relationship with God will necessarily entail obligations, responsibilities, and commitments. The difference is where we place our ultimate emphasis and trust: in God, or in a set of commandments or rules. Do we find comfort in God’s love and mercy, or in the rules themselves?¶

Faith and knowledge are not opposites

The idea view of truth separates faith from knowledge. Typically, knowledge is thought of as justified belief in truth (abstract ideas), while faith is seen as belief without justifying evidence. From this view, beliefs are only justified (that is, knowledge) when they are based on repeated, systematic observations of the natural or the social world. For example, famous philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris wrote, “Faith is simply unjustified belief in matters of ultimate concern. … However far you feel you have fled the parish, … you are likely to be the product of a culture that has elevated belief, in the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the hierarchy of human virtues.”²¶

The idea view of truth sometimes filters into how we make sense of our own faith. In fact, some Latter-day Saints argue that faith cannot exist without doubt. They reject the certainty with which many Latter-day Saints express their testimonies of the restored gospel. One Latter-day Saint online commenter (who goes by Brit) expressed this idea well: “Rather than doubt and faith being incompatible, I think that doubt is the required environment for faith to exist, for when there is no doubt (uncertainty), there is certainty (knowledge) and hence faith is no longer necessary.”³ Some Latter-day Saint thinkers have begun to use similar logic to valorize doubt and skepticism as a prerequisite to genuine faith. For example, one Latter-day Saint thinker has written: “Doubt isn’t a sign of weakness, but of courage. … It takes faith and courage to take steps when one cannot fully see the path ahead, and faith, in the true sense of the word (i.e., trust), can only be forged alongside doubt.”⁴¶

In contrast, the person view of truth shifts our understanding of doubt. If we use marriage as our example, spouses are always and ever knowing each other better every day. But it would make little sense to say that each must question or doubt the existence or faithfulness of the other in order to have faith in him or her or to be truly faithful. A man’s fidelity to his wife, after all, is not justified by empirical evidence but by his love for her and the commitments he has made with her. Furthermore, his trust in her fidelity does not require that he doubt her. Similarly, our fidelity to God is not justified by rational inference or empirical evidence either. As C. S. Lewis taught:¶

From the person view of truth, the opposite of faith is not knowledge but rather being unfaithful. It is disloyalty, or breaking the promises we have made to God, giving ourselves over to other gods and other priorities. When Nephi invited his brothers to exercise faith, he said: “Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him” (1 Ne. 7:12). The invitation Nephi extends is not to mere belief but to fidelity. We think it is the idea view of truth that traps us into defining faith as the opposite of certainty, something that requires doubt in order to be faith.¶

We justify our faithfulness through experience with God

James Faulconer noted, “In Hebrew, truth is understood to be ‘firmness, faithfulness, trust.’”⁶ According to Marvin Wilson, the ancient Hebrews knew “that God was always met in history, in the context of events, in the world of activity and doing. The person of faith was one who was so committed to God that, like Abraham, he ventured into the unknown with the full expectation that God would meet him there.”⁷ From this view, faith is not unjustified belief in a set of ideas, but a forward motion with full confidence that God will keep his promises. This helps us understand what Moroni meant when he said, “I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith” (Ether 12:6).¶

When we place our confidence in God, it is not a blind, unjustified confidence. Rather, it is a confidence born of experience. Prophets in scripture invite us to faithfulness by appealing to our memory. For example, Alma warned: “Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers? Yea, and have you sufficiently retained in remembrance [God’s] mercy and long-suffering towards them?” (Alma 5:6). Similarly, Captain Moroni asked: “Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies?” (Alma 60:20). Nephi also posed the following questions to his brothers:¶

This is why history was so important to the ancient Israelites—it was how they justified their confidence in God. Similarly, it is within our history of modern-day deliverances, miracles, and manifestations that we ground our loyalties to God. In addition, we have our own personal encounters with God that date from the moment we first started praying and experiencing God’s hand in our lives. We have the witnesses of our family, friends, neighbors, and prophets who have also felt the hand of God in their lives, who tell us that God deserves our confidence. Pressing forward with confidence in God is not an act of mere blind trust, nor is it without any viable evidence.¶

It is in this light that we strive to be faithful to God—not because we know about Him (as in, we possess empirical or rational knowledge of His characteristics or existence) but rather because we know Him (as in, we have actual relational experience with Him, both personally and collectively), even if we do not yet know Him perfectly. Belief is certainly important, but the term faith connotes much more than simply belief. It is a lifestyle of fidelity to God—we heed His voice and trust in His promises as we patiently live out our own.¶

Reframing Our Questions: Chapter 4

The first question focuses on whether a particular idea or teaching corresponds to or reflects some abstract doctrinal principle, presumably of the sort that constitute the basis of the gospel of Christ. In contrast, the second question focuses on coming to recognize the hand of God, and His active involvement in selecting, directing, and speaking through His chosen servants, rather than on the abstract truth or falsehood of certain ideas. Rather than seeking to know the truth of abstract ideas, the questioner is seeking to recognize the voice of God in our lives and in Church.¶

Our modern emphasis on idea-truth can often lead us to dwell endlessly on the intractable philosophical problems of epistemology (e.g., how exactly it is we can know what is true of the world?). Focusing on how we can come to know God as a person can radically shift our perspective and the nature of our relationship with God and others.¶

The first question also shows concern with achieving epistemological certainty (i.e., absolutely undoubtable knowledge) grounded in an abstract proposition (i.e., God exists). The answer to this question requires the use of logic, reason, or empirical forms of study to establish the objective certainty of the proposition that God exists. If such rational certainty cannot be achieved, then belief in the truth of the proposition “God exists” is reduced to a matter of mere faith (i.e., a hope not justified by reason in any real way). Person-truth, on the other hand, invites us to see faith not as belief in a set of ideas, but rather as a way of life, living one’s fidelity to God and our promises to Him even in the midst of trials and confusion. Faith in this view is a matter of trust—a trust born of personal experience with God and a willingness to make and keep promises.¶

Footnotes

1. Young Women Manual 3 (Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1994), 6-8. ↩

2. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005), 65. ↩

3. Brit, September 10, 2013 (3:50 pm), comment on J. Max Wilson, “Vectors—Faith and Doubt Are Incompatible in the LDS Church,” Sixteen Small Stones, September 3, 2013, http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/vectors-faith-and-doubt-are-incompatible-in-the-lds-church/ ↩

4. Cody Hatch, “The Necessity of Doubt,” Wheat & Tares, January 16, 2019, https://wheatandtares.org/2019/01/16/the-necessity-of-doubt/ ↩

5. C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1960), 26. ↩

6. James Faulconer, “Truth, Virtue, and Perspectivism,” in Virtue and the Abundant Life (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2012), 85. ↩

7. Marvin Wilson, Our Father Abraham: The Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 184. ↩