Why I believe#

from a talk given 2018-12-09, Webster Groves ward, St. Louis Missouri South stake

Intro#

Good morning, brothers and sisters. My name is Kevin Black. My wife Winona and I moved to St. Louis a month before our 2nd child, Ariana, was born. She is now 28 and has a master’s degree, a husband and 2 children1. Most of you know our youngest child, Lydia.

I was assigned to speak on “why I believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

What I believe#

I can’t really talk about why I believe without saying what I believe.

I believe God is real. I believe He is our Father in Heaven and loves us. I believe He knows more than we do. I believe that God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, to make it possible for us to become more like Him by healing our flaws and sins, and our illnesses and sorrows. I believe God gave us prophets to teach us about Jesus’ Atonement and to help us know how to live in a way that makes us better and happier people, and makes society better too. I believe God still gives us living prophets, and that this is Jesus’ modern church. I really do believe these things.

Why I believe#

That’s what I believe, but why do I believe it? The Savior told one of the early leaders of the modern church, “I will tell you in your mind2 and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost” (DC 8:2). So also for me there are reasons of the head and of the heart.

Heart#

Also there are reasons of the heart—reasons that are beyond reasoning.

As one of the Book of Mormon prophets said, “I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true; for the Lord God hath made them manifest unto me by his Holy Spirit” (Alma 5:46). It’s hard to describe what it is like to feel the Holy Spirit—you may have heard the analogy, “tell me what salt tastes like, and you can’t say ‘salty’”—but for me I can identify the Holy Spirit by a sense of peace, sweetness, and clarity of thought,6 and I’m more likely to feel His presence when I’m doing good or reading God’s word or hearing sacred music.

Ah, but how do I know that experience is real, not just wishful thinking? Faith plays a role, but also I have been comforted by the teachings of Alma the Younger, in the Book of Mormon. He compared the word of God to a seed, and pointed out that when you plant a seed and see it start to grow, you know for sure it was not a dead seed, even if you don’t yet know for sure (and hence still need to have faith) that it will grow up to be a tree bearing good fruit. Even so, he continued, when we plant the word of God in our hearts, it provides us early benefits that prove there is something good and living in it, even if we still require faith in its ultimate benefits. The relevance to my point here about true faith versus wishful thinking is that Alma specifically identified three qualities that we could expect early on from the truth: if it “is a good seed, or [if] the word is good,” it will “enlarge my soul, … enlighten my understanding,” and “be delicious to me” (Alma 32:28). In modern words, if something really is from God, it should make me a better person, help me understand life and truth better, and make me happy. The things I learn at Church do all of those.

Belief and the physician scientist#

Let me come back to the “head” part of my faith. I want to say a word about religion and science. I am aware of numerous areas in which scientific information has challenged religious faith. As a neuroscientist and neuropsychiatrist, I know about some of these in great detail. However, I do not see any essential conflict between science and the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As an apostle of the Lord taught,7 the gospel “embraces all truth, whether known or unknown. It incorporates all intelligence, both past and prospective. No righteous principle will ever be revealed, no truth can possibly be discovered, either in time or in eternity, that does not in some manner, directly or indirectly, pertain to the Gospel of Jesus Christ” 8. There are things I don’t understand yet, but that is a huge part of faith: having patience9 to give our Heavenly Father a chance to explain things to us on His own timetable. I completely agree with the words of Elder Uchtdorf, who taught, “There will be times when it may appear that things are going badly for the truth of God—that the evidence of the world contradicts God’s utterances. For my part, I have learned to be patient, knowing that in the end things will work out. … God knows what we do not. What may seem impossible for us is not impossible to Him. What we mortals may write off as foolishness may be entered into the book of heaven as fact.” 10

At age 22, in 1799, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss proved the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, which confirmed that all polynomial equations have roots. But a thousand years earlier, the Persian Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī11 was using algebra to solve problems related to Islamic inheritance law (alimony). Millions of students today unwittingly trace out that historical pathway, learning how to solve higher-order polynomial equations without assurance that they actually have roots. Why? Because algebraic methods work.12 To me, that’s a lot like faith. You see early results from something, so you trust it’s useful even if you don’t have ultimate proof. It’s not a suspension of disbelief, it’s giving God a chance to explain.13 The point is, faith is looking for reasons to believe rather than only looking for reasons to disbelieve.

Close#

Brothers and sisters, I believe. I’d be glad to discuss my belief with any of you. Your examples have strengthened my faith considerably. Thank you. I leave you this message in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

1

We moved to Crestwood shortly after our 4th child, William, was born. He’s now 24. Our first 5 children have now served full-time missions and married in the temple, and our 6th child, Jonathan, is a missionary in Brazil.

2

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him” (DC 59:5).

3

I have some sympathy with that rebel, Galileo, who said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.” https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

4

“of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are abroad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms”

5

I have read the Bible through. I’ve read the New Testament and the Book of Mormon many times. I’ve read much of what the leaders of the Church have said over the past 200 years. And I believe that …

6

The Prophet Joseph Smith explained: “A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas. …” Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 151. “The eyes of our understanding were opened” (DC 110:1). (Examples are from Boyd K. Packer, “Personal revelation: the gift, the test, and the promise.” Ensign, November, 1994.)

7

“The gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses not only the truth of what was and what is but also the truth of what can and will be.” https://www.lds.org/ensign/2018/02/the-gospel-encompasses-all-truth?lang=eng

8

Orson F. Whitney, Elders’ Journal, October 15, 1906, 26, as quoted in Spencer W. Palmer, “World Religions (Non-Christian) and Mormonism: Overview,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 4:1589.

9

a healthy marriage needs trust (analogy imperfect)

10

Dieter F. Uchtdorf, at the BYU Church History Symposium at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City on March 7, 2014. https://rsc.byu.edu/archived/re-15-no-3-2014/seeing-beyond-leaf-0

11

(c. 780–850)

12

My friend Ian Fillmore provided a wonderful example of this point. His son learned that planets have elliptical orbits, and asked why. The easy answer was that we observe them to have such orbits. But Ian told his son that he’d be glad to explain it, but his son would have to be patient: first they’d have to study gravity, and algebra, and some calculus, and all that would take years.

13

Examples from my faith journey: Meat in winter (DC 89) didn’t make much sense, but later in medical school I learned that catabolism of some high-energy foods released waste heat. Fanny Alger’s father and brothers supported the marriage and stayed faithful church members. Joseph Smith’s supporters recalled his birth family as hard workers, but enemies said they were good-for-nothings. Unfortunately, most of those recollections on both sides were recorded years after the fact, and influenced by later events and prejudices. Donald Enders realized that land and tax records were not only contemporaneous but too boring for people to alter, and they support the Smith family’s version of events. (Donald L. Enders: “The Joseph Smith, Sr., family: Farmers of the Genesee.” Pp. 213-225 in Susan Easton Black and Charles D. Tate Jr., eds., Joseph Smith: The Prophet, The Man. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1993.)