Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Alma 32:27-28 -- On Hope, Faith, and Experiments

"But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me."
Alma 32:27-28


Was talking to a friend about God the other day and he was laughing at religious people, finding the idea of belief ridiculous.  He wasn't trying to be mean, but (as many do) compared religion to science, saying that one can be proven and the other can't.  It made me think of this scripture.  Here, Alma explains that we can learn about the gospel experimentally as well.  We have to be open to really finding out and accepting truth, just as in any scientific study, and if we are, then we can start to feel and understand the spirit. 

One of the challenges of the gospel is the idea expressed here that we can cast out the seed with our unbelief.  Doubts and fears are the enemy of faith and prevent us from building on the solid foundation of God.  It is easy to be like Laman and Lemuel and just assume that God isn't willing to help us or talk to us, without even asking him or trying to find out.  It is easy to think that we understand the world quite well and that God is a fable invented for weak-minded people that can't face the bleakness of reality.  ... And that is part of why hope and faith are so linked together.  Hope in a better world, in a better life with more possibilities--that is what drives us all to finding new places and inventing new things.  And that is God too, helping us to grasp those things that we've never seen or tasted or known, but have only imagined and believed, and then made true.  That's exactly what faith is--the reality of things that we can't push or prod, but we are certain of.  Hopes, dreams, and the reality of things that are beyond us, but that we are reaching for anyway.

Today, let's not settle for things that we can prove by measuring them.  Let's invent new things, and reach out for the things that we can currently only imagine.  Let's be open to accepting evidence beyond our own limited grasp, and hope in God, and trust in his truth.

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