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Abridged:
We live in a world filled with differing views, opinions, and philosophies. Never have we had more access to information. Our task is to decide what is true and what is false. On some issues, that decision is not so crucial, such as whether Cafe Rio or Costa Vida is best. Other issues are fraught with immense—at times even eternal—consequences. ...
In humility, it is wise for us all to acknowledge our imperfection in determining truth. None of us have all the answers, least of all me. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf explained, “It seems to be part of our nature as human beings to make assumptions about people, politics, and piety based on our incomplete and often misleading experience.” ...
So, are we hopeless? Are we unable to know truth? Of course we can know truth! Heavenly Father has not sent us here without revealing the principles and practices we need to recognize and follow truth. And yet for many—even within the Church—there appears to be a crisis of confidence in our ability to know truth. ...
When questions and doubts arise, it is easy to feel vulnerable. We may feel like our whole world is crashing down. Finding that our understanding of one issue is in error can lead us to doubt everything else we thought we knew. With wounded hearts, some people come to the conclusion that they have been purposefully deceived—that they have been lied to. For some, such feelings of betrayal are harder to deal with than the historical or doctrinal issue that began the crisis. My heart hurts for those who feel this way. The feeling is real, even if the purposeful deception is not.
Others faced with such a crisis may begin to question the possibility of knowing any truth. Since their past efforts to know truth seem to have proven faulty, they question whether their current efforts are also destined to fail. It does not have to be this way. It should not be this way. I testify that there is a better way. We and our loved ones can approach these moments in a way that leaves us more—not less—confident in our ability to know and live truth. If we face our questions with courage and integrity, our knowledge can continue to expand and our faith can continue to be strengthened.
President Howard W. Hunter made a promise that I would like to echo today:
...These doubts can be resolved, if [those who doubt] have an honest desire to know the truth, by exercising moral, spiritual, and mental effort. They will emerge from the conflict into a firmer, stronger, larger faith because of the struggle. They have gone from a simple, trusting faith, through doubt and conflict, into a solid substantial faith which ripens into testimony.
Far too many of us fear questions. We have nothing to fear. President Uchtdorf explained, “My dear young friends, we are a question-asking people because we know that inquiry leads to truth.” The scriptures make it clear that we are commanded to seek. They are replete with examples of those who went from darkness to light through seeking: Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Paul, Alma, Joseph Smith. Even Jesus Christ grew “from grace to grace” through seeking for and adhering to truth.
As we ask questions, we must avoid a fate similar to that of a character in C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Great Divorce. This character became so driven by questions and questioning that he ceased to believe in the possibility of answers. This character was counseled:
That is great advice. The scriptures command us to seek and warn us not to be “ever learning, [but] never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” This way of being is as bad as its evil twin: “Never learning but always believing we know the truth.”Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again: even now.
We must become seekers. We must encourage learning. We must “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” which just happens to be another name for truth and for Jesus Christ Himself.
I must make one important clarification: many people use the words questioning and doubting synonymously. I believe this leads to serious epistemological confusion. Epistemology refers to how we know what we know. I will use this word several times today. Conflating doubt with asking questions leads people to value doubt as if it were itself a virtue. You hear sayings such as “If a person has never doubted, they have never thought.” But doubting and questioning are not the same thing.
Doubt is part of the belief spectrum, which goes from disbelief to doubt to hope to belief. Where do questions fit on this spectrum? Can you see that questions can occur at any point on the spectrum? So what is the role of doubt? Is it evil? Is it good?
Doubt in many ways is neither moral nor immoral but rather amoral. If the object of our doubt is false, such as believing in prophetic infallibility—that any human error disqualifies a person from being a prophet—then doubting that falsehood leads to good outcomes. However, if the object of our doubt is true, such as God commanding us to give heed to the words of His servants the prophets even with their imperfections, then doubting that truth leads to bad outcomes. ...
So should we never doubt? Of course not—there are too many false ideas to safely navigate through life without doubt. But doubt must never be seen as a final destination or as proof of our intellectual honesty.
Elder John A. Widtsoe explained:
It may be for this reason that the scriptures never, not even once, speak of doubt as a positive. ...Doubt, therefore, can be and should be only a temporary condition. . . .
In other words, doubt . . . must never itself be an end. Doubt as an objective of life is an intellectual and a spiritual offense. . . .
. . . Doubt, unless transmuted into inquiry, has no value or worth in the world. Of itself it has never lifted a brick, driven a nail, or turned a furrow.
We should never feel guilty or make others feel guilty for having doubts. Please do not do that. But as the Savior encourages, we should seek to answer our questions and act on those answers, not wallow in our unsurety. ...
I would like to spend the remainder of our time discussing three ways of knowing truth. ...
(1) using our best thinking (logic or reason); (2) learning from our lived experience (sometimes called utilitarianism or pragmatism); and (3) seeking revelation, which, I will work hard to explain, is a relational concept. This point is crucial. It is the main point I want to get across.
The ordering of these methods is not random. ...
Blind faith has no productive role in the acquisition of truth. The Lord requires us to use not only our hearts but our minds in seeking truth. Both faith and knowledge are dependent on “evidence of things not seen,” to quote Paul. Peter counseled us to “be ready always to give an answer [for] a reason of the hope that is in you.” Alma admonished us to “experiment upon [the] words”—a clear allusion to seeking evidence. The Lord promised that He would witness to both our mind and our heart. Clearly God requires us to think, reason, and weigh evidence. ...
But our best reasoning will not be enough. Because of this, many who begin to doubt stall in their search for truth. We cannot simply reason our way to ultimate truth. If we refuse to exercise the faith sufficient to add the other two necessary ingredients for knowing truth—that is, sincerely acting on what we want to know the truth of and seeking revelation from the source of all truth—we will likely be stuck “ever learning, [but] never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” ...
You see, logical argument and sound reasoning, as important as they are, were never intended to be sufficient for knowing truth, but they do provide the ground upon which such knowledge can grow.
Elder Neal A. Maxwell regularly quoted a statement made by Austin Farrer regarding C. S. Lewis:
Sound reasoning not only leads to faith but can also help us avoid many of the sincerely believed but unsound arguments that cause people to doubt their faith. We must learn to reason more soundly to know truth. ...Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.
Elder Bruce C. Hafen once explained that most historical “evidence” would never be allowed in a modern court of law because it is nearly impossible to verify its accuracy. If we wouldn’t want to be judged on the basis of such weak and biased evidence, why do we feel it is sufficient to definitively judge others with such evidence? ...
Heavenly Father is not interested in turning His children into bright, philosophically sophisticated adults who value thinking above being. We were not sent here to simply gain a cognitive knowledge of truth but rather to live by truth to become as He, meaning God, is.
For this reason, the second means of discovering truth—lived experience, which philosophically may be referred to as utilitarianism or pragmatism—seems perfectly designed to augment and deepen what we can learn through our best thinking. ...
The only way we can deepen our knowledge of truth beyond mere philosophy is to be willing to live it. ...
But more than disinterested action is required. God is not interested in empty gestures. Mere curiosity or even scientific inquiry won’t work. God requires a deep sincerity and real intent. President Russell M. Nelson explained that “‘real intent’ means that one really intends to follow the divine direction given.” ...
Just as with logic and reason, acting alone has limitations and is insufficient for knowing ultimate truth. ...
The law of justice is real but not immediate. People who do evil do not necessarily reap the reward of that evil immediately any more than people who do good reap the reward of that good immediately. But the results will always come.
Because of this reality, it is not enough to simply “check our pulse” immediately after we act. We must examine more deeply the consequences of actions. An immoral life may feel wonderful in the short run, but as even social science clearly attests, it is a very poor philosophy of life in the long run. True principles should bear good fruit in the long run. ...
There is another caveat to consider: neither we nor our actions are totally evil or totally good. There is usually some good mixed with some bad—both of which will bear fruit in our lives. We sometimes see a person doing something we know to be wrong and yet see that they aren’t miserable and hence conclude that what they are doing must not really be wrong. ...
Two people who have allowed immoral behavior to become part of their relationship may also treat each other kindly and do many other good things. Though the immoral behavior will have consequences, this does not mean that everything about their relationship is based on unrighteousness. Therefore it would be simplistic and wrong to believe that their relationship can only produce misery. We will all reap the fruits of both the good and the bad we do. ...
As helpful as our best thinking and our lived experience are for knowing truth, neither of them are sufficient in and of themselves. God is not limited to our mortal sphere and therefore stands outside of man’s ability to measure and investigate by using nothing but secular means. ...
A popular refrain in the blogosphere is that revelation cannot be trusted. It is pointed out that people of many faiths claim revelatory experiences and come to disparate conclusions. The question is asked, “How can you trust a process that leads to such disagreement?” ...
You generally do not hear educated people denigrating the value of using our best thinking—be that historical, logical, or scientific—simply because people reach different conclusions. This same reality exists for lived experience. People often draw different conclusions as a result of their actions. And yet, when it comes to revelation, the popular argument persists that because people come to different conclusions, revelation cannot be trusted. This argument is sophistry—pure and simple.
It is definitely true that our interpretations of revelation can vary or be flawed. Just as with our best thinking and our lived experience, our interpretation of revelation is not sufficient to carry the load alone—not because of any inadequacies in God’s revelations but rather because of our less-than-perfect power to interpret them. However, as we learn the principles that govern the receipt of revelation and combine revelation with our best thinking and our lived experience, we can have great confidence in our ability to come to a knowledge of truth. ...
Our theology clearly teaches us that we cannot be saved through our own unaided efforts. We totally and completely depend on God’s grace, specifically the redeeming love of our Savior Jesus Christ. Is it any wonder that we are also dependent on God for our deepest understanding of truth? ...
Jesus Christ is not simply the truth we are trying to ascertain; He is also the deepest, most poignant, and most sure means of knowing that truth. He will reveal Himself and all truth to us. True spirituality is simply another way of describing a close relationship with God. ...
We cannot passively—or even passionately—study and expect that our best thinking will find God. We cannot simply go through the motions of being a Mormon and expect that the power, joy, and might of the Holy Spirit will bring us near to God. If we would come unto God, we must ultimately bring all that we have—all that we are—and lay it on the altar. The good news is that all God requires of us to start is to turn our softened hearts to Him, and He will draw near unto us. ...
By using our best thinking, by choosing to act with real intent, and by seeking direct revelation from God, we can come to a humble yet firm conviction of the truth of all things.