Certainty and Uncertainty as Elements of Faith

A month and a half ago, my wife Evelyn and I had a miscarriage scare.

After trying to conceive for about ten months, during which time we had already had one miscarriage, we were finally pregnant. We saw it as a blessing from God, and had rejoiced in His answer to our prayers. But now, everything was uncertain and unclear.

Three months prior, my wife and I were grappling with the uncertainty of fertility treatments. What if they did not work? What about the side effects—which could affect both my wife and our future children? What if we ended up needing to adopt? How would we afford it? When should we decide to focus on adoption instead of fertility treatments?

Above all, what about the promises the Lord had made to us? Both of our patriarchal blessings¹ mention us having children, and in the covenant² given to Abraham,³ we are promised posterity.⁴ We believed that God would bless us with children. But I began to wonder if my faith was insufficient. There are many scriptures that connect miracles with faith. For example, chapter 12 of the book of Ether contains the following promises:

9 Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith.

16 Yea, and even all they who wrought miracles wrought them by faith, even those who were before Christ and also those who were after.

18 And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God.

29 … O Lord, thy righteous will be done, for I know that thou workest unto the children of men according to their faith;

Perhaps, I reasoned, I could receive this blessing if I would just believe firmly enough. But I found my faith and hope fluctuating over time. Sometimes it was easy to have faith that the Lord would bless us with children, and other times it was much harder. I became frustrated with myself for what seemed like an inability to exert more faith.⁵

Faith to Accept Uncertainty

Around the time we were grappling with these concerns, my wife and I read “Accepting the Lord’s Will and Timing”, an article by Elder David A. Bednar.⁶ This article started a journey of discovery for us through which we learned that we had been thinking about faith the wrong way.

In the article, Elder Bednar tells a heart-wrenching story of a newly-married young man named John, who was diagnosed with cancer. He asked Elder Bednar to give him a blessing.⁷ As Elder Bednar talked with him, he felt inspired to ask John an unexpected question:

“John, do you have the faith not to be healed? If it is the will of our Heavenly Father that you are transferred by death in your youth to the spirit world to continue your ministry, do you have the faith to submit to His will and not be healed?”

Elder Bednar explains:

Frequently in the scriptures, the Savior or His servants exercised the spiritual gift of healing and perceived that an individual had the faith to be healed. But as John and Heather and I counseled together and wrestled with these questions, we increasingly understood that if God’s will were for this good young man to be healed, then that blessing could be received only if this valiant couple first had the faith not to be healed. In other words, John and Heather needed to overcome, through the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, the “natural man” (Mosiah 3:19) tendency in all of us to demand impatiently and insist incessantly on the blessings we want and believe we deserve.

Certainly (and gratefully!), neither Evelyn nor I had cancer, but our situation was nonetheless similar in kind, if not in extremity. We recognized that we, like them, needed to have the faith not to receive our desired blessing.

Later that week, we read part of The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown, and came to the section on faith. In it, Brown quotes theologian Richard Rohr:

My scientist friends have come up with things like ‘principles of uncertainty’ and dark holes. They’re willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of ‘faith’! How strange that the very word ‘faith’ has come to mean its exact opposite.

That was the kind of faith John and Heather had had to exercise. Faith to accept, acknowledge, and perhaps even embrace uncertainty.

As I’ve pondered and studied that idea since then, I’ve encountered it everywhere, such as in Hebrews 11:13-16:

13 These [the individuals Paul mentions in the preceding verses] all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.

15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned.

16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.

The people Paul speaks of in this scripture faced uncertainty about both when and how the Lord would fulfill His promises to them.

A few days later, I was reminded of Alma 26:22, which was quoted often by my leaders on my mission:

22 Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance

On my mission, this scripture was interpreted almost as a sort of “recipe”—if you do these things you will baptize converts. But when I considered it in the context of “faith to accept uncertainty,” I realized something interesting: Enos also did all of the things mentioned in that verse:

• Repent and exercise faith: verses 1-8 of his record.
• Do good works: verses 19-20.
• Pray continually, earnestly, and with sincerity: verses 1-18.

However, Enos specifically says he and his fellow missionaries were unsuccessful in their attempts to teach the then-unbelieving Lamanites.⁸ The promise in Alma 26 wasn’t fulfilled for Enos until 330 years later (which, ironically, was the occasion for the great teacher Ammon uttering the words previously quoted from Alma 26). Clearly, there is uncertainty about how and when this promise is fulfilled.

Certainty and Uncertainty

As I continued pondering and studying this idea, I learned that effectual faith involves both certainty and uncertainty. This can be seen in Alma 32:21:

And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.

There must be some true idea in which we believe in order for us to have faith. But that’s exactly where rejecting uncertainty undermines our faith: rejecting uncertainty leads us to hold false beliefs, like “if I do the things in Alma 26:22 then I will baptize people on my mission.” I learned that you can’t have effectual faith by believing something that’s false.

To see why false certainty is a hindrance, I found it helpful to examine knowledge, faith, and false certainty using the justified true belief (JTB) model of knowledge. These three qualities—truth, belief of that truth, and justification of that belief—are necessary components of knowledge.

If knowledge is justified true belief, faith is, inherently, unjustified true belief. This can be seen in the verse from Alma 32 quoted earlier—faith is a belief in “things which are not seen,” or, in other words, not justified. If truth, belief, and justification are necessary components of knowledge, then truth, belief, and a lack of justification are equally necessary components of faith. As Alma says in the same chapter: “if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe [meaning no cause to exert faith], for he knoweth it.”

The third case, false certainty, is unjustified false belief. We assert some idea that we think is true, but is not. A good scriptural example of this is seen in the Pharisees, who held several beliefs about the Messiah, such as “the Messiah will destroy the Romans” and “the Messiah will respect our religious authority.” Because what they saw in Jesus contradicted these false beliefs, the Pharisees rejected Him as the Messiah.

I learned that I needed to cultivate both the willingness to admit what I did not know and the courage to firmly believe in what God had promised. The interaction between these two seemingly-opposed ideas is a delicate one, of the kind that Ross Ellenhorn refers to as a both-and proposition,⁹ as opposed to an either-or proposition. I needed both firm belief and the ability to acknowledge uncertainty if I was to have effectual faith in the Lord and His promises.

Balancing Conviction and Epistemic Humility

Jacob Z. Hess discusses these two concepts—conviction and uncertainty—in this excellent article in Public Square Magazine. He specifically responds to the zeitgeist of “certainty bad, uncertainty good” that can be seen in a lot of recent faith discussions. Arguing that this stance often conflates conviction with dogmatism, he encourages us to value conviction while recognizing uncertainty. He warns against the harmful reductionism of “those who either demonize doubt without conditions or who glorify doubt as an unmistakable sign of greater enlightenment”:

In the same moment that we hold space for uncertainty, therefore, let’s not overly valorize doubt in a way that obscures its potential dangers.

Instead, he argues, we should “[aspire] for humility instead of uncertainty”—a humility that enables a person to both acknowledge what she or he does not know, and at the same time to seek further light from God.

Along the same lines, he mentions the danger of “epistemic humility as a barrier to new knowledge,” or, in other words, being too certain that something is uncertain and not seeking further light:

[I]t’s widely appreciated how epistemic humility can catalyze our learning, as we are open to truth and welcoming of uncertainty, etc. But when taken to an extreme, can these same sensibilities undermine and erode our growth in spiritual knowledge? …

More specifically, can an a priori aversion to any degree of certainty (or strong conviction) prevent people from ever seeking more direct reassurance, more definitive experiences, and more final and grounding forms of knowing? And in this way, can an overemphasis on uncertainty ultimately trip us up?

These are thought provoking questions. I think they are especially relevant to uncertainty that does not pertain to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the future. For example, many people face uncertainties about how to harmonize or reconcile certain aspects of religion and science or history, and some choose to put these uncertainties on a metaphorical “shelf” for later resolution. While this shelf idea is useful, it is equally useful to instead take God at His word when He says “if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men [and women] liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him.”¹⁰ This is particularly true in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—one of our fundamental tenets is that the heavens are not closed. To quote Doctrine & Covenants 121:33:

What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints.

When Uncertainty is Still Valuable

However, when it comes to how things will happen in the future, I’ve come to believe that the Lord often reveals additional knowledge to us by allowing us to simply witness His will as events proceed, rather than revealing what will happen in detail to us beforehand. Our desiring that the future be revealed to us “up front” can easily become a stipulation on our continued faithful action. This is, ironically, a mindset of doubt:¹¹

[W]hen people doubt their beliefs, they often suspend their commitment to commandments and covenants while waiting for answers. The doubter’s posture is generally to withhold obedience or limit it, pending resolution of the doubts. …

[A key] problem with doubt is the intent to obey only after the uncertainty is resolved to the satisfaction of the doubter.

As such, while we should seek knowledge, we should be open to that knowledge coming through experience rather than in advance through revelation.

False certainty often begins with good intentions, as it did for my wife and me—we had a righteous desire to be parents, and I in particular attempted to assert my belief with certainty. “I know that God will bless us with children at this time and in this way.” This kind of firm assertion of certainty feels like we are choosing to have strong faith. But, as discussed previously, false certainty and faith have different characteristics—and the most crucial difference is that false certainty is, well, false. Ultimately, when we make our minds accept as certainty that which is false, we limit ourselves. This self-limitation happens in at least two ways.

First, we are simply less capable when we are acting upon falsehoods. If, for example, I buy into “get rich quick” schemes, or prosperity theology,¹² and make investment decisions based on that false belief, my financial growth, and my current and future freedom, would be restricted. Another example is negative stereotypes—if I have false negative beliefs about a particular group of people, I am likely to judge people from that group incorrectly, falling into “us-vs-them” thinking.¹³ This would prevent me from forming rewarding relationships with people from that group, would inhibit my personal growth and learning, and could lead to me being hostile or harmful towards that group.

Second, holding false beliefs restricts our learning, because our false beliefs must be displaced by the truth in order for us to accept it, and strongly-held beliefs do not change easily. Studies have shown that, when faced with new information that contradicts an existing belief, people experience cognitive dissonance, and often reject the new information entirely. They may even hold more strongly to their false beliefs, a phenomenon known as belief perseverance. Acknowledging what we do not know, and cultivating a mindset of openness, can mitigate these negative self-limiting effects.

The self-restricting nature of false certainty, over time, can cause spiritual stagnation and complacency. We may think we’ve “already heard it all” or that we know all that we need to about the gospel. When taken to an extreme, it can lead us to reject God’s word and His prophets. The scriptures contain many examples of this: from the self-assured Pharisees, mentioned previously; to the Nephites in the time preceding Jesus’ visit to the Americas, who relied on their own wisdom to conclude that “it is not reasonable that such a being as Christ shall come.”¹⁴ Ultimately, of course, these people were proven wrong, their false certainty shaken by truth with which it was incongruent.

Ironically, a position of false certainty feels secure when we firmly assert our belief, but, when our experience refutes them, we find that we have built upon a shaky foundation. The ancient prophet Jacob warned against this:¹⁵

And in fine, wo unto all those who tremble, and are angry because of the truth of God! For behold, he that is built upon the rock receiveth it with gladness; and he that is built upon a sandy foundation trembleth lest he shall fall.

It’s counterintuitive, but false certainty’s “sandy” nature means that it’s only through acknowledging uncertainty that we can dig deep enough to reach the firm, bedrock foundation of Jesus Christ and His gospel.¹⁶

Exercising Faith with Humility

The Pharisees’ rejection of Christ; the Nephites’ dismissal of the coming of Christ as “unreasonable”; and the anger Jacob mentions in the verse quoted previously have a common underlying cause: pride. In his talk from October 2014, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf explains this connection between pride, uncertainty, and receiving additional light from God:

We must approach our Eternal Father with broken hearts and teachable minds. We must be willing to learn and to change. …

Those who do not wish to learn and change probably will not and most likely will begin to wonder whether the Church [or the gospel] has anything to offer them.

False certainty, as in the case of the Pharisees and the “reasonable” Nephites, often leads us to this dangerous state of being unwilling to learn and change.

He continues:

But those who want to improve and progress, those who learn of the Savior and desire to be like Him, those who humble themselves as a little child and seek to bring their thoughts and actions into harmony with our Father in Heaven—they will experience the miracle of the Savior’s Atonement. They will surely feel God’s resplendent Spirit. They will taste the indescribable joy that is the fruit of a meek and humble heart. They will be blessed with the desire and discipline to become true disciples of Jesus Christ.

I find it noteworthy that Elder Uchtdorf mentions meekness in connection to this kind of humble, growth-oriented faith. This, I believe, is a clue to how we can avoid building on a sandy foundation of false certainty.

Meekness, according to Elder David A. Bednar, “is a defining attribute of the Redeemer and is distinguished by righteous responsiveness, willing submissiveness, and strong self-restraint.”¹⁷ Each of these characteristics supports our effectual faith, but I think Elder Uchtdorf’s point is that meekness is not just a “nice-to-have” when it comes to faith. The ancient prophet Mormon seemed to agree:¹⁸

42 And again, behold I say unto you that [someone] cannot have faith and hope, save [or unless] he shall be meek, and lowly of heart.

43 If [he is not], his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart;

“Cannot” is more than just “likely won’t.” Meekness is a necessary part of faith. I believe this has more to do with the inherent nature of faith than with God being particular about how we exercise it. Certainly, as the apostle James wrote, “God resisteth the proud,”¹⁹ but, perhaps more significantly, the proud resist God. When we seek to hold firmly to something that is not true, in essence demanding that it be true, we unwittingly fall into pride. Faith, on the other hand, is the meek submission of our will and mind (wherein we lack justification) to God’s will and mind (from which we learn truth, thus forming the unjustified true belief discussed earlier). In the words of Jacob:²⁰

Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand.

False certainty seeks to counsel the Lord, to fill in the gaps of what is not clear. Faith humbly accepts what He promises and what He leaves uncertain about those promises, asking for—but never demanding—additional light, and always moving forward with trust in Him.

The more I have pondered these concepts, the more I see examples of this kind of faith in the scriptures.

Nephi, when asked by an angel whether he knew “the condescension of God”, replied “I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.”²¹ He acknowledged what he did not know (the condescension of God) while holding to what had been revealed to him (God’s love for His children).

Faith to accept uncertainty enabled Enos to keep going even when he did not succeed in preaching the gospel to the Lamanites—when God had directly promised him that the Lamanites would receive the gospel. He could have doubted himself or God’s promises, but he instead chose to say, “I know God will eventually redeem the Lamanites, but I don’t know when or how, and that’s ok.”

Even after he had lost his family, his livestock, and his property, Job faithfully declared, “Though [God] slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”²²

But the most significant example of meek, submissive faith is found in Jesus Christ Himself. At the apex of His mortal ministry, when He was about to suffer the sins, pain, sickness, and sorrows of all humankind,²³ He deferred humbly to His Father’s will and knowledge:²⁴

O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

A Pattern

We can derive a powerful pattern from these scriptural examples:

[Statement of uncertainty] but [statement of conviction]

The exact text in each case differs slightly from this form, but we can apply this pattern in our own lives:

• Someone who seeks to be married but has not received that blessing yet might say, “I don’t know when or how I will have the opportunity to marry, but I know God has promised that ‘no blessings will be withheld from His faithful Saints.’”²⁵
• Someone who struggles with the Church’s former policy of not conferring the priesthood upon Black members might say, “I don’t know why the Priesthood was not given to Blacks for a time in this dispensation, but I know that God ‘denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female.’”²⁶
• Someone in John and Heather’s situation, discussed earlier—facing uncertain health outcomes and possibly even death—might faithfully declare, “I don’t know whether I will be healed or not, but I know that ‘all things have been done in the wisdom of Him who knoweth all things’ and that ‘there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust’”²⁷²⁸

Importantly, the second clause does not negate the first clause. The unknown thing is still unknown. Rather, meekly recognizing what we do know and what we don’t know allows us to move forward with faith in Christ. We move forward even though there are unknowns. This makes our faith much more soul-stretching than moving forward because the unknowns have been resolved.

Conclusion

Over the course of our fertility journey, Evelyn and I slowly learned to exercise this kind of faith—not perfectly, but better, and more intentionally, than we had before. We learned to let go of false certainty and acknowledge what we did not know. We did not know whether God would bless us with children at this time in our lives, but we knew that He had promised us children eventually (whether in this life or in the eternities) and chose a mindset of celebrating every small experience in that direction: seeing our friends have children, and getting to know and care for them; seeing our younger relatives grow and spending time with them; hearing the (frequent!) baby blessings²⁹ as children were born in our church congregation.

Shortly after we learned my wife was pregnant, I had a distinct impression. I was pondering what we had learned, and I realized that the “overcoming” of our trial hadn’t happened through receiving the blessing we had sought. It had come earlier, through the Lord gently instructing us in what it really means to have faith in Him. We overcame the difficulty of infertility as soon as we chose to have meek, uncertainty-acknowledging faith in Christ. Our worry and concerns were “swallowed up”³⁰ in peace and trust in Him.

The fear and worry of our fertility journey could be described as a “chronic” case, and the treatment prescribed by the Great Physician³¹—faith to accept uncertainty— was effective. The miscarriage scare, on the other hand, was “acute.” Our fear and worry was gripping. We prayed fervently that night, pleading with the Lord to protect our child. As we prayed, we felt the soft guidance of the Spirit reminding us of what we had learned. It was heart-wrenching, but we told the Lord that we would accept His will, and that we would trust in His promised blessings even if we did not receive our desired outcome right now and in this way.

After praying, we felt peace. We hoped that things would be okay but trusted that God was mindful of us and watching over us and our child, regardless of the outcome.

Fortunately—and so gratefully!—things did turn out okay. Our baby continued developing and is growing healthily as I write this. We have since learned that she’s a girl, and feel so much joyful anticipation and so much gratitude for the Lord’s hand in our lives and her life in this way. However, we’re also grateful for the powerful truths we have learned, and for the “furnace of affliction”³² in which our faith was refined. We aren’t perfect at avoiding false certainty, but we have learned to rely more meekly upon God’s grace and mercy, trusting in His timing and choosing to acknowledge what we do not know.

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