Skepticism and Faith

I am, by nature, a skeptic. I don't believe everything I hear or see. When I get something in the mail saying, "You've Won!", the first thing I look at is the fine print. When I see a story in a forwarded email or Facebook post, Snopes is the first place I check. When my kids tell me a far-fetched sounding "fact" they learned somewhere, I have to Google it, check out Wikipedia, and a few other sources, before I will believe it to be true.

On the other hand, there are a lot of incredible things that I do believe in - strongly. I believe in ghosts. I believe in miracles. I believe that in 1820, a 14 year old boy in New York state saw God and his son, Jesus Christ. I believe that boy, Joseph Smith, later translated an ancient record which was written by people living here in the Americas, and I believe that the words written in that record about Jesus Christ are true; I believe that the Book of Mormon is true.

If I am a skeptic, why do I believe in these fantastic things?

I was raised Mormon. All my life, I read the Book of Mormon, I learned about Joseph Smith. I believed what I was taught, for the most part. There came a time when I was in college that I wondered if it really was all true, or if it was a very elaborate hoax. Luckily for me, I had also been taught a way to know for sure what was true: ask God. I had seen enough of his hand in my life to know that God existed, and I trusted that he would let me know what was true.

I remember kneeling in my dorm room and praying to ask if the Book of Mormon was true, and I remember the feeling of peace and assurance that I felt. It was as though He put his arm around my shoulders and said, "MaeLyn, you do know that it is true. Believe it."

I knew the Book of Mormon was true. I knew it because God, through the Holy Ghost, told me that it was. Shortly after that, I decided to serve a mission, to tell others of the Book's truthfulness. As I left  an interview with my stake president in preparation for that mission, I once again felt the Holy Ghost - this time in a feeling of euphoria and I knew that God was pleased with the choice I was making. He wanted the good word to be spread.

As a missionary, I felt the Holy Ghost witness to me of truth many times. Every time I spoke of Joseph Smith and his first vision of the Father and the Son, I could feel the Holy Spirit witness to me, that the words I spoke were true; that this amazing event truly happened, just as Joseph claimed that it did. There was a time I testified of the living prophet, (President Gordon B. Hinkley at the time) and I felt the Holy Ghost's witness to me that this man I was speaking of was God's servant and messenger on the earth. I knew that this was true. Through the Holy Ghost, I learned of the truthfulness of temple work, of the Plan by which we can return to God's presence - via faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion by proper authority, by receiving the Holy Ghost and other ordinances. I couldn't question or doubt these things because God had told me, through his Spirit, that they were true.

This doesn't mean that I don't still occasionally question things that are said at church. Someone once said that where science and religion don't agree, it is because our understanding of one or the other - or both, is incomplete. I believe this. I believe that there are a lot of things about religion, science and truth that no one fully understands except God himself.

While I believe that when a prophet speaks the words of God, those words are true, I also am aware that these wonderful, righteous men are still men, and that when they are not speaking for God, they may make mistakes.

Some things I wonder about:

• If death didn't come into the world until Adam ate the fruit, how come there are dinosaur bones that date back millions of years? I don't have a problem reconciling evolution and creative periods - except for this idea that nothing ever died before Adam. I could speculate that things did die during the creation/evolution process, but God put dying on hold once the creation/evolution of Adam was complete, to resume again after the fall. But that is just speculation, and I don't know.
• It has been claimed in the LDS church that the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon are the principle ancestors of the Native Americans. Scientific studies claim that the Native Americans crossed to America from Asia on a land bridge, and I have been told that scientists have found no evidence at all that any Native Americans had any Jew/Israelite ancestors. While the Book of Mormon never mentions that there were other groups of people in the land besides the Nephites and the Lamanites, I imagine that there were other people here and that the Nephites and Lamanites were just one group among many on the North and South American continents. Again, I don't know for sure. 

A month or so ago, I met a man from another religion, who, when he learned that I was Mormon, went on about the ancestors of the Native Americans not being Jews, thinking that he could "save" me from being Mormon if he cast doubt on this belief. I nodded and was polite to him, believing that he had best wishes for me at heart. If he had let me get a word in edgewise, I might have shared with him the concept of my faith. I have faith that the actual words in the Book of Mormon are true, and that the basic principles of the gospel are true. Most everything else is fluff - it doesn't really make any difference to me. I can hold to my beliefs in what the Spirit has confirmed to me as truth, and it doesn't matter if science "proves" that some other minor belief is untrue... because even scientifically "proven" things have changed over time.

I don't believe that God wants his children to follow blindly just because that is what we are told to do. I think he does want us to think and ponder and study. I think he wants us to question what we hear and are taught. I think he does want us to come to him in prayer and ask for guidance to know what is right. I believe that God loves all his children and wants them to find truth in their lives, so when we come to him with our questions, he will show us what is right through the Holy Ghost. And I believe that once we have received the Spirit's witness that something is true, we had better cling to that truth and not let anyone cast doubt in our minds about that thing again.

I am still a skeptic. A friend of mine mentioned having gone to the temple with a pain in her back, and when she left the temple, the pain was gone and didn't return, and I couldn't help but wonder (to myself) if it was just the act of going to the temple as she claimed, or if it was medication she took before going, or if the pain had just happened to run its course. I don't know. Maybe I'll add that to my list of questions to ask God when I see him again.