Certainty

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the October 1981 Conference.

President Hinckley gave a great talk in this session about faith and certainty. I can't do it justice, but it was bold and stirring and inspiring—an impassioned rebuttal to someone's statement that "certitude is the enemy of religion." On the contrary, President Hinckley shows how faith and certitude and conviction unleash power in our lives and in our church.

But, since I can't adequately sum up that talk, I will instead share a (somewhat related) story I liked from President Marion G. Romney's talk, about his wife:

My wife was reared in a home where they had prayer night and morning; where, almost daily, they discussed gospel principles around the family hearth. She loved education and wanted to go to college. Her father, however, thought college was for boys. In her struggle for an education, she developed an attitude of awe toward people who had been through college. As a member of a stake Sunday School board in Idaho Falls, she taught a class. There came to the class a nonmember of the Church, the wife of one of the brethren on the board. This woman had received a college degree from the University of Idaho. My wife, having not yet received her degree, was a little timid in the presence of this woman. 

One of the lessons in the course dealt with the First Vision of the Prophet Joseph Smith. As she made her preparation for the lesson, there came into her mind the realization that this nonmember would be present in the class. This realization was followed by the question, “What will she think of me, an ignorant girl, saying that the Father and the Son actually came down from heaven and appeared before a fourteen-year-old boy?” The thought terrified her, and she concluded that she couldn’t do it. She went to her mother, crying, and said, “Mother, I can’t teach this lesson. I don’t know that Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son. I know I have been taught it all through my life by you and Father. I have believed you, but personally I don’t know it. This woman will ridicule me. I just can’t stand up before the class with this woman present and teach this lesson.” 

Now, her mother had not been to school very much. She was not an educated person by the world’s standards, but she had faith in God the Eternal Father and in Jesus Christ, his Son, and she said to her daughter, “What did Joseph Smith do to get that vision?” 

“Well,” she answered, “he prayed.” 

“Why don’t you do that?” she said to her daughter. 

This young girl returned to her room and there, for the first time in her life in fact, she went to the Almighty with a sincere desire to know whether he lived and whether he and the Savior actually appeared to the Prophet Joseph. Coming out of that room, she went to her Sunday School class and taught that lesson with joy, with knowledge, with conviction. She had been born of the Spirit. She knew.

There are some things I know, too. And even though I feel (pretty much all the time, especially with my children) as if I don't and can't know ANYTHING very certainly—this is a good reminder to hang on to what I DO know. Much of that has to do with God and His love for and interest in me. And as I start with my certainty in those areas, I can grow toward a knowledge of all the other things that unsettle me as well.

Other posts in this series:

• Conference Talks and Home Teaching by Jan Tolman
• A place for both certainty and doubt in the search for truth by Nathaniel Givens
• Grace for Everything by G