Chapter 3

The Dark Veil of Unbelief

Ammon, the son of king Mosiah and a most successful missionary in ancient America, had a remarkable experience with king Lamoni. Ammon “knew that king Lamoni was under the power of God; he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness—yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God” (Alma 19:6; emphasis added).

Questions and Doubts

It would be nearly impossible for a person living in our day, a time of information explosion, not to have questions about an array of things: Questions about certain events in the history of the Church, about specific Church leaders, about difficult doctrinal matters, and about the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on such sensitive issues as traditional marriage, sexual orientation, and religious liberty.

Questions arise. Why do we have questions, anyway? Con­sider the following reasons: We are thinking. Our intellect is expanding. We are striving to love God with all our mind. Not everything has been revealed or discovered. We’ve not encountered everything yet. We have not paid a sufficient price to resolve the issue. We could be looking in all the wrong places. There are other things we need to learn first. We are human and thus limited in our perspective. Questions are a natural byproduct of being human. Questions, questions, and more questions—all around us. Questions are not, in other words, unusual, inappropriate, or a sign of weakness.

But what about doubts? What’s the difference between having a question and doubting something? I consulted several dictionary definitions of doubt and found that it has changed very little in the last two centuries. Definitions of doubt in Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language include to waver or fluctuate in opinion, to hesitate, to hold questionable, to withhold assent from, to fear, to be apprehensive of, to suspect, to distrust, and to withhold confidence.1 One can quickly see that doubt is a more serious form of questioning, a potentially more harmful form. Let’s see how the word doubt is used in scripture.

After Peter had walked a short distance on the water, seeing the boisterous waves about him, he began to sink. “And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:31).

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done” (Matthew 21:21; emphasis added).

“And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind” (Luke 12:29).

The stripling warriors “had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed . . . the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Alma 56:47–48). “And we do justly ascribe [their preservation] to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe—that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power” (Alma 57:26).

“And there were about three hundred souls who saw and heard these things [Nephi, Lehi, and a large group of people were “baptized by fire”]; and they were bidden to go forth and marvel not, neither should they doubt” (Helaman 5:49).

“Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto the ends of the earth” (Mormon 9:21).

“And because of the knowledge of this man [the brother of Jared] he could not be kept from beholding within the veil; and he saw the finger of Jesus, which, when he saw, he fell with fear; for he knew that it was the finger of the Lord; and he had faith no longer, for he knew, nothing doubting” (Ether 3:19).

“Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (D&C 6:36; emphasis added).

“He that doeth not anything until he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned” (D&C 58:29).

Members of the School of the Elders were taught that if God was not long-suffering and compassionate, loving and forgiving, “man would be cut off from before him, in consequence of which he would be in continual doubt and could not exercise faith; for where doubt is, there faith has no power.”2 They were also instructed that if men and women do not trust in the truth that our Heavenly Father is a God of justice, “they [will] be filled with fear and doubt lest the judge of all the earth would not do right, and thus fear or doubt [note here how they are equated], existing in the mind, would preclude the possibility of the exercise of faith in him for life and salvation.”3

I refer to so many of these statements because of how doubt is viewed and, from my perspective, misunderstood in our day. Evangelical Christian scholar Albert Mohler wrote: “Unsurpris­ingly, it is only after the Enlightenment that atheism became a real intellectual force. The Enlightenment produced a massive shift in the conditions of belief.” He adds that “the result was a new opportunity for the denial of belief in the supernatural in general and the denial of a personal supernatural God specifically. Doubt came to be considered as an intellectual tool, and there arose a culture of doubt and skepticism. In the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the conditions of belief changed dramatically.”4

We are the heirs of much Enlightenment thinking today, a great deal of it extremely valuable, some of it potentially destructive to faith. Especially in recent years, doubt seems almost to be celebrated and in some quarters is considered a prerequisite to faith, a stepping-stone to strong belief. One problem with believing and teaching such a thing is that some members of the Church who have never had noticeable periods or seasons of doubt just might suppose that (1) their faith must not be as strong and stable as that of persons who labored painfully with doubt; or (2) they ought to seek out or welcome doubts into their lives to complete the supposed faith formula. Both ideas are false and potentially hazardous. Neither encouraging doubt nor glorying in it is spiritually healthy or wise. President Harold B. Lee remarked that “it has been said by some who speak loosely that ‘he who never doubted, never thought.’ [We] must understand that faith, not doubt, is the beginning of all learning, whether in science or religion.”5

“Intelligent people cannot long endure . . . doubt,” Elder John A. Widtsoe stated. “It must be resolved. . . . We set about to remove doubt by gathering information and making tests concerning the subject in question. . . .

“Doubt, therefore, can be and should be only a temporary condition. Certainly a question cannot forever be suspended between heaven and earth; it is either answered or unanswered. As the results of an inquiry appear, doubt must flee. . . .

“The strong man is not afraid to say, ‘I do not know’; the weak man simpers and answers, ‘I doubt.’ 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. To take pride in being a doubter, without earnestly seeking to remove the doubt, is to reveal shallowness of thought and purpose.”6

In a devotional address to Brigham Young University students, Elder Marcus B. Nash of the Seventy pointed out that “each of us comes into this world with weakness, which I will define as desires or tendencies inconsistent with the plan of salvation. Such things, to one degree or another, are inherent in the human condition.” He also observed that because Satan is aware of the great power that comes through faith in God’s plan, “he seeks to weaken and ultimately destroy it. Time has shown that among the most effective weapons in his war against faith are sin, fear, and doubt.” He noted that many members of the Church “conflate the idea of questions with the concept of doubt. Questions and doubt are not the same thing. We can seek answers to honest questions with doubt, or we can do so with faith. The choice is ours. . . . Having faith means that we do not know all the answers to all the questions all the time, but we choose to live our lives consistent with the gospel truths we do know because we trust our God! So heed not the mocking and often condescending voices of those who have lost faith.”

Elder Nash declared that “the Lord’s command to ‘doubt not, fear not’ (D&C 6:36) is akin to King Benjamin’s instruction to ‘[put] off the natural man’ (Mosiah 3:19). . . . Doubt too can be a part of the natural man experience, and it too will canker the soul if left unchecked.” Elder Nash then added that rather than overreact or underreact when doubts creep in, “see doubt for what it is: a natural-man impulse that can paralyze your thinking and actions. Then exercise your faith in the Father and in the Son by patiently and diligently living the gospel and trusting that light and understanding will come to those who patiently seek learning by study and by faith. It is beautifully, eternally productive to combine study and faith.”7

Cyprian, a great defender of the faith after the apostolic period, remarked: “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly, and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.”8

But What If . . .

Now, having learned what the scriptures and latter-day Church leaders have taught concerning doubt, let’s take a few moments to have a reality check. Doubt exists. Among Latter-day Saints. Among Saints who do in fact have testimonies of the restored gospel. I can still remember how I felt when I first read the following words from the preface of Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s masterwork, The Promised Messiah: “I was born with a testimony, and from my earliest days have known with absolute certainty of the truth and divinity of his great latter-day work. Doubt and uncertainty have been as foreign to me as the gibberish of alien tongues.”9 I was deeply touched by his words, and I sensed then that Elder McConkie was an honest man, that he meant exactly what he said.

My next thought was, “Boy, wouldn’t that be nice!” Why? Because I had faced doubts directly on a number of occasions, had struggled to come to faith, had wrestled with questions for which there did not then seem to be available answers. Further, I have known many remarkable and godly people who also had gone through seasons of unrest, times of spiritual drought, periods when divine responses to petitions seemed just out of reach. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is a prime example of one who, in spite of nearly half a century of yearning to feel divine approbation and love, pleading for the closeness to Deity that all believers crave, and yet having those desires unfulfilled, kept on. She kept going, until the day she died. Day in and day out, she charitably and humbly went into the streets to greet and feed and lift and love the “poorest of the poor,” to offer tenderness, affection, and healing.10

No one should feel ashamed or less worthy when doubts arise. Like questions, doubts seem to be a part of our probationary estate. I agree with Latter-day Saint historian Patrick Q. Mason when he wrote: “Stigmatizing doubt to the point that people feel guilty for even having questions is not conducive to spiritual growth. Neither is it helpful to ignore questions as if they are invalid, unimportant, and wrongheaded. After having spent time in the scholarly trenches with many if not all of the issues that typically trouble people, and as one who has had countless conversations with those who feel their faith is teetering on the edge, I can strongly assert that the challenges are real and that most of the people who face them are earnest.”11

For some, doubts take the form of “I’m not so sure that I really believe living that particular principle is spiritually worthwhile,” or “I’m having difficulty reconciling my feelings of love and respect for our Church’s leaders with the position the Church took on . . .” or “Can’t I believe the Book of Mormon contains beautiful and uplifting teachings and marvelous precepts without believing it is a record of an actual pre-Columbian people?” or “Would it really complicate things in the Church if women were ordained to the priesthood?”

These are examples of matters about which some Latter-day Saints wrestle. And some of those are beloved, even lifelong, friends of mine. They are serious concerns to our brothers and sisters, and they should be taken seriously by those who desire to provide answers and strengthen their faith. Elder M. Russell Ballard explained to teachers in the Church Educational System, “Gone are the days when a student asked an honest question and a teacher responded, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Gone are the days when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue. Gone are the days when students are protected from people who attacked the Church.”12

There have been times when I allowed a question here and there in my life to morph into a doubt, when a doctrinal or historical issue took an extended period to understand or resolve. But one of the most profoundly moving and even startling of my moments of doubt came several years ago while I was simply sitting in our living room. My wife, Shauna, was away at the time, and I had spent a few hours reading. One of our daughters was going through a difficult illness. For some reason, I found myself worrying and fretting in what I now acknowledge was disproportionate to the situation at the time. She was quite sick, but there was nothing to suggest that her condition was life threatening. And yet I found myself thinking the worst—what would happen to her husband and children, how would he would get by, and how would their children survive without their mom.

But that was not the deepest anguish nor the most poignant fear. I found myself reflecting deeply during the next fifteen minutes on such dark questions as, What if there is no life after death? What if this life is all there is? What if, when we die, we simply cease to exist? What if we would never see our daughter again after we laid her in the grave? The situation was entirely new to me because I had never in my life entertained such doubts. The pain, the sorrow, the gloom and bitterness, the darkness that shrouded my soul are almost impossible to describe now; all I can say is that for a period of time I found myself where I had never been before: in a mood of absolute existential despair, drowning in doubt and consumed by the pain of eternal separation. I wept and shuddered, shook my head and cried out, “No, no! It can’t be!”

And then, as quickly as those evil and empty and distressing thoughts had entered my mind, they left. The Spirit of God rested upon me, and I felt that reassuring peace that passes all understanding: the tender assurance that God lives and that he is in his heavens; that the plan of salvation is in very deed the great plan of happiness; that Jesus has in truth burst the bands of death and led captivity captive; that his rise from the tomb signaled and certified that we, too, will rise from the grave in glory; and that life and love and learning are forever. In short, my soul was reassured and rested in the knowledge that all that I had been taught, all that I had read and studied, all that I myself had taught in various venues in different parts of the world, was true. It was true! Oh, the unspeakable relief I felt! It was as though the lights had been switched on and the darkness dispelled. Like Lamoni, I was keenly aware and attuned to the fact that the “dark veil of unbelief [had been] cast away from [my] mind, and the light which did light up [my] mind . . . was the light of the glory of God.” Indeed, that “light had infused such joy into [my] soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled” (Alma 19:6).

As I sat pondering on what had just taken place, my mind and heart were overrun with a mixture of thoughts and feelings: I poured out my heart in gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the spiritual study in contrast I had just experienced. I thanked God for the testimony of Jesus that had been planted in my heart some six decades before. I praised him for allowing me to sense, for a brief moment, just how gloomy and helpless so many of earth’s inhabitants feel when a loved one departs this life or when they themselves look into the eyes of the grim reaper. Consequently, I grieved for a time with all those in the world who sorrow in the face of death without hope of deliverance and the firm knowledge of the immortality of the soul. Even now as I contemplate that sobering experience, I am overwhelmed with feelings of appreciation and love for the Father and the Son, for their care and tender mercies. My doubt, ugly and overwhelming as it was, had been dispelled by a far greater power.

Conclusion

Ours is a beautiful world, and it is spiritually healthy to rejoice frequently in the Lord and in the magnificence of his creations. Ours is also a troubled world. We live in what some of the prophets have called the Saturday evening of time, in the eleventh hour.13 Three millennia before the coming of Jesus Christ to earth, Enoch the patriarch-prophet was shown (as were many of the Lord’s seers) a panoramic vision of things past, present, and future. He saw that “the heavens shall be darkened, and a veil of darkness shall cover the earth; and the heavens shall shake, and also the earth; and great tribulations shall be among the children of men, but my people will I preserve; and righteousness will I send down out of heaven; and truth will I send forth out of the earth, to bear testimony of mine Only Begotten” (Moses 7:61–62; emphasis added).

That “veil of darkness” Enoch saw can take many forms. The irony is staggering when we consider that in our day millions upon millions of pieces of data and information can be retrieved in almost the snap of a finger, while at the same time we are witnessing “a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.” Amos prophesied that “they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12).

The blessed word of the Lord, particularly that certitude and assurance that come from the member of the Godhead known as the Witness or Testator, can and will come to the honest in heart. Men and women, young and old, need not languish in doubt, nor need they wrestle forevermore with disturbing questions. Compounding doubt and spreading uncertainty need not characterize the Latter-day Saints, for there is a more excellent way; there is a brighter future. We can look at the world—and even look at our questions or doubts—through the “eye of faith” (Alma 5:15; 32:40; Ether 12:19). To do so is simply to be open, attentive, teachable, even flexible, for “the things of the Spirit are to be ‘sought by faith’; they are not to be seen through slit-eyed skepticism.”14 We need not yield to despair or settle for second best when it comes to knowledge and understanding and conviction. We are not alone, for we have received the soothing and satisfying word of Jehovah: “My people will I preserve” (Moses 7:61). May we be open to the Master’s gracious effort to preserve and protect us.

Notes

1. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, s.v. “doubt.”

2. Lectures on Faith, 46; emphasis added.

3. Lectures on Faith, 52; emphasis added; see also 71.

4. Mohler, Atheism Remix,18–19; emphasis added.

5. Teachings of Harold B. Lee, 88.

6. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, 31–32; emphasis added.

7. Nash, “Guided Safely Home.”

8. In Lee, Stand Ye in Holy Places, 57; emphasis added.

9. McConkie, Promised Messiah, xvii.

10. See Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa.

11. Mason, Planted, 19.

12. Ballard, “Opportunities and Responsibilities of CES Teachers.”

13. See Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, 3:1.

14. Maxwell, Not My Will, but Thine, 35.