"Faith is the Great Cop-out..."

Over the past few weeks, as I've been going to church, studying scripture, praying, recording thoughts and feelings and impressions I receive from Him in my journal, and visiting the Temple grounds; I've repeatedly had a Richard Dawkins quote come into my head. I'm sure many of you are familiar with it, it reads:

Faith is the great cop-out, 

the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. 

Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

 I remember thinking, in my inactive days of... a month ago, how much I agreed with this sentiment. I remember feeling this truth, and found myself astonished that anyone could be so foolish as to think there was a Divine Being. The literal thought of God created a rage in me.

 I now know better.

Since exercising my faith, and trusting in Him to reveal Himself to me, and His subsequent revelation, I have a vastly different interpretation.

Faith is not an excuse. 

Faith is not easy.

Faith is hard. 

  Finding it is the hardest, most painful thing I have ever done. I remember spending hours as a child on my knees begging for His help. I didn't believe He would, I just had nowhere else to turn. After I (thought I had) received no help, I became angry. I raged at God. I swore at Him, I cursed Him, I reviled Him for not taking the prayers of a young man and granting them without delay. I thought only an unjust God could see and hear and feel the innate suffering, the soul-crushing agony I was going through and turn away.

My problem is that I had no faith. Faith is often defined as believing in something that you cannot see, or prove. Something that isn't tangible. But this is a vast oversimplification of Faith by those who don't understand it. Faith is so much more than belief. It is knowing without a shred of doubt in your soul that something is real, and it does exist, even if you don't know how or why. I have Faith that the Sun is a real, tangible object. I also have Faith that Christ lived, and performed miracles, and continues to do both of those things.

But wait, you might say, I can see the Sun, I can feel it's heat on my back, I know when it is gone from my sight; I don't know that of Christ.

But I do.

I see Him everyday, through miracles both large and small he performs for me, and others. I can feel the warmth of His presence when he is near me, and likewise feel the loss when He departs. I know he is real just as I know the Sun is a ball of burning gas 93 million miles away (a figure I didn't even have to look up, you should be impressed to know), or that Barack Obama is the President of the United States.

Faith is not a cop-out, it is not ignoring evidence. It is finding the abundance of evidence, recognizing it, and accepting it; and then continuing to do so throughout your life! Faith requires work, belief in science requires no such thing. I know gravity exists; I experience it on a daily basis, and I move on. That knowledge has no effect on my life. No person, or entity is striving to take away my belief in the power of gravity.

The same cannot be said of my Faith.

I know my Redeemer lives, but every second of every day, there is a very real personage trying to take that belief from me. I have struggled with a great addiction for many years, and at the moment of my conversion, any desire to partake in my Great Temptation was taken from me. Not once have I strayed from the path in the weeks following, and that is the greatest evidence to me that the Savior is working miracles in my life. but every so often, a voice whispers, "That was not His presence, that was your mind. It was a placebo." And I have to remember the burden that was lifted from me, and I have to pray for support, and I have to have faith in Him that I will be delivered, and I will be.

I go through this cycle many times a day, many times an hour. And it is hard, and it requires work, and exertion, and faith, but I can beat it. Satan does not whisper into my ear misgivings about the truth of gravity. 

And that is the difference. 

People who do not have Faith cannot know how endlessly easy it is to not have faith. I know I didn't. It would be so much easier for me to go back to my former ways. To curse, to partake in vulgar music, to give in to my Great Temptation, and to put aside the Joy I receive from Him to settle for contentment. To be complacent. To be lazy in my faith, much like being lazy in anything else.

A good friend and I were discussing this very topic earlier tonight, and she had a wonderful insight into faith:

"The truth is that everyone with faith is constantly on this teeter totter

 of finding where their beliefs are, and trying to strengthen them...

It's never complacent...

It's so much easier to stop trying...

But then you're also never balanced..."

Faith requires work. It requires evidence. And it is HARD to gain. Faith is not a cop-out, just the opposite. People stop searching for Faith, not because it's easy, but because it is so hard.

I remember being told that to receive and answer to my prayer inquiring the truth of God that I needed to pray until I could pray no more, and then to keep praying. I found that absurd, like telling someone they had to walk until they passed out from dehydration, get up, and continue walking before being granted a drink. What God could require so much of me, when I was searching for HIM!  

The truth is, a loving One. A just One. I was looking at it in the wrong way. All God requires is that we, like Abraham, be willing to sacrifice our everything to Him, and through that obedience He will grant us new life. And I promise you, he does, and he will. This is coming from a person who literally thought not a month ago that people who had a "relationship" with God were stupid, and ignorant, and who knew He didn't exist, and would never, and could never exist. Until He did. He came to me, and wrapped His arms around me, and said "I am with you. I have always been, and will always be with you. I have struggled, and mourned, and sorrowed with you, and now I rejoice that you might know Me." 

And all it took was believing He would, until I could believe no longer. And then believing a little more. It took giving everything I am, everything I have to him, and the willingness to give so much more. And to maintain it, I must be willing to do the same.

What's so hard about that?