I have for many years been mystified by how people can once
have a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and then supposedly
lose it. People say, “well they must not have had a testimony in the first
place” but I don’t believe that is true.
For my own self, I want to be sure that I remain true and faithful to what
I know. I want to be able to weather the
storms of life, the darts of the adversary and my own personal failings and
temptations.
Perhaps how our brains work holds something of the answer to
this forgetting. Yesterday on CBC on “Quirks
and Quarks” a question was asked about memory.
The question was whether when we remember something, we are remembering
the original experience or whether we are remembering the remembering. We do in fact remember the memory not the
original experience. Like a computer we make
new versions of experience as we remember .
The interesting thing is that the memory is influenced by what we are thinking at the time we are in the
remembering process. The context of how
we are and what we are thinking about when we remember overlays itself on our
memory of the original experience. That
means that depending on what is happening to us in the current context, our
memory of the past can change or be changed by our current experience. In relation to testimony, if we are in a
state of doubt when we think about a spiritual experience in the past, that
memory can be affected by our current doubt.
It turns out then that the ability to remember what we know is
a key aspect of maintaining a testimony. Perhaps that is why the Lord uses this
word so frequently in the scriptures. In
Mosiah 4:30 King Benjamin says “But this
much I can tell you, that if you do not watch yourselves and your thoughts, and
your words, and your deeds, and observe the commandments of God, and continue
in the faith of what ye have heard concerning the coming of our Lord, even unto
the end of your lives, ye must perish.
And now, O man, remember, and perish
not.” So when challenges and adversity
come, as they will, it is important to remember, truly remember, what we have
known and experienced that have built our testimony.
The purpose of this life is to gain experience and through
wise choices gain wisdom, becoming perfected like our Heavenly Parents. If we are raised in the gospel as I was, we
learn about spiritual practices such as prayer and scripture reading, church attendance
and service. We learn how to do these
things and by both explicit and implicit (i.e. example) teaching we have the opportunity to learn the
importance of these spiritual practices.
As we grow older, we take
upon ourselves sacred commitments and make promises to the Lord that we have
come to know, in the temple. With integrity, we try our best to keep these
covenants, thinking deeply about gospel principles and giving ourselves to the
service of others. As we gain experience
praying, fasting, not just reading but studying the scriptures, attending years
of church meetings and giving service through hard times, we learn to love and
come to deeper understandings about the gospel of Jesus Christ. This
experience over time develops into a testimony of the truth of individual
principles and of the gospel in its entirety.
The more we discipline ourselves with these practices,
the more sensitive we become to the Spirit
and more able to discern light and truth
The more we experience of light and truth the more we are learn from our
experience and the deeper our testimony
becomes. The more we come to understand our daily need for the love, mercy and
atonement of Jesus Christ. We learn to overlook the failings of others and in
the organization of the church. This process that begins in our youth as
simple instruction and rote obedience, as adults has us make choices to
continue this spiritual learning and then to remember what we have
learned. We can become through this
process wise as to the things of the spirit.
As adults we must continue in this spiritual
discipline. Like physical fitness, we
much persevere and continue in this practice to maintain our spiritual strength. Just as physical fitness can be lost, spiritual
sensitivity can also be lost through inattention, through participating in
activities and exposing ourselves to experiences that take our focus from that
which is spiritual. These are many and
varied. The temptations are real and
powerful: money, career, sex, drugs,
alcohol, feminism, activism and intellectualism. There are too many to list and their power is
personal and individual. Each of us may respond and be tempted to different
degreees but in our world these detractors are constant and pernicious.
If the research in how we remember is true, then what we are
choosing to do today in relation to spiritual discipline can in fact have us
forget what we once knew. Our current
doubt can have us change our past confidence.
This explains how people can begin to tell different stories about their
testimony and about what they once knew. It becomes easier to say that they
never knew it was true. This is hard and
painful and has me reflect on what I know and have learned. It encourages me to rehearse often in times
of both strength and weakness what my past experiences have meant, what I know
to be true to be sure that I remember and do not lose the spiritual wisdom and
light that I now have.
I have experienced the direction of the Spirit in both the
mundane i.e. where is the wallet, to the incredibly important i.e. who should I
marry and if and when I should I have a child.
I have felt the comfort in my darkest saddest times that there is
eternal life and those that I love that have departed are yet alive and know
and care for me. I have felt the
strength that comes from depending on the Lord through hard times, hard
physical and emotional. I have been able
to do more with this strengthening than I could ever have imagined doing on my
own.
I have seen the transformation that comes in lives and
families when gospel covenants are made and kept. I have seen the pain and
suffering that follows when they are not. I have seen the power, strength and
wisdom that comes to women who have given their lives to gospel and family service. I have seen the unselfish softening and
humility that comes to men who have kept the oath and covenant of the priesthood. I have felt the joy of repentance and the
sweet forgiveness of the Saviour and know that this is real.
I am grateful for the heritage of faith and testimony and
church membership at have. I am grateful for the choices that my progenitors
made at great personal sacrifice to join and stay true to this gospel and this church. Just as they knew that there was a prophet
and the true religion had been restored so do I know that we have a prophet. And, in spite of the failings of individuals
and the every changing world context, this is the true religion and only true church.
I am grateful for this knowledge. As my
sisters both said to me on different occasions, I will not allow any person or
experience to have me deny what I know, to sever in any way my association with
this church, its members and to leave. I
will not let down those who came before me by treating it with lightness. I will not disappoint those whose sacrifice
was great, by becoming discouraged with my imperfections or because of any
other trial no matter how great. This is
what I want to remember and do remember.
