Learning and faith

Learning and faith are powerfully connected. Learning increases faith, and faith is required for learning to take place. Faith and learning are a self-reinforcing pair that can form a virtuous cycle – leading the learner to ever greater light and knowledge of the truth. But the right conditions must be in place. This concept is very new to me and I have only begun to explore it, so this post is just a first stab at what seems to be an extremely important area of study.

While my exposure to the concept goes back further, I was most recently inspired by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of revelations given by Jesus Christ to his prophet, Joseph Smith and considered scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), section 88, verse 118. Let me quote the passage here:

“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

I found it striking that the response to a lack of faith was to teach: “as all have not faith…teach one another…” Learning, in other words, begets faith. But also, at the end of the verse, we are commended to “seek learning…by faith.” So the reverse is also true: faith is essential to learning!

Now, the atheist or agnostic is probably rolling her eyes at this point, thinking “hey, I don’t need to believe in God to be able to learn. And learning doesn’t make me believe in God either.” Good point. But I never said one had to believe in God to be able to learn. What I said, was that faith was necessary for learning. Let me clarify: faith is belief. To have faith is to believe something with less than 100% certainty. Anytime you have less than absolute proof of something, but you believe it none the less, you have faith.

Faith is therefore a part of every human life, not just those with spiritual or religious inclinations. When scientists first propose a new theory or idea, they have little proof that they’re right. But they advance the idea anyway – believing it to be true before they know for sure. This is faith. Even after much evidence has been collected, there is still uncertainty in the result. In fact, scientists are required to quantify their uncertainty. For example, they might be able to say, “we are confident of this result to within one tenth of a percent.” But even then they can’t know for sure that their theory is correct. Further experimentation might overturn their theory, or reveal it to have been only partially true. So to believe the theory is correct still requires faith.

Another way to see it is that faith is confidence that something is true. The more faith you have in someone or something, the more confident you are in that person or thing. Under this definition, a scientist’s faith in a theory increases as more evidence is discovered that supports the theory. This may seem counter-intuitive, but faith is actually proportional to the degree of certainty, not inversely proportional – as many mistakenly think.

Now back to learning. My first claim was that learning increases faith. How is this so? If we use the concept of faith as confidence that something is true, then it becomes clearer. Say I have heard of a particular principle, idea, or concept (let’s go with ‘concept’ from here on out, for simplicity’s sake), but I’m not at all sure I believe it is true. Perhaps I have only heard it explained vaguely or briefly and my understanding of it is not very strong. At this stage, my lack of faith (or confidence) in the concept is justified: I cannot have faith in something I do not even understand. That would be foolish, and atheists and agnostics are right to criticize this behavior – what is often referred to as ‘blind faith.’ True faith is not blind: it is a well-founded confidence that something is true. To gain that confidence, I must first increase my understanding; in other words, I must learn.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the more I learn about a concept the more confident I will be in its truthfulness. On the contrary, I may discover that it is an unreliable or even completely false concept, and my faith in it will diminish. And rightfully so: since faith is confidence in the truthfulness of something, as you discover that it is not true, your faith in that thing should diminish.

From the preceding argument it should now be clear that as knowledge and understanding grow, so does faith. This is simply because you cannot have faith (or confidence) in something you do not understand. If, through learning and increased understanding, you discover a concept to be false, then you discard it and your faith is no greater than before. But if you discover it to be true (or that there is some truth to be found in it – perhaps it is only partly true), then your faith has grown in that thing – and your overall faith in the truth has therefore augmented. As you discard false notions and embrace those that are true, your knowledge expands to an ever-wider circle, encompassing a larger subset of all truth. And as it does, so does your faith in the truth.

So much for learning increasing faith. One final word, however. And this is so important that I feel bad adding it as an addendum, but this post is getting too long and I need more time to think about it. For this process to occur (for learning to increase faith), the teacher must also have faith in what she is teaching. Faith increases a teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

The key here is that the teacher must teach with her faith. In other words, she must communicate her faith in the concept to the student. A teacher who does not really believe what she is teaching – or who is incapable of communicating that faith to the student – is much less likely to be able to assist the student in increasing her own understanding and faith. In other words, she will be a less effective teacher.

This is because it is very possible to learn something by rote without really gaining confidence that it is true. Stated otherwise, it is possible to simply learn about something without really learning it. To truly understand something, you must find out for yourself if it is true. You must be confident about the matter. Only then have you truly learned it. Faith, therefore, is a strong barometer for learning.

Which brings us, of course, to my second claim: that faith is necessary to learning, and increases both its pace and quality. But this point will have to wait for a later post.

The meaning of each day

The prime value and meaning of each new day is that it is an opportunity to love. If we cannot come to see life this way, we will not have lived to the fullest, or gained what we were intended to gain.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard is that you should always be thankful every day just for waking up. Don’t take it for granted that you will wake up tomorrow and have another day to live.

I’ve often wondered about this advice. It sounds so true – to use a physics analogy (which I warned you in my introductory post might happen occasionally), it makes my soul resonate on some of its most fundamental frequencies when I hear it and think about it. But I’m not sure I truly know why. I mean, most days I’m not frankly that grateful to wake up. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. And why? Because most days are so full of responsibilities, expectations, requirements, work and stress that I can’t honestly say that I wake up saying to myself, “Oh goody, here we go again! I love this!”

Which gives me pause to consider why the advice to be grateful every day just for waking up is so profoundly true. I mean, I’m not grateful. But I ought to be. What am I missing?

My own experience has provided a window of insight (and I’m sure, on reflection, you will discover yours has too) that might lead to a breakthrough on this one. In an attempt to resolve the conundrum, I asked myself, “have I ever been grateful just to wake up? When have I been grateful to be alive, to have the incredible pleasure of living? When has life been joyful to me?” Let me share with you some examples I thought of, and see if you can tease out the commonalities, the underlying themes.

The first experience I thought of was during my two year volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church” – yeah, it’s kinda long). For two years I spent all day, every day with a colleague talking to people about God, his son Jesus, and the plan they have for our lives here on Earth. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but for most of it I was legitimately happy. Sure, there were times when the homesickness (I served thousands of miles from home), difficulty getting along with my colleague, or the stress of talking to complete strangers in a foreign language overwhelmed my happiness. I’m only human. But for most of the time, life was joyful and I was happy. Not because life was easy. It certainly wasn’t. But even though it was hard, I was happy.

Second, I thought of a time when I volunteered (after my mission ended) on a committee – again, affiliated with the church – that organized, planned, and put on inspirational talks and lectures about spiritual matters and life in general for the students at my university. We would invite talented, wise individuals to come address the student body (the event was open to the entire university, but most of those who attended were members of the church), then prepare the main meeting hall of one of our churches for the event. This involved setting up hundreds if not thousands of chairs. Then, after everyone had left (which often took an hour after the event ended) we would take down the chairs and clean the building before heading home. In all, it would often take four or more hours of effort on the day of the event and several hours of preparation beforehand.

One winter night after one of these events I left particularly late. As I exited the building I realized it had been snowing hard the entire time and the ground was covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It was cold, and I hadn’t dressed for the snow, as it wasn’t snowing when I had arrived hours before. I trudged across the parking lot, the snow coming up past my knees, heading towards my car. It was a lump of white in an otherwise deserted parking lot: I was the last to leave. As I unburied my car with my arms, I remembered I had a test the following day in a very difficult physics class and I hadn’t had time to study much.

It was then that a funny realization hit me: I was happy! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I was cold; I was wet; I was the last to leave on a miserable snowy night; I had a test the next morning that I should have been stressed out about. But I wasn’t – on the contrary, I was happy.

I could mention other experiences too, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at two. Thinking back on these and other times I felt truly happy to be alive, I discovered the following remarkable correlation: my being happy had nothing whatever to do with the ease of my life. The level of ease, of pain, of convenience, of entertainment and fun; all these had nothing to do with my happiness. In fact, if these had been the prime determinants of my happiness or misery, I should have been very miserable, not happy.

Instead, it seemed to me that I had been ignoring my own ease, pain, convenience, or entertainment, and that this had somehow caused me to be happy. As soon as this thought hit me, I remembered my reasons for not being happy to wake up every morning. I had thought that so long as my life were stress-free, responsibility-free – in short, full of ease, convenience, fun, and short on pain, then I should be happy. And being grateful to wake up every day would be natural.

I realized that I was completely wrong. In fact, the focus on my own life and my stress, troubles, responsibilities, etc was what was bringing me down! When I forgot to think about them because I was too busy thinking about others, worrying about or serving others, I was truly happy. The motto “forget yourself” came to mind. As did Jesus’ teaching, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Which leads me back to my conclusion: the meaning of each day – the reason to be grateful and happy just to wake up one more time – is that it affords each of us the opportunity to live for others, not ourselves. In short, each day is an opportunity to love.  

The odd link between pain and anger

The other day I was thinking about anger. Where does it come from? Why do we feel this powerful emotion? And why does it always feel like reaction? Reaction to what? Trying to trace this emotion back to its source, I came across a rather startling realization: in almost all cases, anger originates from pain and/or fear. An angry person is one who has been hurt, who is suffering, or who is afraid. And properly dealing with that pain or fear can quench the anger. 

I’m not sure exactly how I stumbled on this, but if you think about specific examples and try to trace the anger back to its source, you almost always run into pain or fear, or both. Indeed, fear is the source of significant pain and anguish, so the connection is hardly surprising.

For instance, take a group of three friends. Initially, they are all equally close to one another, more or less; but over time, two of them grow closer to each other than to the third. The two are happy and sense nothing wrong, but over time the third friend grows inexplicably angry with the other two, being mean or spiteful for no apparent reason. The two friends might interpret this to mean that the third doesn’t really like them anymore, when in fact the opposite is true: the anger stems from her hurt feelings at being excluded or feeling less loved.

Or an even simpler example: you stub your toe hard. What do you do? You hop around, cursing like a sailor for half a minute while the pain subsides. Someone walking in on this scene might be frightened by the sudden burst of angry words. But there’s no cause for alarm – the anger will subside with the pain.

At first, I was confused as to why pain would lead to anger. Pain inspires sympathy and a tender desire to help and comfort. Fury, in contrast to pain, drives others away and discourages the kind of comfort and love that would best address the suffering that caused the rage in the first place. It all seems very counter productive and ironic to me.

Yet it’s true. Every time I feel angry about something it comes down to an offense: someone or something offended me, hurt my pride or my feelings. But if this natural reaction is so counterproductive, then perhaps by understanding the reason behind it one can learn to overcome it. This is especially important in light of Jesus’ famous statement: “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come.” (Matthew 18:7, KJV) I take this to mean simply that it is impossible to avoid being offended in this life; people and circumstances are going to offend you every single day. So the sooner we overcome the knee-jerk reaction to resort to anger, the better off we will be.

So why is it that pain and fear give rise to anger? I think, after some reflection, that it arises from two factors. First, anger is an anesthetic, a painkiller. We resort to anger because it distracts us from our pain. Think back to the stubbed toe example. Why resort to cursing while you hop around on one foot? Because it takes your mind off of your throbbing toe a little. That’s why the cursing tends to subside with the throbbing.  Or the friend who has been excluded forgets her hurt and loneliness and rejection by focusing instead on being mean. She may not even consciously recognize that her anger is the result of her feelings of rejection, so effectively has her anger distracted her.

Second, the alternative to responding in anger makes you feel helpless; and people don’t like to feel helpless. Responding in anger gives the impression of accomplishing something  - and sometimes, if directed carefully and properly, anger can lead to getting important things done. But most often the perception of power that comes with anger is illusory and short-lived, or at worst is highly destructive, rather than productive. But those who suppress the resort to anger have little choice but to quietly, humbly endure the pain. To be honest, this is extremely hard to do. It’s why Jesus’ command to turn the other cheek is so revolutionary – and difficult. You simply have to submit to the pain without any distraction or anesthetic. Resisting the urge to anger and quietly, patiently enduring pain is, I think, at the heart of what it means to be Christian.

There is something magical in enduring pain and suffering without recourse to anger and wrath. It prevents the wounds to self and others that rage always inflicts. But it also changes you. Great patience is required, and I have learned that patience is the greatest virtue of them all; where it goes, every other blessing follows. By resorting to anger, you are forfeiting the chance to mold your character in the heat of affliction. Sometimes absorbing that heat (rather than directing it outwards at others) allows impurities to burn away, leaving you more refined.

I certainly haven’t discovered every aspect of this issue, but I’m intrigued by the connection. It seems to me that this is one of those golden keys to wisdom, maturity, and happiness in life. And like all such keys it is difficult to master. Jesus himself mastered it to perfection – which indicates how important it is for us to follow and do likewise.

P.S. I hope I haven’t offended the reader by my frequent references to Jesus. It’s just that he is, in my mind, the greatest teacher of all time; so whether or not you believe he is the savior of the world, I hope you can appreciate his role as a teacher.