It has almost become a cliché that those who are called to give talks on this or that subject will begin by defining name of their subject. (For example, Gospel literally means good news.) It can be good to update and refine our personal definitions of scriptural terms occasionally. When are they ever complete?
My first lessons about driving a car included instructions to walk around any car before driving and make certain the tires were inflated, and no gasoline or other fluids were leaking. Today I almost never stop to consider those things; I just get in my car and go.
In a similar way, it is easy to assume that we have the basics down—that our personal definitions of scriptural terms are compatible with the actual definitions. Most of them are, but often there are gaps in our understandings of the fundamentals, and this can lead us to incorrect actions or assumptions. We can falsely believe we have crossed the finish line when there is none.
Scriptural definitions of words and their secular counterparts are often quite different (e.g. converted means “convinced” in popular terms, but it means “altered by God” in the scriptures).
Below are some terms that are not as simple as they sound at first.
Faith
What could be simpler? Faith usually means “a belief one holds beyond physical proof.” The scriptures distinguish between mere belief on the one hand, and faith on the other. Faith is a subcategory of belief; it is a belief in things unseen but TRUE. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1; JST says “Now faith is the assurance…”).
“…faith is things which are hoped for and not seen…” (Ether 12:6). (The most important of these unseen but true things is Jesus Himself.)
In other words, to believe in something unseen and false, or to believe in something seen and true, are not scriptural examples of faith. It must be a belief in that which is unseen and true to qualify as the kind of faith the scriptures say we need.
The scriptures refer to faith as “evidence.” How can a belief in something be evidence of that thing? Again, scriptural terms are not as simple as they seem at first.
Alma 32 is generally considered the go-to passage in the Book of Mormon about increasing one’s faith. If you read it carefully, you recognize that Alma has a few assumptions, and one of them is that each person has some kind of built-in spiritual truth detector.
“…we will compare the word to a seed…if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlighten my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlarge my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.
“Now, behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea…” (Alma 32:28-29).
Alma here assumes that if anyone hears the truth, and takes a chance by accepting it into his or her heart, the validity of the ideas will elicit certain responses in the person. It will cause feelings—“swelling motions,” good feelings, inside of a person. It will “enlarge” the soul, “enlighten” the understanding, and become “delicious” to a person. Just as the palate can detect the foul taste of poison or the sweetness of sugar, Alma is telling us that we have the ability to “taste” when an idea is correct, and that recognizing that sweetness will increase our faith (when we look for it).
Another assumption of Alma’s we often overlook is the roll of the Holy Ghost in this process of building faith—he says if we “will resist the Spirit of the Lord” it might short-circuit things. That is another element of faith that goes beyond secular or popular definitions—revelation. It is not just a man sitting in a padded cell reading the scriptures and achieving an epiphany on his own. A member of the Godhead is involved in the process of lighting the flame of our faith.
Almost immediately after the Savior appears to the Nephites, He tells them: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and I bear record of it from the Father; and whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto him will the Father bear record of me, for he will visit him with fire and with the Holy Ghost.
“And thus will the Father bear record of me, and the Holy Ghost will bear record of the Father and me…” (3Ne. 11:35-36). Any old kind of belief will not suffice. Faith built on suppositions, assumptions, casual acceptance, leaning on the words of trustworthy authority figures, even witnessing miracles, is not enough; we must all receive some confirmation from God in our hearts before we have the kind of faith in Christ required of us.
Repentance
Sometimes we twist the scriptures by tacking another word onto a term, and suddenly it loses all its meaning, or gets warped into something else, sidetracked. The Savior says: “…the Father commandeth all men, everywhere, to repent and believe in me” (3Ne. 11:32).
In the scriptures, repentance is something everyone is commanded to do all the time. We are commanded by the Savior, “be ye…perfect,” (3Ne. 12:48, Matt. 5:48), and that is never fully completed for us here; it will come long after the resurrection. In other words, we are not to beat ourselves up, but we are not to rest on our laurels, either. For all practical purposes, legitimate repentance never ends—any improvement we make in this life counts as repentance.
In our Sunday schools and sacrament meeting talks, we have begun to tack a word onto repentance that does not follow it in the scriptures: “process.” This gives kids in the audience a false impression—that repentance is like a regimen of medicine you have to take for a while after you do something really naughty, something you can spit out and leave on the shelf when you have suffered enough.
This can create a negative stigma—that repentance is like a dunce cap or a scarlet letter, a badge of shame to punish those who have done something very terrible. When we hold to this mentality, any suggestion that we need to repent is tantamount to attacking us, impugning our character.
There is no neat, start-to-finish “repentance process,” unless the process is life-long. “…all men, everywhere…” must repent continually. Anyone who is not repenting is necessarily backsliding. A living tree always adds new rings of growth.
Feeling guilty all the time is not a legitimate part of repentance, either. We often conflate feeling sorry or depressed with genuine scriptural humility. Alma tells his wayward son, Corianton: “…only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance” (Alma 42:29).
Sorrow for sins should soon be replaced by resolve to live well—constant guilt morphs into shame, which can cripple progress along the Gospel path here and now (though there is a place and time for guilt when we repent). If misery were the essence of genuine humility, Satan would be humble. Genuine humility is closer to willingness—being ready and prepared and even eager to do what God commands us, coupled with an acknowledgement that we desperately need His help.
If there is a “repentance process,” it is a never ending one. Creating the false impression that it is a brief “process” can eclipse the fuller meaning of repentance—continual lifelong refinement.
Rebirth—A Mighty Change
All these terms funnel into another concept mentioned frequently in the Book of Mormon, but that is generally not well understood among us members of the Church—spiritual rebirth, the “mighty change of heart.” One member I talked with thought that being reborn meant the ordinance of confirmation after baptism. Rebirth might come at that moment, but often it does not.
The earth was baptized with the flood, but it has yet to be baptized with fire; many of us are in a similar condition spiritually. We have received ordinances, but not that rebirth, that change of heart.
One well-meaning speaker conflated the scriptural term “mighty change of heart” with the enthusiasm we feel after a rousing sermon. We recommit ourselves on special occasions, determined to try harder and do better. This enthusiasm is a good thing, but it ebbs and flows, comes and goes. It is not what the scriptures mean when the say “a mighty change of heart.”
This change is conversion, something the Lord does to us or in us; it is not something we work on, or cause through our own efforts alone. We can work on or practice at keeping the commandments, and these exertions are good, but they do not constitute or directly cause spiritual rebirth.
So often, we want everything in the Gospel to conform to what we can touch, see, and understand with our natural minds. We comprehend working harder and getting good at something, and that has application in the plan of salvation, but there are certain parts of the plan that do not make any sense to the natural man, yet are also critical.
For instance, why would being very, very, very humble before God, and having faith in Him, and being baptized and confirmed, make cigarettes unappealing to an addict? There is no physical connection between the two things, and yet the laws of God and His power, the power of the Atonement, can cause such a change. If we were supposed to rescue ourselves, why would we need a Savior? He does for us that which we cannot do for ourselves, including changing our natures to more closely align with His.
A lady I encountered on my mission (recently converted to the Church) told me and my companion that one day her nicotine addiction was simply gone—no work, no toil, no practice—the Lord had just changed her heart. This is a miracle, something that defies our assumptions about nature. Her husband, also a smoker, was not a member of the Church (and not interested in it). Yet even he was compelled to acknowledge, despite his lack of faith, that her sudden freedom from craving, or any symptoms of withdrawals, was remarkable. This is a practical example of that mighty change of heart.
This scares us members of the Church—it does not fit into our paradigm of working harder and seeing results. Also, it is not something one can bottle or distribute like an elixir. We would rather rely on the faulty arm of the flesh to get the Lord’s work done, and see mediocre results, than “relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save” (2Ne. 31:19).
This kind of a change is the result of coming to the Savior in deep humility and faith. When we are humble, He baptizes us “with fire and with the Holy Ghost” (3Ne. 9:20). This is not an increase in our enthusiasm—this change is something we might not be aware of: “…the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not” (3Ne. 9:20).
We can do our best to obey the commandments externally, yet miss out on this mighty change because we are not humble enough.
What constitutes real humility? “I’ll do it your way Lord—I need your help,” captures some of it. Another way to gauge our humility: Go through the list of things we love, and ask one by one, “Would I surrender this to the Lord if He asked me to give it up?” The point here is not to hate everything but the Lord, or to think that the things we love are necessarily bad; the real question is, Do we love the Lord more than anything?
Abraham loved Isaac, but he loved the Lord more. Isaac was not bad—he was a gift from God to his parents, a miracle child. Surrendering Isaac by itself was no virtue; indeed, it was appropriate for Abraham to love this boy. The real virtue was in keeping the first commandment—to love God before all else. That is authentic humility, and has nothing to do with belittling ourselves or feeling guilty.
The things we surrender are not what God wants (He already owns everything); what they represent, the offering of “a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” that is what He wants from us.
He will not overstep agency—God only changes our hearts when we surrender them to Him. The more we surrender our hearts, the more He will change them. Often that surrender is accompanied by some outward act, and we can confuse that outward obedience with the real cause of the sanctification we see in ourselves. Were the ten lepers healed because they started walking towards the priest, or were they healed because that show of faith increased their faith in Jesus and His power to heal them? Are we reborn because we keep the commandments outwardly, or because keeping the commandments (or attempting to do so) engenders that humility and faith in Jesus Christ that leads to conversion, a mighty change?
When we share or study the gospel, it is good to examine our assumptions about what terms mean. False assumptions that we fully comprehend Gospel vocabulary can impair our understanding, or even spiritual progress.
