From Bruce C. Hafen and his book ‘Faith is Not Blind’:
Some people who wonder if they are losing their religious faith say that they are not only losing confidence in Joseph and the Restoration, but that why are losing confidence in the very existence if God—implying that the Restoration isn’t true, no other religious explanation of life could be true either. And suddenly agnosticism or even atheism sound like a real option to them.
That can be seen as a backhanded compliment to the strength of the Restoration’s claims. Yet those whose faith has been that deeply shaken might be asking themselves for the first time how we can “know” anything about spiritual realities beyond what we can prove with our rational senses, One friend was talking to coworkers who said they were atheists. When he asked why they didn’t believe in God, they said, “No one ever comes back to life. What convinces you that Jesus did when no else does?” Our friend wanted to “give . . . a reason of hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), but he couldn’t think of a “substantial reason, and for the first time truly questioned the religion of my childhood.”
He might have mentioned the Bible verses and modern scriptures that offer eyewitness accounts that both Jesus and many others “came back to life”—and that’s partly why the Book of Mormon is called “another witness of Jesus Christ.” But in the moment, what perhaps caught him so fully off guard was that he couldn’t offer “a substantial [enough] reason that might convince his friends.
A theistic explanation for life actually makes more sense than does an atheistic explanation. What are the odds that a tornado spinning through a junk yard would create a flyable Boeing 747? Or as Alma told the skeptical Korihor, “All things denote there is a God, yea even the earth and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion” (Alma 30:44).
Biologist Francis Collins led the international project in the year 2000 that put together the first complete map of the entire DNA code. Seeing the complex code as the language in which God created life, Collins writes that “Belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and . . .the principles of faith are . . . complementary with the principles of science.” In fact the earth contains in exactly the right proportions all of the fifteen scientific “physical constants” that are each crucial to sustaining the planet’s complex life forms.The likelihood that this unique combination could come together by sheer chance is almost infinitesimal. [Without God] our universe is [so] wildly improbable [that] faith in God is more rational than disbelief.” 54
At the same time, Collins is talking about probabilities, not absolute scientific certainties. And God has some good reason for making it so difficult for us to “prove” religious realities beyond question including the reality of his own existence. That’s not to say he has left us without evidence, witnesses, and probabilities. Still, there may be times when it seems that he has left us in the dark. Even Joseph Smith cried out in Liberty Jail, “O God, where are thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” (Doctrine 121:1).
Joseph was discovering what Job had also learned the hard way: “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there: and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold: he hideth himself, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:8-10).
Let us consider, then the value of the veil that covers God’s hiding place, the same veil that blocks our memories of our pre-earth life. In the Kirtland Temple, Joseph Smith said, “The veil was taken from our minds and the eyes of our understanding were opened” (Doctrine & Covenants 110:1). Before the Brother of Jared beheld the premortal Christ, “the veil was taken off [his] eyes” (Ether 3:6). Indeed there were “many” of such strong faith that they could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes [what] they beheld with an eye of faith—a faith which is not blind, yet remains subject to the veil.
Not only does the veil keep us from remembering our premortal past, it also keeps us from seeing many things that are going on in the present. God and his angels almost always stay in their hiding places—except on those exquisitely rare occasions when He does part the veil.
After the Savior’s Resurrection, for example, He saw and talked to two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t recognize Him. When he heard their disappointment about this Jesus in whom they had “trusted” (note the past tense), He saw that they had missed the core message of His mortal ministry. So, beginning at Moses . . . he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (see Luke 24:13-31). He didn’t say who he was. He taught them exactly what He’d taught them in the flesh. Only later did they recognize Him. Why didn’t he tell them sooner? . . . continued
~~Bruce C. Hafen, Marie K. Hafen, Faith is Not Blind (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book, 2018) 70-72
