Continuing from a previous post and his book “Spirituality Anchored in Unsettled Times” Bruce C. Hafen writes:
The three elements that form and support a complete testimony as the above title. I draw again on the metaphor of a triangle to show how these elements interconnect, because each side of the triangle strengthens the other two sides: “If there is a single most important shape in engineering, it is the triangle. Unlike a rectangle, a triangle cannot be deformed without changing the length of one of its sides or breaking one of its joints. In fact one, of the simplest ways to strengthen a rectangle is to add supports that form triangles at the rectangle’s corner or cross a diagonal length. A single support between two diagonal corners greatly strengthens a rectangle by turning it into two triangles.”
This image is especially fitting to suggest how the three parts of a testimony reinforce each other. Put together with its three strong corners in place, the triangle of testimony is anchored and sure.
I am struck by the similarity between the process of developing the process of testimony and the process of falling in love. Love and testimony are two of the most important human experiences, yet often we are unsure how to be certain that either has come fully into our lives. It helps me to realize that each process builds upon the same component parts—The three sides of the reason-feeling-experience triangle.
In finding the love we seek during our courtship years, we often have in mind the personal qualities we are looking for. But even when we meet someone that has the personal qualities (let’s call that the test of reason), there may be some “spark” missing—that mysterious something that let’s us feel love, not just think it (let’s call that the test of feeling).
Yet rational satisfaction and good feelings are still not enough. To know if we’re really in love, we need a little testing time (call it the test of experience). We can’t tell the difference one thin strand of a cobweb and one thin strand from a cable just by looking at them. We need to see what happens when we put stress on the strand. To know what we’re thinking and feeling is really love, not just infatuation, we must see how the relationship holds under stress, whether it grows and stirs, whether it takes on a life of its own. And the process of searching for a testimony is very similar to the process of searching to know when we’re in love.
Consider now each side of the triangle of testimony. We begin with reason, or the thoughts in our minds. In describing the spirit of revelation,” the Lord said, “Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart” (Doctrine & Covenants 8:2; emphasis added). Joseph Smith once said we may notice “the first intimation of the spirit of revelation” when we “feel pure intelligence flowing into [our minds:] it may give [us] sudden strokes of ideas.”2 The Lord told Oliver Cowdery, “You have not understood, you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me if be right” (Doctrine & Covenants 9:7-8). In other words, do your homework first. Then the feelings and experience can come along to confirm your reasoning.
In a more general sense, a religious explanation for life actually makes more sense rationally than does an atheistic or agnostic explanation. I am Impatient with shallow skeptics who say that religious truth must be taken solely on faith, as if no rational evidence for religious propositions are taken on faith. When Lehi and Nephi in the book of Helaman had great missionary success, Moroni tells us that “the more part of the Lamanites were convinced [that the message was true] because of the greatness of the evidences which they had received: (Helaman 5:50; emphasis added.
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). Science tells us that if the earth were even slightly nearer to the sun, all life would burn up. If the sun were even slightly farther away, all life here would freeze. As I see the destructive power of a tsunami, or a hurricane, I see no way that we could carry on life as we do if the elements were not held in check by divine laws and powers. If we were truly at the mercy of arbitrary natural forces, wind and sand and title waves would knock this planet around like a leaf in a storm. ~~~ Bruce C. Hafen, ‘Spiritually Anchored in Unsettled Times’, Deseret Book, Salt Lake City, p. 51-54
