A lot of prayerful folks around here, Latter-day Saints and religious people of all kinds, who seek to connect with God say, when it comes to matters of the spirit, that they know this or they know that.

You’ve heard it.

Their testimonies include statements such as “I know this church is true,” and “I know that God is in the details of my life,” and “I know that God helped me get my new job,” and “I know that God helped me find my car keys when they were lost.”

They know, they know, they know.

There are even scriptural passages that say to some it is given “to know.”

I don’t know about that. I don’t know nothing.

Wait, I do know a couple of things: I know that’s a double negative. And when it comes to religion, my religion, I know what I believe and in what I have faith.

That’s what religion in this mortal existence is to me: faith. That’s at the center. That’s what it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s what it is for you, too. Or perhaps you’ve had experiences and now have questions that pretty much have ruined your faith.

There have been thousands of articles and books written about faith, the meaning of it, the importance of it, the usefulness of it, the power in it.

For many humans, present company included, it’s the spiritual lifeline that connects the wandering traveler to the heavens. Some form of belief and faith is a guide in every attempt to live and worship in a meaningful manner.

Why, then, do so many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints so routinely say they have blown past faith, straight to knowledge? In the church’s doctrine, one of the purposes for being born on this Earth, separate from the physical presence of God and angels, is to live by faith without actually seeing the Almighty. In other words, without knowing God is right there, as, according to the theology, it was in a premortal world.

A lesson from ‘Conclave’

Depending on faith stirs humility and a sense of togetherness, a sense of seeking and need, for those who join in on that endeavor. Knowledge does something else. It separates — or at least it can separate — those who supposedly know God from those who don’t.

A favorite passage of mine comes from the movie “Conclave,” which comes from the book of the same name, each of them fictional spiritual-political thrillers surrounding the naming of a new Catholic pope.

The head cardinal in the story is Cardinal Lawrence, who famously addresses an assembly of electors in advance of choosing the new church leader. In that speech, he talks about the power of variety and diversity, quoting the Apostle Paul that tolerance is important, and that diversity and variety is God’s gift to the church, and he says further:

“[L]et me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.”

In good faith

In pursuit of the spiritual, that combination of doubt and faith makes the reliance on faith all the more powerful. For some, the doubt erodes and, in some cases, cancels it out. But for those who hang onto their faith and expand it, making room for others, wherever they might be on that spectrum, in that journey, that serves the dual personal purpose of humbly looking to the heavens for guidance, without ego or desire to dominate other people, and embracing those people who likewise are working through the struggle.

If I insisted on constantly telling family members, friends, co-workers and nonbelievers that I know all that God is, all that God wants, all that God expects from them, in the midst of so much plain uncertainty, I am certain they wouldn’t want to spend much time with or listen to me. They get enough of that when it comes to the decidedly less-divine, less-important matters of sports.

Next time you hear someone say they absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that some heavenly thing is true — and you wonder why you don’t know it as well — give yourself a break and lean on whatever faith you’ve been happy enough to gain, and believe that God is happy for you, too.