Cycle of Belief – Sunday, January 09, 1944
The cycle of fashion in human affairs has often been observed and commented upon. Succeeding generations come back to old styles, modified, but strikingly similar. Not only in such things as dress, in literature, and in art do we tend to move recurrently, but also in thought. And not only does the aggregate thinking of the world tend to repeat itself, but each man in his own life tends to go through phases from faith to doubt, and back again from skepticism to belief. In childhood, an implicit faith in an intelligent direction of the universe and in the reality and approachability of God is the likely condition. And then comes a little learning—so tritely but truly described as being “a dangerous thing”—a smattering of knowledge acquired here and there, a fragment of fact, which, unrelated to the whole, would seem to discredit the pattern of faith.
At such times, it would seem that the only thing in all the universe that could give meaning and purpose to life has been taken from us—and that which was supposed to have taken the place of God, gives no comfort and no satisfying answer. The world itself has gone through something of this process. There have been times when faith and belief in the reality and omnipotence of God were virtually unquestioned. There have also been generations in which it has been unfashionable to believe—and there are few things which men dislike quite so much as being out of fashion. A scholar who is out of fashion is likely to become a martyr, unless he keeps his thoughts to himself.
A scientist who is out of fashion is likely to become ostracized, unless he keeps his own counsel. A student who dares to believe in an atmosphere of unbelief is likely to have to pay in many small ways for his independence of thought. We have gone through much of this, and now it would seem that again it is becoming more popular to believe. So far as the average man is concerned, perhaps the war has had something to do with it.
Men are turning to their only source of help, realizing that it is the only source. But more than this, the great minds of science, men who have emerged from their scientific adolescence, are coming to know, and are so declaring, that beyond all the knowledge we have acquired, beyond all the laws we have discovered, beyond all we have learned to do, and see, beyond the penetration of the greatest intellects, and beyond the deepest probing of science, still lies that which can be explained only in terms of a very real and personal and omnipotent God. We may well be grateful that the pendulum swings toward belief—that the cycle of fashion moves toward faith—in learned circles, as well as among laymen. It is an encouraging note in an otherwise dark picture, and we have reason to hope that there may come a day when faith and belief will be as popular and as fashionable as doubt and skepticism once were.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Jan. 9. 1944, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1944.
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January 09, 1944
Broadcast Number 0,751