Faith. For most of my life it has been a great mystery. The mystery was, how can faith give one man such power as illustrated in the life of Jesus Christ and also the man named Enoch? How, using faith, can others do the same, accomplishing what many people consider impossible? After all, didn’t Jesus say, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”?

While exploring what faith is in my own life, I have come to the conclusion that the definition must radically be redefined. The usual definition, that of faith being trust, confidence, or strong belief, simply is not useful for trying to figure out the power behind faith. In fact, it obscures it and leads people down wrong paths. From such definitions spring terms like “blind faith” and “faith to move mountains”, which either demoralizes faith or takes the power out of it. Faith when used in such a way becomes less meaningful.

I have come to believe that the normally understood definition is not the true one. Rather, our normally understood definitions have become diluted over time to mean something other than what they originally did. There is evidence for this idea in countries not initially exposed to Christianity, such as Japan, where there are no original words for many Christian terms with the equivalent meaning they have in Christianized countries, including faith. This implies that the word’s current meaning in Christianized countries is not real, or in other words, not subject to reality, because if something is experienced in reality then presumably there would be a word for it! The implication is that faith has come to mean something in Christianized countries that in fact does not really exist. So the question then becomes, what is the true definition of faith, that does exist? This is something that I have been trying to answer for much of my life.

My understanding of reality, as for everyone, has been shaped by my experiences. However, in my case, I have had certain extreme experiences that few others in our society have had. My thoughts have been shaped by developing, having, then overcoming the most debilitating illness known to mankind: schizophrenia. Such severe problems have caused me to have a different view about certain things than many. They have taught me by extreme example things that others have not learned because they have not “been through the fire” as it were. And from the crucible of these experiences came a new understanding of many things I had never thought of before, one of them concerning faith.

My new understanding of faith started after working hard at overcoming my diagnosis and the other problems that plagued me such as severe depression and anxiety. Because of persistence and lots of effort, I was able to find solutions to my problems and ultimately overcome them all. I was told by my mom, after persisting in finding such things to help me, that I had “great faith”. Feeling she was on to something intuitively, I thought to myself, what is it that cases me to have great faith? What is it about me that made her say that? What do I have a great amount of? I thought about it for a while, and then the answer occurred to me – I had great motivation, great action. That was the key – I acted, and kept acting. Tying this together with faith I began to think of faith in terms of action and motivation. I also remembered the scripture “through faith they shall overcome” (D&C 61:9) and thought on how it was my action that allowed me to overcome my problems.

Another thing I later thought about was how in the New Testament, Jesus was constantly doing things with his faith. He walked on water. He turned water into wine. He healed a person who was blind from birth. He caused the lame to walk. He was using his faith to accomplish things. And I thought, what is the only thing I know of by which I accomplish things? The answer to me was clear: my will, or in other words, my ability to do things. And this is the way in which I ultimately came to define faith.

Our will is the way by which we have control over the world, the power to make things happen. This can be illustrated in the hundreds of things we do everyday, all of which are done by exercising or using our will. When we move any part of our body, we are exercising our will. When we walk, talk, read, write, or do any of thousands of other things, it happens all by way of willing it to happen. We will our body to move, and it moves. We will our thoughts to dwell on something, and they do. We will ourselves to smile and we smile. Whether it be singing, swimming, dancing, climbing, or doing any other thing, it is our will that makes it happen.

And by observing how we use our will, we also notice an interesting element involved with it. We see that there is in fact a law operating behind our use of will. We find that the more we try to do something the better we get at doing it. In other words, the more we try to do something, the greater our ability to do it becomes, until we can do it effortlessly. What we initially could not do, by consistently applying our will, we are eventually able to do. This can be seen in all skills, such as typing, riding a bike, and playing a musical instrument. When we first start to use a keyboard, the typing is painfully slow with many errors. But over the years, if the typing is kept up, the speed at which one types increases until it is so fast it is virtually instantaneous. We eventually get to the point where we can will ourselves to type a word, and it happens. It becomes easy. The same is true with riding a bike. At first we cannot do it, but with practice and repeated effort, we can, and are able to do so automatically. And with the example of playing the piano, we cannot play it at first. However, with practice we can, and with enough practice our ability to do it becomes instantaneous. Any skill we have we first started at a point where we couldn’t do it at all, and then, by consistently applying our will, we got to the point where we could do it effortlessly.

The interesting thing is, this getting better at applying our will applies to all endeavors. Significantly, every “skill” we can get better at was created by us. The keyboard has letters in an order that was invented, the bicycle has only existed for a hundred years, and every musical instrument is an invention of man. And yet, anything we keep trying to do and practice at we will eventually get better at and be able to do. The key word here is practice. The principle of getting better at an action the more we attempt to do it can be summed up in the common saying: “Practice makes perfect”. And so it is with faith, which I define as being the exact same thing as our will.

We now can come to parable given by Jesus in Luke 17 on how to increase faith. Here is what it says:

And the apostles said unto the Lord, ‘Increase our faith’. And the Lord said, ‘If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, “Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea”, and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, “Go and sit down to meat?” And will not rather say unto him, “Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken: and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?” Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, “We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do”.’ (Luke 17:5-10 KJV)

If faith is defined as trust or confidence as it sometimes is, then this parable makes little sense as to how to increase ones faith. However, if we apply the new definition of faith as being one’s will or ability to do, with the understanding that it grows stronger as one uses it, the meaning of this parable suddenly becomes clear. Jesus is saying that there is only one way to increase your faith, and that is through plain old work – exercising your will. There is no way to skip this or to go around it. Thus, you cannot be the one sitting at the table enjoying the fruits and power of faith until you have worked hard to achieve that faith. Then, once you have achieved it, you can finally sit at the table and eat, enjoying the power of the faith that you have. There is no one to thank us for doing that work because it is work that is “our duty to do”. The opposite is death, and so we have no choice but to work hard in order to increase our faith because the alternative is to stagnate and lose power. No one can, or will, do the work for us, because we ourselves are the prime beneficiaries, and only we can increase our own faith.

So how can our will do marvelous things? This mystery is uncovered by understanding other aspects of our will. Our will is not limited simply to controlling the movement of our body or the understanding of information as the examples before illustrated, but its power extends even farther.

For one, our will can be used to control our bodies internal mechanisms. I have watched a program on the discovery channel about a man named Wim Hof who they called the “iceman” because he could will himself to heat up. He demonstrated this ability by successfully running a half marathon (21 km) above the artic circle in midwinter wearing only a pair of shorts and no shoes, where the ground temperature was 35 below Celsius! This type of thing is also demonstrated by Tibetan monks, who have been shown to have the ability to wrap themselves with ice cold wet towels and then produce enough heat over several hours to dry those towels completely!

Our will can also be used to give us strength. I have learned through muscle testing, for example, that if I test weak on a certain subject, I can will myself to go strong on that subject, test myself again, and then I am strong! I can will the problem to “correct” too rather than willing it go strong, and the same thing happens.

But it doesn’t stop there - our will can be used in ways that affects things outside of the body as well! For example, rather than only being able to will myself strong, I can also will others to go strong when they are found to test weak on a subject, and they become strong. Also, from personal experience I have learned that an invisible energy that surrounds us, called “chi”, can be moved around simply by willing it to move around. In other words, it can be controlled by our will.

I believe that our will in fact has the power to control the world in any way we can think to will it. However, while theoretically it is possible to will the world to be affected in any way, it is important to remember that, as has been previously illustrated, to achieve such power of will takes lots of practice. We wont be able to do it to begin with, but if we continue to try, we will get better and better until the day comes when we can do it, and will eventually get to the point where we can do it effortlessly.

And so, now we can understand the miracles done by Jesus. Jesus had attained a very high power of will. By constantly exercising his will, he eventually he attained many skills that others did not have: walking on water, calming the sea, turning water into wine, healing all sicknesses. And he also even said “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” That is the power of our will, our faith. It is far reaching and can have power over anything if we simply apply ourselves and act, practicing over and over again until we achieve the level of proficiency we want.

Finally, all this explains why we see few people exercising the kind of faith to move mountains. It takes a long time to develop such faith, and who has the patience to sit around willing something to happen for hours every day for years and see nothing initially happen, when on top of that they don’t even know that that is what it takes in order to achieve that ability? Without the knowledge of how faith really works, hardly anyone has the motivation to continue with such an undertaking.