A Short Shelf Life

President Eyring once said that “great faith has a short shelf life” (see here).  Many scriptures confirm this principle that faith is not static and we will lose it if we don’t actively protect and nourish it.  Faith is not an object that we obtain and then have; it is a living thing that must be kept alive or else it will die and we will start to believe that we never had it to begin with.  This is especially true in a secular world that rejects faith more and more.  The Lord emphasized this principle in the preface to the book of commandments: “And he that repents not, from him shall be taken even the light which he has received; for my Spirit shall not always strive with man, saith the Lord of Hosts” (D&C 1:33).  He later said something similar after chastising those who would not open their mouths: “And it shall come to pass, if they are not more faithful unto me, it shall be taken away, even that which they have” (D&C 60:3).  Alma put it this way to the Zoramites: “And they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries” (Alma 12:11).  It’s a scary thought to me that the spiritual knowledge we have gained can be completely lost until we eventually know nothing about God if we let our hearts be hardened against Him.  Eventually those who depart from the faith look back and believe it was only “foolishness” as Paul said and wonder how they ever believed (1 Corinthians 2:14).  This concept is highlighted symbolically in the vision of the tree of life, when those who “had commenced in the path did lose their way” because of “a mist of darkness; yea, even an exceedingly great mist of darkness” (1 Nephi 8:23).  We can lose the vision of what we see and know to be true now if we wander into the darkness that the world sends forth to take us away from the Savior’s path.  If we do nothing to protect and foster our faith in the Lord, its shelf life will indeed be very short.    

                In The Silver Chair, the sixth book in the Chronicles of Narnia, I think this same idea is depicted in the scene where the witch attempted to deceive Prince Rilian, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill as they were together in a room in her underground world.  She put a green powder on the fire that spread a mist across the room and started to put an enchantment on the four people.  When they attempted to tell her about the sun and sky and Narnia and world above that they had lived in all their lives, she talked with them gently and softly, repeating to them, “There never was any world but mine.”  She eventually had all of them repeating back to her, “There never was a sun.”  She nearly convinced them all that everything they thought they knew was really just make-believe, and that the only reality was the dark underground world in which she lived.  I feel like this is just what the world attempts to do to us as we who have developed faith in that which cannot be seen attempt to live by and defend that faith.  The world will send forth the mists of darkness and tell us that what we believe is “the effect of a frenzied mind” and a “derangement of [our] minds.”  The world will cry forth, “Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see,” and therefore the only reality must be what we see with our physical eyes around us (Alma 30:15-16).  In the book what saved them was when Puddleglum walked over to the fire and stood on it, burning his feet but also stopping the green mists.  Their minds soon cleared and they were able to see clearly that what they knew was reality, and the witch’s words were the make-believe.  In our day that only gets more secular and more vehemently opposed to the principles of the gospel, we too must have that kind of courage to defend our faith and reject at all costs the mists of the world’s ideas from overcoming that faith.