In a different thread on this blog, an ex-member of the Church mentioned that he and his friends—some still in the Church and some no longer in the Church—regularly met for lunch and were able to remain friends despite their now-different takes on the truth claims of the Church. As part of his comment he made what I consider to be a very interesting statement:
Our biggest problem was that we maybe believed in the church too much…and to some here it seem too literally and then tried to learn more.
That was it; the statement was almost singular, as the individual drifted down a different tangent. The comment is interesting to me, however, because if I am understanding the described process correctly, it really happens quite often:
1. A person believes one thing.
2. The person discovers the belief is wrong.
3. The person tries to learn more about the original belief.
Many people—myself included—have gone through the same process, sometimes over and over and over again. (After all, I am not alone in holding many, many beliefs which may or may not be wrong.) At the end of the three-step process described above, some people are able to salvage faith (and grow stronger) while others jettison their faith.
I’ve often wondered why there is a difference in outcome. Those who end up jettisoning their faith often come up with various reasons for why those who stay in the Church do so: they are either (1) lazy, (2) duped by the Church, (3) tied in for social or employment reasons, or (4) liars. (I’ve been accused more often than not of being in category #4. Just the other day someone on the RfM board described me as a someone who “will lie, cheat, steal and do anything to defend Mormonism.”)
On the flip side of the coin, those who stay in the Church come up with their own reasons to explain those who jettison their faith: they are either (1) lazy, (2) duped by Satan, (3) enticed by the world, or (4) sinners. (I know many ex-members who rile quite a bit—and rightfully so—at #4.)
These reasons—from both sides—seem rather simplistic to me. While there may be some contributory truth to these reasons in some isolated cases, they are not neat bins into which people can be placed.
So, the question still remains: What accounts for the difference in outcome? Why can person A go through the process described above and become stronger in their faith, while person B can go through the exact same process—many times using the exact same data—and walk out the door and sometimes start nuking bridges?
What say ye?
-Allen
The following two scriptures help me understand the answer to the question asked:
Parable of the ten virgins Matt 25:1-12–five had the companionship of the Holy Ghost and five did not (even though active in the church).
Account of Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery receiving the Holy Ghost when they baptized one another. JS History 1:73-74
Joseph said: Our minds being now enlightened, we began to have the scriptures laid open to our understandings, and the true meaning and intention of their more mysterious passages revealed unto us in a manner which we never could attain to previously, nor ever before had thought of.
I’ve learned by my own experience that ones perspective is changed when the Holy Ghost is in the act. This isn’t a visible thing that can be detected by the eye of a beholder.
Depending on the degree that an individual has acquired the Spirit they can handle paradox when it presents itself as Allen posed it. For example, when I learned about the difficulty surrounding the Book of Abraham I was stunned intellectually. But my experiences with the Spirit completely trumped the paradox. Without my experiences with the Spirit I wonder what would have happened to me.
Conclusive evidence to prove or disapprove religious claims doesn’t exist. For example, The Book of Mormon is powerful evidence for belief, but without revelation from the Holy Ghost one cannot know with certainty. On the other hand, evidence doesn’t exist to irrefutably prove the Book of Mormon is a fraud.
The Lord keeps the evidence in balance so that we are free to choose according to our desires. It is a matter of faith agency. We can either believe or disbelieve based on the evidence.
I think a lot of it has to do with what the original belief was in this process. Is the original belief a belief in the existance of God? Is it a belief that all polygamist men were ideal husbands?
I also think a lot has to do with where that belief fits in the ‘deal breaker’ category. If I became convinced that there was no God, my reaction would be different if I became convinced that Joseph Smith committed some sin during his lifetime.
Some belief changes would appropriately be ‘deal breakers’ where others would not. But that line seems to be different for different people. What would be a ‘deal breaker’ for one person might not be for another.
Not entirely on topic, but I will note that of the four reasons you gave that some LDS understand people to leave the Church, it should be noted that none of them actually logically result having to leave the Church. Any LDS knows from experience that people can be lazy and stay in the Church; they can be “duped by Satan” and stay in the Church believing all manner of false doctrines (or believing the Church to be in error), (not sure what you mean by “enticed by the world”), and they can be “sinners’ and remain in the Church and lie about it (or just keep quiet)(unless they get ex’d).
So while they may contribute to someone leaving the Church, none of them would be a solely immovable motivator. The only three reasons I know of for people to leave the Church is 1) because they no longer think the Church is what it claims to be, 2) they believe the Church is what it claims to be and are making an active choice to “opt out” of the program or 3) They get exommunicated for sin.
I think cinepro makes a good point. When analyzing why people might leave the church. It is perhaps best to get at some more concrete reasons before we get into more esoteric thoughts on inherent evil, laziness, gullibility, or socialization. (By the way, I like how your two lists are actually the same list framed from two different perspectives.)
Nevertheless, it has often been noted that the concrete reasons are not necessarily honest ones. People are not very concrete, and we often make up rational sounding reasons for our decisions after-the-fact. We even believe those reasons, but they are not necessarily accurate or even honest.
The philosophical answers, I think, are probably closer to the root of the cause, but perhaps incomplete and prone to be abused (by, say, using them as buckets).
Nevertheless, a person generally can be bucketed more nicely as “ecommunicated”, “disenchanted”, “rebelling”, and, I might add, “other” (for some of the more exotic cases… I can think of one that almost happened).
And people can be all of the first four and yet leave the Church as well.
I’m sure that my post will read like an “Exmo’s Manifesto”…since I have so many thoughts and directions I want to go with this…so bare with me…I’m sure that by the end of this thread…I’ll have gone full circle.
Here is my difficulty with this thread and one I hope won’t rear its ugly head…Typically, the apologetic Mormon community presides comfortably from their perch high upon their rameumptom…with a quiet arrogance and the self created assurance that they are right and everybody else with a different opinion is wrong. The playing field is never a level one.
The church is ALWAYS true period. …end of discussion. I’d wager that many posters here could not even allow the thought… that the church is something other than what it claims to be…even run through their minds. For to even allow for that possibility, is such an impossible reality as to make entertaining the thought…well … ridiculous.
To use a metaphor…the churches truth claim, rather than being a solid rock foundation upon which to build one’s life is actually molten mercury…which can ebb and flow to fill any gap or threat to its existence. For because the church is true no matter what reality may present…there is NOTHING that could make it …ummm … Untrue. There is always a scenario, an explanation, an excuse or apology that the apologist community can create that will provide plausible deniability and cover for the church. Because after all…the church is true…no matter what.
I no longer claim to know anything as an absolute…but I’m pretty comfortable with my conclusions regarding Mormonism…but could I be wrong? You betcha. Anything is possible, but I’m willing to risk my so-called eternal life that I’ve it right. Could a Believing member of the church make the same statement? I guess anything is possible…but probably not likely.
Among the Mormon faithful one often hears the catch phrase…the church is true, what else matters? Well to me it does matter if the church IS really what it claims to be. It matters to me IF the church is in a position to make good on the pay off on all of its many promises…which ironically come AFTER one is dead. So if the water is safe to enter…I’m willing to offer some insight into this subject. And I’m gonna try my best to be a good boy.
So here it goes…an Exmo’s prospective on how we all read the same road signs yet ended up at different destinations.
I would describe my experience with the church as a very typical one. Mutli-generational-pioneer stock-raised along the Wasatch front by active parents- Mormon. 90% of friends were LDS, progressed through all Aaronic priesthood offices, serving as quorum president when my turn came, 4 year seminary graduate, Never broke or wanted to break the word of wisdom, a poster child of Mormon teen virtue, full time mission, serving as DL, ZL and AP, full tithe payer, temple marriage, served in many leadership positions, YM Pres, Bishopric, High council, yadda, yadda , yadda… and now I’m a flame throwing Ex-Mormon… so what happened?
To be continued…
PS: Where is that Exmo-Nuke so I can start blowing something up?
I think many would take exception to this characterization of yours, Craig:
“The church is ALWAYS true period. …end of discussion. I’d wager that many posters here could not even allow the thought… that the church is something other than what it claims to be…even run through their minds. For to even allow for that possibility, is such an impossible reality as to make entertaining the thought…well … ridiculous.”
Speaking only for myself, I was terrified when I was 14 by the thought that the Church might not be true, that it might all be a lie and a fraud, however good the Church itself might be. This was a major turning point in the maturing of my testimony, as I sought answers. I was then and am now pretty well-read and knew how to find sources.
My experience has been (and this might stir the pot) that those who ultimately leave the Church over crisis of faith issues ultimately *want* the Church (for whatever reason) to not be true. And those who ultimately *want* the Church to be true will find a way to resolve their “put-it-on-the- shelf” issues. I know that this will raise howls from Ex-Mormons that they wanted nothing more badly than for the Church to be true, but in my experience, they wouldn’t have left it then. As Richard Bushman wrote back in the heyday of the Wes Walters First Vision “bombshells,” members will “move heaven and earth” to vindicate the faith in the face of sophisticated and apparently troubling claims (I’m paraphrasing; I don’t have the Dialogue article in front of me).
My second companion was a 26 year-old native German who was plagued and tortured by corrosive doubts and testimony problems. Although a college graduate and fluent in English, he refused to speak English with me (except for me to teach him Beatles songs, his favorite being “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl”). Day after day he would disect my testimony, not to destroy it, but to find out how and why I could believe. This was very good for my testimony and my German in the long run (How do you know President Hunter is a prophet? What does that mean? What does that look like? How can you say that? Etc.).
We worked *H-A-R-D*, though, and in two months only got through a couple of streets because we got let in a lot. He was very, very good with words and people, and we taught a lot. He would ask me for advice in wooing the bishop’s daughter after his mission (she was very pretty and had just returned from her mission; he was near the end of his mission, and I was his first junior companion). A year later, I met him at General Conference in Hamburg (Conference is a big deal and an opportunity to catch up with friends and acquaintences). He was doing *g-r-e-a-t*, and his countenance shone.
I don’t know if I did a good enough job of describing how torturous his doubts were, but from this I really believe that the “deal-breaker” is ultimately whether people ultimately *want* the Church to be or not to be what it claims to be. In his case, he really wanted it to be true, and this ultimately helped him to navigate his mine field of doubts and concerns.
Can God be a reason for why some people leave the Church?
Jared spoke of the Holy Ghost factor, which I think is the major factor in almost all, if not all cases. The only way that one can know that Joseph Smith is the true prophet of the Restoration, or that Book of Mormon is true, or that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Kingdom of God on the earth, or that Thomas Monson is God’s spokesman for the whole earth, etc., is by the power of the Holy Ghost. If one maintains the companionship of the Holy Ghost those testimonies will be maintained. If the Holy Ghost withdraws from an individual, for whatever reason, those testimonies will also depart. The revelation given to Joseph in the Liberty Jail may be applicable in many cases.
One word: Pride.
Several writers correctly noted that some “objections” merely provide intellectual cover for “sin.” On the other hand, what clearer way to communicate ones intellectual and spiritual differences with the Mormon Church than to down a stein of beer or smoke a Texas-sized stogie?
We err — and possibly compound the problem — when we indulge tidy explanations that reveal more about how we think than than they do of the wanderer’s decision to disengage, temporarily or permanently. As often as not, we offload all the responsibility on the wanderer instead of attempting to understand his burden clearly and, as required, share some of the blame, institutionally and personally.
Consider the plight of a conscientious young returned missionary of the 1960s who was counseled by prominent church leaders: 1) We know by revelation that Negroes can not hold the priesthood; 2) They can not hold the priesthood because they were less valiant in the war in heaven; 3) They should be relieved, because “priesthood” is a burden; 3) They will receive the priesthood at some point, but not in this life time; 4) The reason they can not hold the priesthood is to prevent interracial marriage in the temple; 5) The civil rights movement in the U.S. is a communist plot, a tool Satan is using to undercut church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was quite clear to many then that these teachings were not of God. Some decided to hang on and pray for change. Others concluded that the “doctrine” invalidated the church’s prophetic claims, undermined their personal testimonies and faith, and left them with no ethical choice but to leave.
Should it surprise us that their angry protests often were acted out with cigarettes and whiskey and wild, wild wimmin? I think not!
So then, the responsibility for their apostasy is not their own, but really lies with the prophets.
>So then, the responsibility for their apostasy is not their own, but really lies with the prophets<
There’s no universal formula.
Your earlier comments implies that you believe all faithful inquiries receive confirmation; that all faithful members receive spiritual witnesses of one form or another; and, ever more narrowly, that the “Holy Ghost” it is the only way to become truly “persuaded.”
I don’t agree with you, but I’ll run with your proposition for a paragraph or two.
If your proposition is the case then, yes, the errant teachings of prophets and other respected church leaders (e.g. inconsistent and patently false teachings about why blacks could not hold the priesthood, for example) could prompt a faithful member to renounce or seriously moderate his testimony and entanglements with the church and its leaders. This would be especially the case if church leaders, teachers, and other faithful members of the church exacerbated the matter by asserting that the young RM’s challenges to the so-called “doctrine” were in and of themselves heresies, evidence of his apostasy, his dwindling in unbelief.
“Can God be a reason for why some people leave the Church?”
Actually Todd, I would say yes, believe it or not.
I think an LDS ward can actually be a very bad place for certain people. As an Evangelical minister in Mormon country, I imagine you’ve met some of them. Sometimes it’s hard to feel the joy of the Gospel in a Mormon ward for various reasons. When people suddenly find that joy in a pleasant, accepting Evangelical congregation, I can totally see God prompting them to rebuild their spiritual life there instead.
An omnibus reply to several…
Craig; I’m looking forward to your next post. I hope it will be the “continued” part you mentioned. (Don’t let yourself get side-railed by other comments on here.)
McKay; I enjoyed your comment. Very interesting.
Rob; your one word doesn’t cut it. If pride led everyone out of the Church, there would be much less pride within it. Pride is (I believe) one of the largest problems in or out of the Church, along with its kissing cousin, selfishness. To stereotype those who leave the Church as terminally suffering from pride is to turn a blind eye to those who suffer from it and remain.
And, for those who wonder… I don’t think “sin” is a better answer than “pride.” (Even allowing that pride is a specific sub-category of sin.) While sin—practiced or desired—may be a reason to leave, it is not the only reason, nor does it answer my original question:
-Allen
cinepro wrote:
I think there’s one you’re missing that accounts for more than any of these three: Those who never really had a strong testimony — having been born in the Church or converted for social reasons — who are offended by another Church member or who come to the point where their preferred lifestyle choices no longer match their church peers’.
In my experience, this accounts for the majority of inactive people I’ve met. They don’t have any serious beef about the Church or its beliefs or history (because they don’t really even know much about those) — they just don’t feel like they fit into the Church’s social or cultural model, and they never obtained a testimony strong enough to overcome that.
I can empathize with that to a degree, because I struggle with some of the social and cultural aspects of the Church (particularly in the areas of right-wing politics and anti-intellectualism), but I have a witness that this is where the gospel and its saving ordinances are found.
So, like Peter, I am constrained to say, “Lord, to whom shall [I] go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
Just to clarify my previous comment: I don’t believe that there aren’t any people who have left the Church because of problems with doctrine or history. I’m just saying that they represent, in my experience, a miniscule percentage of those who have “gone missing.”
And I completely reject the frequently-expressed belief on RfM that Church members are “leaving in droves” over issues of belief. There is simply no evidence to back that up, and much more to indicate that we’re just not very good at gaining and retaining converts who have solid testimonies.
There are “degrees of glory” for a reason. The Lord has given mankind–His sons and daughters, agency. We can choose, and have chosen for a long time prior to being born, the path we’re comfortable with (Alma 29:4).
However, in the same breath, I’ll say, I know by sacred experience that the restoration of Jesus Christ’s church through the prophet Joseph Smith is a fact. I have the companionship of the Holy Ghost as proof.
Now this may set some of you on edge, but I’ll say it nonetheless.
All kinds of criticism can be voiced against the church and tolerance will generally be extended. But when I speak up and say that the Lord is my friend and hears my prayers and answers them in many, many ways,including promptings, serendipitous answers, visions, dreams, and ministering of angels (unseen)I’ll have my comment deleted or be banned in some instances.
I hope others who are having similar experiences will add their voice with mine and appropriately share their conviction and experience.
From what I’ve experienced the Book of Mormon is our handbook, a “how to do” book teaching us how to fulfill our baptism covenant and acquire the gift of the Holy Ghost.
I would guess that many of those who have hardened their hearts towards the church haven’t given much thought to following the examples of the prophets in the Book of Mormon. They teach us to be humble, plead with the Lord, wait on the Lord, and endure trials, and when we have been tried then the manifestations of the Spirit will come.
Being born again and receiving a remission of sins is a real and tangible experience. Please try the Lord’s way and diligently seek for the gift of the Holy Ghost and the gifts of the Spirit. I’ve done it and tell you it is all true.
Before I continue let me try to catch up…
McKay Jones Says: I think many would take exception to this characterization of yours, Craig:
Me: McKay…I was speaking to the institutional organization and its apologists…I think individual members and investigators by their very nature question the claims of the church to a point. But, the church can never be anything other than what it claims to be. I think back to B.H. Roberts’s 1922 report to the First Presidency following his attempt to answer the questions posed in the William E. Riter letter. How did the first presidency respond? They did not share the concerns of Roberts or offer any explanation or inspirational light on the subject…they merely ignored the report and bore their testimony that in spite of this seemingly undermining information that the Book of Mormon was true. Period. Facts didn’t matter. That was my point.
Ok so I have a crazy day but I have every intention of trying to make a contribution…
Craig said:
At the risk of derailing the topic of my own thread, could you please provide a nugget or two for me relative to this, Craig?
First, on what source are you basing your information (what book or article)?
Second, you say that the FP provided no “inspirational light on the subject” yet then say that they “bore their testimony” on the matter. Such a characterization seems contradictory to me. Did you mean it that way?
-Allen
RB,
I did mean to imply that “all faithful inquiries receive confirmation.” It is only by the Holy Ghost that one can become truly “converted.”
Allen,
What accounts for the difference in outcome? Rob’s one word answer, “pride” may be an oversimplification but I believe that it is at the root of the problem. It may be that our enlightened day of discovering discrepancies in some things that the prophets have taught, will, in a future more-enlightened day, be further superseded by further light and knowledge that will exonerate the prophets in some things. Nevertheless, when faced with these contradictions some “trust in the Lord with all [their] heart; and lean not unto [their]own understanding”(Proverbs 3:5), and some, “when they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God…, supposing they know of themselves” (2 Nephi 9:28). So, the difference does condense down to pride vs humility. Compared to the knowledge and wisdom of God, the learning and reasoning of the most brilliant minds among us is as foolishness. When faced with these contradictions some maintain their trust in the revelations of God and some place more trust in their own reasoning.
Theodore
Correction: “I did NOT mean to imply that….
Theodore
My point is a simple one, Theodore: not all faithful Latter-day Saints have received or would claim to have received a witness of the Spirit. Perhaps they will receive such a witness in this life time. Perhaps they will not. They remain faithful, nonetheless. I would imagine the Lord will award such devotion, such faith. The Church benefits from having such faithful people number as active members, even if they can not in good conscience testify boldly: “I know…”
Theodore, is there any room in your view for a diversity of spiritual gifts like what Paul speaks of?
It is not always given to everyone to know of themselves.
Nothing can prove the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be untrue. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. The Gospel is true. Mormonism, so called, is the true religion.
However, the paradigms through which we see and interpret the gospel can be proven untrue. Sometimes, I find that some people leave the Church because they are unable to shift paradigms. They throw their paradigm out with their testimony, the baby with the bath water.
For example: Joe Mormon believes in the unscriptural and unrevealed idea that prophets are infallible. During his college years he discovers that some prophets belived some things that he interprets as being superstitious, racist or unscientific.
He reasons that 1)Prophets are supposed to be infallible. 2) Presidents ABC was wrong on XYZ issue.
Conclusion: President ABC was not a prophet.
Joe Mormon feels duped and is mad. Why doesn’t he just throw out the false notion of prophetic infalibility?
The answer to that questian is ultimatly only known to God.
My experience is mine and mine alone…
As a youth, our family like most LDS families of our time…attempted to hold family home evening on a weekly basis…my mother, bless her heart ,would raise early each morning and prepare a wonderful breakfast for the family prior to heading off to school…this breakfast would be accompanied with a daily scripture card next to our plate and on the record player, yeah I’m that old, playing in the background, literally on gold colored records, would be playing the audio version of the Book of Mormon. Prior to departing for school…we would all kneel in family prayer…even my Buddhist friend was required to join us if he showed up early, prior to walking to school.
I only knew one reality…it was Mormonism. Everything was filtered through this Mormon prism. It was my world, it was part of my DNA and it was the truth upon which all other truth claims were measured. Any conflicting truth claim which might be in variance with my Mormon worldview was rejected or discounted as the fanciful whims of man…who did not have access to or had rejected God’s true Gospel. (I think I’m feeling the spirit of nostalgia as I write this)
Despite Lou Midgley’s claim that I was part of some fringe-folk-Mormon-movement, I was raised in to believe in a very typical, run of the mill, traditional Mormon worldview.
Rather than make of list of these traditional views…( I know I wasn’t the only one taught these things) let me just state that I accepted and believed what my parents, teachers and Church leaders taught…if I had doubts or questions…I would set them aside…assuming that some day it would all make sense. I didn’t really know that I could have picked and chosen between different things to believe in. To me, the church was true…I’d have taken a bullet, if asked; to defend it…I was that certain of its truth claims.
Beginning on my mission I was exposed to historical issues that seemed in conflict with the Mormonism I had been raised to believe in. I was able to successfully resolve these issues through discussion with other missionaries and my mission president…the basic message was that much of these new revelations were the mere lies and distortions of the enemies of the church….and fortunately the church was true and could be trusted to always present its side of the story in an honest and forthright manner …right?
This patterned of confronting conflicting information would continue at different times in my adult life and each time I was able to, if not resolve the issue at hand…at least put it on the back burner of my mind…after all I knew I could always trust the church since the church was true, right?
Did I have spiritual experiences throughout my life? Well I had what I assumed were spiritual witnesses…I told myself that what I felt was, what others described to me, the spirit.
So now having set the stage…what went wrong?
First in a spirit of full disclosure but also hoping not to confirm many of your preconceived notions of what makes an apostate (fat chance of that)…I was excommunicated. At the time I was in a leadership position in my ward. Rather than go into the details of this episode of my life…let me just share that…
01. I initiated the process that led to my church court….seeking and desiring repentance.
02. I did not break my temple covenants.
03. I entered the process fully understanding that excommunication was a possibility…but more than likely not a likely outcome (boy I totally misjudged that one)
04. And despite my apostasy…my still very TBM wife and I remain happily married.
For 20 years of my adult life I had placed my trust in the church. I had even been willing to subject myself to the most humiliating degrading experience…a church court…because I had faith and believed in the claims of the church.
I distinctly remember sitting in the high council room when the courts findings were announced that I was no longer a member of the church…I remember thinking I can NEVER go back to membership until I KNOW it’s really true. No longer could I leave my doubts or questions unanswered on that back burner…simmering. I HAD to know. And YES prayer was part of this equation….I learned to pray in a depth I didn’t know existed. (Probably an exaggeration just trying to explain the sincerity of my prayers lest someone challenge my sincerity…no one would do that here would they?)
So I decided to start from the beginning…and investigate the church. I began by re-reading the Book of Mormon. In the past, I had given the BoM a free ride…I accepted its truth claims as a matter of fact. This time I went in with fresh eyes…I gave it the benefit of doubt and gave it the premise of being true (what ever that means)…but I kept my eyes open held a healthy skepticism and wasn’t afraid to ask difficult questions about its many claims. Following this reading, I read BH Robert’s,” Studies of the Book of Mormon” I must admit that this book, written by a Mormon GA, was equivalent to a tsunami crashing against my traditionally taught Mormon paradigm.
Was it because I had lost the privilege of the constant presence of the Holy Ghost that my mind was open to new alternative answers to plaguing questions? Or was I now just open to alternative answers to my Mormon worldview.
I had laid my spiritual life on the sacrificial alter of a so-called Mormon court of Love…That certainly took faith and trust. But what I felt after reading Roberts book…was a deep deep feeling of betrayal from the very institutional church whom I had given everything. This sense of betrayal gave rise to an insatiable desire to jump head first into areas I had always been afraid to venture.
I began an intense study in American archeology, anthropology, linguistics and yes DNA. I delved into the new theories of limited Book of Mormon Geography, BoM population studies and the Journey of Man. I read books by Jared Diamond, Darwin and others that have opened my mind to a world I had never been exposed to as a “thinking has already been done Mormon”.
So much of the new information that I was being exposed to was in complete and utter conflict with my Mormon world view. At this time, the cognitive dissonance I was experiencing was intense….nothing made sense in my Mormon world any more…yet everything had was becoming crystal clear.
The complete melt down of my Mormon worldview however was yet to come…I was still working on becoming rebaptised…
Back in 1985, I had bought and started to read Michael Quinn’s “Magic world view” I think I read the first couple of chapters before I put it away and eventually threw it away. It was not faith promoting. But those things were like spiritual porn…I could never forget them, try as I might. I was a product of the churches faith promoting lesson material…and had not been exposed to these alternative realities…
To be safe, I bought a first edition copy of all 7 volumes (at great expense) of the History of the Church by BH Roberts. I took a line by line reading of the volumes comparing them to a current modern copy I had but had never read in my library. I was shocked at all the whitewashing that had taken place. The changes and doctoring of our history made me want to throw up…from here it was a spiral to places I never thought I’d end up. I read Compton, Palmer, Southerton and many others in an attempt to get to the bottom…with every reading I would turn to FARMS in an attempt to salvage my ever deteriorating beliefs.
Ironically…most of my concerns were not salvaged by FARMS/FAIR but my worst fears confirmed. As a last ditch effort…and at the request of my wife…I met with some GA’s…who came off just as clueless as the First Presidency did in 1922.
At the bottom I made one last ditch plea to God for help. Not even God could this mess. but the truth was I was already dead. God didn’t return my call. I was left alone man…
As someone has said earlier… and this will be a poor paraphrase…Evolution…is the only theory that makes all of the natural sciences makes sense. And when I added up everything that I now believed to be real and true…the only solution to all the many conflicts I was looking at in my Mormon world view…was that Mormonism was not, had never been nor would ever become what it claimed to be.
Ironically when I came to this acceptance….everything became crystal clear and the world seem right and clear…no longer did I have to make Mormonism fit in a world where it made no sense. And perhaps for the first time in my life I was at peace with myself.
I’m sure many here will now tear my essay apart and put me in some box that makes them maintain belief…for as I began this thought process…the church cannot be Untrue…it just can’t…yet for me at least …that reality is the only conclusion that make sense in a real way…no matter how much I may dislike its conclusions.
When a TBM hears an Ex-mormon say they were lied to by the church…it is because they sincerely felt lied to. I often wonder if my outcome wouldn’t have been different if the church had been more forth coming with the difficult aspects of its history…I certainly believed a lot of weird things as a mormon…so it wasn’t like I couldn’t have been open to more weird things…but having to discover this stuff on my own and in my state of mind at a time when I was fighting for my spiritual life…I’m sure left me exposed to entertaining alternative conclusions.
But even now waxing sentimentally about my tenure in the church…I could never go back now…knowing what I know…to me it’s just plain and simply not what it claims to be and I refuse to live a lie.
Cheers,
Craig Paxton
OK let the scavengers in…so they can begin devouring me
Oh My Gosh! Did I just post a testimony building, sterotypical comfirmation of what apostates are? Crap!!!
Craig Paxton has given a detailed explanation of his experience. I will make no comment about it.
I’m going to post my experience and let the readers of this blog draw their own conclusions.
My ward leaders told me that after I was baptized I would receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. I was nine years old and believed what they said. My dad was not a member and my mother was inactive, but both of them, at the urging of our ward leaders took me to the Salt Lake Tabernacle to be baptized.
There were about 30 or 40 people there. We were told to wait until my name was called. As we set there someone announced that the ordinance of baptism was sacred and that everyone there should have pure thoughts. In a few minutes a man entered the font and several young people were baptized. I became concerned by what I saw. My thoughts were not about the Holy Ghost but about what happened when the newly baptized person exited the font. The wet white gown clung to them and revealed a lot of anatomy. I determined then and there that when my turn came I wasn’t going to reveal myself.
In a few minutes my name was called and I went to the locker room and was handed a white gown and nothing else. The gown, as I remember it, was a one piece garment with no zipper, and the candidate for baptism pulled it on like a t-shirt. It hung to the floor and seemed heavy. I entered the font with the help of several people; my thoughts were focused on my predetermined exit strategy. When I came out of the water I immediately grasped the front and back of my gown and pulled hard so it wouldn’t cling to me as I exited the font. I remember muffled laughter coming from those in attendance. However, I felt confident that my plan had been successful, which my mother later confirmed.
I didn’t think much about the gift of the Holy Ghost until I began to notice a “feeling” that would come to me in my deacon’s class. I don’t remember experiencing it anywhere else. After class, on several occasions I mentioned it to my friends. I wondered out loud why I would feel so good after listening to a dumb lesson. I noticed that the feeling would leave me only to return again the next week.
I gradually lost interest in church but I felt I was being watched over. I figured it was the same for everyone and didn’t pay much attention to those kinds of thoughts. That is until one eventful morning when I was fourteen, as I started waking up I took a deep breath and exhaled, then it happened, I couldn’t inhale. I was startled and instinctively reached for my throat. No matter what I did I couldn’t inhale any air. I ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I couldn’t see anything wrong. My mother saw me and in a voice filled with panic asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t answer her. I ran into the dinning room and was beginning to feel pain in my chest. My mother was there but she couldn’t help me. I dropped to my knees in desperation and prayed, immediately I took in a life giving breath. It was my first experience of having a prayer answered-I realized someone was there.
By the time I was sixteen I forgot about my earlier answer to prayer. The power of my fallen nature was in full bloom. I wasn’t very good at keeping the commandments and when I felt an inner voice telling me not do something I dismissed it saying in my heart, that whoever you are you’re not my friend or else you would have answered my prayers about my mom and dad-so get the hell away from me.
Driving aimlessly about town with my buddies and going to keg parties became my new religion. I was very active. I paid little attention to my inner voice but I appreciated its presence even though I wasn’t willing to follow it.
As the years went by I became more worldly, but every so often I would focus on my inner voice and wondered if what I was taught as a youth was true. “What about the Book of Mormon and the Joseph Smith story, I would think, what if these things are true?” One day while in this frame of mind I decided to read the Book of Mormon, I said to myself, “if it is true then I will change my life, if not, then I will entirely forget about religion”. I offered a prayer telling Heavenly Father my commitment and invited Him to bless me to know about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. The next night, a few minutes after getting into bed I received an answer to my prayer, I should say, a partial answer, I was given an experience similar to what Joseph Smith wrote about when he said, “…I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak…it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction…to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being”(JS-History 1:15-16).
While I was in the grip of this power from the unseen, but now seen world, I realized the incredible hate he had for me; I called upon God to deliver me, and my prayer was immediately answered.[1]
This kind of experience creates an instant testimony. It was a dramatic and powerful occurrence. It left no room for doubt about the presence of God and satan. This was not a sanctifying experience in the sense of a “mighty change of heart”, that would come many years later.
I’m embarrassed to say that even after the Lord provided this life changing encounter I returned to my old habits. It took me numerous attempts to break away from the life style I had been living before I was able to bring some order into my life.
After a few months I decided to attend church. I also commenced to read the Book of Mormon. I started new friendship and put former ones behind me. It took me about three months to complete the Book of Mormon. I loved every minute of it. The Holy Ghost was with me as I read. I wrote down questions and literally hungered for the truths of the gospel. When I completed my study of the Book of Mormon I didn’t need to ask the Lord if it were true, I knew it was true by the manifestation of the Holy Ghost that I experienced on a daily basis as I read it.[2]
I was very excited about the gospel and the testimony I’d received. I read everything I could get my hands on. I decided that I wanted to tell others about the restoration of the gospel. I turned in my papers to serve a mission. The Lord drew very near to me at this time. It was as though I were encircled about in the arms of His love. Before I received my call the Lord revealed to me where I would serve my mission. This was made known to me by the whisperings of the Spirit (Holy Ghost). My farewell talk at church was a spiritual treat for me and those in attendance because of the Spirit that was there. I could have recited the A, B, C’s and it would have been edifying.
Once in the mission field I encountered trails and difficulties of every kind. The first part of my mission was tough, but I was determined to serve God and I worked very hard in His behalf. I would characterize my mission as being very average. At times I felt very close to the Lord, and at other times it was as though I was left to myself. I learned that my ability to teach the gospel effectively, in other words, with the spirit, was related to the receptiveness of the person my companion and I were teaching. There was one experience in particular that taught me how the spirit works with missionaries. We were teaching a man who was in school to become a minister. He was smart, humble, and asked difficult questions. On one occasion while I attempted to answer his questions I found myself listening-listening to myself teach. It was as though there were two minds in one body. As I was teaching him with one mind, the other mind was acting as an interested observer. It was an amazing experience that went on for more than an hour. When we concluded our investigator was ready for baptism but wanted to talk with his family. The next time we saw him he was hostile and wouldn’t even talk with us other than to say he had lost interest. This was an example of a man who had been enlightened by the spirit of God and then lost the light by allowing disbelief to take root in his heart and mind because of the persuasion (precepts) of his family (D&C 93:39).
At the end of my mission I felt I had served the Lord diligently, but I also felt I had disappointed Him because of the temptations I experienced. Being in the world, but not of the world is easier said than done, I was learning. The gravity of the life I experienced before my mission pulled at me.
When I came home I was tired, but thankful to have my mission behind me. My homecoming talk was a dud. I wondered at the difference; why was my farewell talk so uplifting and my homecoming talk just the opposite? I concluded that the workings of the Spirit are not easily understood, just as described in the scriptures (Ecclesiastes 11:5).
I was excited about my future and about my first experience as a college student. I had been dating a wonderful girl for about a year and we were considering getting married. I was very much in love with her and I felt certain that she was going to be my wife. On one of those evenings when couples talk freely about their life’s experiences I shared with her some things about myself when I was inactive. From that time forward our relationship began to decline. Her upbringing was such that she couldn’t handle a relationship with an Alma the younger kind of guy, a Nephi type of guy was a better match for her. I know that now, but I didn’t realize it then, so I pushed on. By the time school started I had a serious case of heartache-extreme heartache. She was seeing another person and told me she loved me, but was also falling in love with him.
When she told me this I was angry and even raised my fist towards heaven and using profanity swore at Lord for letting this happen. Within hours I sought forgiveness and divine help! I approached the Lord in prayer and within a day or two found myself experiencing a dimension of prayer that was new to me. As I poured out my soul to the Lord asking him for help, I told him that I wanted to keep his commandment regarding marriage and that I had found the girl I wanted to marry. I explained that we had dated for over a year and that we were temple worthy and pleaded for his help. I made covenants that I would be the best husband and father that I could be. I found myself praying for hours at a time-in fact I couldn’t stop praying. When I wasn’t on my knees praying, prayers flowed from my heart. The channels of communication were open and I knew the Lord was hearing my prayers. I had received a gift from the Lord-the gift of prayer. I lost interest in food, and was essentially fasting every day and ate only to keep my strength up. I began to lose weight. I was showing up for my classes, but I was supplicating the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, strength, and soul.
One day, while praying a question formed in my mind that I knew came from the Lord-”lovest her more than me?” This question needed to be answered and I responded, “Lord, thou knowest I love thee, bless me to love thee more perfectly.” From this point on my prayers turned to my relationship with the Lord. I explained to the Lord that I was not going to stop praying to him until I received an answer and that I would accept his will no matter what it was-and I meant what I said. I thought about all my sins and pled for forgiveness. At this point a pain entered into my heart that I cannot describe. I’d never felt anything like it before. It was intense heart-pain. Not from the heart that pumps blood, but from the heart that resides at the center of our being-the place where our fondest hopes and dreams emanate. I cried many tears and realized anew my nothingness! I understood more than ever before my unworthiness and I begged the Lord to apply his atoning blood so that I could be made clean.
I raised these earnest, heart-felt prayers for a two to three week period. One evening as I was preparing for bed, all I could do was kneel by my bed and say a very short prayer; I was physically and spiritually exhausted. I reminded the Lord that I was going to continue to call upon him until I received an answer. A few minutes after getting into bed in the throes of a gloomy and forlorn mood, I felt something in the room change, as I focused my attention I realized the spirit entered the room and my heart, joy replaced gloominess and sadness,it was like a refreshing breeze entering into a hot and stuffy room. I knew I was to get out of bed and open my scriptures. The page fell open to D&C 84 and I started to read at verse 44.
As I read these words I knew the Lord was speaking to me, and when I read verse 61 I knew that my sins were forgiven. I raised a silent shout of joy to my Savior!
A week or two later, while at Sacrament meeting I received another manifestation of the spirit; while taking the sacrament I experienced the presence of “fire”. It was a subtle, rather than a dramatic experience. I looked around the room to see if anyone else was aware of what I was experiencing. I wasn’t sure what had happened but I knew it was from God. I felt peace, love, and joy, and raised my voice in prayer thanking the Lord for his great kindness to me. I felt clean and pure and extremely close to Heavenly Father.
My girl friend and I broke up a couple of months after this experience. I cannot describe the pain and unrest I felt, but I had told the Lord his will be done, for as much as I loved her, I loved the Lord more. I prayed that I would be able to stand up under the afflictions that came to me, and I had faith the Lord would continue to be with me in my trials. For several nights, when my heartache was at its worst, I was visited by the Holy Ghost and learned for myself what the scriptures mean about the Holy Ghost being a “comforter”. What can I say to you as a reader of my words to convey the least part of what I experienced? Just know that God is love and he desires to heal us from our sins. He wants to give to us the gift of eternal life! When Nephi says, “He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh”, I can verify his words and bear a similar testimony with my own lips because of the experiences the Lord gave me in the days of my severest trials.
I am so thankful that the Lord extended his love and kindness to me in such marvelous ways. I love the Lord because he loved me first. I can hardly believe that these experiences were given to me; I am completely unworthy of them.
There was a mighty change in my heart and mind. I knew I was born again (to some degree) and had received fire and the Holy Ghost. I engaged myself in school and read the Book of Mormon with new eyes and understanding. The Holy Ghost was my constant companion in those days. I felt and comprehended things in ways I never had before. I asked the Lord to bless me to meet people who were like Nephi, and I also prayed to learn to know more about the Lord and His church. My prayers were answered in short order, and I marveled at the variety of people I became acquainted with. I learned things from them about the Lord, His prophets, and His church that amazed me and also challenged me greatly. I realized for the first time that our church history and doctrine could challenge the strongest church member’s testimony and even be the root cause for some members to lose their testimonies.
I enjoyed my college experience, but my interest in doctrine and church history eclipsed anything else I was studying. Because of the many spiritual experiences I had been given I was insulated from the “fiery darts” of the adversary that came to me as I studied, I could not be moved. I prayed for answers to my new found questions and the answer was always the same: we live in a fallen world and we’re here to be tried and proven and there is opposition in all things, be still and know that I am God[3].
From those days until the most recent day, the Lord as been near, but not as near as He was for the first few years after my experience with the sacrament. I can relate to what Joseph Smith said after he experienced the First Vision and was born again:
After it was truly manifested unto this first elder that he had received a remission of his sins, he was entangled again in the vanities of the world… D&C 20:5
Having experienced a “mighty change” I can say that one doesn’t have a disposition to do evil, at least not in the same way as prior to this experience. However, it would be wrong to say that temptations and sin are no longer a factor of life. That just wouldn’t be true. King Benjamin taught his people how to retain a remission of theirs sins after they were born again and experienced the mighty change (Mosiah 4:26).
In the years and decades that have followed I have been blessed with many experiences with the things of the spirit. When I have needed help the Lord has blessed me abundantly. I have been given visions, dreams, and received the ministering of angels (unseen) in answer to prayer. However, I have had to struggle in the spirit and pay a price for these blessings. There have been many times I have prayed and have been unable to obtain an answer to my prayers. This is frustrating, but who am I to counsel the Lord.
If there is only one thing you remember from this post I hope this will be it: The Savior gave His life for you and He cannot extend the complete gift and benefits of the atonement to you, until you offer up a broken heart and contrite spirit (2 Nephi 2:6-8). Based on my experience, I learned that offering up an acceptable sacrifice is accomplished when you plead with Him for forgiveness of your sins. When you acknowledge your fallen nature and realize your dependence upon Him (Christ) for entrance into God the Father’s presence, then you will be on the high road to fulfilling your baptismal covenant.
1 Joseph Smith was not possessed by and evil spirit, nor was I.
2 The “feelings” I received from the manifestation of the Holy Ghost revealing the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon are difficult to describe, so I’ll borrow the following words because they are the best I know of to relate how my testimony of the Book of Mormon came to me: And now, verily, verily, I say unto thee, put your trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good-yea, to do justly, to walk humbly, to judge righteously; and this is my Spirit. Verily, verily, I say unto you, I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy; And then shall ye know, or by this shall you know, all things whatsoever you desire of me, which are pertaining unto things of righteousness, in faith believing in me that you shall receive. D&C 11:12-14.
3 There are many scriptures that say essentially the same thing, here are a few: Alma 42:14, Abraham 3:25, 2 Nephi 2:11, Psalms 46:10
There are certainly consistent patterns of conversion, and defection, and this no doubt explains our desire to place people into the “tidy” boxe’s that others have mentioned. this notwithstanding, in most cases people still do move on individual motivators which make the blanket categorizations disingenuous. The argument that the Holy Ghost will settle things, is great for doctrine, and debatable in practice. Quite frankly, outside of the often criticized “feeling” the mechanics or certainty of this experience are somewhat vague even for a lifetime member like myself. The pride argument is another which fits nicely within scripture, but does little more than insult someone by creating inferior/superior status. And in fairness, the same goes for those who would suggest that believers are incapable of self thought, or intellectual autonomy. Rather it is just an insult to someone you disagree with. Perhaps the evidence of pride in either case would be for any of us to presume that we can ultimately speak for the experiences, motivations, etc, of one another. Or presumptively speak fact of things which we can not universally prove, even if we believe we know the real truth behind the Church, or whether we feel justified by the authority of scripture.
Craig said:
Don’t worry, Craig. You did nothing that will require you to turn in your ex-TBM recommend. I found your story very interesting.
But you still didn’t opine on the question that I originally posted. All you gave was your exit story (and a fascinating story it was).
You read BH Roberts and it was, for you, “equivalent to a tsunami.” I read it and it didn’t have that effect on me. (Nor, I might add, did it drive BH from the Church or cause him to deny his testimony.) Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve studied American archeology; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve studied American anthropology; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve studied linguistics; I’ve studied some of it. (Conversational reading, mind you.) Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve studied DNA; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You “delved into the new theories of limited Book of Mormon Geography”; so have I (although, I must admit, they aren’t particularly new and have been around longer than either of us has been alive). Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve studied BoM population studies; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You read books by Jared Diamond; I have not. I have, however, read 1491 by Charles Mann. Good book, but it didn’t affect my testimony in the least. Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve read books by Darwin; I have not (although I am a “leaner” toward evolution). Great article in the SL Tribune that discussed evolution and still remaining faithful.
You started to read “Magic World View”; so did I. Why the difference in reaction?
You read Compton; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You read Palmer; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You read Southerton; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You’ve read FARMS stuff; so have I. Why the difference in reaction?
You read “many others” in your studies; so have I. (For instance, I’ve read most everything by the Tanners, Brodie, Abanes, Martin, Hardy, Vogel, and Metcalfe. I’ve also read books by Brooks, Novick, and Cowan. Not all of these are critical of the Church.) And, yet, I maintain my faith.
You also identified yourself as “a product of the church’s faith-promoting lesson material” and as one who “had not been exposed to these alternative realities.” I, too, could classify myself as the first, but I have exposed myself to all the alternative realities you mention.
The conclusion that you came to from all your studies (which are remarkably similar to mine) is that “Mormonism was not, had never been nor would ever become what it claimed to be.” Yet, I came to a completely different conclusion.
You say that you “could never go back now…knowing what [you] know.” Yet, there are people—like me—who know what you know and still remain.
Which, of course, brings us back to the original question:
What accounts for the difference in outcome?
-Allen
You also identified yourself as “a product of the church’s faith-promoting lesson material” and as one who “had not been exposed to these alternative realities.” I, too, could classify myself as the first, but I have exposed myself to all the alternative realities you mention.
In Seriousness Allen, perhaps you would be willing to do the same, particularly given the above statement. I am interested why knowing, even conceding, that the Church is less than forthcoming about parts of it’s history, you still remain. It’s not inconceivable in my mind, but I would still be interested in your take.
Thanks,
CB
Cowboy,
You questioned why I stay in the face of “knowing, even conceding, that the Church is less than forthcoming about parts of its history.” Let’s see if I can give my take on this…
I tend to be rather charitable in my assessments of others, including the Church and its critics. I try to never accuse someone of “lying” or “covering up” because that would entail me doing some mind reading.
I can say that you are mistaken about something and then provide information so that you are no longer mistaken. However, if I say you are lying about something, I am implying that you knew about your mistake and that you chose, in contradiction to that knowledge, to put forth the mistake as truth. Again, I can’t do that without reading your mind.
So, words mean something: accusing someone (or some organization) or lying or covering something up is very different from saying they are mistaken.
With that said, I think that many things the Church has put out in the past and some things the Church puts out now are mistaken. Why? Because they are written or produced by individuals who very well may not have gone through the trouble to go to original sources to verify what they are creating. This point was driven home to me when I was doing my research for my Zina Young paper—it was obvious that many “official” sources and even more unofficial sources relied on earlier second-hand research, and the earlier research was clearly wrong when compared to the first-hand information.
So, if people can be wrong because they rely on the wrong information, why should I infer intent to deceive when such intent is not there?
Now, back to your question: Why do I stay? One reason is because I don’t see intent to deceive where others apparently do.
Another reason is because the older histories produced by the Church (and by non-Church sources) are not, technically, what we would consider good, scholarly histories today. There were different standards for producing histories when, for instance, History of the Church was produced. It wasn’t until the last half of the twenty-first century that standards for historical research and reporting were raised.
Even though more modern histories are generally of higher quality than those produced in the 1800s and early 1900s, one still has to bear in mind that it is literally impossible to create an unbiased history. This affects any history created even today, regardless of the source. [The benchmark on understanding this is Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).]
Finally, the primary reason I stay is because my testimony of the truth of the gospel and the Church is not based on anybody’s rendition of history. I have found out for myself, which process is consistent with every urging that Joseph ever made to his followers when it came to their relationship with God—find out for yourself and you won’t have to rely on others.
Someone who nailed this relevance of Church history to testimony was the late Davis Bitton, a professional historian, in a paper entitled I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church. Great stuff.
Do those three reasons help?
-Allen
They do. As I said, I can certainly fathom why someone might take an approach different from mine, it is interesting to see how someone actually takes the same information and interprets it apart from myself.
Thanks,
>I am interested why knowing, even conceding, that the Church is less than forthcoming about parts of it’s history, you still remain.
I am not Allen, and I have not read many of the antagonistic works that he has. But for me the answer to this question is simple. First, I do not concede that the “Church” is less than forthcoming. For me (and most dictionaries) the “Church” is an assembly (or community) of believers. Devotional literature presented in Sunday meetings (which I will concede follows a faith promoting agenda over a complete disclosure philosophy) only makes up a small fraction of my total “Church” experience. As I am immersed in literature written by Church members for Church members who follow the ideals of academic inquiry (Maxwell Institute, FAIR, BYU Studies, Journal of Mormon History, the Bloggernacle, etc.), the “Church” as a wholistic community more than meets my needs when I wish to explore thorny issues.
Even as a primaty kid, I would not have considered myself solely as “a product of the church’s faith-promoting lesson material.” I absorbed other influences from my family that encouraged book-reading and there was a trickle down effect from my parents who would share ideas from what they read as they simultaneously instilled in me the importance of seeking after personal knowledge and revelation (even if the result was at odds with the opinions of other church members). So even before I became relatively well-read my total “Church” experience was not just one that occurred at Sunday meetings.
Allen,
I think your post and comments bring up some interesting points. Thank you.
Your question: “What accounts for the difference in outcome?” can only be accounted for by the witness of the Spirit.
As you told Cowboy, “find out for yourself and you won’t have to rely on others” is the best advice we can give when asked why we remain in the church in spite of the challenges we’ve faced.
This question can be used on other levels and may well be asked of us by the Savior some day. It won’t be asked in a condemning way, but the point will be that there are other doors we can open if we diligently seek for them.
The message I hope to convey is that there are places to go spiritually that many appear to be missing out on for lack of interest. The place I am referring to needs to be traveled to alone, the only books that will be of any use will be the scriptures and talks by church leaders. Our educational attainment, success in our fields, and church callings won’t count as much as we’d like because the Savior is no respecter of persons. The place I am referring to is clearly outlined in 2 Nephi 31,32.
My question is: why does it appear so few are going there?
Keller:
I agree with your comments as to what defines the Church for sake of ones personal experience relative to religion. However, the Church, for the sake of my comment quoted in the preface to your remarks is a corporate entity that produces manuals, magazines, literature, and runs seminaries and institutes of religion with institutional and uniform governance. Do not take my labeling of the Church as a corporation as an attempt to denigrate it, that is not my point in this case. I am just pointing out that while I recognize that you are correct in that there is a great deal of independent study and literature regarding Mormonism, from the Mormon perspective no less, there is still the absolute organization which ultimately determines and publishes the official position.
I can appreciate Allen’s argument that perhaps errors creep into the official manuals by misinformed CES writers. I don’t entirely agree with it, but I can at least see that as a reasonable assumption and justification for why errors may exist in official literature, and yet not be evidence of duplicitous behavior. I do reject the general assumption however that all, or nearly all, of the errors in Church literature, comes from misinformed general membership. I also disagree that the influence of local ward culture generally (I will accept exceptions) exceeds the corporate influence. The Church is highly systemized from top down.
Cowboy, I think your distinction between the corporate Church and the broader Church is fading. Of the five forums I mentioned: BYU Studies has been an institutional publication since in conception in the 60s. In the 00s, FARMS/NAMI should be considered as producing Church sponsored publications. As for the Bloggernaccle, the correlated Church Newsroom is very much an increasingly important voice as it has participated in the broader discussion (“the Great Conversation” a term L. Ara Norwood in FR 20/1 brought to my attention). We also have FAIR’s materials being covered in institutional media, whether it be Newsroom (which is correlated) or DNews’ MormonTimes or Church News. As Turley can write a featured MMM article in the Ensign, Bushman can conduct an apologetics seminar mostly involving CES employees, and FAIR members are routinely asked to speak in sacrament meetings or firesides about criticisms against the Church, then I would say a lot of progress is being made towards adressing thorny issues, even in traditional, devotional, institutional space. Is there more work to be done? Yes, but rather being blown over by institutional short-comings, I work to make things better and I have every indication that the corporate church values my efforts.
Seth,
Of course; and as Moroni spoke of (Moroni 10), and as God told the Prophet Joseph Smith (D&C 46).
It is not always given to everyone to know of themselves.
That is true. But I believe that everyone can know for themselves if they make the commitment. As Moroni said, it requires a sincere heart with “real intent.” God loves all of his children. And because He does He sometimes withholds revelation from them that might be a condemnation to them if they were not prepared to follow through on the greater light and knowledge. This is the same reason that Jesus spoke in parables (Mark 4:11).
I haven’t read all of the replies posted, but noted Craig’s dissertation. Speaking of which, I posted this on Craig’s blog back in May last year (has it been that long?!):
“I think perhaps the most incorrect apostasy stereotype is that exmos left because they wanted to sin. There are people like me who wanted to sin, and also doubted much in Mormon Doctrine. So I’m okay with that stereotype, if applied to me. Sinning was much more entertaining than doing home teaching, that’s for sure. If I hadn’t discovered the controversies that lead so many non-sinning Mormons into sinning ex-Mormons – I would probably have gone ahead and sinned anyway. I haven’t tried, I think, to justify my apostasy on doctrinal grounds alone (although this is important). The “robotic” LDS lifestyle just bored the hell out of me. The controversies were the icing on the cake, because now I could do what I really always wanted to do – sin. My natural habitat. According to LDS doctrine, I’m now an enemy to God because of my gross carnal ways, such as indulging in a beer and uttereing the F-word (and much more). I’m obviously depraved, and what I have to say about Mormonism is grossly coloured by my penchant for sin. I’m okay with that too. But as Galileo is reported to have said:
Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position–eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.
Even if Galileo was a hopeless alcoholic who left the Church to sin – it would not change the facts he discovered.”
Yes Theodore, but if you have not gained that personal knowledge, does that mean there is no place in the LDS religion for you? Or does it mean that you are a “defective member” until you get it?
Seth,
Each one of us mortals are flawed in some form or degree. The reason we have a church is to help one another progress and grow from what ever point we are at. I was born into the Church but drifted into inactivity in my late teens. In my early thirties, it was the continued effort of a ward of Saints in Southern Alberta, another in Provo, and another in Eastern Idaho, that over a period of five years nurtured me from a hopeless alcoholic to the Temple. As the Lord told Peter, “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32). It’s true that all members are not as loving and patient as others in this endeavor. Those who are not need some help themselves.
Now it’s my turn to tell a story. When I moved with my family to Provo to attend university, I took my wife, who is Jewish and was not a member of the Church, and our three young children to church for the first time. After we sat down in the middle section of the chapel, the family in front of us got up and moved, loudly proclaiming that they could not stand the smell of tobacco. My wife, who did not smoke, was so disgusted at the rudeness of these people she was going to leave at that moment and probably never come back. As I was sitting on the aisle I prevented her from doing so. Feeling particularly unworthy I did not partake of the sacrament when it was passed. When the sacrament meeting was over, an elderly brother from across the aisle, who had carefully observed all that had transpired, came over and put his hand on my shoulder. He said to me, “You don’t have to take an old man’s advice, but the sacrament is not reserved for just the perfect.” Those few words from this good brother changed everything.
I remember very well who that elderly brother was but I do not remember who the rude family was in front of us. We need to forgive those in the Church who may offend us if we expect the Lord to forgive our own trespasses.
Theodore
I have just now finished reading this thread. Craig Paxton’s “exit story” is interesting. It fits rather nicely within a category now being studied by some sociologists. But Craig gives it a “Mormon” twist. He begins his tale by asserting that “typically, the apologetic community [think FARMS/Fair] presides comfortably from their perch high upon their rameumpion…with a quite arrogant and self-created assurance that they are right and everybody else with a different opinion is wrong. The playing field is never a level one.” It appears that there are people out there–those nasty apologists–who really bug Paxton. His stereotype is as follows: “The church is ALWAYS true period…end of discussion.” Then we are immediately treated to code language. Following Talmage Backman, he loves the question, “is the church what it claims to be.”
Now I have two large problems with this language. I have raised them with Bachman and begged him to explain. In at least ten exchanges, I never could get an answer. Now I wonder if Paxton will provide his answer to the kinds of questions I directed to his friend Bachman. First, what exactly do you mean by “church”? What meaning, if any, do you pour into that word? Second, what exactly is it that you think it “claims to be”?
I notice that others have picked up on the ambiguity in talk about the “church.” Keller is right that the word “church” commonly identifies in English an assembly or community. It also tends to identify a building where a given portion of a community meets for various purposes. Now obviously a building cannot make claim, except perhaps in some symbolic sense in which some artifact stands for something. If we look back for clues to how the words that the English word “church” came into our vocabulary, what we find is the word ecclesia in both Latin and Greek. What that word in its various forms identified was an assembly of people. I believe that the word is closely related to our word economy, which once meant household, which is an assembly of people. In fact, one could say that a polis, from which we get our word politics, is an assembly of households held together by laws or rules and a common or shared history.
So in the Book of Mormon what we find is labels like People of God, Covenant People of God and so forth. We also have in our scriptures the metaphor Body of Christ, which is another way of talking about the Covenant People of God. So “church” must include the good, bad and indifferent, unless they are no longer numbered among the People of God. One can, of course, be excommunicated from the community of Saints, as in Paxton’s case, or one can excommunicate oneself in all kinds of ways and remain on the rolls and appear to others as faithful. I believe that virtually all Latter-day Saints have at various times and degrees done this to themselves by not remembering and keeping the commandments the made when they entered the community of Saints and thereby became members, to use the body metaphor, of Covenant People of God. I am painfully aware that I have. My feeling is that even the best of the Saints may still have one foot in Babylon and hence part of the time be in the business of turning their hearts over to the pursuit of wealth, status, and on and on. They focus on the glamorous treasures of spiritual Babylon and where one’s treasure is, there is one’s real God. And then out goes the Lord. So idolatry is a menace to the Covenant People of God at all times and places. It is easy for me to spot this when someone tries to sell insurance of involve me in a stock deal but it was more difficult to see it in myself as a professor in a university.
Now this is the way I understand and hence talk about the “church.” I am not sure how Paxton used that word. “Church” might mean for him the Brethren or what those with power do and say. He may not have thought through all of this and may have merely picked up some code language from Backman. I am simply not sure. I can, of course, understand how a person can make a claim or who a group can agree to make a claim. But I simply do not understand what Paxton/Bachman mean when the talk about “what the church claims to be,” unless they have in mind that the assembly or community of people have submitted to Jesus Christ as their Master and King, and worship him and put their trust in him for their salvation from death and sin.
Someone mentioned the “church” as a corporate entity. Well, it is the Body of Christ. That is a corporate entity. But I think they may have had in mind bureaucrat in buildings.
Now I believe that the Church makes claims? No. Individuals do make claims. And one can sort of sum up a number of individuals who seem to claim this or that. But that seems about as vague as asking what the Church teaches. I insist on knowing which individual taught that and how they come up with that opinion. Instead, I hold that faithful Latter-day Saints–that is, genuinely faithful Saints, who are ultimately known only to God, have a witness from the Holy Spirit that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and have allowed the Holy Spirit to burn out of them the old stuff and hence begin the painful process of the necessary baptism of fire (aka sanctification), and so forth. They often or at least sometimes can witness or testify to the faith that is in them. This has to be what we commonly refer to as having a testimony. That expression, unfortunately, shields somewhat the fact that we are actually talking about our faith. And we live by faith and not by sight. We are all seeking to grow the seed of faith into the tree of life from which we can eventfully pluck and taste the fruit thereof. e? So, if you ask me if I believe that the Church is true, the answer is an emphatic No! The reason is that I am not sure that I always remember and keep–that is, that I am genuinely true and faithful. I am, instead, in my imagination, on a journey, striving to offer an acceptable sacrifice to God, seeking his mercy and so forth. But I am painfully aware that without his mercy, I am less than dust, and without hope here and now or then and there.
Now I see none of this in Paxton’s exit story. I see, instead, someone who seemed to think that being the point of being a “good Mormon” was not to drink or smoke, pay tithing and climb the ladder of status offered by various callings in the Church. And then the wheels fell off his naive, and for me very worldly faith. And then, for the first time in his life, he started facing dubium. I started with doubts, and from even prior to my mission I was trying my best to see what alternatives were out there. I sought and studied with atheists and cultural Mormons, and admired and learned much from both types. I was always testing to see if my faith could stand in the face of whatever I encountered. I did not want to mindlessly merely conform to what might be wishful thinking.
And growing up in my home it was simply impossible to entertain the notion of infallible leaders. But it was also possible to put one’s trust in the Lord. I have found it increasingly necessary, given the alternatives.
So I now await Paxton’s explication of the formula “what the Church claims to be.”
Note: Please forgive my inevitable typing mistakes.]
My simplistic one word answer would be *choice*. Sure pride may or may not play a role, and while I mostly agree with those who have mentioned the role spiritual witness plays, there are those who have felt the spirit, and still left the church.
But ultimately, with whatever life experiences we have, with whatever story we have to tell, it comes down to an act of will– a choice we made.
Several people have told their conversion or de-conversion stories here. But we have to admit that the story we tell is made up of the things we have chosen– the story that we have chosen to tell ourselves about why we are the person we are. We tell it to ourselves and then we present it to others as who we are. But we pick and choose from an overwhelming amount of experiences, many that we have in common with others– and we choose the ones that we give more or less emphasis to. Others with the same experiences may choose what to add to their story differently than we do.
We see the same thing in all other religions- and even in science. Once they get back to asking what came before the big bang they have to choose– either there is “something more” going on, or it’s all random. Either way, it’s a leap, and a product of choices they have made in other areas and an outgrowth of the self-story they have constructed.
Same with religion. Once we have made the choice to believe that there is something more, we have to choose what belief system best helps us in our approach to and relationship with God. And that’s all about us. It’s not the book we read or DNA or that rude bishop (or even the awesome one). Sure, spiritual witness is key in Mormonism, I don’t mean to discount that, but ultimately it is all about what we choose to believe.
Wisely spoken!
Allen wrote:
Which, of course, brings us back to the original question:
What accounts for the difference in outcome?
I think it’s because some people choose to continue in faith without having answers, or “shelving” difficult questions. I think, if I recall correctly, even Louis said he has done this. Sure you’ve read a lot, Allen, and I think I’ve also read most of what you outlined. But I doubt you’d claim to have all the answers (?).
Take the case of Henry Eyring Snr. and Joseph Fielding Smith. JFS had to have his answers, even if he had to resort to Velilovskian theories to justify a young earth. This “black and white” thinking also permeated his son-in-law Bruce McConkie.
Eyring accepted evolution, and also admitted that there were many unanswered questions, and he was willing to continue faithful believing, hoping, that one day it will all be made plain. And the D&C in effect says this, that all will be made known at a future time, how the earth was created, etc.
One of my greatest “barriers” is that for the life of me I cannot accept that the Book of Mormon is historical, and though believers will disagree, it is as plain to me as the sun shining at noon-day. So that alone immediately opts me out of “mainstream Mormonism”. Sorry, but I’ve read all the apologetics, going on 26 years now, and my “take” on that is opposite to Allen’s. And it’s not as if I jumped ship overnight, or woke up one morning with an “aha!” moment of insight that it was all false. I made five aborted returns to the Church during the 1990s. You get to a point where you realise that you can only revise, reinterpret or liberalise your views so much, and no more. After that, you’re kidding yourself.
I could, like Eyring, settle in the Church while delaying my hunger for answers which will only come after I die. Sort of like, “God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul”. Those who believe they have the answers are not being honest with themselves. But if they choose to continue in faith, that’s fine by me. It will probably make you all better people. And I suppose that’s what the Gospel is, walking by faith, not by sight.
If you’re looking for some “evil” or ulterior motive as to why we leave, it’s not there, not in my case. As I’ve said before, I find the “Church lifestyle” very “artificial”, just my take. Maybe this is why so many thrust themselves into apologetics and academia, to get the mental and intellectual stimulation you don’t find in Sunday School or home-teaching? Look at Nibley for example, who tried to liven up discussions, criticised Apostle Richard L. Evans’ approach, and criticised BYU. Yet Nibley didn’t have all the answers either, or even most of them.
So if we choose to leave because of “impossibles”, reach a point which Craig described, the impossibility of going back, it’s not for a lack of trying or having tried. This could apply to any religion, not just Mormonism. Had we abandoned the Jehovah’s Witnesses, you’d have no argument with us, in fact you’d probably agree and even encourage us. Yet there are more Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world today than there are Mormons. And I’m sure there as many educated JWs who remain faithful, for a lifetime. So my return question to Allen would be, have you investigated the Witnesses? And if you have and didn’t convert, then why? Why do you choose to reject that, while many equally educated people find it totally convincing?
The problem that people don’t get – in or out of the Church – is that every time there has been “God’s people” on the earth or “God’s Church” on the earth, it has been a bumpy ride.
The entire narrative of the scriptures is one of the Church rising and falling in levels of righteousness. In the time of Jesus’ ministry – the Church actually killed the Son of God!
Keep that in mind. The Pharisees WERE a part of the “true church” (whatever that phrase means). In fact, they were the leaders of it.
Do I think things have even come close to that level of wickedness in the Church today? Not really. I merely bring it up to point out that people who seriously study their scriptures need not be flabbergasted to discover hypocrisy, arrogance, pettiness, dishonesty, cruelty, and all the rest in the “true church.” It comes with the territory.
So, you have a choice here.
You can either run off and refuse to associate with anyone who isn’t perfect. Or you can stick around and try to do something about it.
Lots of wonderful counsel and deep thought have gone into the post and comments. I’ve enjoyed the read.
I’m trying to understand how Brother Paxton, and others who travel the same path got there in the first place. There seems to be more and more of them.I for one think nearly all of them are honest and sincere in telling their story.
If this is the case then what is the explanation? Can a good an honest person by just studying the doctrine and history of the church reach a place where Brother Paxton is? The answer appears to be, yes. And by the same process others, as the author of this post pointed out, come to the conclusion it is part of the experience we’re given and stay close to the church and defend it with powerful reasoning.
As other have said, it boils down to what one wants to believe after sifting all the evidence.
I personally wouldn’t call what Brother Paxton and others are going through a de-conversion. A true conversion experience–being born again, receiving a remission of sins by fire and the Holy Ghost is such that I can’t imagine a person ever falling away.
It appears to me that the Lord has put us in a situation where it is reasonable to believe or not believe by using just our faculties of reason. The message the Lord is giving us is that we need the converting power of the Holy Ghost to really know the truth. This for most of us, is a process where we’re given spiritual experiences here and there, and arrive at a point where we discover we’re a believer and really don’t have any intention of changing.
But we need to reach beyond that plateau at some point, and seek diligently for the full conversion experience.
I believe the full conversion experience comes about for many when we’re in a crisis and turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of our sins thus offering up a broken heart and a contrite Spirit, then the Lord is able to extend the mighty change of heart to us and provide the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost.
I hope to see those who frequent the Bloggernacle telling more conversion experiences than ex-mormon experiences.
Brother Paxton, I hope you will allow the Lord to guide you back. He did me. He left the ninety and nine and came for me and I am confident He will do it for you and others who are likewise troubled.
Ray,
Then you obviously haven’t read my theory on the subject. It makes perfect sense (to me anyway 🙂 ) You may download it at http://brandley.poulsenll.org/
Theodore
On the other hand, if you just don’t believe in it, you certainly aren’t going to feel much need to stick around.
Which is fine.
What I have is the people who keep stomping around the blogosphere in pompous indignation about how it turned out the tooth fairy wasn’t real, and how Thomas S. Monson doesn’t produce solid gold nuggets every time he blows his nose.
We have people like this inside and outside the LDS Church. Some are active members. Others are some of it’s most vocal critics. In or out, they’re pretty much the same. Same sense of self-righteous superiority, same black-and-white thinking, same reductionist tendecies, same inability to shut up and stop telling people how to living their lives.
These fundamentalists make life in the Church incredibly annoying for the rest of us. Then on occasion, one of them pops, and storms out of the Church. But they still haven’t gotten rid of the urge to make other people’s lives miserable. So they rush off to CARM or RfM and continue to spew the same kind of idiotic thinking that made them a crappy Mormon to live with.
Once a fundamentalist, always a fundamentalist.
Tearing up your temple recommend and deciding to vote Democrat doesn’t change that.
Theodore,
I’m downloading your file and will have a look. It appears to be about Book of Mormon geography. That isn’t the main problem. The main problem is that the Book of Mormon is filled with anachronisms. It is a modern Christian text, a 19th century Christian text. Jews living in 2,000BC and 600BC didn’t write Christian texts. Forget about the Mormon/Moroni argument. The small plates come from 600 BC unabridged.
Thanks anyway, I’ll have a look.
Theodore:
For what it is worth, your short explanation of your experiences with re-activation (for lack of a better word) are encouraging. It also places our former discussions into an even more positive perspective.
Cowboy
And yes, I realize my above comments are uncharitable and snotty.
Ray,
I can talk about the geographic issue, but hopefully someone on this blog more versed in the BofM anachronism issue could address that.
Cowboy, Thanks.
Theodore
Theodore:
I can talk about the geographic issue…
You certainly put a lot of work into it, and I think Rod Meldrum would agree with you. I’m sure the Maxwell Institute won’t. Nor FAIR. But you are entitled to your opinion.
Tackling geography before anachronisms, for me, is putting the cart before the horse. In any case, if I did accept a model (which I don’t) it would be the LGM, or LGT. I think Sorenson, in this genre, has more persuasive arguments.
Is it conceivable that the church today is both less — and more — than it appears?
At its core, Mormon belief is that we (humanity) are a race whose individual personalities originate before mortal life and continue afterward. In addition, there is divine being(s) that are concerned about our actions and activities.
Around those basic concepts are many, perhaps, ancillary concepts: various scriptural references, a host of doctrines, and many historical fragments.
The Church itself is today an organization that is run by individuals that believe that they are doing the will of divinity. I suspect often they don’t have direct guidance so they do what they believe is desired.
My basic point is my strong suspicion is that many of our problems occur because our interactions with God are more muddled than most are willing to acknowledge. Perhaps the Lord doesn’t care that much as to how long Sunday meetings are or the particular requirements to teach primary. He may be involved in big issues but often with less clarity than assumed.
If that thesis is correct, is it conceivable that many of our “problems” flow from human beings inserting their own personalities into a host of decisions. And, those are often imperfect or contradictory.
A few musings . .
* The Book of Mormon. Where did the Lord end and Joseph Smith begin? The language is clearly 19th Century Christian. Is that Joseph imposing his own world view? What does that mean about the translation process? How literal is the story and how much is concepts? Hard questions. I don’t have the answers. I suspect is is far more muddled than one would assume.
* What was polygamy? Could it be partly human weakness on the part of Joseph? Might the continuation have been from a desire to create separation from American society? And, what if God really isn’t bothered by a variety of relationships? Perhaps he hasn’t minded when leaders pursue such marriages.
* Evolution and such. What if no one really knows? Maybe divinity has conveyed the concept of mankind’s divine parentage. Individual church leaders, based on that impression, might be injected their own comfort or discomfort with scientific explanations.
Most human interaction is neither black nor white. I wonder if they same is true for religion. Maybe there is influence and direction from God. But, it might not be in the form of detailed, worded instructions in most cases but more impressions.
If so, such might explain the varying experiences so many have yet most feel some sort of divine influence.
Anyway, a few thoughts.
Allen Asked:
————————————————————
Craig said:
I think back to B.H. Roberts’s 1922 report to the First Presidency following his attempt to answer the questions posed in the William E. Riter letter. How did the first presidency respond? They did not share the concerns of Roberts or offer any explanation or inspirational light on the subject…they merely ignored the report and bore their testimony that in spite of this seemingly undermining information that the Book of Mormon was true.
At the risk of derailing the topic of my own thread, could you please provide a nugget or two for me relative to this, Craig?
First, on what source are you basing your information (what book or article)?
Second, you say that the FP provided no “inspirational light on the subject” yet then say that they “bore their testimony” on the matter. Such a characterization seems contradictory to me. Did you mean it that way?
Craig’s Reply:Second question first, Roberts returned and reported on the Riter letter to the FP…and basically said (and yeah I’m paraphrasing) ah dudes we have a serious problem here and we better come up with some answers…or we will lose our youth when they wake up and smell the coffee (yeah Mormon’s could drink coffee back then). And the FP…did not offer any solutions other than to give their testimonies. I liken it to the flat earth proponents who in spite all the evidence before them bare a loud testimony that they know the earth is flat…why? Because they know it to be true. How?…they just do know it period…(yeah yeah yeah I know the spirit told them) now don’t ask again!!!
First question: Kind of in a rush here today…just checking in on the thread and am trying to catch up…will try to tackle some of this stuff early next week. But in Roberts Study of the Book of Mormon…he describes this meeting with the FP…its been a few years since I read it…but that description was the sense I got from what I remember…I’ll check it again to make sure I remember it correctly and provide a better reference.
According to JS, he asked God, “Which Church is true?” And God replied that none of them is true. He then called JS to re-establish the true church, which contains the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the true Plan of Salvation.
Anybody dispute that?
So, when someone says “church” – that’s what I think of in the most simple and basic meaning of the term. Put in other words, it’s the “Kingdom of God on earth.”
And so….. the question to me is….. did that First Vision really happen the way JS said it did?
If it did, it’s the most important message anyone could ever deliver. Therein lies the reason that so many post-LDS people such as Craig Paxton don’t leave the church alone as quickly as many want them to do.
And, to quote Gordon Hinkley, if it DID NOT happen that way, then the Utah LDS Church (and others, of course) is a fraud. If it’s a fraud, then again, therein lies the reason that so many post-LDS people such as Craig Paxton don’t leave the church alone as quickly as many would like them to do (i.e., “just move on with your life.”)
Why should it any more complex than that?
Label me a “fundamentalist” if you will. I don’t care. Your labels mean nothing to me. I only care who I really am.
For me, I believe in God. There are 2 basic questions I have asked him over and over, for many years now:
1. Whether the Utah LDS Church is really what it claims to be.
2. I also ask God to lead me to the truth about the meaning and purpose of my life.
So far, no answer to the first question has come. But the 2nd one is happening for me, and I’m on a positive path that’s leading me to greater understanding (and happiness) about what MY life (not yours) is about.
C Jones said:
I think I quite agree with you on this point, C. More on that in a moment…
Ray Agostini said:
Again, choice. You appear to be in agreement—at least at the outset—with C Jones. But, again, more in a moment…
Nope. Never claimed it; never plan to. (If I had all the answers, why would I start have created the original post to ask a question?)
So you are implying that you reach a point where there really is no choice…despite your earlier statement that staying was really a matter of choice? That seems to be a bit of a contradiction.
Ray, correct me if I am wrong, but here you seem to be saying it is OK to choose to leave or choose to stay, but some people have no choice and can’t ever go back. Is that right? Do those people still exercise choice, or are they beyond choice?
This almost borders on a “take” I’ve seen many times from some who leave the Church. They say that the evidence against the Church became—for them—so compelling that they had to leave; they no longer had a choice.
So, people have a choice to join. People have a choice to stay and shelve doubts. But people who confront the evidence have no choice; they have to leave.
Is that right? Is that really what you are saying? Because if you are, it doesn’t seem like a particularly balanced argument.
Actually, I have. I joined the LDS Church when I was 11 years old. Since I’ve been married and out on my own (32+ years now) I’ve been tracted out by the JWs many times, in many places we’ve lived. I’ve *never* (not once) turned them away. I’ve always invited them in and agreed to do Bible study with them. I admire them quite a bit. (I admire anyone who lives their religion to the extent that JWs do.) I believe that I have been through their entire study course to completion twice. I have several of their publications on my bookshelf.
So why didn’t I join them? Because they offered only a subset of what I already had with the LDS Church. It’s really that simple.
-Allen
An Observer wrote:
Most human interaction is neither black nor white. I wonder if they same is true for religion. Maybe there is influence and direction from God. But, it might not be in the form of detailed, worded instructions in most cases but more impressions.
Well I suppose one of the “quirks” I retained after leaving the Church is a belief in God. Not the anthropormorphic man of Joseph Smith’s King Follett sermon, nor even a man. I really don’t know why any God would care whether the Church has a block meeting schedule or not, or whether someone wears jeans to Church, or has one, two, or no earrings. This, and a host of other examples which could be given, it seems to me, is what Jesus called “the traditions of men”.
I thought your post was very well worded, and it expresses some of my feelings. Lou Midgley also had some interesting in-put in this regard.
Ken Taylor wrote:
If it did, it’s the most important message anyone could ever deliver. Therein lies the reason that so many post-LDS people such as Craig Paxton don’t leave the church alone as quickly as many want them to do.
I think Craig has a right to feel angry. I was not born nor brought up LDS, but I could only imagine what it feels like to see your lifelong beliefs and ideals crumble in the dust. And he has a right, he would feel obligation, to tell others about his experiences. I’m not an “RFMer” myself, and once severely criticised them, but I think people do need space to get these disappointments off their chest. It’s not a high retention board, only retains two weeks of archived posts, and does not have many long-standing posters. Most vent, then move on, some never to be seen again on the Internet. And the thing we must bear in mind is that all of them were once “TBMs”. As Craig was.
The reason I continue to interact with the LDS community, or LDS-related message boards, is because in spite of my apostasy, I think that Mormonism is an enormously intellectually stimulating religion, but most of that stimulation comes from the “thinkers” in Mormonism, not those B.H.Roberts called “disciples pure and simple”, or “the repeaters”. That’s probably why “chapel Mormonism” interests me very little.
Truth isn’t something that comes neatly packaged, and all you have to do is follow simple formulas to “get to heaven”. So in that sense I retain an interest in LDS thought which broaches a wider spectrum of thought. Mind you, some Exmo thinking can be just as narrow as “chapel Mormonism”. For some odd reason, I still can’t really bring myself to call Mormonism “a fraud”. Because for something to be an outright fraud, it has to be universally true in the first place. And I lost my “true believer” status about 1985. So I’ve taken a sort of Joseph Campbell approach. I view Mormonism as only one avenue in the quest for truth, albeit, a very interesting one.
Ken Taylor said:
Then later he said:
I can’t quite figure out whether you really have three recurring questions over the years, or whether the question about JS and the First Vision is subsumed in your question about the Utah LDS church.
Either way, I’d encourage you to keep asking until you do get an answer. (Probably didn’t need my encouragement since you said you have been doing it for years, anyway.)
And that is way cool.
-Allen
Allen wrote:
So you are implying that you reach a point where there really is no choice…despite your earlier statement that staying was really a matter of choice? That seems to be a bit of a contradiction.
I’ll try to make it clearer. I think it’s possible that I might return to the Church one day, but if I did, it would be for a type of “spiritual community”, or “Christian community”. Or, maybe if the Church relaxed its view on Book of Mormon historicity. I’ll put it to you this way, Allen, I’d rather belong to a Church than the Rationalist Association of New South Wales.
The “impossibility” is going back to a Church which has “rigid conformity”, and asks questions like (one example only) do I think there is only one man on earth who holds the Only priesthood keyes and power to act in the name of God. I also totally and comprehensively reject polygamy as an abomination, in practice, theory or belief. That is the Church I could never return to.
Allen wrote:
This almost borders on a “take” I’ve seen many times from some who leave the Church. They say that the evidence against the Church became—for them—so compelling that they had to leave; they no longer had a choice.
Well I suppose I could have rejected Book of Mormon historicity and continued in activity. Most bishops/stake presidents, I think, could have tolerated that. My last bishop and SP did. But paying tithing is a real effort when you don’t believe “the fundamentals”. So I see Mormonism as an “all or nothing” proposition, as per Gordon B. Hinckley’s statements. I’m a Universalist, and I don’t believe that truth comes neatly packaged in one Church.
Allen wrote:
So, people have a choice to join. People have a choice to stay and shelve doubts. But people who confront the evidence have no choice; they have to leave.
No, they don’t have to leave. They can become Richard Poll “Liahonas”. That is not something I feel comfortable with. It’s a sort of Lieutenant status for “Korihor”. A notch above outright apostasy. Or, as many leaders have said, “wolves among the sheep”.
I think it is part and parcel of who a person is, or has become. Regardless of what many LDS think, not everyone would be happy in the Celestial Kingdom. God created multiple mansions for a reason. Alma 11-12, and Mormon 9 insist that the wicked would be miserable in God’s presence. Well, there are many who virtually are not interested in eternal marriage, much less having children through the eternities. For them, such an eternal experience does not seem like heaven.
For those who find the gospel isn’t exactly what they thought, or who have had a change of heart/mind on what they believe, because something else makes them happier, there is no reason for God to try and impose his fullness upon them. It won’t make them happy.
Each of us tries to find our own happiness. Some find it in Mormonism, others in traditional Christianity, some in atheism. I know a former member, who studied Kabbalism until he joined! It doesn’t change the fact of Joseph Smith as a prophet. It does matter as to what interests, fascinates, and makes this one person happy.
And I believe God is so loving as to allow each child to find and receive the type of happiness he/she wants, as long as it isn’t in sin. And we all know that only Tal Bachman fits into category #4, right? 😉
Raemumption wrote:
And I believe God is so loving as to allow each child to find and receive the type of happiness he/she wants, as long as it isn’t in sin. And we all know that only Tal Bachman fits into category #4, right?
That’s the sort of sarcasm I can do without.
I think it is part and parcel of who a person is, or has become. Regardless of what many LDS think, not everyone would be happy in the Celestial Kingdom. God created multiple mansions for a reason. Alma 11-12, and Mormon 9 insist that the wicked would be miserable in God’s presence. Well, there are many who virtually are not interested in eternal marriage, much less having children through the eternities. For them, such an eternal experience does not seem like heaven.
Sure. I don’t mind having “Telestial status” in Mormonism. I would be really worried if I thought it was true. But I don’t.
Ken:
Joseph Smith prayed to God to find out (1) if his sins had been forgiven, and, when that was settled in the affirmative, then (2) he wanted to know which Protestant sect he should join. It was commonly necessary, when joining a Protestant sect, to have to convince a preacher that one’s sins were forgiven. The answer Joseph got to the second question stunned him. Why? He had not previously considere that all sects might be wrong. There was no right sect for him to join. He was not, however, told about a true church. Nothing he learned in his first encounter with divine beings launched anything or established anything. He remained unchurched. It was only later, when he encountered Moroni, that his role as Seer and also Prophet was set in place. He then went about assembling a community that was initially called the Church of Christ.
The expression “true church” has become Mormon shorthand for the Covenant People of God–that is, the Kingdom of God on earth. But for me to call a people true when many of them are not faithful to the covenants they have made, seems a bit odd. What is true–that is, what corresponds to the mind and will of God and flows from him by divine special revelations–is the doctrine of Christ, also known as the Gospel. One can find that in the Book of Mormon. The crucial question, I think, is whether one has genuinely decided to make and then keep a covenant with God. We only come to know the truth of things later, after we have shown that we are true and faith by remembering and keeping.
Ray:
It is great to see that you are still kicking. You bring, from the West Island yet, a fresh perspective to these conversations. I think that, if you wanted the Book of Mormon to be true, you could find plausible answers to the objection you set out earlier. I have heard most every objection to the Book of Mormon. None of them seem all that good. But that is probably because I want it to be true. But those I just called TBAMs, who don’t want it to be true, end up just hating your friend Dan Peterson and me because we pose a threat to their unfaith. Hence the efforts to demonize us.
Lou wrote:
I think that, if you wanted the Book of Mormon to be true, you could find plausible answers to the objection you set out earlier. I have heard most every objection to the Book of Mormon. None of them seem all that good.
We are on different paths here, Lou. I find the objections to historicity overwhelming. But yet, I still read it 20-plus times, and know just about every verse. I have never denied that, the “spiritual impact”. You’re not likely to ever hear me calling the Book of Mormon a “fraud”. But the “historicity” question, for me, is now a foregone conclusion – it’s not history (sorry to sound so “dogmatic”). Perhaps I should have dined with Sterling Mc Murrin, the late anti-Christ of Salt Lake City 🙂
Lou wrote:
But those I just called TBAMs, who don’t want it to be true, end up just hating your friend Dan Peterson and me because we pose a threat to their unfaith. Hence the efforts to demonize us.
Both you and Dan remain quite high in my estimation, in spite of disagreements on “fundamentals”. I’ve actually been reading your writings before Dan’s, when the late Max Nolan of Western Australia “introduced” me to you through some correspondence he had with you then.
Dan and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but I’d never, for one minute, underestimate his intelligence. I think you are both, for me anyway, “legends in apologetics”, and I admire your perseverance, but I cannot agree with your conclusions.
I have been away at the Ballet in Salt Lake, and have just now been trying to catch up on this thread and other pressing matters. The other thread, I just noticed, is dead. I am a bit disappointed that Craig Paxton just ignored my comments on that other thread. And the same is true on this one as well. He has been itching for a conversation. His account, though not a formal argument, but a story–is both a kind of secular testimony, of how he came to have his new faith and typical of those sometimes called leave takers. There are now scholars building minor academic careers studying people who leave and turn violently against their former faith. So Craig’s story invites commentary, does it not? And perhaps also classification and comparison with others who leave communities of faith, secular or otherwise.
Ray:
You are nothing like Sterling McMurrin. He liked to boast that he had never read the Book of Mormon, but merely glanced at it. I think I understand your stance on the Book of Mormon. We differ, of course, the historicity issue. But, whatever one’s opinion on that issue, it would be silly not to see the complexity and power of its message. But, from my perspective, its message is woven into a narrative or flows from a narrative that would cease to have authority, if it were a kind of fiction. Would the New Testament have the same authority, if one was confident that there never was a Jesus of Nazareth? These are issues I enjoy discussing.
I had lost track of Max Nolan. You indicate that he passed away. Perhaps you could fill me in on Max away from this blog. I can be reached at [email protected]
No problem, Lou, I’ll email you.
I think that it is a slippery slope we turn down when we start to judge the intents of another man’s heart. Was he sincere in his inability to reconcile his faith or does he have some dark ulterior motive? Faith is a very personal thing, however, there is one who does know the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. He will judge us. He knows which ones are really seeking for truth and which people allow the weak spots in their spiritual armor to be exposed, blaming their fall on the fiery darts of the adversary. After thinking about the many comments on this very long thread, this is the conclusion that I have come back to: I don’t know but God does. You are my brother and I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
I do wonder about the actions of many of those who have left the Church and now spend time and money aggravating its members. How can you say that this has been a good and positive change in your life when you are so full of resentment and hate? Are not the positive changes in life those which motivate us to achieve greater magnanimity and excellence? How can participating in forums websites that drip with elitism, bitterness and vicious criticism be the consequence of a good and virtuous choice? Why would you want to put yourself in the same group of people the lynched Joseph and Hyrum Smith? Whatever your opinions about them are, can you really believe that injustice and rage solve anything? Can these things be the outcome of a good decision? I do not envy the pain you feel that motivates such actions and I sympathize with those who have unanswered questions. Please stop spreading this hatred.
This post raises a profound and perplexing question. I am a closet doubter. I am also the Bishop of my ward. I was a doubter when I was called four years ago. I was terrified, but I accepted and I have done my best. Surprisingly, I am actually quite a good bishop. I think my weak faith has actually made me a better bishop in many ways. I am able to relate to my ward members in ways that some of their previous bishops could not.
I do not believe the Church is “true” in the way most use that term, and I do not believe the Book of Mormon to be a true account of real people. I am not certain of those conclusions. I am well aware that there are many who are more intelligent, thoughtful and educated than I am who genuinely believe those things. I was onced firmly in their camp. I now think it is more likely than not that these things are not true, although I continue to hold out some hope that I am wrong.
I have a couple of theories for why honest, sincere people come to different conclusions. I don’t think any single theory can explain all of the differences. In my own case, it is quite simple. I have studied and prayed a lot. God has never answered those prayers. During the last ten years I have learned much more than I knew before about many of the most common objections made by critics. I think I can hold my own in debates about Book of Mormon historicity, the Book of Abraham and issues in church history. Some of those issues trouble me a great deal, but they are only part of the problem. I just find many of the church’s teachings to be in conflict with the way I see the world around me. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I have to twist my faith in knots to reconcile it with my ohter beliefs. That is hard to do. Nevertheless, I could easily get over all of those issues with just one single answer to prayer. The apologists have at least plausible arguments on most, or maybe even all, of those issues and so I can understand how they can continue to hold on to their faith. But I have put Moroni’s promise to the test. I accepted President Hinckley’s challenge to reread the Book of Mormon a few years ago and to pray about it. I did that, sitting in my office each night after my regular interviews. I had nothing but negative impressions. I don’t believe that God was speaking to me at all at the time, but if he did, he was telling me that it was not true. At least those were my feelings at the time.
So what distinguishes me from others whose experiences are so different from mine? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think most people are really open to the possibility that their beliefs are wrong. This works both ways, and I have nothing but disdain for the RFM types. Most believers, when confronted with information that seems to contradict their beliefs, will immediately search for ways to justify their beliefs in the face of this assault. I know everybody knows this. I am not saying anything profound. Nevertheless, it is true. Most are not really open to the possibility that their faith is misplaced. Some have had profound personal spiritual experiences. Others are completely immersed in the faith as part of their culture and identity that they can’t entertain the possibility that they are mistaken.
I think that this explains many, but not all cases. I also believe that for some reason, certain evidence seems to have more persuasive power in some minds than it does in others. We see this all the time in politics, economics and even science. Reasonable, well informed people reach different conclusions about all kinds of things when confronted with the same evidence. This happens in religion also.
One of by big objections to the Church, is exactly this inconsistency. If the church is true, then I think that God should be morew consistent. Moroni’s promise has been falsified. It seems to work for some people, but I know from personal experience that it does not work for all people. I know from my personal counselling that a great many people struggle with their faith precisely because they see no evidence that God is answering their prayers. During my time as bishop, I have seen two members of my ward leave the church over “intellectual” concerns. They were two of our best, most faithful people. I have had a couple of other outwardly faithful, wonderful, kind, stalwart people confess to me that they really did not have testimonies. I don’t have the answers, but I am convinced that the standard answers that these people just didn’t try hard enough to gain testimonies are not true.
“I do wonder about the actions of many of those who have left the Church and now spend time and money aggravating its members.”
1) This only represents a small (extremely small) fraction of individuals who leave the Church.
2) Those who do end up spending the money, as you say, usually fall into two camps. A) Christians of another faith, ie. the Tanners, Deckers, etc. B) Historians. In either case their motives would not be self described in the same manner you labled. The Christians would argue the same motives that drive Mormon missionary efforts. The historians would argue that they are simply doing research into a major American religion, history, etc.
“How can you say that this has been a good and positive change in your life when you are so full of resentment and hate?
This is a rhetorical question aimed at a preloaded conclusion. Putting aside the debate as to which side is actually right (The Church is true vs. The Church is not true), if you believe you belonged to a Church that was false and possibly took advantage of your spirituality, you would naturally feel that being out has been “good” and yet still harbor the negative feelings suggested in the above comment. I seriously don’t want to draw parallels here, but could we argue by the same logic that pissed of women of abusive relationships were better off in those relationships where the abuse was percieved as an odd manifestation of love.
“Are not the positive changes in life those which motivate us to achieve greater magnanimity and excellence?”
I doubt anyone would argue that would be a postive change, though I will argue that you are speaking of what is often the ends of a dynamic process. I could also argue that most things which improve your situation are also positive, even if it includes discomfort. Secondly, don’t speculate that just because someone is angry at the Church for a time, that in most cases ex members persist in a daily unalterable virtriol against everything. Many get past the issue, even to the point of dismissing their resentment to the Church. Some don’t I realize, but again I would argue they are in the minority.
“How can participating in forums websites that drip with elitism, bitterness and vicious criticism be the consequence of a good and virtuous choice?”
Your description of the websites for one is highly subjective, particularly on a website (fair) that stands as unofficial representation of a supposed but disputed truth. If we wanted to be nasty we could argue, particularly given comments on this thread which suggest that the primary motivator for those who leave the Church is unwarranted pride, that fair is elitest forum. Don’t misunderstand, those are not my personal feelings, but it demonstrates the subjectivity of the comments I am critiquing.
Secondly participationg in those forums, is much like the participation in this forum. People like to associate with likeminded company, and frankly the polyanna expectation that those who leave the Church ought to go out and plant flowers demonstrates a gross oversimplification, or misunderstanding, of the wide spectrum and process of human emotion.
“Why would you want to put yourself in the same group of people the lynched Joseph and Hyrum Smith?”
This seems to be an allusion to D&C 132 regarding the unpardonable sin being the willingness to assent unto The Saviors death. First, I highly resent that comment. Despite what you might think, very few if any of those who leave the Church would be willing to commit murder. Nor would they support, or have supported the murder of Joseph, Hyrum, The Savior etc. You began your comments with the obligatory “no one knows the intentions of another” as though that is some type of disclaimer which allows you to imply a murderous spirit of those you disagree with. If you would like to begin with:
“I think that it is a slippery slope we turn down when we start to judge the intents of another man’s heart.”
then you should probably end with that in mind. Most of those who leave the Church, are able to do so civilly, and would not condone any of the injustices which led to the murder of Joseph or Hyrum.
B:
I am not just a bit of a doubter; I am a full fledged doubter. I am serious. I doubt virtually everything. So here goes. You say you are a Bishop? Could well be, stranger things have happend. But, if so, why are you posting this stuff on Sunday morning at 10:00am? Don’t you have bishoping to do? My experience with that calling tells me that it starts before the sun comes up and ends after it goes down on at least Sunday. And does your Stake President known all this about you? Did you explain all of this to him, when he called you? If not, why not? And do you hide all this from those in your Ward? And why do you not reveal your name?
The question isn’t, as you put it, but whether, if his church is true, then Jesus Christ ought somehow to be more consistent, whatever that means, but whether we are true (and faithful), including avoiding being dishonest with others in both word and deed. God is not, as C. S. Lewis liked to point out, in the dock. Instead, we are on probation and hence being tested.
L. Midgley:
That’s quite a gamble, and a fair amount of detective work. Of course we will never know if you are right or wrong. I thought B’s comments were fairly respectful, way to shove it in his face.
“And why do you not reveal your name?”
As someone who comments under a pseudonym I already know the answer. Do you want to guess, or should I just tell you that perhaps he doesn’t want to be public with his personal doubts. Very few people are completely open and honest with even their Stake Presidents or anyone else, about every detail of their personal thoughts. Call it what you would like, I consider it prudence. I think we all have our own standards here.
Bishop–your words are a real eye opener for me. I’ve been active in the church for forty plus years and it never crossed my mind that “doubt” plays such a big role in the lives of so many members. It is only in recent years I’ve become aware of the magnitude of this challenge.
Your words have sunk deep into my heart. If you read my testimony on this thread then you’ll know my experience is just the opposite of yours. The Lord, for reasons known only to Himself, has given me experiences that crush doubt and have created a testimony of knowledge. When I say I “know”, I use this word because nothing else fits.
With all of this, I also have some understanding of another dimension of the gospel–the Lord will have a tried people.
I’m distressed at some of the trials the Lord has put me through and fear other that may come, but He has bound up my wounds, and supported me in my troubles, trials, and afflictions.
When I’ve been in the thick of troubles, trials, and afflictions I’ve learned much, but it was pure hell, and I had many failures and set backs that required me to repent. This occurred even in light of the sacred experiences the Lord has given me.
My point in sharing this with you is to say that one of the most difficult kinds of trials I’ve experienced, are those where the Lord denies us of that which is so clearly promised us.
Think of the trials endured by Abraham, Moses, and Joseph Smith, to name a few. They sought to do the Lord’s will but the Lord designed and required them to endure unimaginable trials before the blessings came.
I’ve tasted of the bitterness of these things and can only say, stick with it–endure. The Lord isn’t finished with you and your quest for a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and the truthfulness of the origins of His church.
I have the greatest of respect for you and those who are hanging on to their faith in the face of Abrahamic trials with doubt because the Lord is withholding a spiritual confirmation for a season.
Cowboy:
You are right about our unwillingness to be honest, and also about what being genuinely honest may costs us. Now what about those who proclaim, even boast, that they are honest and sincere? We have seen some of that on this thread and on its companion, have we not? Don’t you wonder if those RfM types, when they tell us that, unlike those sheep-like TBMs, who are controlled by the evil MORG, and defended by those dreadful MORBOTS, they have a passion for the truth, come what may, and that they are sincere and honest? I do. But setting out my doubts would, I suspect, offend what is now being called “Mormon nice.” But, I think you are suggestion, when the chips are down, a measure of hypocrisy and dishonesty are justifable. Please notice the word “justice” packed into that word. How can one keep up or manage appearances and keep one’s employment and insure one’s pension and so forth, if one does not hide one’s unfaith and identity? Think of the Palmer Syndrome.
Of course, we roll our eyes when a kid is caught stealing a car, but when it is someone with a Church calling who gets caught peddling phony stock or whatever, that is just the good old American Way, is it not? The answer, unfortunately is, yes. And the end result of greed and self-interest not properly understood, has been the melt down of our banks, among other things. But Bernie Madoff probably did not start out a crook. He got there by one little fib after another, all easily justified. This is one of the reasons that I am filled with doubts about my own motives, about my honesty and so forth. I keep wondering if those who are silent notes taking are not filling a file that will eventually sink my ship. So I strive to offer an offering in righteousness. But I have doubts about whether I have accomplished what I intend.
So I think that sin is real and we all need to repent, all of the time. Or at least I do. When I see people hiding their identity, and sneering or smirking at the faithful and the faith, or boasting about their honesty and sincerity, I have some doubts. That is not accusing anyone; it is just being cautious.
Incidently, the word “moderation” has come to replace, for various reasons, one of which your comments illustrate, both the English words “prudence” and/or “temperance” in translations of the Greek word sophrosyne, which identified one of the famous so-called Cardinal Virtues. The other three are courage, wisdom and justice. Now think of our word justification or justified. It is, in the end, only a properly credentialed wise judge who can dispense real justice. The four virtues together made of the one who possessed them, according to such a one as Aristotle, an excellent human being. What are the so-called Christian virtues? Well, the answer is faith (trust in God) hope (for something much better “beyond the ignorant present”), and love (sometimes called charity, from the same Greek root as grace or gift). When we love someone we give them freely our best gifts.
But back now to the issue at hand. Does one who hides his or her identity, while proclaiming their unfaith, manifest courage? Or love? Could we say that to be fully and ultimately virtuous, one must have the whole of virtue, not just some skill at manipulating appearances. Our scriptures are packed with warnings about deception and what the French call “bad faith” or self-deception, are they not?
Louis: Fair questions. I am AWOL today for the long weekend visiting family.
I do not reveal my name because I don’t want my family and friends to know of my doubts. That would cause them too much pain and would damage our relationship.
No, I did not reveal the extent of my doubts to my Stake President. That may well demonstrate a lack of integrity on my part. However, I did not ask for this calling. Men whom I genuinely respect and admire thought long and hard about it, and believed that God inspired them to issue this calling to me. Maybe they are right, and this is what God wants. I have tried hard to be the best I can be. I continue to pray for guidance, and to pray sincerely for members of my ward. I care deeply about them. If my doubts and my lack of openness about them condemn me, then so be it. I am in God’s hands, and he can intervene to solve my problem at any time. In the meantime, I have resolved to do my best in whatever calling is extended to me, to ask for God’s help and to hope that by doing so my faith will return. Except for this internal tension (which is a big exception, I know), I love serving. I am certainly guilty of some deception, but a lot of people would be profoundly hurt if were more open about my lack of faith. I believe I am doing good, and doing the right thing. I am genuinely trying to help others live better, happier lives. I am even succeeding sometimes. But I understand those who think my lack of openness overrides all else.
Your reference to C.S. Lewis begs the question. If there is a God, and if this is his church, then you are right. I am the one in the dock being tested. But to get to that point you have to assume that God is real, and this is his true church. Only he can make that known to me, and he has not done so yet. So he is still in the dock, or at least the question whether he is real, and whether this is his church, is very much on trial.
B opined as follows:
“Moroni’s promise has been falsified.” What the language that is glossed as “Moroni’s promise” indicates, is that when one receives the Book of Mormon, then one can, by asking God, get help from the Holy Spirit in knowing its truths. For me, the word “receive” in that famous passage has the same or similar function as that word has elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. So, for me, that is not law-like rule that one can test by, say, asking a dozen people to try it out. My experience is that many who suddenly take an interest in the Book of Mormon find it amazing, wonderful, beautiful but they still do not know its contents at all well. They still need to prayerfully ask for assistance in mining it for its truths. This is my experience.
Some of you might recall that Terryl Givens has pointed out that for most of the history of the Church, including its initial phase, the Book of Mormon was seen as a sign that the heavens were open and hence as one of the grounds of faith, but not as the source of the contents of faith. It is only in my lifetime that this has undergone a dramatic change. And that change has made the Book of Mormon function more fully as the so-called keystone. This has also led to more and more efforts to marginalize it and brush it aside or “prove” it not true, either by attacking its message or challenging is historicity.
Now I am not exactly pleased when someone tells me that they got their testimony way back when, often on their mission, and have not since then taken the Book of Mormon seriously. The talk about having a testimony, rather than witnessing to testifying to the faith that one has–that is, giving reasons for that faith–has become, I think unfortunately, the LDS equivalent of answering an altar call and having everything henceforth locked up. My sense is that all those who want to sign the song of redeeming love had better be doing what we do with fear and trembling. Why? We are dealing with God and not some social club–that is, we are if we take anything seriously.
I find the bishop’s comments credible, and I see no obvious reason to disbelieve them. As for Lou’s concern, anonymity on message boards is very common. Sometimes it can be annoying if the person attacks you and you don’t know who they are, but they know who you are. But most anonymity is benign, and many people have real concerns about upsetting family or friends.
I don’t think it’s unusual for a member to have closet doubts, no, not even a bishop. Tom Ferguson also showed how easy it is for an unbeliever to continue in fellowship. Not even his family was aware of the extent of his unbelief, and his clandestine correspondence with the Tanners only came to light many years later. I believe Ferguson also had temporary “lapses” back into belief, as he really wanted to believe, but I think his practical experiences outweighed his desire to keep believing. Who knows, maybe he settled back into some sort of “spiritual” but non-literal belief, so that he could remain within “the best brotherhood anywhere”.
I don’t doubt what the bishop has said, because it has been my own experience as a one-time bishop myself. In ten years three bishops left the Church (including me), one was actually serving when he lost his faith, asked to be released, attended the Sacrament meeting where he was released then walked out after, never to return. That was 20 years ago. The other bishop, I understand, denied he ever believed it. I’m not sure he “never believed”, but he was a “social bishop”, and enjoyed the limelight and attention, and was grief-striken when he was released. I think he more enjoyed the sense of community, and that he was a leader in that community, and helping people. I think he did believe early on, but gradually lost his belief as time went on.
Apart from them, the first branch president (before it became a ward) left the Church for 20 years, denied the divinity of Christ, etc., but returned in late life, and again I doubt he had literal beliefs. Another bishop told me, after I said there was “too much” I couldn’t believe, that the gospel boils down to only one thing – the Sermon on the Mount. His message was clear, so what if you don’t believe much, that’s all you really need to believe.
That’s why the bishop’s account doesn’t surprise me in the least.
I have always found it interesting that we all have different gifts. Some can simply believe. Others require intellectual support. There are those who question everything, and those who don’t. I remember asking my uncle once as to why he didn’t attend church. His comment was that most people can look at a hillside with a flock of sheep and comment, “Look at the white sheep.” He would comment, “Look at the sheep that are white on the side facing the road.”
There are those who have theophanies–which is a manifestation of God. There are others who do not and probably never will. Why is that? Is it worthiness? I doubt it. Paul and Alma are both those who had manifestations. But, so did Laman and Lemual. So the next question that comes up is, “If Brother or Sister Soandso had that wonderful experience, why don’t I? Or why doesn’t my wayward child? I have no answer to that. I suppose we will have to ask God when we get there.
On the other hand, if God answered all of our prayers with Angels, visions and healings, there would only be one faith tradition on this earth. It would be the one with the Angels, visions and healings. It would be very much like taking a multiple choice test with the instructions, “The answer to these questions is ‘c.'”
I think we also sometimes miss on time frame and situation. There have been experiences that I am aware of where spiritual manifestations have happened. I would prefer not to be in those situations. We can only hope that they are once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
Whatever the case is, there are things that cannot be explained away. As much as we try and want to do that, we simply can’t.
What an interesting collection of the “best brotherhood anywhere”. This is perhaps the most interesting thread I’ve participated in since discovering the “Bloggernacle” nearly two years ago.
The exchanges have been interesting and I believe sincere.
Of course, I find myself in the position of being ignored. I’m not sure why, maybe one of you will speak up.
We’re a church that believes in spiritual experiences. But I’ve found, in the last few years since I decided to speak up, that even though we believe, when someone shares a testimony as I have, then it gets quite.
My biggest surprise is that the Lord hasn’t brought forth more members in the Bloggernacle to share the other side of doubt–knowing. I confident He will.
We’re a church that believes in spiritual experiences. But I’ve found, in the last few years since I decided to speak up, that even though we believe, when someone shares a testimony as I have, then it gets quite.
My biggest surprise is that the Lord hasn’t brought forth more members in the Bloggernacle to share the other side of doubt–knowing. I confident He will.
Well, Jared, the subject is, “Same process, different outcome”. So we’re analysing it, and I presume those who’ve had “different outcomes” will say a lot. It isn’t, after all, testimony meeting. 🙂
Ray–because of what I’ve been given I am accountable to the Lord.
This whole thread is a “testimony meeting” of doubt. I shared my testimony of knowing, not to fly in anyone’s face, but I want you to doubt your doubt, until the Lord sees fit to reclaim you.
Jared wrote:
Ray–because of what I’ve been given I am accountable to the Lord.
This whole thread is a “testimony meeting” of doubt. I shared my testimony of knowing, not to fly in anyone’s face, but I want you to doubt your doubt, until the Lord sees fit to reclaim you.
Well if you must really know, I’ve had more “manifestations” and “experiences” after I left the Church. I’ve learned through experience to shut my trap about them. Maybe you don’t believe David Whitmer was told to “separate myself from the Latter-day Saints”. I happen to believe him. Everyone will not walk the same pathway. I’m pretty sure Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a Mormon. I’m also pretty sure Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Mormon. And I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want everyone to be a Mormon.
So if there’s going to be a judgement by God, and ourselves, eventually and ultimately somewhere – then let us walk according to the dictates of our own conscience. Not someone else’s.
D&C 134:4:
4 We believe that religion is instituted of God; and that men are amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others; but we do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul.
Judgment day will indeed be interesting. I’m glad the Lord has provided the way back for those of us who are, and have struggled along the path in this fallen world He provided for us so we could become like Him.
Didn’t Wilford Woodruff say that many of the former presidents came to him and asked that their temple work be completed? If I understand that correctly then who knows, maybe Lincoln and Jefferson are Mormons.
I thankful to Elder Woodruff for sharing this sacred experience.
Jared:
Didn’t Wilford Woodruff say that many of the former presidents came to him and asked that their temple work be completed? If I understand that correctly then who knows, maybe Lincoln and Jefferson are Mormons.
I’d love to be a fly on the wall to hear David Whitmer explain why he never reunited with the Church, considered the D&C false, and Joseph a “fallen prophet”, just like King David.
Interesting about David Whitmer. The recent find of the McLellin journal had an interesting story about both Whitmer and Cowdery. If you haven’t seen that it was in the Deseret News, Jan 22, 2009.
My take on men like these is that if they want, the Lord’s blood can redeem them.
I have no doubt Whitmer was convinced Joseph was a fallen prophet. That’s forgivable.
One thing about the next world, all of the details we get wrong here, will be brought before us in clarity. If we’re honest then we will correct our errors, and all our tears will be dried.
Jared wrote:
The recent find of the McLellin journal had an interesting story about both Whitmer and Cowdery. If you haven’t seen that it was in the Deseret News, Jan 22, 2009.
Interesting account. I’ve been in some very involved discussions about the Spalding Theory recently, which I find hard to accept because of accounts like the one reported in the Deseret News, and also Brent Metcalfe’s analysis of why it doesn’t fit the facts we have. (Not to mention Dan Vogel.)
I’m currently wading through Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?, properly, after discussing this with one of the authors, Art Vanick. They completely believe the Spalding-Rigdon Theory. I don’t, but I’m prepared to wade through all 558 pages to discover what the fascination is.
So many theories, so little time.
I have no reason to doubt Whitmer’s sincerity (though Rigdon was a very shadowy figure). And he is the most quoted, and probably the most studied witness (see for example, David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness, [Lyndon W. Cook, ed, Grandin, 1993]). In some regards I’m more interested in him than Joseph Smith. I just find it interesting that he “called out” what he felt was wrong in the Church, and with Joseph Smith (as did William Law). I don’t view them as “apostates”, though many will disagree. Interesting also is the fact that Law, as vigourously opposed as he was to Joseph Smith, never denounced the Book of Mormon, as far as I’m aware.
Many complexities to consider. So I don’t think judgement, of anyone or anything, is going to be a simple and straightforward task.
The Lord provided the witnesses to the Book of Mormon. The story of their lives is intriguing. The fact they went to great efforts to assure their testimonies of the Book of Mormon didn’t diminish while they lived is a powerful testimony.
I would like to know more about them. For example, besides the manifestations they were given, did the gifts of the Spirits show up in their daily walk? Were they guided in any other ways? Did they have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost? These men were selected to play in the big league.
Law–I don’t know much about him except he was accused of being out to kill Joseph.
As for judgment, I couldn’t agree more.
But I always come back to Joseph, what incredible character he possessed.
Jared wrote:
Law–I don’t know much about him except he was accused of being out to kill Joseph.
Law wasn’t out to kill him, only to expose polygamy (no official statement about polygamy came from the Church until 1852).
In fact Law said that he believed it was wrong to kill Joseph Smith, but instead he should have got a hefty jail sentence.
Google: “William Law Interview”
I would like to know more about them. For example, besides the manifestations they were given, did the gifts of the Spirits show up in their daily walk? Were they guided in any other ways? Did they have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost? These men were selected to play in the big league.
I believe that could be true regarding David Whitmer, from what records we have of his life. I also believe Law was a pretty straightforward and honest man. But I know that won’t win me any accolades among LDS.
Ray-
Regarding the study of church history, and for that matter all history. I know of a case where a young man died who was preparing to go on a church mission. His death, of course, was a shock to the family and all associated with him. He came back to one of his relatives and told how he was ready to go on a mission, but on the other side of the veil. In his report he explained that when they study the scripture there they see them as though they were in the event.
This squares up with others who have said nearly the same thing. If that is the case, all our question will have answers, in detail.
I left off my in depth study of church history about 30 years ago. I have been concentrating on the scriptures, genealogy, home storage, and etc.
When I get into discussions like this my interest, which never left, is rekindled in church history.
You seem to be current on things regarding LDS history and doctrine.
Jared:
I left off my in depth study of church history about 30 years ago. I have been concentrating on the scriptures, genealogy, home storage, and etc.
When I get into discussions like this my interest, which never left, is rekindled in church history.
You seem to be current on things regarding LDS history and doctrine.
I’m not as current as I should be, and most of my reading these days is online (e-books, etc). I haven’t read the MMM (Turley, et al.), for example, and no longer subscribe to all the journals I once did, preferring to read them online when they become available. My interest has really died off a lot, because most of the questions are no longer crucial to me, as when I was in the Church, or in and out of the Church in the ’90s and weighing, for example, whether or not the Book of Mormon “is history”. I studied quite heavily for about 18 years or so, beginning about 1983, when I was a FARMS volunteer, then later, in 1985-86, I read every book and journal about Mormonism I could get my hands on at the local university library.
My views today are much more certain (not absolute, of course), and much of the “hunger” is gone. I suppose many veterans of apologetics might say much the same, that their views are much more certain as well.
One thing I’ll say for Mormonism, it created in me a “lust for more knowledge”, and improved my writing skills out of sight. I still find it a fascinating subject, but not as fascinating as I once did. Previously I was very interested in where Mormonism came from (the quest for “historical truth”), whereas today I’m more interested in where it’s going. Harold Bloom sort of speculation. And questions like whether or not Rodney Stark is right.
Ray–been an interesting thread. I need to take care of family things so I’m off.
I hope all the best for you.
L. Midgley:
Your response is interesting, and raises some stimulating questions. It is no doubt a great philosophical topic of discussion, and would make for an intriguing lecture. As it applies to your over the top criticism of “B”, you haven’t won a convert here. First you challenged his integrity, which on this forum is easy to do because it will rarely be met with a reasonable defense. “B” has already determined not to make his identity public. He just offered his two cents on public forum where he held some interest. He entered this domain with the same amount of credibility we all have, and that of an average member. He of course could be lying, but how would any of us know. Those who read the comments (should) know better than to give too much credibility to complete stangers, and with that understanding engaging conversation ensues. Perhaps another way of looking at it, “B” did not provide a false name, rather just a letter indicating that he intends to keep his identity private. I certainly hope that nobody thinks that my name is actually Cowboy, rather it is just a designation I have chosen to identify myself while still communicating my desire to keep my true identity private. I understand that with a name like that, only my comments will hold water, and not the authority of an absurd pseudonym.
Perhaps, you might take issue with the fact that “B” has not been entirely forthcoming on his feelings with his presiding leaders. This would be a much easier argument if we were defending serious sins or conduct which could threaten his eligibility. Putting aside the ideal, how much faith must a person have in order to participate in the Church? Is it a sin, especially a progressive one a la Madoff, to not be certain about your faith while in office? How many missionaries are apt to say that they found their testimonies while serving a mission. Does this then discount their missions? I would argue that again, each of likely has our own view on what is appropriate, except that faith at the end of the day is an individual walk inspite of our routine interviews with Priesthood leaders. Perhaps I have blown this out of proportion, I just found your comment highly defensive to a fairly respectful comment from a minority member. In the end it came across as just plain rude.
For the record, I am not the least bit insulted by Louis’ skepticism of my credibility. He has good reason to be suspicious, and I certainly don’t fault him for that.
Louis, I would be interested to hear your theory of why some honest, sincere, intelligent and well informed people can study and pray about the gospel and come to radically different conclusions. Some believe, and some do not. Faith is the first principle of the gospel. Our eternal welfare is a function of our faith. Doesn’t that imply that a just God would answer the prayers of all sincere truth seekers and bestow upon them the gift of faith? We have no way to know God if he does not reveal himself to us. If the heavens are closed to people like me, where is God’s justice? (This is what I meant when I referred to God being inconsistent in an earlier comment)
Cowboy:
Lying seems to me to be a sin, even a serious sin. It might even be the source of all sin. How does one have integrity, when hides one’s lack of faith from family, and others, while enjoying being of those who offer their naive love, honor and respect?
Now I am inclined to believe every word that B has written. What he has posted, for me at least, has the ring of being accurate. My argument is that B seems, on his own admission, to lack probity.
I wish to address the topic of this thread. One problem with blogs is that they get hijacked or undergo drift. They sometimes read like a mass free association. Does everyone remember that Allen launched this thread by quoting a sentence from Craig Paxton. On the other thread, Paxton had been trying to explain why he and his RfM associates went missing. He offered the following explanation: “Our biggest problem was that we maybe believed in the church too much, and to some here [presumably from RfM?] it seem[s] too literally [?] and then [we] tried to learn more.”
I intend to address the idea that Allen has culled from what Paxton posted. First, no doubt, to paraphrase Shakespeare, Paxton and the RfM crowd could have believed too much but not wisely. Let me explain. My explanation is not all that complex nor should it be difficult to follow. I will start somewhere in the middle.
Ray reminded me, in a very interesting and informative private email, that Max Nolan (see above for details) had encountered me when I had been busy responding to the 1983 MHA Tanner Lecture by Martin E. Marty, the leading American church historian. My critics had gotten Marty to take me on in that lecture. My critics wanted me taken to the Wood Shed. But I really liked what Marty had said. I fully agreed with most everything in his famous lecture. We corresponded a bit in an effort to figure out where we differed. Of course, I believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and Marty does not. We differ on the big issue, but not on much else. So, other than that obvious difference, we sought to determine where we might otherwise differ. Well, it turned out, not on very much.
Marty has a way with words. And so I have over the years made use of his 1983 MHA lecture. For those interested, have a look at my essay entitled “The First Steps,” FARMS Review 17/1 (2005): xi-lv at xi-xvii (available on line), and also in “Debating Evangelicals,” FARMS Review 20/2 (2008): xi-xlviii at xxiii-xxvi (this item is currently not on line but should be available in print in a few days and then shortly on line). In his MHA Tanner Lecture, Marty describes a crisis that he thought some of the Saints were beginning to experience over their crucial past. A crisis is a situation that you either survive or it kills you. Marty mentioned what I believe is appropriately called a primitive naivete that those who have never really been exposed to the corrosive impact of challenges to their belief necessarily have. There is nothing necessarily wrong with being naive. So we all seem to begin–we all do, even those who start out with an atheist unfaith–as naive believers, then we may face a crisis of faith or unfaith, depending on where we started, and we either survive in one way or another or we cease being believers or unbelievers. If and when we survive–I know this as a fact, since I am a survivor–one eventually acquires a kind of new, more mature and thoughtful new naivete.
One reaction to a crisis of faith, when one discovers that others have radically different opinions, is to retreat into what Marty and many others label some kind of fundamentalism, which comes in various varieties. A fundamentalism is an ideology that shut out the challenges rather than confronting them. From my perspective this is exactly the wrong path to take. On the other hand, some Latter-day Saints face a crisis of faith precisely because they never made an effort to own their faith and, instead, settled for what they now think they were taught at some point in the past in Sunday School and so forth. This can be seen when they whine that they were taught this and that. In some instances, this involves nonsense about this or that scientific theory being wrong because they insist that it can be harmonized with their wooden understanding of the Restoration, and also such ideas as a young earth, the exact date Adam got the boot from the Garden and so forth. They cannot tolerate ambiguity and must have everything harmonized, often by official statements. This seems to have been the case, as I pointed out, with Craig Paxton, at lease as I read what he posted on the other thread. Now one might have begun with some or all of those notions as part of one’s initial naive faith. That is, of course, possible. But at some point one must put aside childish things or one’s faith will wither and die. And one will end up not being able to spit or swallow. Or one will turn to RfM to fight a battle against those evil apologist–that MORGBOTS. And one’s life will be filled with endless expressions of hostility and hatred.
Joseph Smith was right, when he once indicated, if I remember correctly, that when one enters the Kingdom, one leaves neutral ground. That is certainly true for those who moan about the pain that their brush with Mormon things has given them.
Comments invited.
Ray:
Brent Metcalfe had a few things to say in that very long battle over the Spalding Theory. However, it was Dan Vogel, who has a remarkable control on the relevant sources, who was the one who did most of the destructive work on Art Vanick’s second edition of The Spalding Enigma. Vogel was able to do this without even having initially read Vanick’s book. How come? Vogel relied on Matt Roper’s very long and detailed essay on the Vanick book that we published in the FARMS Review. Since Vogel knows the sources, he could see that Roper had demolished The Spalding Enigma.
Brother Midgley,
I like your thoughts on Paxton.
I would love to hear some more of your thoughts on the Bishop.
I understand that a lie is not the way to go about things, but I am seeing something here that tells me the Bishop was exercising faith when he accepted the call. I think he is saying, yes, I have a testimony of some sorts and I am willing to accept this call as an act of faith. This may lead to a much sought after answer by accepting the call.
Bishop, you tell me if I’m putting words in your mouth, but this is how I am looking at this. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I hope Brother Midgley will comment on what you did as being an act of faith instead of being purely deception.
Allan asks: We studied the same things… Why the difference in reaction?
One reason and one reason alone. Coming from my perhaps naive/trusting understanding of church history and worldview, I lost the divine. Where I had once seen God’s hand in the foundational stories of the church…I began to see the hand of man. Where I had once seen a chosen prophet…I began to see a con-artist and fraud. To use an oft over used Post-Mormon metaphor…where once I had seen the Great Wizard of Oz…I dared to draw back the curtain and now I just saw a man standing behind the curtain pulling at switches and levers.
I fear I am the product of the LDS church’s decision to teach a faithful history rather than the real unvarnished history. While I understand that a faithful history can lead to faith and belief…I also know from experience that exposure to the real history can lead…well to reality.
I have come to understand that the line between faith and doubt is an extremely thin line. Much more thin than the folks here at FAIR may want to concede. Although many will merely blame my apostasy coming as a result of my excommunication from the church…that I believe is the easy answer…because once again they cannot accept the reality that the church is anything other than what it claim to be. But I know my heart and I know just how much I wanted the church to be all it claims to be….but in the end I sadly accepted reality.
So we both read the same information and came to different conclusions. You gained more faith, while I lost what testimony I had remaining. As I was going through this period of learning I recall how each new historic, archeological or anthropological discovery … added more to the weight of my doubts until I reached a tipping point…between belief and non-belief. Funny but I remember that exact moment when the scales tipped, as if it were yesterday.
I was reading my first edition copy of the history of the church when I came to the story of Zelph. In all my life, I had never heard the story of Zelph…so imagine my surprise as I read the accounts as retold by those in attendance. I remember literally having an epiphany…a complete and utter shock to my mind. I read the accounts and all questions and doubts seemed to be removed from my mind…it was a reverse spiritual experience…a quickening of my mind…and I KNEW in that very instant…that Joseph Smith was a complete and utter impostor and fraud. And I also came to understand something about our Mormon fore-fathers… that they would believe any story no matter how farfetched that came out of the mouth of Joseph Smith.
These were men just like me…who wanted so much for Mormonism to be all that it claimed to be…that they would believe anything. They just didn’t have the gift of hind sight and the resources I have available today.
Everything I have read from that day till now has only confirmed and added to that conclusion of JS being a complete fraud. So where you see God…I see a man made church. Well meaning perhaps…but still man-made.
Mormonism is the sum of all of its parts…it must account for each and every part…and just like the jig saw puzzle…the parts must fit for it to be what it claims to be. And they just don’t fit.
Spirual comfirmation is not enough…for other religious groups also claim the knowledge of their truth through the same process. There has to be more…and to me at least…its claims, can’t conflict with reality…and whether you or anyone at FAIR likes it or not…Mormonism’s claims do not add up…that is why most of the posters here have (if they’re being honest) “something” sitting on the back burner of their minds simmering away…something that just doesn’t add up…with respect to the church.
Well guess what…all those questions disappear once you’re out of the church… Its a truly amazing experience.
This probably isn’t what you were looking for…but it is how I see things.
Vogel was able to do this without even having initially read Vanick’s book. How come? Vogel relied on Matt Roper’s very long and detailed essay on the Vanick book that we published in the FARMS Review. Since Vogel knows the sources, he could see that Roper had demolished The Spalding Enigma.
I’m still going to read every page, and every footnote, Lou. I’ve read Vogel’s critiques, and I agree they are strong, but I need to follow this trail myself, to the very sources of these claims.
Jared:
I like your proclivity to see the best in people. Latter-day Saints are generally not inclined at all to sniff around for signs of disaffection. We don’t feel comfortable judging others whose circumstances we do not know and probably cannot ever really know. We believe that God’s judgments are just, while we rightly suspect that ours might not be. This is all to the good. So when B turns up and tells his story, we hope that in his life somewhere there is the flicker of faith. What Richard Bushman has called “Mormon nice” kicks in. And, of course, I wish B well. But his lack of probity, I admit, bothers me. I do not question his story. It has a ring of truth. He responded to my remonsrances without rancor. I regret his lack of integrity. How can he, I wonder, expect God to answer his prayers when he has fiddled the truth about his unfaith in God? The fact is that one must start really wanting the gospel to be true. Then the little seed can be nurtured and hopefully grow into the tree of life. Then we will, I hope, really know. This hope is not just a wish like suddenly finding a large sum of money. It is the companion of faith and love.
Saying and believing that one is sincere might be the problem. Leaving out a lot of steps, it may go like this: I am sincere, therefor God is in the dock. It is now his turn to pour into me something I merely thought I had to ask for. And then I wait to see what happens, putting God to the test.For me, in the darkness, God is still there. And there is hope.
Now you want B to have a testimony of some sort. Of couse he has been testify to us about his unfaith. Testimony is not a possession, despite our way of talking about faith, it is something we do. Think of a court. We are to testify. Think of the word testify. Notice any word sort of like it? Well, let me suggest one. Think of the words testes or testicles. One once places one’s hand down there when on swore in court. We now raise our arm and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And then we fig to justify ourselves. But we are all sincere.
Now what are we,if want God to hear our prayers, to testify about? Our faith–that is, our trust in Jesus Christ as our redeemer and savior. Clustered around that core element of faith are a host of stories about faith or the lack thereof, and the consequence and trials, the blessing and cursing, that follows remebering and keeping. Everyone has heard those words before. They have become routine. They have moved from the sacred to the profane. The profanization of sacred things is a sign of our time.
I truly hope that B manages to survive his crisis of faith–that is, that he comes out of the other side of the crisis a whole person. Now think of the word integrity.
I know from my own experience that we all, at our best, have only one foot or toe in Zion, but the other one is firmly placed in Babylon. Our problem is worshiping false Gods. Read and ponder the foreword to the Doctrine and Covenants, and take seriously the explanation of idolatry in verse 16. We must, I testify, testify in word and deed. The two must support and sustain each other or we are guilty of…. Well you can fill in the blank.
Craig,
Your epiphany over the story of Zelph that Joseph Smith was a fraud is very sad to me. I read about Zelph many years ago and have read most of the arguments formed against it since, and find none of them convincing. I believe that Zelph was revelation to the Prophet as much as was his visit from the Father and the Son and the Angel Moroni. What is the difference? You probably feel sorry that Theodore is so naive, and I feel sorry that you have lost your testimony of the greatest prophet that ever walked the earth.
Theodore
Jared: It is difficult to be objective about oneself, and I am certainly guilty of rationalizing. You are trying to give my actions a generous intepretation, and I would like to accept that intepretation, but I am uncertain whether that is justified. You are certainly correct in one sense. I don’t know if I can say that my actions are acts of faith, although they are certainly acts of hope. I hoped, and I still hope for faith. I desire to believe, as I once did. I miss faith. I pray for it regularly. I pray to be guided in my actions, and in my counselling. But I lack any conviction that I am so guided, or that God speaks to me or answers my prayers. I am not an enemy of the church. I am not convinced it is untrue. I just lack belief.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, because I think that the bigger fundamental being addressed here is much more important and interesting than my own situation.
Here I am, having lost my initial naivete, as Louis describes. I am not a fundamentalist (although I once was) and I am not at all inclined to join the RFM crowd. The very idea is revolting to me. However, I have been unable to reconsruct a faith that is consistent with my understanding of the doctrines of the church and my understanding of the world around me. I do not feel the Spirit operating in my life, answering my questions, comforting me and doing the other things it is supposed to do. Every Sunday I take the sacrament and pray that God will explain the atonement to me. It does not make sense to me. I don’t know why it was necessary, or how it works. I want to know how to reconcile the creation myth with science. If it is not literal (and I accept that it is not), then what does it mean and how do I reconcile that with established church doctrine? Why does God answer so very few prayers, none of them mine? Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Why are so many things about the church so weird. Steel in the Book of Mormon is a trivial issue compared to these questions for me.
Despite his disdain for me, I would love to have Brother Midgley’s thoughtful, mature new naivete. I just don’t know how to get it. Lately it seems like every where I turn in the church, I find myself screaming “this does not make sense to me.” At some point, you quit trying. I have not quit yet, but I am close. The only reason I have not quit trying is that thoughtful people have wrestled with these questions and have found satisfaction. Some here on this thread are in that category, which is why I am here. I want to listen to what they have to say, so I should quit talking about myself.
Craig wrote:
I was reading my first edition copy of the history of the church when I came to the story of Zelph. In all my life, I had never heard the story of Zelph…so imagine my surprise as I read the accounts as retold by those in attendance. I remember literally having an epiphany…a complete and utter shock to my mind. I read the accounts and all questions and doubts seemed to be removed from my mind…it was a reverse spiritual experience…a quickening of my mind…and I KNEW in that very instant…that Joseph Smith was a complete and utter impostor and fraud. And I also came to understand something about our Mormon fore-fathers… that they would believe any story no matter how farfetched that came out of the mouth of Joseph Smith.
This is where Craig and myself are different. I really can’t say I’ve ever had an “epiphany”. And, truth be told, I’m at a complete loss to explain the difference. I know Simon Southerton had a similar “epiphany”. Waking up in the morning and “knowing” it’s all a fraud has just never been my experience. Maybe it’s because I see things from my “universalist perspective”, and I don’t believe God must necessarily, strictly adhere to the conventions of historiography.
And I think Blake Ostler has shown that the Book of Mormon contains 19th century content not available in 600 BC. That is quite obvious to me, not only from Ostler, but many other sources.
Brother Midgley–thanks for you thoughts. I see your point and it is well taken.
My experience with God is that He is willing to leave the ninety and nine and rescue some of His lost sheep. I don’t know how He determines when to do that, but that He does I am a witness. I am very grateful for His mercy.
This thread has been very useful to help me see the variety of situations that exist in the lives of LDS.
We are a product of our experiences for sure. Not one set of experiences has all the answers but there certainly is power in the crowd.
Mormonism is true and the redemptive power of the Savior is real and beyond our grasp to comprehend or explain. One day it will be extended to each and very one of us in ways that will leave us all on bended knees acknowledging He is a God of both justice and mercy and His judgment is perfect.
Bishop–keep at it and counsel with those you respect and love.Don’t be surprised if the Lord gives you reason to believe more fully. He did me so I have confidence in this outcome, but remember he is a 4th watch God. He comes at the last moment much of the time. Our job is to endure.
Having seenthis situation numerous times and in numerous stages both prevoius to during and after my mission i offer the following opinion. My sentiments relate to the very core of our existence and character. The way in which we “swing” when confronted with various trials and knowledge hinges on the very substance of who we are, who we were in the preexistence and who we are destined to become in the worlds to come. It is a very personal thing that even all the influence both under and in heaven cannot sway. Some in the pre-existence after knowing the entire plan of salvation still chose to follow Lucifer. Some sway similarly in this life. Even the very God of Heaven himslf cannot force one to go against ones own will, sentiment, opinion, character and spirit. It is my experiance that the reason why one can come out strengthened from such an experience and why one can come out weakened has nothing to do with the experience at all for ” time and experience happen to all men”, but hinges on the core and character of that indivdual.
We as children of God are strengthed in this life by knowledge and experience, if one chooses to reject the amalgamating experience that occurs from either of those instances, one inevitably becomes weakened and does not receive grace for grace, neither truth for truth. Joseph smith stated something like, if one chooses to reject the light and knowledge that he is offered from God that light and knowledge will condemn him. Since the light and knowledge does not change, only the catalist does. That is the key. I belive that in all our strugglings that some things are even unfortunalely out of the power of even God. It begs us to conform to his will, seek it, envoke the powers of heaven, because such changes to individuals and families cannot come but by miracle alone.
Trying to get to the bottom of this some more. A question for Craig.
Did you have any “spiritual experiences” with the Book of Mormon?
For example, did you receive, or feel you received, a “confirmation” that the Book of Mormon is true?
How many times did you read it, and did you ever feel that “burning in the soul” about it?
Or was it just a part of your wider perspectives about the “truth of Mormonism”? In other words, did you accept the Book of Mormon as “true”, because of your whole Mormon experience, without having a specific “spiritual experience” with the Book of Mormon?
I’m asking this in good faith, as I’d like to understand more about this “phenomenon”.
Matthew wrote:
We as children of God are strengthed in this life by knowledge and experience, if one chooses to reject the amalgamating experience that occurs from either of those instances, one inevitably becomes weakened and does not receive grace for grace, neither truth for truth. Joseph smith stated something like, if one chooses to reject the light and knowledge that he is offered from God that light and knowledge will condemn him. Since the light and knowledge does not change, only the catalist does. That is the key. I belive that in all our strugglings that some things are even unfortunalely out of the power of even God. It begs us to conform to his will, seek it, envoke the powers of heaven, because such changes to individuals and families cannot come but by miracle alone.
Many Muslims feel that “light and knowledge” comes from the Qur’an. And I have enormous respect for many of them. I even know Muslims whose faces “shine”, and who are as honest and upright as it’s possible for humans to be. I’m quite certain that Mormonism doesn’t have a “corner” on this.
Craig,
Further thoughts about your epiphany that Joseph Smith was a fraud over the Zelph story:
The only reason that the Zelph story has been attacked and questioned is because if it is true then the Mesoamerica geography theory is false. Do you realize that this entire Mesoamerica theory put forth by John L. Sorenson is based upon how far a pig can walk through the mountains in a day? Using this standard of 11 miles a day Sorenson estimates from Alma’s journey the distance between the original city of Nephi and the city of Zarahemla to be 180 air miles. This estimation is the foundation of the entire theory. (“An Ancient American Setting For The Book Of Mormon” pp 8-10). There are five major flaws in Sorenson’s reasoning.
1. A pig with his short legs and large body would be the slowest of any flocks or herds.
2. The righteous Nephites lived the Law of Moses and would therefore not have been raising pigs.
3. The assumption that they were traveling through mountains is not justified as there are no mountains specifically mentioned in BofM geography except the areas inhabited by the Gadianton Robbers.
4. The party of Alma was fleeing for their lives, and the Lord strengthened them that they could escape from the pursuing armies of king Noah and of the Lamanites (Mosiah 23:2; 24:23).
5. The assumption that the city of Lehi-Nephi (later shortened to “Nephi”) was the original city of Nephi is not justified because after over 200 years of wars with the Lamanites only the more righteous Nephites had survived (Omni 1:4-7). The Nephites would probably have been driven from their original city generations earlier.
As a boy, I helped my father move sheep and cattle between two ranches that were twenty miles apart, which we always did in an easy day. Alma was traveling with children and flocks but they were fleeing for their lives. Joseph Smith, leading Zion’s Camp, made twenty-five to forty miles a day. (HC 2:65, 68). There is a book by Don Rickey about US enlisted soldiers during the Indian Wars. It is entitled, Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay. The pursuers of Alma’s band could have done forty miles a day, but since Alma had a head start his group would not need to travel that fast. It would seem that fleeing for their lives, with the Lord’s help, thirty miles a day would be a reasonable distance for Alma’s group to travel. Twenty-two days of travel at a rate of thirty miles a day, would put the city of Lehi-Nephi six hundred and sixty miles from Zarahemla. This would not fit into the proposed area of Mesoamerica.
Craig, it appears that your loss of faith in the prophet Joseph Smith over the story of Zelph may be based upon the estimated distance a pig can walk through the mountains in a day. How many other Latter-Day Saints have lost their testimony over this issue? Some years ago I was debating the Zelph story on the Eyring List, and a scholar on that list, whom I had known since childhood, when cornered with my arguments wrote back, “Joseph Smith was out to lunch!” That was a shock to me at that time, but it no longer shocks me when I hear of people loosing their testimony in the Prophet over this issue.
Theodore
Theodore,
Craig may have had his “aha” moment over Zelph, but that moment was only, in his words, the “tipping point.” There was much more before that. Discussing Zelph and Book of Mormon geography is not on-point for this thread, and (dare I say it) not on-point for Craig. He is beyond Zelph now, and answering it will not solve his problems; answering it will not “untip” his belief and heal his unbelief.
-Allen
Craig said:
That is a very candid and (to me) insightful statement, Craig. It is a human condition, I fear, to wonder if we are living in Oz and that some magician is pulling levers or living in the matrix and some machines are controlling our destiny. We suspect that there has to be more and, at the same time, fear that we are being duped when we believe that there is more.
In saying that you lost the divine, do you feel that you once had it? Did you once have the capability to see the divine around you and somehow, at some point, lost that ability? Or, do you now think that you were somehow “fooling yourself” in earlier years when you then saw the divine? That you were then naive but have since “woken up” to a greater understanding of how the world really is, and that understanding affords no place for the divine?
The study of history should seldom be confused with the divine, in my book. When I read history I see people just like you and me muddling through and trying to make sense of their world. There is much of the good, the bad, and the ugly in any history you choose to read. But if you get beyond the reading and put yourself in the place of those actual people, you will find that they weren’t that much different than we are.
Scripture is a special instance of history. It is a record of people’s experiences with what they viewed as the divine, trying to make sense of that experience, and then applying that sense to their lives. Sometimes they were successful and sometimes they weren’t.
So it is with us.
There is a very real and (to my mind) valid argument that it is not the place of the Church to teach history. The institutional Church *uses* history to teach belief and faith. There is nothing sinister or evil in that; it happens all around us. Philosophy classes in college use history to provide examples of whatever aspect of philosophy they are teaching. Economics classes use history to provide similar examples for their studies. The same can be said for multiple other disciplines, or for any author who uses historical examples to support his or her hypothesis.
The purpose of the Church is well-defined and one with which even critics should be familiar—to bring people unto Christ. History can be a tool in doing so, the same as with other studies.
My personal experience is that history is a fascinating topic, and that the Church is quite benign when it comes to the study of history. It is sometimes even helpful. I have had absolutely nothing but good experiences in working with people at BYU Special Collections or the Church Archives in doing any studies. And I don’t think it is because I am faithful in my studies; I remember a couple of times studying in the Church archives and seeing Michael Marquadt—hardly faithful in an LDS sense—in the next cubicle studying away. The Church was just as helpful to him as it was to me.
No concession necessary; it *is* a thin line. The line between opposites (such as love and hate or virtue and vice) is always a thin one.
But “the reality” of which you speak is not really reality. That is the fundamental question, which I addressed in my opening post and you responded to. I see the divine around me; you do not. Which one is “the reality” of which you speak—your experience or mine? Or are both equally real and dependent upon choices we individually make in relation to external data points? If the latter, then your “reality” is no more or less real than mine, is it?
As to your excommunication, that is obviously a difference between the two of us. I do not blame your apostasy upon your excommunication; that would, indeed, be simplistic. But to discount its effect all together; to say it has had absolutely no bearing on where you are now in your life would be equally simplistic.
Your excommunication is part of who you are and part of your journey. Just as you say that “Mormonism is the sum of all of its parts…it must account for each and every part,” so we as individuals must account. Your excommunication is one of those parts, but certainly not the whole.
While one set of questions may disappear, I strongly suspect that they are simply replaced with a different set of questions rather than certitude. Questions are a part of life, whether they be philosophical or not.
Let me provide an example. On the philosophical front, there is a seemingly simple question that has been asked since the dawn of recorded history: Why am I here? The Restoration posits an answer, but jettisoning the Church doesn’t answer the question. Even if you think you have found an answer, the question doesn’t disappear.
In addition, we live in a world where we put questions on the “back burner” all the time. Just the other day I was looking at a video and admiring some special effect that was used in its production. This brought up a question in my mind: How did they do that? My immediate answer was “Wow. I’m going to have to figure that out someday.” I thereby placed the question on the back burner, to be attended to someday when I had the time, the inclination, or the access to answers.
Is my life any more complex because I put that question on the back burner? Nope. I’ve got a ton of questions for a host of historical figures—Joseph Smith included. I don’t have the answers immediately at hand, so I table them until some point when I can get answers.
Because I have questions about video production techniques or about Joseph Smith doesn’t make my life any more complex than not having questions. And throwing out consideration of Joseph Smith or video production doesn’t remove the questions or make my life any simpler. Questions still remain, and always will.
For a person to say or imply (as you have) that life is simpler once some alternate reality is accepted just doesn’t ring true with my experiences in life. It is no more true than someone saying that “all my questions have been answered since I joined the Church.” Both are over-simplifications of life.
Actually, I found it quite illuminating. I appreciate it. And I hope that someday you will be able to again recognize the divine in the world around you.
-Allen
Allen: The question you have posed raises different challenges for a believer than for a nonbeliever.
A nonbeliever has to try to understand why the evidence which persuades him that the church is not true, does not convince other well informed people. That is an important question, and every sincere truth seeker has to confront that question. We must always wonder about our own conclusions when we know they are not shared by other sincere, intelligent and well informed people.
There are a variety of potential answers to that question that have nothing to do with God. Why do well intentioned Democrats assess certain evidence differently from Republicans? Why do some scientists hold to some views, while other equally well trained scientists hold opposing views? Why do well trained doctors come to different medical conclusions with the same evidence? Often, but not always, we can explain these differing conclusions with theories such as confirmation bias. Whether or not we have a good explanation, we do know that this phenomenon exists everywhere, and not just in the realm of religious belief.
For a believer, it is much more difficult to explain in a way that is consistent with the existence of a loving God who demands faith from his children as a condition of entry into his kingdom, and who promises faith to those who sincerely seek him. When somebody has in fact concluded that evidence for faith is not persuasive, and that person still lacks faith notwithstanding his genuine seeking for God, the believer does not have access to the same range of potential explanations as the nonbeliever. The believer is forced into a corner. Either he must deny the sincerity or “worthiness” of the nonbeliever, or he must conclude that God’s promises cannot be relied upon. Maybe God is the arbitrary Calvinist God, who elects some for faith and salvation and others for unbelief and damnation.
I believe that is why there is a strong tendency among Mormons to find some reason to blame the nonbeliever and to accuse the nonbeliever of some fault. And so we see people like Teryl Givens who teach that faith is a choice laden with moral consequence, and that one’s faith is a reflection of one’s good character. Or we see more crude accusations that these nonbelievers are not really sincere, or are not worthy of the truth which they seek. There is no room in the believer’s world view for a sincere truth seeker who remains a nonbeliever even after petitioning God for answers, and after trying hard to live a life of commitment to gospel principles.
Brother Midgley has suggested that my sins disqualify me for the answers and faith that I seek. Maybe he is right. But I have signed a lot of temple recommends for, and listened to a lot of testimonies borne by, people whose commitment is much less than my own. and whose sins are equal to mine. It is a very strange God indeed who miraculously intervenes in the life of a wretch like Alma the Younger but who ignores others who would be quite content with a simple spiritual impression of peace and assurance that the scriptures they are reading are actually true. I don’t know how to reconcile the empirical evidence from the perspective of a believer.
B,
I understand what you are saying, but I’m not sure that believers are necessarily forced into the dichotomy you propose. I run into people all the time who say “If I do X and Y, then Z will always happen.” Put another way, I’ve had lots of people come to me and say “I did X and Y and Z didn’t happen. Why not?”
We often presume that reaching God (and, often more importantly, having God reach us) is some sort of mathematical exercise or scientific formula. We expect that if we attend Church we will be spiritually fed. We expect that if we pay our tithing we will reap financial blessings. We expect that if we train up our children right, they will follow in our footsteps. We expect that if we do good things, God will smile on us and we will somehow never have to face trial and struggle and pain.
Life isn’t that simple. Period. Sometimes (most times) things don’t go our way. We do X and Y and we get B instead of Z. And then we question the fairness of the universe, the validity of what we have learned, and the interest or existence of God.
As a believer, I think it is possible for God to not answer prayers. He doesn’t *have* to answer prayers, for whatever reason He deems best. I can go years without having prayers answered, and I suspect that some people can go a lifetime. But does the lack of answer indicate the disinterest or non-existence of the answerer? We can only conclude such if we discount the experience of others or if we believe that our experiences define the character of God.
Similarly, I think it is possible for someone to get an answer from God that is different than my answer, and sometimes to things I consider quite consequential. If one allows the existence of God and that He knows His children better than they know themselves, then one has to allow that He can individually answer His children in a way that is best suited for them.
Now, that being said, I believe that the sincerity or worthiness of the petitioner can enter into the equation. In most cases I cannot judge either sincerity or worthiness; those are matters of the heart. I certainly cannot judge those with people I only know through words on a blog. So, I leave those determinations to God.
I’m not sure that anyone has completely satisfactory answers. Why does God do the things that God does? The answer from the ancients—which I acknowledge may be unsatisfactory to some people—is that God’s ways are not our ways and it is impossible for us to fathom the purposes of God.
That, I believe, is where trust comes into play. Do we trust God? Even if that trust—in the extreme—leads us or ones we love to pain, sorrow, or death? It is far from a simple yes or no question, and one that every believer is called upon to answer at some time in his or her life.
-Allen
I find what B said here interesting:
“who promises faith to those who sincerely seek him”
“The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.” – Isaiah Berlin
In my experience if I am seeking for some kind of sign or guarantee from God, I am asking the wrong questions. I don’t think He ever “gives” anyone faith. I have to choose it. I plant the seed. No one, including God, can do that for me. It is always a leap on my part.
Bravo…Bravo… Bellissimo …Encore…Encore
Despite having missed your queue…and entering stage left rather than stage right…I must admit that that was one of the greatest performances I have ever witnessed by an LDS apologist. You carried the role so seamlessly, so perfectly and convincingly that no one would ever have guessed that you came right out of central casting. Well Done Lou. Bravo! Bravo!
I didn’t think that you would disappoint us…and you haven’t…congratulations…hooray…well done!
I particularly enjoyed how you came swooping down from your lair with the majesty that befits your character… leaping in off your lofty Rameumptom to save the day…and protect the innocents from the crafty, designing ways of the evil apostates.
Oh how I especially enjoy how you are able to so quickly pigeon hole your adversaries by putting us in your tidy little boxes…it keeps everything so spick and span. And just knowing that there people out there who are lovingly quantifying the deranged minds of the ex-Mormon community by analyzing our motivations through sociological studies is such a relief. It must be so comforting to know through their science that we didn’t leave Mormonism because the church was not what it claims to be…for that just couldn’t even be a possibility could it…so of course…it had to be some psychological deformity…Now that is just tidy. And it helps protect the innocent, unassuming, traditionally taught just how silly the cause of the Ex-Mormon community really is. We have a sociological malady. It’s the perfect deflectionary solution.
So thank you again for weighing in on this subject…I truly think that it is good for you to mingle with us little people every so often…but then that may just be my arrogance getting in the way Lou…for whom am I to assume what is good for the likes of you? So I humbly apologize for making such a suggestion…it was neither my place nor position to make such a proposal. Will you forgive me?
Now I do have a few questions for you Bro Midgley. What is your fascination with Tal Bachman? Dude, get over it and let it go.
Why do you feel the need to minimize peoples arguments by attempting to place them in sub-groups that you feel have some negative connotation? Do you feel it strengthens your position to do so? you repeatedly try to place me in one of your minimalist boxes such as the RFM community…a community I certainly respect and understand yet, haven’t actively participated in for several years only dates you… again move on or some imaginary folk Mormonism clique. I refuse to be placed in one of your stereotypical boxes…but I’m sure you’ll keep trying to define me.
When I or anyone uses the phrase…”The church is not what it claims to be” what exactly is so difficult for you to understand? Do you seriously need me or anyone to parse, define or spell this out for you…I think not. I believe this is merely one of your many apologetic mind games or tools to deflect attention away from what is being clearly stated. I know that you know exactly what “the church” is…It’s a term that you also use often. Oh and I know that you know exactly what the “claims” of “the church” are…who are you kidding? I’m not buying.
And finally, Are you paid based on how many words you can force into a post? So much of your bloviations are just so utterly and completely tiresome…
I know that this is your playground Lou, but you come across as the arrogant, self righteous, all knowing, apologist that you are…if that is your intent…congratulations…you’re a smashing success.
Allen: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. The problem I keep bumping into arises from your final paragraph. I am prepared to trust God implicitly. I understand that life is messy, that you don’t always get what you want, and that God is not a puppet whom I can manipulate. I get that, I really do. I would not want it any other way. But the real question is not whether I am prepared to trust God. The real question is whether I can trust that there is a God at all who has any interest in me. If I had a conviction that such a being exists, then I could quite easily trust the way he chooses to answer or not answer my prayers. But I can hardly be existed to trust God in the absence of a conviction that there exists such a being.
C Jones: I am not a child seeking for guarantees. I am asking for that which the scriptures and prophets have repeatedly and solemnly promised. Can I trust in those basic promises or not? I leaped. I have been leaping for a long time now. I keep landing at the bottom of the chasm. That starts to hurt after a while.
I meant to type “expected” not “existed” in the last line of my comment to Allen.
Finally, I don’t mean to offend, but I do want to divorce myself from the sarcasm of Craig’s last post. I have not been here before, and there appears to be a historical context of which I am unaware that might explain his anger. However, I really did wade into this discussion hoping for enlightenment. I am not here to pick a fight.
B: My comment was merely a FWIW. Nothing personal. I was going more for the “craving for certainies” being a part of the human condition idea rather than the “childhood” thing. Sorry if it came out wrong.
But if you don’t mind a personal question, what specifically do you mean when you say you are asking for what was promised? I think I’m just not getting that from what you have written so far.
Allen wrote:
We often presume that reaching God (and, often more importantly, having God reach us) is some sort of mathematical exercise or scientific formula. We expect that if we attend Church we will be spiritually fed. We expect that if we pay our tithing we will reap financial blessings.
That is actually a promise made in the D&C. It fact it says, “prove me now herewith”. Sometimes the reverse happens.
Life isn’t that simple. Period. Sometimes (most times) things don’t go our way. We do X and Y and we get B instead of Z. And then we question the fairness of the universe, the validity of what we have learned, and the interest or existence of God. As a believer, I think it is possible for God to not answer prayers. He doesn’t *have* to answer prayers, for whatever reason He deems best. I can go years without having prayers answered, and I suspect that some people can go a lifetime.
That’s not very comforting to people like “B”. I presume if Joseph Smith never had a spiritual experience/theophany, the Church would never have come into being. The scripture also says that “God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him”. Whether this “reward” comes materially, or spiritually, such as a feeling of “peace and assurance”, one should expect it. Isn’t it sort of like working for an employer for 30 years and not getting paid? Moroni also says that “by the power of the Holy Ghost” you may know the truth of all things. Again, not very comforting to those who have not had such experiences. But I suppose it’s possible to go almost a lifetime hoping, as the Jews did for a messiah.
But does the lack of answer indicate the disinterest or non-existence of the answerer? We can only conclude such if we discount the experience of others or if we believe that our experiences define the character of God.
Not necessarily, but any sane person would wonder why he/she has been excluded.
I don’t think most people are familiar enough with their own motivations or honest enough with themselves to accurately describe the reasons they leave the church or in some cases stay. It is often a chicken or egg debate. Among the people I have known who have left the church they all deny sin was the reason but many had serious morality issues (admittedly anecdotal).
I think the other major group is the rational empiricists who are unwilling to accept the fact that God does not subject himself to repeatable measurable third party observation (spiritual confirmation is repeatable and third party observation some times occurs but not in a systematic measurable way that the scientific method requires.)
I think there is also room for a category of people who are ignorant about accurate LDS beliefs who leave the church by relying on inaccurate information before gaining a testimony. I just don’t see a lot of people who are willing to accept a lesser form of religious proof such as bible infallibility to the greater, albeit scientifically unacceptable, spiritual proof.
I don’t think lazy is really a category since they generally don’t put the effort into actually leaving the church. All categories are technically duped by Satan which makes that category unhelpful.
C Jones: What do I want? Just about any communication will do. Just let me know that he actually exists and cares. I want to be able to confidently state that God has reached down to me and has assured me of his reality and his love. That alone would be great, but I would really like him to go one step further, and let me know that Jesus really is resurrected, and that the atonement is real, and its ok if I don’t understand it, he will explain it later. And finally, there are a bunch of people who claim that God has revealed to them that the Book of Mormon is true. I would like him to do that for me, because right now, it seems a bit out there. He doesn’t have to make my problems go away. Just let me know that he is there. Jesus said that none of us would give a snake to a child who asks for a fish. He assured us that our father in heaven will give to those who ask, and he will open the door to those knock. God knows my heart and my concerns. He knows how to make himself known to me. That is what I want. He can choose the method of communication–I am indifferent. I just want something that I can recognize as an answer to my prayer when I say: “hey, is anybody listening?”. The prophets have all taught that God answers those prayers. We are supposed to be able to count on him for at least that much. That is all I want.
I am actually astounded that any faithful Mormon would suggest that this is an unreasonable request or that this desire of mine reflects a naivete about how God really works. This is fundamental to our religion. If I can’t rely upon the promises which have been given in this respect, then I may as well give up. It is all just a crap shoot if God really is that capricious.
Sorry for the rant. As you might have guessed, God and I seem to have a communication problem.
Rob S: I agree that we all have difficulty being objective about our own motivations. However, all of the people I know who are still faithful members of the church have serious morality issues. All of the people I know who are not faithful members of the church also have serious morality issues. I don’t think that one gets us very far.
Ray Agostini Asked:
Trying to get to the bottom of this some more. A question for Craig.
Did you have any “spiritual experiences” with the Book of Mormon?
Craig: Yup
Ray Agostini Asked:
For example, did you receive, or feel you received, a “confirmation” that the Book of Mormon is true?
Craig: Yup
Ray Agostini Asked:
How many times did you read it, and did you ever feel that “burning in the soul” about it?
Craig: During my lifetime I’m sure I’ve read the BoM cover to cover literally dozens of times. I’ve had and still do to some extent have dozens of memorized passages ‘STILL’ in my mind.
With respect to the “burning” I had what I think others claim as this burning experience…on many occasions. I have had to rethink these experiences and place them in context with reality and the fact that I now find this to be an unreliable means to truth confirmation. If it was reliable…we wouldn’t have so many conflicting religions on the earth that all use this same means to test there so called truth claims. Plus I know and have sadly participated in spiritual manipulation during my time in church leadership. So I know that this is a common tool used by the church to create these feelings…to manipulate and control the membership of the church. (Ok now I’m really going to get it)
B Says: Fair enough. Embarrassment over sin.
I might also ask this question with respect to the so-called validity of the spirit…how many here felt the spirit during the fabricated lies of Paul H. Dunn? I know I did…well at least what I interpreted as the spirit…
B:
Not a rant at all 🙂
I found it very moving. I have, or have had in the past, many of the same desires. I hope you don’t give up. You are in a position to do great good or great harm to a lot of people. (Not meant to be a guilt trip in any way– I’m sure you are acutely aware of it)
I know advice from a stranger on the internet is probably worse than useless, but I found reading Truman Madsen helpful at one point. My husband served as a bishop and I know what a heavy, lonely road it is. I wish you all the best, and I hope you find some peace and joy in that service and in your search for answers.
Theodore says:
Alma was traveling with children and flocks but they were fleeing for their lives. Joseph Smith, leading Zion’s Camp, made twenty-five to forty miles a day.
Craig’s Reply:
With all due respect Theodore, Joseph was traveling with horses…the fictional Alma, if real, had no such luxury, but we don’t need to go there on this thread.
I have enjoyed reading this thread. I cannot speak for others but I have often wondered these same questions. I am 52 y.o. and have been trying to live the gospel for over 30 years. I cannot define a time when I have prayed and received a direct answer to my prayer. My answers have come as I have tried to live the teachings of Christ as recorded in the scriptures. Those answers are very subtle but they are what I have come to recognize as the Spirit of Christ and have become more and more convincing overtime of their truthfulness. The experience I have as I try to live the gospel, even though I do it very imperfectly, is the feeling of love for others and growth and improvement in my own life. I have recognized that the reason that the Lord has never given me a more direct answer is because when I embraced the gospel what I needed to learn more than anything else was patients and trust. I am not a scholar and often wish that the Lord would bless me with the intelligence and ability to explain my experiences and beliefs better than I often do. But I have learned that my weakness are some of my greatest strengths because they cause me to continually rely upon the Lord. I am fairly well read even thought I can’t always remember details of what I have read as well as I would like. I have a degree in psychology and worked 9 years in the mental health field and the rest of my carrier in the medical field as a nurse. I am somewhat familiar with the secular point of view and have experienced regular questioning of my faith. But my experience is that living the gospel does more for me than anything I have seen in any other way of life. I have two children who are wonderful people but have accepted the secular point of view. I cannot speak for anyone else but my observation is that often the reason that people give up on their faith is because it is easer to embrace the secular point of view and to not have to have your faith constantly questioned than it is to continue to exercise faith and to live differently that those around you. I don’t know why others that have posted don’t experience the same thing that I do when I try to live the teachings found in the scriptures, all I know that for me I experience that feeling of love and growth and improvement in my life on a regular bases.
Allen Asks:
In saying that you lost the divine, do you feel that you once had it? Did you once have the capability to see the divine around you and somehow, at some point, lost that ability? Or, do you now think that you were somehow “fooling yourself” in earlier years when you then saw the divine? That you were then naive but have since “woken up” to a greater understanding of how the world really is, and that understanding affords no place for the divine?
Craig’s reply:
Did I once see the divine? Oh very much so…I saw the divine in everything…I saw the workings of God in man, in nature and certainly in the coming forth of the church. I fully accepted angelic visitations, divine revelation, prophets etc etc etc…all of which I no longer accept. Why do I no longer see the divine? For me I came to an understanding that my beliefs in the divine were not based on all of the information available. In other words my LDS upbringing had not provided me with the complete story. Again the exmo metaphor: I based my beliefs and faith on only the defense’s arguments during the trail…and once I heard and factored in the prosecutors arguments… I had a more clear understanding of the facts…I deliberated and based on what I now understood to be true…I now find myself on the outside.
Allen Asks:
But “the reality” of which you speak is not really reality. That is the fundamental question, which I addressed in my opening post and you responded to. I see the divine around me; you do not. Which one is “the reality” of which you speak—your experience or mine? Or are both equally real and dependent upon choices we individually make in relation to external data points? If the latter, then your “reality” is no more or less real than mine, is it?
Craig’s reply:
I am more than willing to concede that I may be completely wrong on my conclusions…but I’m also willing to risk my so-called eternal life on the correctness of my conclusions…are you?
Allen Asks:
As to your excommunication, that is obviously a difference between the two of us. I do not blame your apostasy upon your excommunication; that would, indeed, be simplistic. But to discount its effect all together; to say it has had absolutely no bearing on where you are now in your life would be equally simplistic.
Your excommunication is part of who you are and part of your journey. Just as you say that “Mormonism is the sum of all of its parts…it must account for each and every part,” so we as individuals must account. Your excommunication is one of those parts, but certainly not the whole.
Craig’s reply:
Very insightful Allen and I find myself once again agreeing with you. However, I now view my excommunication as a wonderful gift. Not the one that the church had intended for me…but one that literally changed my life for good and with benefits I could never have imagined when I initiated the process that eventually led to my church court.
On a side note Allen I want you to know how very much I appreciate you’re balanced approach with this subject. I find it refreshing and gives me hope that while there may be disagreements there is opportunity to also come to better understanding…at least that is my hope.
Thank you.
Craig said:
In no longer seeing the divine, do you feel like something is now missing in your life that you once enjoyed? I’m not asking in the traditional missionary-minded way; I’m just curious if you miss the feeling you once had.
I think so, yes. I believe (firmly) that the decisions we make can have eternal consequences. If you still do (which your statement above implies), then you know that my decisions relative to the Church and/or gospel *do* have an element or risk when it comes to eternal life.
I would agree with you that in most cases a disciplinary council is a gift, if viewed properly. Of course, I suspect that we two would disagree on the meaning or purpose of that gift.
I’m curious about one thing, however. If you truly view it as a gift, then why do you regularly refer to your council as a “so-called Mormon court of Love,” as you did earlier in this thread? (I’ve seen you refer to it in this way in other comments on other threads, as well.) I would think that if you really did view it as a gift, then you would somehow value it in hindsight and not denigrate it.
And mine, as well. I know there are many who view me as some sort of TBM hit-man, but I have a family, group of close friends, and several wards and stakes that would shake their heads at such a characterization. I do feel strongly about my beliefs, but try to recognize that others feel just as strongly about theirs. Civility is sometimes hard to achieve, but familiarity can foster civility. (Just ask the Street Preachers I talk with every six months outside of Temple Square. <g>)
-Allen
I see a difference now.
Craig wrote:
If it was reliable…we wouldn’t have so many conflicting religions on the earth that all use this same means to test there so called truth claims. Plus I know and have sadly participated in spiritual manipulation during my time in church leadership. So I know that this is a common tool used by the church to create these feelings…to manipulate and control the membership of the church. (Ok now I’m really going to get it)
I don’t connect the Book of Mormon to the Church. So I guess you could say I have a wider view of it as a (non-historical) “sacred text” (along with others):
(3 Nephi 27)
All of the post-Book of Mormon doctrines seem to me to be what has caused so many problems.
I don’t read it much these days, but nor do I feel that my experiences with it need be negated or reinterpreted. And least of all, that if the Church is a fraud, the Book of Mormon should be directly connected to that fraud.
Ray A. said:
Not to pick nits, but promise is in Malachi 3, in the Old Testament. And it doesn’t promise financial blessings, although many may incorrectly interpret it that way. It just says that the Lord will “open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing.”
-Allen
Allen Asks:
In no longer seeing the divine, do you feel like something is now missing in your life that you once enjoyed? I’m not asking in the traditional missionary-minded way; I’m just curious if you miss the feeling you once had.
Craig’s Reply:
Honestly at times yes of course, but it has dissipated with time…I would be a fool not to want there to be a real god who loves us and saves us from the consequences of death. So yes I miss that belief. But I have also come to view that belief as a crutch created by man to inoculate mankind from the reality and finality of death.
Allen Asks:
I’m curious about one thing, however. If you truly view it as a gift, then why do you regularly refer to your council as a “so-called Mormon court of Love,” as you did earlier in this thread? (I’ve seen you refer to it in this way in other comments on other threads, as well.) I would think that if you really did view it as a gift, then you would somehow value it in hindsight and not denigrate it.
Craig’s Reply:
My excommunication was the most excruciatingly painful experience of my life. Knowing what I now know, I would NEVER recommend it to anyone…nor would I go through it again. But having said that…I am the man I am today because of that experience. It made me a better father and husband and a much more caring, loving and compassionate person. (Lou Midgley may not agree with me)
It also freed me from my Mormon paradigm of what sin is…I no longer view sin through a Mormon lens…if it hurts no one else, to me it is not sin…a much more liberal view then the church would teach.
It also gave me a window to the facilities of man (and I’m not only speaking of my own)
The aftermath of my church court was..well even by church accounts… not handled very well. But hopefully that is all water under the bridge for me and my family.
But I have turned lemons into lemon-aid … I think it bothers some that sat in on my court…when I do run into one…they still can’t understand why I am so happy and at peace. To them I am an enigma.
Bishop-I am thinking about you and the discussion from this thread.
I remember a class I had in college. I worked hard and ended up with a poor grade–a D. The only grade below a B- I received. I remember sitting next to a pretty blond girl and she was pulling A’s in this glass. I asked her out and it turned out to be one of the worst dates ever. Without saying so she conveyed the thought, “wow, your dumb”.
People have varying talents, and I’ve come to understand this about obtaining answers to prayer. Some people are like the girl from my class and they excel, while others are like me with the class, they struggle even though they work hard at it.
I believe Heavenly Father is always near to those who are repenting and seeking diligently to keep His commandments, but they have trouble recognizing the Spirit.
Gene R. Cook said:
“…promptings of the Spirit are so subtle and so quiet that sometimes it is very, very difficult to know whether an answer is “yes” or “no.” Sometimes it’s very difficult to know whether you have been spoken to by the Spirit or not…the Spirit usually speaks in feelings, thoughts, ideas, and impressions. The voice of the Spirit is still and small, and if we’re looking for something more, or if we’re not being very quiet and attentive, we’ll likely miss the answer when it comes.” Receiving Answers to Our Prayers, Gene R. Cook, P. 94.
On a slightly off-topic, but not totally irrelevant point (especially considering Craig’s comments), does anyone here consider the Book of Job to be literal history? Should it be wiped from the canon?
Craig,
You’re right, we don’t need to open the debate on BofM horses. Most of Zion’s Camp walked all the way. 30 miles a day is a medium paced walk of 3 miles per hour for 10 hours. Not that difficult for farm people.
Theodore
Steve G: Your comments are profound, and they teach important truths. The truths that matter most are those that we learn by living, and those that govern our way of living. My problem is connecting the profound truths you have learned with certain other truth claims made by the church and the scriptures. I have a strong “testimony” that living in the way that Jesus taught is the way to happiness. (I might quibble with a few things.) I am less confident that I can affirm, for example, that the Book of Mormon is a true translation of a historical people. I am less confident in a number of other doctrines also, and I find it hard to believe that God really cares about my beliefs on those issues. But my church cares about them, and insists teaches that I need to conform my beliefs to the orthodoxy of the Church. This creates a lot of tension.
I do appreciate everybody’s comments and expresssions of support. I even appreciate your criticisms. They are all thought provoking.
Question to Bishop B:
What do you do when it is your turn to preside at fast and testimony meeting? What exactly (if you care to share) do you bare testimony too?
Theodore:
Frankly, aside from being off topic (I’m guilty too, by the way), your completely off on why people struggle with the Zelph account. Myself and others I have spoken with generally have had the same reaction as your friend mentioned above: “Joseph Smith was out to lunch”. We can debate about whether Joseph Smith was right or not, and we will get nowhere fast. To those who do not have a proclivity to believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet the account comes across as ridiculous, and to many who do the story is sort of embarrassing. All of this without even considering The Book of Mormon geography debates.
Thanks B for the compliment. I am going to attempt another post even though I fear that I have probably spent all my profoundness. As I have studied the gospel and the learning of the world I have found that their are many different ideas both with in the church and in academia. That much of what people accept as reality we really don’t know for sure. Take the post from Fair received yesterday on evolution. I like to listen to books on tape that have to do with academic topics that I get from the library. One I listened to recently was by a scientific historian on the history of the theory of evolution. if we are really honest, even though that theory explains many things very well and seems to work in a lot of situations, there are many things that it does not explain and it is far from proven as some contend. I believe that we have not reached the end of our search for knowledge in the scientific field and that there are still some surprises in store and a little more humility would probably be helpful.. There are also ideas common in the church that are not necessarily so. I recently posted and editorial in the deseret news talking about my uncle that was a life long democrat and how he served 3 missions for the church and at his funeral 3 general authorities spoke and read a letter form the First Presidency. How the Churches stand was that there “are principles of the gospel found in many different parties” and that you did not have to be a republican to be a good Latter-day Saint. I received 167 posts to that simple editorial and one letter in the mail. Some expressed appreciation for the acknowledgment that you could be a good L.D.S. and a democrat and others that the democratic party was close to satanic. My testimony is based on the teaching of Jesus where he said “If any man will do his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it comes form God or I speak of myself.” My experience has been that it is not just the ethical teaching of Jesus that bring that spirit but it is other doctrines such as the atonement and the relationship that is developed with Christ threw that doctrine. I know that we cannot explain it completely in a philosophical way, though good men like Blake Ostler have made a valiant attempt. But for me I have found that doctrine to have a powerful impact in my own life and in the life of many others and I have found it worthy of belief. I enjoy learning about the questions in life but I can suspend having to have all the answers because no one knows the answers so why should I have to have them.
Cowboy,
To those who do not believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God most of what he said comes across as ridiculous. Leaving out The Book of Mormon geography then, what is it about the Zelph story that you think is embarrassing to those who do believe he was a Prophet?
Theodore
I know this may sound a bit facetious, but I just caught this post from Mighty Curelom on MAD:
MC has been one of the least aggressive posters on MAD. This is where I come back to those who still appear to take the claims seriously. Your disappointment and anger are equal to how seriously you still take the [literal] claims.
B:
I have been thinking about your remarks and my replies. I made a fuss about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This put you in an awkward position. I believe, of course, that when we testify, we should insist on truth in that radical sense. But I have to admit that my treatment of that issue was very incomplete. There are very good reasons one can set out for holding back information and so forth. Concern for the other is one very good reason for doing this. One can even argue that withholding information is actually required in certain situations or at least justified. You did a bit of this. I objected. But I was a bit to hasty. One can argue that it is required by love for the other one to not say what is technically fully truthful. There are, I am confident, instances where not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth is actually a virtue. And there are situations where we might easily and plausibly agree that not telling the truth and hence in lying is a virtue. But these are very special cases and hence do not constitute the general rule.
In addition, there is a literature in which noble as opposed to base lies are defended. And this literature involves specifically belief in the Gods and the laws of a regime. It starts with Plato. In his Laws, he argues that the way to control, for example, youths lusting for homosexual gratification, must be restrained by a rock solid theology, one element of which includes the idea that the Gods detest such behavior and will, sometime immediately but always eventually, punish those who yield to that temptation. So, one can read Plato as holding, the notion of divine retribution is crucial for a well-ordered regime. In the Republic, Plato has someone for the first time use the label theology. Theology consists of lies told by poets in a well-ordered city. Such a lies are not base but are described as a Noble Lie. With the complex of such arguments, Plato sets in place the idea that the truth of what we can call religion or what he calls belief in God(s), is solely its usefulness as a social cement. Put another way, Plato can be read as saying that the truth of religion–that is, theology, is its utility, since there really are no God(s) strictly speaking, at least from the perspective of philosophers. But genuinely wise men–that is, philosophers, ought not to speak or write in such a way that they undermine either the laws or the Gods of a regime, since children or child-like adults–that is, most human beings–need belief in both to restrain their passions.
If philosophers were to communicate to their closest followers, and yet avoid the fate of Socrates, who had spoken too freely, and gotten himself into big trouble with the authorities in Athens, they had to speak and write in such a way that they did not unravel the theology–Noble Lies–the city needed, while also leading a very few really gifted ones to enlightenment. They agreed that public atheism was worthy of death. Socrates was, after all, guilty as charged, and accepted the verdict of the court and drank the poison. His followers were intentionally much less bold in public. There were two reasons: they wanted to avoid persecution, and they genuinely did not want to fret the regimes in which they lived.
It is not difficult to trace this complex of ideas in the philosophical literature from Plato to Alexis de Tocqueville. I have done this in an essay entitled “The Utility of Faith Reconsidered,” found in Revelation, Reason and Faith, pp. 139-186. So it turns out that there are philosophers who were private atheists, but who could see huge advantages for both individuals and communities in faith in God. And, of course, those who were genuine believers also can see, as you can, those same things. But no serious believer thinks that the truth of faith is merely its utility as a consolation or surcease. That is blasphemy from the perspective of the believer.
In the ancient world there was a very cautious private atheism; atheists were not bold but shy and retiring. Then in the modern world atheists became bold and adventuresome. Knowledge was seen for the first time as power to change the world for the better by liberating human beings from enslavement to the Gods and the laws. Faith was seen as a narcotic that caused the pain. We call this ideology modernity and we all face its many aspects. Those who escape what they think of as the opiate of their former religion, often end up turning to real narcotics for pleasure and then pain, or they torture themselves mocking their old faith. They also rely on an atheism the history of which they do not know at all.
All communities grounded on faith in God now face the corrosive forces of the new public atheism. They survive, if they survive, because those who feel the impact of public atheism find ways of shielding themselves from its corrosive impact. They may move from what Martin Marty, following the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, called “primitive naivete” through a sometimes agonizing crisis, to a “second naivete.” Or they fashion new anti-science fundamentalisms. Latter-day Saints have not, by and large chosen this path. And there is no need to do so.
We have witnessed on this blog several examples of those who were for various reasons unable or unwilling to give up their previous fixation on a naive understanding of Mormon things, who deeply resent those of us who have passed through the inevitable crisis and are perhaps stronger for having done so. Doubts are not the problem, since they lead us to further light and then way down the road to knowledge. The problem sometimes might be an unwillingness to doubt oneself. In this sense, pride or arrogance about oneself and one’s primitive understanding and hence one’s bloated sense of one’s standing with God is often the root of the difficulty the disaffected have.
But concern about others, and a sense of the worth of the community, even given all its faults, and in the face of all that we do not now comprehend about divine things, is a good starting point. We all start by making choices. Faith in God begins with a choice. Faith must necessarily come before any of us really know much of anything. But the ethos of the modern world teaches us and then we demand that we avoid following just a mere wish. We end up insisting on proofs before we will trust God. That puts the cart before the horse. When we confront the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are faced with a choice to experiment by growing the tiny little seed of faith or to try briefly and routinely and then give up almost before we have gotten started on a long and difficult journey while we are here on probation.
But then, if we are faithful in our deeds, then sometime in the distant future, we can hope that the seed will grow into the tree of life and we can then taste the fruit thereof and then we will know in the full sense of that word. Faith first; knowledge much later. We are being tested, and not God. So we all walk by faith and not by sight. When we say that we know, we mean that we have chosen to have faith and we have reasons for that choice and hence for the trust we strive to place in Jesus Christ as our redeemer. We do not here below need proofs and certainty. Demanding or expecting that sort of thing decoys us from allowing God through the Holy Spirit to speak peace to our souls in a quite little, even still, voice and hence in ways we did not expect, could not anticipate and can only really appreciate after we have manifested deeds such as genuine love for others. When we are troubled because God has not granted us an immediate certainty in some direct way like he seems to us to have done with Paul on that road north of Jerusalem or Alma the younger, we forget that those experiences are not the rule but very unusual exceptions. We should not scold God for being inconsistent, but look inside our own souls for remnants of the debris of modernity that shields us form seeing the hand of God already in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
This is my way of testifying to B, and anyone else who might care to have a look, in the hope that he will seek and find genuine peace and prosperity in the faith. I don’t care to get into the rhetorical gutter with Craig Paxton. But I would be pleased to see a tiny sign that he had for once really listened to one of those he denigrates as an apologist.
I am an active member, who never received a spiritual witness that the Church is true, and who finds the evidence against the Church’s claims more persuasive than the evidence for them.
I see it argued that people like me “want” the Church not to be true. I’ve considered that, and reject it. I have far more reasons to want the Church to be true, than to want it not to be true. (Insert typical recital about being active my whole life, serving a mission, marrying in the temple, being one of the few youth who didn’t drink/toke/get busy/etc.)
But that leads to another question: Why would it be a virtue to want this particular Church to be true, as opposed to wanting another church to be true? Why is it a virtue to believe that this good but occasionally flawed church is the best that God could do?
Why should I be considered immoral for wondering if there really is something out there that really could offer the “visions and blessings of old”? Whose prophets hadn’t said such appalling things about race?
Why is it morally desirable for me to want to believe that the vast majority of people of faith are in apostasy?
Thomas (Doubting?) said:
I think that people can (and do) leave the LDS Church and still possess virtue. (Conversely, I think there are some within the Church who lack virtue.) It is virtue that leads a person to seek greater things, to better themselves, and (in a religious sense) seek oneness with God.
As to whether “this good but occasionally flawed church is the best that God could do,” since God leaves the details up to us, the flaws can easily be attributed to those of mere mortals and not God.
I certainly wouldn’t think you would be immoral for wondering such. But if you are looking at the prophets of old as icons of perfection, I think you may be in for a rude awakening. I don’t think, for example, that Jonah or Peter were any more perfect than Joseph or Brigham.
-Allen
I read your treatise Lou, why is it that you and I always seem ending up butting heads, while within the same thread, I am able to have conversations, based upon mutual respect, with others on this board? What is different between these various communications?
Is it that you are in an unretreatable war with the ex-Mormon community? Is it that you are always right and I am always wrong…period? Is there no room in your world for understanding or bridges? Relegating my thoughts to a “rhetorical gutter” is symblamatic of your tactics. Placing me in your tidy RFM-Exmo rubbish bin does not promote understanding or communication.
It’s unfortunate…I wanted learn from you…learn how you maintain belief in what I now find an unbelievable church. In how you are able to make the many misfiting pieces of Mormonism fit. But I will not engage in an environment where I am relegated to your preconceived biases nor will I submit to your rules where the outcome is a far gone conclusion.
Best of Luck Lou…once again you win….but you already knew that didn’t you.
Theodore:
I realize that you can provide a cogent defense for the Zelph account, and I don’t think I could articulate a strong intellectual argument on this matter. I wasn’t attempting to dispute whether Joseph Smith and company really unearthed the corpse of a Lamanite general. How could that ever be proven, especially when Zelph’s nation, culture, heritage, are still in dispute. My point was that when people struggle with this story it because of a gut reaction that cries Bull S…, rather than a defensive reaction to a percieved threat against a favored theory on Book of Mormon geography. The name Zelph just sounds silly. Is there a linguistic root which makes it plausible – I’m sure there is – gut reaction still says BS. The company just happens on this ancient corpse, and what do you know, it is the remains of character of a key event in the book translated by none other than Joseph Smith. Could God have had a hand in leading them to this experience? Of course he could. Do I think he did, no, so we disagree. Does it sound to ultra convenient and ridiculous, for a lot of people yes it is. Again I’m only talking gut reaction here which by no means a barometer for what actually is. Did you ever see that movie called “Big Fish”, the Zelph account sort of has that air to it. Now, putting it into a thicker perspective from the Skeptic, does this account sound like the same type of nonsense that Joseph used to drum up while chasing around the woods for hire looking for buried treasure, dead Indians, ancient enchantments, etc? Yes it does. That’s about as fair as I can be Theodore, I can’t prove it, but I don’t buy it. In any case, the story itself is responsible for peoples reaction to it, on not it’s affect on minor speculative geography squabbles.
Allen — My parents named me after two of the most famous doubters in the Bible, probably without noting that fact. (At least they didn’t pick “Korihor.”)
Thanks for your charitable remarks. I come back to the question: Why would it be more virtuous, or worthy of divine reward, to desire to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one true church, than to believe that, say, the Eastern Orthodox Church is the true church? Or that (as the Protestants say) all believers in Christ comprise the true church? Or for that matter, in Buddhism or Universalism or some other non-Christian faith?
Why would it be so desirable to hope that God’s one true church is a minor sect centered in the Rocky Mountains, and that people like C.S. Lewis and Richard John Neuhaus were all missing something critical? What is it about this Church that is so uniquely virtuous, that a genuinely honest and virtuous person should inherently want to believe in it and not the others?
Craig Paxton obviously has not list relegate his thoughts to “rhetorical gutter.” I merely indicated that I have no desire to get into the rhetorical gutter with him. I had in mind the sarcasm, sneering, name-calling, nasty stuff in that bizarre item he posted on February 16th at 12:34pm under the heading: Bravo…Bravo… Bellissimo …Encore…Encore (in bold face yet). This is the second time I have encountered Paxton. And both times he has turned up, he has engaged in same unseemly antics demonstrated in spades on this blog. His world has been nourished by the RfM open sewer in which apologists–MORGBOTS–is a liar or worse. It is simply impossible to have a rational conversation with someone who begins with such a premise. There is at the press an essay entitled “Debating Evangelicals” in which I set out the reasons why Latter-day Saints are obligated to try as well as they can to defend their faith. I also try to demonstrate that it is useless to engage in controversy with countercults, though it it entirely possible to have conversations with those with an open heart and mind. And it is fruitful to do so with those beset with doubts.
We should, of course, work to resolve our doubts, especially if they tend to make us double-minded so that we lack personal integrity. The fact is that I constantly live with doubts. Both my own disposion and professional training have made doubting a habit of the heart. In the kinds of academic endeavors I engage in, one makes forward steps by discovering flaws in explanations and accounts. But I constantly face doubts about my own capacities both intellectual and moral. All around me I find people with more intellectual fire-power and better training and skill in areas about which I am ignoant. And I worry about whether I am doing the best I should, given the seriousness of the issues I confront. When I write, I work slowly and I constantly revise. I am never confident that I have gotten it right or set out well what I am striving to present. And I change my opinion on things, and learn new things that make me admit that I missed something earlier or got things wrong about which I was once rather confident. And I contantly wonder about me motives. Who am I trying to please and why? If God is the judge, have I avoided playing to some other audience? Do I apply the same standards to myself that I apply to other? And on and on.
Thomas,
Would it be too ‘crude’ to note that, for some, praying to the god of the LDS is indistinguishable in its effects to praying to the flying spaghetti monster.
A slight typographical correction is needed. If I could type, I would have written: “CP obviously has not listened. I did not relegate his thoughts to “rhetorical gutter.” I hope that there not additional similar garbling in that last item.
Thomas said:
I don’t think that divine rewards are granted based solely on virtue. Virtue is an attribute possessed by someone; there are virtuous people all over the world, in all walks of life, and from all faith traditions.
I believe it is correct to point out that believing one religion over another doesn’t, in and of itself, make one more virtuous than another.
I don’t think that there is anything in the LDS Church that is “uniquely virtuous.” That does not mean, however, that I don’t believe that the LDS Church possesses attributes that are unique; it does. The primary attribute is divine authority, restored by messengers of God. (We are, after all, the benefactors of the *Restoration.*)
Now, I know that others believe that they have authority to act in God’s name. I’ve examined most of those claims from other sects (including the “priesthood of all believers” to which you refer in your comment), but I find those claims lacking. The Restoration–particularly the Restoration as contained within the CoJCoLDS–is what makes the most sense to me.
But, again, that doesn’t make the Church uniquely virtuous or its adherents any more virtuous than others in the world.
I believe the 13th Article of Faith sums it up: If there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after those things. In other words, we try to be better today than we were yesterday. All people are in that same boat, hopefully.
-Allen
Malkie said:
I realize that some believe that, and they are entitled to their beliefs. It isn’t crude to point out that some people believe it unless you try to tell me that I would have had the same benefit from praying to the FSM that I got from praying to God. In that case, you would be wrong.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to accept my experiential evidence in that regard over your own beliefs that lack such evidence.
-Allen
Allen: I’m probably not expressing my question as clearly as I should — likely because I’m not explaining the assumptions behind my thinking.
It’s said that the reason some people don’t believe the Church’s historical claims, while others, seeing the same evidence, are able to believe, is that the first group doesn’t want the Church to be true.
My (possibly unjustified) assumption here is that the believers see themselves as *better* than the unbelievers, by virtue of their desire to believe the Church’s claims. The Church teaches that the path to faith and spiritual knowledge starts out with a *desire* to believe. (See Alma ch. 32.)
Now, where does that desire come from? It seems to me we have two choices:
(1) The Spirit bloweth where it listeth; some people are just predestined to want to believe the Church’s claims, and some aren’t. A Calvinist God calls to the path of saving faith those whom He will save, and the rest are out of luck. Or…
(2) There is something about the Church, whereby all good people — the “honest in heart” who are true to the Light of Christ all people are born with — *should* want it to be true.
My next assumption is that God is a moral Being. If there are any conditions to his willingness to bless people, they are not arbitrary. Rather, they involve us taking steps in a virtuous direction — at the very least, taking the decision to seek a righteous God and learn and follow his will.
So it seems that I have a choice — assuming that the God of the LDS gospel gives the gift of faith, light, and knowledge to those who desire to believe that the Church is true — between believing in a Calvinist God who hands that desire out arbitrarily, or a just God who justly rewards people for having a virtuous desire to believe.
What I can’t figure out, is why a desire to believe in the Church, and its exclusive claims, is inherently virtuous, such that it would be just for God to make possession of such a desire the first and necessary condition to obtaining a saving faith.
Thomas, above, sees two possibilities: (1) either God is totally arbitrary and hence saves those he saves without regard to their desires, or (2) he rewards an already present virtue–”the desire to believe in the Church”–with what he calls “saving faith.” He then complains that it would not “be just for God to make possession of such a desire the first and necessary condition to obtaining a saving faith.” The first possibility he attributes to those with a “Calvinist God.” His description of the what he considers the first possibility might be close to being right, if he had in mind Five Point Calvinists. I am confident that not all of those who are committed to what Thomas calls a “Calvinist God” do not necessarily end up with TULIP. Hyper Calvinism is not the only possibility. The history of Christian theology is larded with a host of other possibilities that compete with and challenge the opinions of Augustine and Calvin on divine and human things. And even Augustinians and Calvinists do not always agree on all the crucial details.
And the assertion that Thomas sets out about the only other possibility he offers–that God rewards an already present virtue with “saving faith”–is simply not the only other possibility. Why? His second possibility is not found in Book of Mormon. There is nothing in the LDS scriptures that grounds his notion that the Saints imagine that God begins by rewarding an already present virtue. Put another way, the desire to experiment with the seed of faith is necessary but not sufficient. And it is, by itself, not a virtue God gives freely or infuses in us. It is what gets us started on the path to acquiring as gifts from God the virtues given to those who love and serve him. And example will help. The desire a kid in the second grade for a Ph.D. might be nice but it does not qualify such a one for the degree. The necessary desire to be part of the family of Jesus Christ must be following by repentance, faith and enduring the tests to the end. We are not sanctified or justified by desire alone, though it is necessary to get the painful process of rebirth started and maintained.
Thomas is also hampered by the notion that the Saints place their faith in the Church. Not so. The name of the one that redeems us from death and sin is Jesus Christ. The Church is the community of those who have made a covenant to obey and love Jesus Christ. Some in this community earnestly strive to keep their covenant with God, others do not, some just get on the train and get off at the next stop–that is, drift away–some few rebel against God and excommunicate themselves. The church is a kind of hospital for those afflicted with the diseases of the world. Everyone has disease, but are not inclined to turn themselves in for what is always a painful treatment.
All of the Saints are tempted and hence all of the Saints must constantly repent and seek forgiveness and the assistance of the Holy Spirit in burning out of them, sometimes in very painful ways, the bad old stuff, replacing it with the Christian virtues of love, hope and faith, which together yield faithfulness in keeping the commandments and hence eventual sanctification.
Thomas said:
While there are undoubtedly those who do view themselves as better than unbelievers, such views put the believer in a tenuous position. That is where pride comes into play, and we are continually admonished to strip ourselves of pride.
You seem to be conflating belief in the Church (which is non-salvific) with belief in Christ (which is salvific). Alma and his seed talks about faith in Christ, not about faith in some worldly organization.
People have a choice to believe in Christ and, I believe, are born with the light of Christ that you mention. That light pulls them toward Christ, yet it is not an inexorable pull that overwhelms their ability to choose.
I would agree with this.
Again, you are conflating the Church and Christ. God gives the gift of faith, light, and knowledge to those who desire to believe in Christ. This is why there are many good, virtuous, holy people in all religions.
Belief in the Church will not save anyone. Period. Belief in Christ, when coupled with action on our part to come unto Him, will save us. The question becomes where do we go to find those authorized to act in His behalf? That is where the Church comes into play.
The Restoration effected two primary things: the disclosure of knowledge that had been lost during the Dark Ages and the bestowal of authority that had been abdicated during the apostasy. The loss of knowledge and the abdication of authority are closely intertwined. The Church was formed to both teach the lost knowledge and administer the authority bestowed.
Believing that the Church teaches lost knowledge and has the authority to administer divine ordinances is essential to salvation *only* in that it helps me to do the necessary individual actions: to believe in Christ and to act upon those beliefs in ways He requires.
Believing in the Church, however, is to focus on the vessel rather than on the life-saving essence conveyed within the vessel. For instance, water provides temporal salvation to a person dying of thirst. But what, exactly, provided the salvation–the water or the cup containing the water? Christ and His ordinances are the water and the Church is the cup.
I hope that helps.
-Allen
Allen Wyatt said:
“I realize that some believe that, and they are entitled to their beliefs. It isn’t crude to point out that some people believe it unless you try to tell me that I would have had the same benefit from praying to the FSM that I got from praying to God. In that case, you would be wrong.
Of course, I wouldn’t expect you to accept my experiential evidence in that regard over your own beliefs that lack such evidence.”
Allen, as I hope you realize, I wasn’t trying to tell you anything about *your* experiences.
Many years ago, in Scotland, the mishies (absolutely no disrespect intended by that term) found a nice family who – rare occurrence – let them in and listened to the first discussion. The parents agreed to read some verses in the BoM and pray about it.
When the mishies returned a couple of days later and the parents told them that that they got no answer to their prayers, the mishies asked them to describe what they had done, and how. It turned out that they were going to their personal shrine in their home (they were Sikh, or Hindu, IIRC), burning incense, making food offerings etc, and then praying.
After the mishies told them why that wouldn’t work, and put them straight, they prayed again, this time in the ‘approved’ manner. The result was the same.
The family was puzzled, because the mishies had promised them an answer (a specific answer, in fact), and the mishies were disappointed.
To turn around the blog topic – “Different Process, Same Outcome”: why?
I shared the feelings of both the family and the mishies. As a young & struggling branch president I had had no ‘luck’ with praying. In fact, after a couple of years as BP I had pretty much given up on prayer, and was functioning as a spiritless administrator. I had been spending almost every moment of my non-working non-sleeping time on my callings, and was completely frustrated.
I continued as an active member for a couple of decades, serving in all sorts of callings in the wards my family attended, before a couple of incidents made me re-evaluate my faith, if I can call it such, in the church. The result was that I concluded that, for me at least, there was nobody at the other end of the prayer line.
For family reasons I continued to attend and to serve for several more years, and, to my surprise (well, by then I really wasn’t greatly surprised), I was just as successful, just as effective, just as worthy (according to my leaders) as I had been before.
I don’t believe in the FSM, but I have no more reason to believe in the christian/mormon god than I do in the FSM.
Louis (and also Allen):
“Thomas is also hampered by the notion that the Saints place their faith in the Church.”
If I am so hampered, then so were Elder McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, and a boatload of other Church leaders, whose opinion Mormonism assigns a lot more weight than either of ours.
It has been widely taught by prophets, seers, and revelators that “there is no salvation outside the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” to use Elder McConkie’s formulation. (I think it sounds better in the original Latin — “nulla salus extra ecclesiam” — but that’s probably just my long-dormant papist ancestry surfacing.) Others have expressly taught that it is not enough to have faith in Christ — one must also have (and act upon) a testimony that Joseph Smith was the prophet of the Restoration, and that only the Church he founded has the authority to perform the ordinances that are necessary to salvation. (I recognize that the term “salvation” is used interchangeably in the Church to mean different things; I’m using the term as equivalent to exaltation.)
Louis, I think you’re still misunderstanding my point. you are absolutely right that a mere desire to believe has no immediate salvific effect — but Alma 32 is clear that this desire is the foundation of a person’s effort to be saved. My basic question is this: Assuming that salvific faith must start out as a “particle of faith, yea, even…no more than a desire to believe (Alma 32:27; note that this chapter does not, as Allen says, limit its scope to just faith in Christ, but rather to the process of gaining faith in any of the “words” of God or prophets), where does that desire come from?
Observation seems to confirm that not everyone has that desire — or at least, not everyone recognizes and acts upon it. If the former, then how do you escape strong Calvinist predestinationism? If some people innately have that desire, but not others, how are those who don’t to be saved? They lack the “particle of faith” that’s the foundation for the whole structure of faith. They’re doomed from the beginning.
And if the latter — if God, or the nature of divinely co-eternal Intelligences, did install a desire to believe in not just Christ, but the whole message of the Restoration (faith in which prophets, as discussed above, have declared to be necessary to salvation), as part of the Light-of-Christ operating system installed in the beginning as part of every man’s operating system, then to manifest a lack of desire to believe in these things must, in some way, constitute a moral flaw. Perhaps I assume to much, but I presume that God is not an arbitrary God, and punishes men (or withholds His blessing, which I believe amounts to the same thing) on the basis of their sins, not because of morally-neutral acts or characteristics. (I do not believe, for example, that he would condition salvation on a preference for spinach over brussels sprouts.)
Thus, I can’t see any real way for faithful Mormons to avoid the harsh conclusion that when someone lacks a desire to believe in the Church’s message, there must be something wrong with him. And so I ask again: What is it about this Church, that any decent person, who is not suppressing his conscience, should inherently want it, and no other church, to be true? Why should a good person inherently want to be Mormon more than Seventh-Day Adventist, and be condemned for wanting the latter to be true more than the former?
I seem to see several descriptions of how several people once played a role, did the dance, and then eventually noticed that nothing big, as they expected, sprang from the routine. I never see in these accounts signs that the person telling the story was aware that they had made a covenant with God. Instead, they insist that what they call the “church” let them down, didn’t pay the dividends they expected and think they had been promised. They seem to see what they call the “church” as a kind of investment scheme. They claim to have been led (or they led themselves) to believe there would be a routine return on their investment. And, of course, they wanted evidence that they had not made a mistake in believing in the Church.
Somewhere it is written: “In this life you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” The word tribulation comes from what happens to grain when it faces the grinding wheel as it is milled. The other image is the refiner’s fire. There is in these untestimonies never mention of being on probation, as being tested. There is, instead, much talk about how the Church did not produce on its promises, and hence how the Church is bunk and lied and so forth. All this sounds to me like someone signing up for a social club or for some exercise program expecting gratification of some appetite or immediate recognition for service rendered and so forth. I don’t notice much talk of the inner rewards of selfless service or of a willingness to face hardship for the one has freely chosen to be one’s Lord and Master. I don’t see a recognition that, without God, we are less than the dust. I don’t see signs of fear and trembling when one approaches the Holy One of Israel. Instead, I see much unfortunate focusing on the self and hence a willingness to place God in the dock, to borrow again from the title of a book by C. S. Lewis. And there is the talk about the faults and failures of the “church.”
Allen, further:
“Believing that the Church teaches lost knowledge and has the authority to administer divine ordinances is essential to salvation *only* in that it helps me to do the necessary individual actions: to believe in Christ and to act upon those beliefs in ways He requires.”
Exactly. And in a way, belief in the Church therefore becomes just as important as belief in Christ — because without belief in the Church (which, as Alma 32 has it, must start out with a desire to believe in the Church), a person will not have any reason to “act upon those beliefs in ways He requires.” A person who does not believe in the Church, does not receive its ordinances.
Your analogy of the cup and water only reinforces this point: In a sense, belief that the cup has water in it is just as essential to quenching one’s thirst, as belief that water quenches thirst.
Let’s take this analogy a step further. A person wandering in the desert knows that he needs water to survive — but that knowledge is useless, unless he also knows where to go to get water. If that person does not believe there is a spring in a particular direction, he won’t go in that direction. If the Church’s ordinances (along with faith in Christ) are in fact the equivalent of water — as critical to eternal life as to physical survival — then faith in the ordinances, without faith to guide one to their one true provider, is as useless as the mere knowledge that your body needs water.
Thus, faith in the “vessel” that provides the saving ordinances is just as indispensable as faith in the ordinances themselves.
So again: Why do some people appear to have the basis for such saving faith — a desire to believe in the Church’s message — and some do not?
Louis Midgley said:
“All this sounds to me like someone signing up for a social club or for some exercise program expecting gratification of some appetite or immediate recognition for service rendered and so forth.”
I’m happy for you that your experience has been better.
Perhaps its just weakness on my part – painful though it might be to say it – but at some point I just had to say that I tried it and it didn’t work for me. Not just for a short time, and not only the easy things.
I’m not looking for recognition for what I’ve done in the past – I learned some very good lessons from it, and don’t feel that my time and effort were entirely wasted. But at some point I had to question whether there was a good reason to continue to do what I had been doing, and (once again, for *me*) the answer was “no”.
If the failure is mine, then so be it.
btw, I don’t know if your remarks were aimed at me, but in the end it doesn’t really matter.
Louis:
I thoroughly agree that it is us who are on trial, not God. This is a deadly serious business, with eternity on the line. God is not mocked.
And that is precisely why I do not intend to go galloping off after the first claimant to revelation that crosses my sights. If a a minor stock offering requires a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of due diligence, should a decision with eternal stakes require less?
God is not on trial — but this Church absolutely is. “We ought to obey God rather than men.” If the Church is a merely human institution, then it is entitled to no more “fear and trembling” than you or I are. You seem to be trying to have it both ways — denying in one place that the Church and God are identical, and conflating them in another.
You refer to covenants. Were those covenants administered by God’s authorized agents? What is the validity of a covenant made ultra vires? We ought to obey God rather than men. If the covenants administered by the Church are administered by divine authority, then they are sacred and binding. If not, then they are not “a covenant with God” at all. That is the basic question that has to be answered, before you can belittle people for forgetting their “covenants with God.”
My testimony (not my “un-testimony”, to use one borderline hostile phrase) — is this: I approach the God of Abraham with reverence — and yet I come boldly to the throne of grace, not groveling. I have faith in my Father in Heaven, that he will not give me a stone when I ask for a fish. Knowing that the vast majority of people who claim prophetic authority claim falsely (southern Utah alone probably has more false prophets, right now, than there have ever been true ones!), I expect I can be pardoned for applying strict scrutiny to such claims.
I know what I have and have not received spiritual witnesses of, and I know God knows what I know, and I expect that if he is anything like I understand him to be, he would take a dim view of my pretending otherwise. I choose — in the absence of compelling evidence either way — to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven, who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him — and therefore I diligently seek him. I trust that my search will not be in vain. I deduce — from my initial decision to believe in a just and loving God of truth — that if there are any conditions to God’s blessing, including his granting me greater light and knowledge, they are that I revere and follow truth, love God insofar as I come to know him, and love my neighbor as myself. I trust that if I am true to these basic confessions of faith, I will do well. (See James 2:8.)
So is there a resolution yet, an answer as to why we go through the “same process” yet have “different outcomes”? Going back to the subject of this post, I wonder whether we do go through the same process.
John Dehlin once became a “victim” of discovering hitherto “unknown history” and his faith was shaken. He managed to resolve that by taking what he calls “the middle way”, or being a “buffet Mormon” (you can’t eat everything).
In his essay “How to Stay in the LDS Church After a Major Challenge to Your Faith”, he advocates taking a course similar to “Liahona Mormons”:
Yet, this is contrary to what the prophets have taught, including Gordon B. Hinckley. It’s an “all or nothing” proposition. If the First Vision didn’t occur “we’re stuffed”, basically. Might as well go join the local country club.
Dehlin’s thinking isn’t always up to scratch. One paragraph after writing the above, he writes:
Message: Drop the “one true” thinking, but the leaders should still teach it, for the sake of growth. You will see that even in those who take “the middle way” and remain in the Church, they have to live with compromises and even contradiction.
At the conclusion of his essay, John writes:
But John revealed on FLAK (Further Light and Knowledge) however, that one of the reasons he gave up his “ministry” to “the disillusioned”, was that he felt he was encouraging too many wavering Mormons to actually slip over the edge, because he was giving them warts-and-all, believing that truthful accounts would actually rejuvenate faith, if it came from another Mormon. In other words, when many of them were exposed to “alternative thinking” about Mormon history and doctrine, they made that final leap out. And very graciously thanked John for his help. You can check FLAK and read John’s comments for the full context, but “Mormon Stories” is no more. It’s now “Stay LDS”, minus John Dehlin.
So did John recognise something here that most of us know? That when you give members “meat”, many of them will leave the Church. And I’m not talking small bickkies. The leaders never give the “meat”, because they well know what the consequences will be for too many. Bear in mind some of Elder Packer’s memorable quotes about “meat and milk”. “Not all truth is useful.” That is, if you want the believers to keep believing.
As for the “different outcome”, is it really all that different in many cases? There are probably “Liahona Mormons” who believe as little as some Ex-Mormons, but they choose to stay for personal reasons, and take the “the middle way”. Here are some of John’s “reasons” for staying:
Sounds a bit like Tom Ferguson’s “best brotherhood anywhere”, and yes, heck it could be true! (grin)
Does John even know if it’s “true”?
Apart from community, and some aspects of family, there is no reason any person who leaves the Church could not embrace all of the above outside the Church, or even in another religion.
So now we have to narrow down what the “different outcome” really is. Or is it just another form of rationalisation?
Louis: Earlier on this thread you posted a very thoughtful comment addressed to me. Thank you. I read your comments carefully and appreciated your thoughtfulness.
I agree with much of what you say about faith. I understand that faith must come before knowledge. I also understand that faith entails a genuine commitment. I like the Alma 32 analogy to a seed growing in to a tree of life. I think your ideas on faith should be preached in every congregation. However, continue to think that you are too quick to dismiss some of my questions. Thomas has expressed many of my own thoughts and questions much better than I did.
The simple truth is that some people who have planted the seed and nourished it do not come to the conclusion that the LDS church is true, and that the gospel was restored through Joseph Smith. I have to agree with Thomas–the church is very much on trial, and the church’s leaders have often invited us to put it on trial. It is not fair to dismiss those who have planted and nourished the seed, but who don’t believe, as covenant breakers or as people who have flunked the test.
It is not fair to dismiss those who have planted and nourished the seed, but who don’t believe, as covenant breakers or as people who have flunked the test.
Infact, highly unfair. Certainly we would not consider an individual who has converted to the LDS faith, from another faith, a covenant breaker for not remaining committed to the Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, way etc.
It is not only not fair it is contrary to the word of God. Even speaking of excommunicated members the Lord charges the members:
I am still enjoying this discussion. I can feel some pain in some of these comments and I don’t necessarily have the answers. I do like being a small part of the conversation. All I know is that The restored gospel of Jesus Christ has and continues to change and transform my life for the better. I know that their is much good outside of the Church and the scriptures as I understand them teach that all good comes from Christ. I have been an observer of Human behavior for most of my carrier and all I know is that if I gave up the gospel I would end up with something less good than what I have. For me I find so much good in the scriptures and and the teachings of modern prophets that my life is greatly enriched. That is the witness to the truthfulness of the gospel I have received. I don’t have the answers to all questions, but I have enough answers to satisfy my needs. I would love for the members of the church including myself to be less human with all of our weakness and frailties’ and prejudices but that is what I believe the gospel is moving towards. Wish you all the best.
For what it is worth, I really like personal observations like the one you just made. It has an air of honesty and even optimism that just isn’t found in pounding scripture or declaring unsubstantiated absolutes. Nephi’s words keep ringing with me when he declared, that he knows that God loves his Children, nevertheless he does not know the meaning of all things. I have appreciated Thomas’s comments to that vein as well. He articulated in a way much better than I could myself, the general religious feelings I have held for quite a while, while at the same time reinforcing a desire for religious optimism from the following statement:
“I choose — in the absence of compelling evidence either way — to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven, who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him —and therefore I diligently seek him.”
Theodore Brandley seems a tad bit confused about what our scriptures say about excommunication. The passage he quotes (3 Nephi 18:32) does not forbid Church discipline. Instead, it urges the Saints to fellowship as well as they possibly can those who are no longer “numbered among” the People of God (see 3 Nephi 18:31). The reason is that they still might turn back to God (repent). They are moral agents and hence have that choice.
Theodore Brandley, it seems, was responding to Cowboy who seems troubled by the possibility that those who go missing and turn against God and the community of Saints have violated the covenants they previously made. This is, however, a different issue than Cowboy raised.
Instead, Cowboy seems to assume that, for example, Baptists think of themselves as the Covenant People of God. This is not the case. Why? One profound difference between the faith of the Saints and sectarian religiosity is our deep concern about covenants. When a covenant was renewed by ancient Israel, the Torah was read and blessings and cursings were set out for obedience to or disobedience to the terms of the covenant. This can also be seen in the Book of Mormon. The blessing and cursing formula found in the Book of Mormon in more than a dozen places sets out the cursing or penalty for disobedience. It is to be cut off from the presence of the Lord both here and now and then and there. Even though the New Testament carries in its name the word covenant, since testament means covenant in that context, there is no overt covenant teaching in the New Testament. The important so-called New Perspective on Paul, tends to read covenant back into his writings, thereby profoundly shifting the understanding of Paul from what was taught by Augustine and much later by Luther and Calvin. But the fact is that the Restoration scriptures are packed with the language of covenants. And hence covenants are central to the faith of the Saints, who see an initial covenant being made with God at baptism and then enriched in the Endowment. So enduring to the end simply has to involve keeping the covenant one has made to God. But this emphasis is not typical of sectarian religiosity. From an LDS perspective, turning one’s back on God and hence going missing, most certainly involves covenant breaking. Cowboy should find another way of expressing his disagreement with me.
But Louis, what if one genuinely believes that he did not really make a covenant with God, because, in reality, there was no other party to the covenant? You can certainly argue that such an individual was wrong, because God was indeed involved the purported covenant, and you might be right. But that is the only real issue. Until that issue is resolved, you and the so-called covenant breaker are talking past each other, and that is why I think you are begging the question.
Louis,
I think you are a tad bit confused about what I said. I was certainly not suggesting that 3 Nephi 18:32 forbids excommunication. (??) I was saying that the Lord tells us not to write off or discard anyone, even those who are excommunicated. ( Perhaps it was your misunderstanding of Cowboy’s use of the word “dismiss?”
Theodore
Thanks for the history lesson, as well as helping me understand my point. For what it is worth, I anticipated that you might derail my argument by debating the covenant emphasis/practices of the broader Christian community. That is why I included Catholicism and Judaism which are both sacramentally intensive. I never intended to suggest that Baptists emphasize themselves, ie the general body of baptists, as God’s covenant people. Most Baptists with whom I have conversed, would view that statement more academically as Old Testament verbiage wich refers explicitly to the house of Israel. Rather they would much more generally refer to themselves as the Body of Christ which need not be exclusively comprised of Baptist’s. This explanation may be a bit off point, and not entirely relevant to my initial comment as I do not hold myself out as an authority on the Baptist faith(s).
The above notwithstanding you completely missed my point. I was simply responding to your observation (February 19th, 2009 at 1:12 pm) that those who leave/become dissatisfied/etc, the Church seem to turn their back on Covenants made with God in the context of Mormonism. There were a number of items regarding the entire post which I found dissagreeable, but determined not to comment much because I felt that Thomas’s response was very good. My point was that your concern with the so-called covenant breakers is that if the LDS Church is not God’s Church, then the Covenants are not binding (particularly given that some of the covenants directly relate to mans relationship with the Church, tithing, callings, missionary work, etc.) You cannot settle a dispute about covenant breaking without first determining whether the Church is true, and that is precisely the reason most people leave, they don’t believe it is true. It’s entirely faulty logic, unless of course you expect that those who leave The Church do so fully believing that it is true, in which case you are just plain wrong. My point was that, you would not consider a persons decision to leave their current faith to join Mormonism an abandonment of covenants in spite of participation in former sacraments/rites – even those which are more closely aligned with Mormonism’s view on the covenant relationship. You would not, because generally you would consider those pacts non-binding except where possible oaths allow for inter-religious cross-over. In Short, you are putting the cart before the horse.
Lastly, I am not sure how your clarification of Theodores interpretation of 3rd Nephi somehow corrects a faulty explanation on his part. As I read your comments, you both come to the same conclusion except Theodore lacks arrogance.
For the record, the following statement on my post dated: February 19th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
It is not fair to dismiss those who have planted and nourished the seed, but who don’t believe, as covenant breakers or as people who have flunked the test.
Should be in quotes, I was responding to the final statement in B’s comment directly preceeding mine. I think Theodore is correct on what is meant by “dismiss” in this case.
In the dark and dreary world of litigation, when a person, having entered into a contract, comes to question whether the person who executed the contract on behalf of the other party had the authority to do so, one prudent option is to file an action for declaratory relief, asking for a clear ruling on the issue so the parties can fairly know their respective rights and duties.
Unfortunately, religion doesn’t work the same way. If you believe that making and keeping covenants is an essential part of the pursuit of eternal life, you have to choose which of the competing sects claiming authority to administer those covenants to do spiritual business with — being aware of the possibility that, perhaps, none of them do, as Joseph learned.
I may be a bit simplistic, hopefully it is child like, but probably just simplistic. Going back to the original question I think I can tell from my own experience why some have different outcomes. When I was taking a philosophy class at the U of U and the professors many goal seemed to be to convince me that Jesus was not the Christ I had to decide to exercise faith in what I had already learned was good. I needed to learn what he was trying to teach me because I could see that he knew things that I did not know, but I could also see that much of what he was teaching was theoretical. I kept readying my scriptures and praying and trying to keep the commandments and I came away from the class with some understanding of his view point that I did not have before the class but also that I was better off for keeping my faith. I have observed that when I delve into things that make me question my faith that I am more susceptible to temptation and that I need to make a continues effort to fortify my faith while I am trying to learn something knew or it is not hard to loose the spirit. I know that if I was not blessed with my weakness and I was, in all sincerity, as intelligent and as good at reasoning as most on this post are that it would be harder for me to maintain my faith. I hope that makes some sense.
I find it ironical that a solid Later-Day Saint must be so guarded and careful about loosing his faith when he ventures onto a blog set up specifically to defend the Church. Is the FAIRblog accomplishing its goal, or is it doing more harm than good for the Church? Just a musing, not a condemnation.
Theodore
Theodore:
I have, with whatever gifts I have, and given considerable time limitations, been striving on this thread to defend the faith and the Saints from those who seem to have gravitd here to try to validate themselves by opining about how, among other things, God has failed to plump up their saging faith, and hence let them down, and hence that they have ceased to believe in God, even though they sometimes pretend in their local congregations. I wonder, have I been what you call guraded? What might, from your perspective, constitute an unguarded response to critics? Should I have gotten down in the rhetorical gutter with one fellow who turned up on this thread and insisted on issuing a series of tasteless snide remarks, insults, and so forth? I refuse to do that. I have tried, instead, to respond to critics in at least a somewhat irenic way. Is that a mistake? If so, why?
I sense that we have come full circle, unfortunately, without any real answers to the original questions. What I get from having read this entire thread is that people just don’t really know why people can read and study the same materials (go through the same process) and come to a different outcome.
Perhaps it does just boil down to choice, as several have noted. And, I suspect, those who choose to stay will continue to be incredulous and shake their heads about those who choose to leave, and vice-versa.
Interesting life, isn’t it?
-Allen
Re: choice, I wonder where is the tipping point at which a “choice” to believe something ceases to be honest.
I do not believe an educated person could honestly “choose” to believe that the earth is flat, or that President Monson is really a duck. Obviously, at some point, the evidence that a thing is X and not Y is so overwhelming that a “choice” to declare otherwise is either meaningless, dishonest, or insane.
Now, the evidence concerning the antiquity of the Book of Mormon is not quite as one-sided as the evidence for a spherical earth. Where’s the line? A 51% preponderance of evidence? 8 to 2? 99% probability?
Allen wrote:
Perhaps it does just boil down to choice, as several have noted. And, I suspect, those who choose to stay will continue to be incredulous and shake their heads about those who choose to leave, and vice-versa.
The Church has many benefits, as noted by John Dehlin, and of course Tom Ferguson. I think most people can see that. But commitment and covenant-making is an important part of the LDS lifestyle. It’s not like Catholicism, where you can show up on Saturday evening or Sunday morning for 30-45 minutes then your worship is done for the week. They don’t keep membership records. In the 19 years I was a Catholic I’ve never been visited by a parish priest. The closest I came was a priest whose brother lived next door, and he, the priest, only came by for family visits and a couple of social (alcoholic) drinks once in a blue moon. Of course there are Catholics who take it very seriously, but in my experience they have been few. Notwithstanding this, I still feel no desire to return to Catholicism, as easy as it would be.
On Friday I went shopping and saw a member of the Church, an old friend, but I didn’t recognise him until I walked past, as he had aged so much, so I just kept walking rather than go back. This man has an interesting history. Thirty-two years ago the missionaries literally lifted him out of a gutter. He was an alcoholic, and was told that if he kept drinking it would kill him. The short of it is that the missionaries taught him and his wife (he was also on the verge of divorce), and they were both converted. He became very enthusiastic and was ordained an Elder in something like seven or eight months, and served on a bishopric.
When I became their bishop they had lots of problems, and I wondered if they would even stay in the Church. They battled through those problems over the years, “tests of faith”, if you will. Today he is in his 80s, and as I said, had aged much, but in reality he would have been dead not long past 50 if he hadn’t changed his lifestyle. The Church, literally, saved his life. He is not be any means the only one.
It is impossible to deny good things like this. While I was literally “educating myself out of the Church”, they were wrapped in meetings, genealogy, temple attendance. To me that was simplistic, but in a way, I suppose, sort of like ignoring the “darkness” all about mentioned in Lehi’s dream, and pressing forward. However, I don’t see this as Allen’s description of “incredulous head shaking”. No, I don’t do that. I can see why members stay. I understand why members stay. And I even admire many of them.
But the “downside”, for me anyway, is all that I’ve mentioned so far. You cannot get a round peg in a square hole. And sitting through meetings and mentally questioning so much of what you hear can be unpleasant. I choose not to let it become a social club, or “the best brotherhood anywhere”, because they take it all so literally, and I can’t. To pretend otherwise would be dishonesty to myself.
As for Theodore’s “musing”:
Is the FAIRblog accomplishing its goal, or is it doing more harm than good for the Church? Just a musing, not a condemnation.
I think if the FAIR blog promotes intelligent and respectful discussion, it is more than accomplishing its goal. Sometimes, a too enthusiastic defense of the Church can do more harm than good. Sometimes listening and reasoning is more important than winning every argument.
Louis,
My sincere apologies for what apparently are my poor communication skills. My previous post was not referring to you at all but to the comments made by Steve in the post just above mine.
Steve said,
To which I commented, “I find it ironical that a solid Later-Day Saint must be so guarded and careful about loosing his faith when he ventures onto a blog set up specifically to defend the Church.”
I’m sorry Louis, but I was not even thinking about you.
Theodore
My friend from Oz, see Ray’s comments above, opines that “sometimes listening and reasoning is more important than winning every argument.” Notice the words “sometimes” and “every.” The unsaid is that most of the time listening and reasoning is not worth the effort and hence winning or attempting to appear to win an argument is a worthy endeavor. This is silly. Listening to a conversation, on a blog or in academic discourse, and then reasoning is all that matters, unless the point is to perform on a stage before a real or imagined audience in an effort to punish others and justify oneself.
Take the following as an example of how not to listen to a conversation. Thomas, see above, insisted that I have been guilty of “denying in one place that the Church and God are identical, and conflating them in another.” Really? I have never met anyone who thought that the words “church” and “god” were alternative ways of referring to the same thing, except in the remark above. I distinguish God from his covenant people. I certainly do not conflate the two. The reason is that I don’t confuse the architect/owner/builder and master of a ship with its sometimes motley crew. The crew are followers of the Captain, and they may manifest differences in loyalty and skill and knowledge in knowing their jobs and in actually doing them well. But the crew might also be said to be sailing or attempting to sale a “true ship.” That would only make sense is what one had in mind was that the crew was striving to follow the instructions (or commands) of the “architect/owner/builder and master of the ship.
What Thomas may have been trying to express is his fondness for the expression “true church.” And, in his attempt to do this, he may have wrongly assumed that I was denying that God has a people to whom he has made available the fulness of his plan of redemption, as well as priesthood keys, or that in one degree or another some of the Saints are actually true and faithful to their Captain and King, that they are genuinely striving to keep the covenant they have made with God. If Thomas did not understand something I have posted, he could have asked for a clarification. And this is also true of those who wrongly assumed that every religious community thinks of itself as grounded in covenants with God.
“And this is also true of those who wrongly assumed that every religious community thinks of itself as grounded in covenants with God.”
I think we have gone the rounds on this one. So let’s ask, for the sake of winning an argument, if the Church is not true (is that a pointed enough hypothetical?) and God is not in it/has nothing to do with it, are allegiances to covenants made within the Mormon context relevant? This is where we would have say that an argument can only be won if you agree that they would be irrelevant. If you don’t, then inspite of an academic/philosophical appeal to certain forms of ethics we can’t settle this debate. I for, and apparentlly others also, see covenants as only binding or important so far as they represent an actual relationship, expectation, contract, etc, with deity. Should we honor for example a covenant to pay tithing and build up God’s Church we our substance and lives, if after having made said covenant we no longer believe that it is God’s Church? You may argue yes, but you would certainly be in the minority on such a position. What about a covenant not to commit murder or adultery? I would argue, that inspite of the fact that these are obvious proscriptions within the framework of acceptable LDS behaviors, they are not exclusively so. So, I would honor these covenants, because I would expect that God requires adherence to these principles whether LDS or not. So the point is we do have to make a choice, and youre characterization of those who leave the Church, as covenant breakers, only suits the perspective that the Church is actually true. Since that is why people leave of break covenants, if you wish, in the first place, therefore the debate starts there. Hence, you are putting the cart before the horse.
PS –
Your argument that the broader religious communities are not covenant based, may be largely correct but is completely missing the point in the first place. I never intended to define Baptist perspective on covenants, but rather just point out that LDS covenants are only as good as:
1) The LDS Church is the “True Church”, and therefore God is the author of said covenants.
2) Such covenants are universally acceptable (generally, and this would require choirce). Marital fidelity for example.
Some on this thread have asked: “why do some people…have a desire to believe…and some do not?” It is possible to guess, but I am not sure that listing the vast number of actual or potential reasons would be useful. What would be the point? There cannot be just one simple answer or pat formula. Does faith or faithfulness, or unfaith and its consequence–that is, unfaithfulness–depend upon our guesses about such matters? The answer has to be an emphatic NO! Why? There is simply no reason to assume that the life experiences of those who are faithful or who go missing or who never sign on are all the same.
However, for some trying to justify their choice to go missing becomes a life venture. We see evidence of this on blogs such as this, as well as lists and boards. The same people tend to turn up trying to justify their unfaith. Nor is there a good reason to assume that the life experiences of all those who remain faithful are the same. I appreciate the variety of their stories.
The question seemingly being discussed is why we see different outcomes among the Saints, when they have gone through the same process? Is there an identity between the two groups? But the prior question has to be: is there an identical process? I have seen no evidence that there is such a thing.
We have had, instead, some efforts to insist that the answer to this question has to be traced back to God. He could, some have more than suggested, fix things if he cared to; he could, for example, force everyone to turn out the same. Or he could at least make this or that doubt that I may entertain go away. Such a one as God could, if he were a decent chap, some seem to say, even provide proof on demand. Or he give better signs. Why would God, if there is a God, some ask, stress those who think of themselves as sincere, honest seekers of truth? Could he not at least plump up the faith of those who suddenly find themselves overcome by doubts? So, if there is a God, then he (or it) is ultimately to blame for unfaith. And since there is unfaith, there is either no God or, if there is one, he (or it) is either morally flawed or disinterested in human affairs. Something like that has been set out on this thread by various people who see themselves as enlightened folks, and who have become functional atheists.
For those who have for whatever reason gone missing, I must explain that I am not in the business of validating their choices or celebrating either their intellectual and moral superiority over those who remain faithful. For me it is a miracle to see so many who survive and whose faith flourishes in the middle of the mania of mocking they get from critics who have a passion to poison the faith of others with their often tall tales of woe. I contrast my own encounter with divine things with the sour tales told by those who have chosen for whatever reason to go missing. From my perspective, it has been a series of miracles that have grounded my own faith and caused it to flourish despite the rampant dis-ease and distemper of the world around us.
“I choose — in the absence of compelling evidence either way — to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven, who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him —and therefore I diligently seek him.”
While I can’t speak for everybody, I have a hard reconciling the above statement as a consistent perspective from a “functional atheist”. Your final critique places your arguments into a position where you are conflating God, who many here on both sides believe in, with the Church – which is under debate. The underlying assumption for you characterization in the fourth paragraph of the preceeding comment is “if the Church is true”. In other words, and to re-emphasize, nobody is placing God on trial here, they are placing the Church on trial regarding IT’s claims about God. To borrow your metaphor, the real question being asked is, why do some people feel that membership in the Church is paying them “dividends”, while others feel it is not.
As far as my comments go, I think we have gone the rounds here, and I do enjoy the dialogue but barring anything which enhances the conversation, I will withdraw from active participation in this topic.
Cowboy tells us that, without “compelling evidence either way”–that is, without a good reason–he has decided “to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven” who rewards those, like him, of course, who diligently seek this God. He neglected to explain why he made this choice of a God. Nor did he spell out what constitutes seeking this God. Since Cowboy employs a mercenary metaphor, I am disappointed that he neglected to explain what investments are required and what dividends he has earned or expects to earn from his diligent seeking.
Has, I wonder, Cowboy’s diligent quest yielded anything he might share with us, other than his bald assertion that about its reality there is no “compelling evidence either way”? He neglected to indicate, for those who might wish to follow his lead, what exactly is involved in his quest? It seems a tad bit unkind of Cowboy to have withdrawn from this conversation without even a hint about how he engages in his quest. How has he gone about seeking his God diligently? Or how he expects to recognize his God, if and when he finds it? Has, I wonder, Cowboy’s “loving, just God in heaven,” about whose reality there is no “compelling evidence either way,” ever been involved in human affairs or made itself known in human history? How, I wonder, does Cowboy explain to those who see the evils in this world as compelling evidence against a God of love and justice? Cowboy seems to have ridden off just in the nick of time–that is, before he even began to answer all the sticky questions about the contents and grounds of his religion.
I find myself immediately drawn back for some clarification. You may recognize the quote at the beginning of my last comment as a remark made by Thomas on February 19th, 2009 at 2:01 pm. I thought it was a good reflection of my own perspective on things, but I do not deserve the credit.
In response to your questions, I choose (keyword: choose) to believe this way because I find it productive and good. I find nothing inherently problematic with the belief that God exists, that he is good, and generally cares for the welfare of his children, and finally that he is a rewarder of his children. I hope that these things are correct, so I choose to let this line of thinking influence my perspective. Recognizing this, I claim to know with an absolute perfectness, nothing regarding deity as it has not been revealed to me in such a straightforward manner. I choose to see the order in creation, and the necessity of purpose, I feel inclined to believe that the human tendency towards emotions such as love (love of life, spouse, children, even fellowmen) must bare some semblance to the divine. Again, I hope based on this, though I cannot with certainty speak to the particulars of how God operates, thinks, influences, etc. I don’t have a religion outside of this, I am inclined towards the teachings of Jesus and The New Testament, and can even accept the general Christian doctrines surrounding Christ and the Atonement. That being said, I could not nail all of this down to a defined religion per se`. As for what to expect, how would I recognize God, I guess I don’t know but I tend to think that he understands that and has a solution figured out. I don’t expect to find him in the layered insults levied as a pretense to defense from someone who can academically speak of Christian virtues but fail to display them on a blog which in sincerity seeks to address differences.
Cowboy rode back into this blog with platitudes and piety blazing. He wants us to know that he finds “nothing inherently problematic about God.” He even thinks that God–undefined–exists, is good, and “generally cares for his children,” and is just–that is, “rewards his children.” He neglects to indicate if this is by giving them either what they desire or deserve. Where many others have found both lacking, Cowboy finds order in creation and a necessary purpose, though he does not identify either the order or purpose, or given reasons for his opinions. And he chooses to believe, he tells us, that human tendencies like love of children somehow mirror the divine. He neglects to indicate why he does not see the much more ubiquitous hatred and rampant evils in this world as mirroring God. He would, perhaps, see the flaws in trying to move by analogy from human things to the divine, if he had read David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume, incidently, seems to argue that, if we have any clear knowledge of divine things, it is because God has revealed it. Be that as it may, Cowboy does not explain the enormous evidence of human hatred for each other and for their own children. Do those clearly malevolent tendencies somehow mirror a demonic that afflicts the human condition and is manifest in the distempers of human history? Cowboy does not say.
Cowboy is, he testifies, sort of “inclined towards the teachings of Jesus and The New Testament.” At this point Cowboy begins to touch on the question I raised about whether he imagines the divine in some way present in human history. But he neglects to identify which specific teachings or what part of the historical setting those teaching in the New Testament are placed in. Does Cowboy, I wonder, include among the teachings he admires the picture of Jesus as an exorcist and miracle worker, or as God incarnate, or as the once dead and now resurrected Lord? He does not tell us what in the New Testament fits his fancy? Nor does Cowboy provide reasons for his pious opinions. Instead, he declines to be specific about his religion, though he does assert that he “can even accept the general Christian doctrine surrounding Christ and the Atonement.” Notice the word “even.” I wonder what contents he includes under the label “general Christian doctrine”? Cowboy is nothing if not modest: he boasts that he cannot “nail any of this down to a defined religion.”
If Cowboy had been so inclined, he might have easily discovered that there is no “general Christian doctrine.” There is, instead, a host of specific teachings and history followed by an array of controversy over every detail. And he could have easily confronted the host of objections to the platitudes he paraded in his last post. He could have discovered that there are those who wonder if the God Christians and Jews pin their hopes on cares at all for human beings, given the obvious, enormous suffering in this world, and the evils in the hearts of those who sponsor and benefit from it. Is Cowboy, I wonder, aware of the objections to his platitudes and pious sentiments from those who don’t believe in God?
But Cowboy’s pious sentiments are the prolegomena to his clincher–an insult directed at me. He moans that I “can academically speak of Christian virtues”–he has in mind the little spanking I administered over his inept gab about virtue. But, he confidently opines, I “fail to display” these virtues on this blog. So it seems that his response to my importuning began with platitudes and ended with an insult. Instead of listening and learning, Cowboy seems to need to score points by issuing insults.
Louis:
You and I have reached a point where all we can do is trade jabs. Rather than continue, I will again withdraw and let my last remarks stand.
Louis, Feb. 22 at 8:30 a.m.:
“Thomas…insisted that I have been guilty of ‘denying in one place that the Church and God are identical, and conflating them in another.’ Really? …. I certainly do not conflate the two.”
Louis, Feb. 15 at 9:43 p.m.:
“How can [B], I wonder, expect God to answer his prayers, when he has fiddled the truth about his unfaith in God?” (Emphasis added.)
And finally cf. B’s post of Feb. 15 at 10:00 a.m. (to which Louis @ 9:43 p.m. responded):
“I do not believe the Church is ‘true’ in the way most people use the term.”
B clearly expressed doubt in the Church, not in God. In response, you, Louis, characterized him as lacking faith in God. Sure looks to me like you’re conflating the Church and God, if lack of faith in the one is equivalent to lack of faith in the other. This looks to me like a dodge, but I’m happy to hear explained why I’m mistaken.
Louis, the “platitudes and pious sentiments” against which you’ve deployed your rhetorical artillery are (as Cowboy noted) not Cowboy’s but mine. You ridicule my faith — of which you have but a synopsis — as simplistic. Which it might well be — though not for lack of study, pondering and prayer.
Louis, you may disagree, but I see in you the original sin of sectarian religion: the conviction that another man’s different belief can only be explained by that man’s personal unrighteousness. The other man is either spiritually lazy, morally cowardly, or obstinate. Deep Down Inside, he knows what he should really believe — or at least, that he should experiment further upon a particular Word — but he defies the Spirit and refuses to come to the altar.
Do you deny this?
I will understand if you do not, and not hold it against you. The whole point of my coming here — the preeminent LDS apologetic forum, as far as I can tell — was to see if I could find a persuasive argument that LDS epistemology could allow any other conclusion, apart from an extreme predestinarian one.
You wrote earlier, Louis, that “Faith in God begins with a choice. Faith must necessarily come before any of us really know much of anything.” (Feb. 19, 1:12 p.m.) I agree. That was what I meant when I wrote that ” choose — in the absence of compelling evidence either way — to believe that there is a loving, just God in heaven, who is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” (Feb. 19, 2:01 p.m.) We start at the beginning with a binary choice: Is there more to existence than can be known by unaided reason? I choose to believe yes. I’m still trying to understand why, but I do. Quite possibly, it’s because the world would be horribly unjust if that were not the case, and so I “against hope believe in hope.”
So far, so much on the same page, as far as I can tell. You have had experiences and thoughts which expand on that basic premise, to the point where you are convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints constitutes God’s true covenant people. I have not reached that point. (“Yet,” perhaps — or perhaps not.)
Then you say, “When we confront the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are faced with a choice to experiment by growing the tiny little seed of faith.” (Feb. 18, 10:06 a.m.) And there it is — the source of the question everyone keeps ignoring. Alma 32:27 indicates that the “particle of faith” — the ultimate seed for a mature faith — consists of the “desire to believe.” Where does this desire to believe come from?
Perhaps God only equips an elect with this seed — the predestinarian position. Or perhaps all of us have it inherently — the Pelagian doctrine. Or perhaps God equips everyone with that seed.
The Third Article of Faith declares that “all mankind” have the potential to be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. So it can’t be the first possibility. In either of the latter two circumstances, under LDS doctrine, having that seed to plant is an essential ingredient for salvation: We emphasize the hard work of digging and dunging about the seedling, but without the seed in the first place, we’re just moving dirt around.
So I have to conclude that it is fundamental to LDS doctrine that every man has, somewhere in his mind, a “particle” of desire to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one institution in which he can obtain salvation. At this point, I’m willing to waive semantics, and wrestle either with the Church or with God Himself on this question: Why should this be so?
What is it about the Church, that a randomly-selected person — say, a good Catholic, raised in a faithful family, and raising a faithful family of his own — want to believe that the faith of his fathers is false, and the implausible message from the two palefaced guys at his door is true? Why should he not want Catholicism to be true — or Islam, or Buddhism?
Louis, I’ve tried to understand your argument that LDS covenant theology is somehow the critical point. Is your argument that covenant theology is inherently desirable? That all men of good will should obviously want the true Faith to have a covenantal structure? Leaving aside the fact that covenant theology isn’t an exclusively LDS concept (see, e.g., Heb. 8:6-12), and is held in various forms by most Reformed churches as well as, apparently, the present Pope, why should a desire to believe in a covenantal tradition be among the critical elements of a saving faith?
I have been busy with other things, but I just noticed that our doubting Thomas has blasted away at my response to Cowboy. Thomas clearly seems annoyed because, when Cowboy quoted some of his language, I did not validate those pious sentiments. He does not, however, deal with what I wrote. Instead he shifted grounds.
It seems that when I mentioned that some who pick a fight with God end up as functional atheists, Thomas turned for support to our admittedly unfaithful B, who has told us, in a modest understatement, that he is “a closet doubter,” though presumably an LDS Bishop. B does not believe the church is true in the sense that faithful Latter-day Saints do. What exactly does he not believe? “I do not believe,” he boasted, “the Book of Mormon is a true account of real people.” So he must consider that Joseph Smith was either a liar or lunatic. B also boasted that he finds “many of the church’s teaching to be in conflict with the way I see the world around me.” That goes without saying. He provided illustrations. When he prayed about the Book of Mormon, he got nothing by negative impressions–”if God was speaking at all, he was telling me it is not true.” What could he expect, given his disposition? B operates with profound objections to what he calls the Church. Take the following as an example: “one of by [my?] big objections to the Church, is exactly this inconsistency. If the church is true,” B concluded, “then I think God should be morew [sic] consistent.” So his problem is God. Later B. clarified what he meant: “if the heavens are closed to people like me, where is God’s justice?” So it turns out that God is B’s target. And not “believing” in the Church is his way of setting out complaints about God. His argument runs as follows: if someone as morally qualified as B cannot get God to show him a sign, then God is simply not just. B flatly denies the very core of the gospel of Jesus Christ: he boasted that the atonement “does not make sense to me. I don’t know why it was necessary or how it works.” The gospel is just “so weird,” B insists. B seems not to have considered either death or sin. He apparently cannot see the point to any of the talk about the need for redemption from either than is packed into our scriptures. Well, what would one expect, since he brushes aside the Book of Mormon.
Thomas wants to justify his own agnostic stance. He complains because he senses that I believe that the Church of Jesus Christ “constitutes God’s true covenant people.” Thomas will have none of that. He tells us that he has “not reached that point. (‘yet,’ perhaps–or perhaps not.)” So much for his desire to believe. Since he waffles on his own desire to please God, he thinks that we must have, before we can begin to trust God, a final answer to the question: “where does the desire to believe come from”?
Thomas ends with what he considers profound questions. “What is it about the Church, that a randomly-selected person–say, a good Catholic, raised in a faithful family, and raising a faithful family of his own–[would?] want to believe that the faith of his fathers is false, and the implausible message from the two palefaced guys at his door is true? Why should he not want Catholicism to be true–or Islam, or Buddhism?” To me this is a silly question. It seem obvious that what we call the tradition of one’s fathers, coupled with a vast host of subtle temptations, cultural and intellectual influences, including those agents seen and unseen who are, I am confident, fighting against God make this question absurd. The Book of Mormon identifies the problem as the “chains of darkness.” The Light (aka gospel) shines into the darkness of this world, but the darkness rejects the Light. So only those who are or choose to be anxious to receive the Light respond to the Gospel. Is there not overwhelming evidence of the demonic in our world? And the mockery or sneering by Thomas about “two palefaced guys” is unseemly and unwarranted.
In addition, I admit that I was not previously been aware that a genuinely devote Roman Catholic, who is open to the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is asked to believe that “the faith of his fathers is false.” Thomas goes too far. Instead, they are invited to bring with them whatever is good and true in their faith tradition, of which there is much, and enjoy the blessings that can follow fidelity to a covenant with God. The fact is that many who are devout and deeply desire to serve God, who are busy seeking for light, are prevented from doing finding it by a vast host of things, one of which is the kind of infidelity to Jesus Christ manifested by B and by our doubting Thomas. I have encountered some who are not willing to listen to the gospel, or who are decoyed into going missing, precisely because they see dissidents and cultural Mormons stinking up the place. Nominal Latter-day Saints are a kind blight on our efforts to bring the gospel to those who desperately need and even desire to be God’s covenant people. Recognizing that our flaws tarnish and frustrate the building of the Kingdom of God, should cause those with moral earnestness to be kind and cautious but that does not mean that they must validate the ideology of those in that not yet and probably never group.
Louis, you crochety old Jesuit, I was one of those “palefaced guys” getting doors slammed in my face, and my memories are a lot fresher than yours. What is it they say — the Church must be true, or the missionaries would have destroyed it long ago? My gentle chuckling at my fumbling missionary self and my equally hapless but beloved companions is not at all “sneering.” I leave it to men of good will to spot the real sneers here.
I note you avoided the invitation to explain yourself concerning the contradiction I caught you in, denying you conflated faith in God with faith in the Church when you had done exactly that. No honorable explanation being forthcoming, and upon your compounding the deceit by sweeping it under the rug, I call Alma 11:36.
It’s the first time that I come to this blog. I am doing some research on people leaving their religion for my Ph.D and I am quite interested in the kind of questions that Allen raised. I must say that I have enjoyed the conversation and especially inputs by Allen, Thomas, B, etc. for a variety of reasons.
On the other hand, what has disturbed me the most, as an active believing member in particular, are Louis Midgley’s posts, especially his later ones. Dr. Midgley, you are a very poor apologist, to be kind. I don’t think anyone in or out of the Church is going to be strengthened by your opinions and by the way you express them. If you want to look at a good apologist, look at Allen or Scott Gordon. There is somebody who understands that to defend you also need to listen and to recognize points of difficulty, even to admit errors.
The conversation in this blog was very enlightening and I found people raised good questions and points until Midgley came to a fundamentalist defend by insulting them.
We can keep believing in the Church but also ‘understand’ why others may not choose to. It’s a matter of faith and faith is not exclusively a matter of worthiness.
Dr. Midgley, can you find something better to do than to damage the Church through your arrogance? It only strengthens the perception that Mormons cannot have good reasoned discussions about religion. There are dozens and dozens of us faithful members of the Church who are involved in graduate studies that relate to religion and we feel increasingly alienated by people like Midgley and others at FARMS who seem to be saying that we should be out of the Church if we do not believe as they do. Good thing we have Richard Bushman and others who are good mentors and understand our difficulties and struggles to be faithful while confronting difficult issues.
Sorry for the outburst. I truly enjoyed the tone and exchange in the rest of the post and I just hope it can continue without Midgley hijacking it.
Dhogge,
Welcome to the blog.
I, for one, do not agree with you concerning Dr. Midgley’s contributions to this or to any other conversation in which he and I have taken part. You may not like the way he says what he says, but my experience has shown that one dismisses what he says at one’s own peril.
For example, the last post by Lou was, I believe, spot-on. It addressed doubts and their place within the Church, which is a valid area of discourse. I, like him, have wondered how someone like B could be a bishop and have the doubts he expressed.
Doubts are real; they are all around us and sometimes they are a part of us. Thomas has those doubts. B has those doubts. Lou has said that he has had doubts. People shouldn’t necessarily be out of the Church because they have doubts, but isn’t it reasonable to ask whether they should be in leadership positions while possessing them? It isn’t a worthiness issue; it is a matter of leadership—we always do well to follow those who can testify, through personal experience, of the way that we should follow. B and Thomas, by their own statements, are not able to so testify because they haven’t had those personal experiences.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that B should not be a bishop because of his doubts. His continued service is entirely up to his leaders. But I cannot help but feel sad for both B and his congregants when he cannot testify—with knowledge—to the validity and reality of the atonement.
B may be a good administrator and get along great with people. Only a small part of what most bishops do is related to administration, however. The majority of a bishop’s call is to counsel with members, help them to recognize their errors, and steer them to forgiveness that only comes through Christ. The atonement, of course, is central to that process. If a bishop cannot tell his congregants, with certainty, that the atonement is real, that Christ lives, and that forgiveness is possible then both the bishop and the congregants are the poorer for it.
Dhogge, you find fault with the approach that Lou used because he was “insulting” B and Thomas. Yet, you then turn around and label Lou as “a very poor apologist” and as possessing “arrogance.” Why are alleged insults to be shunned when they come from Lou but to be accepted when they come from you? The civility you see as lacking in Lou’s posts is certainly not promoted in yours.
All are welcome to post here—including Dhogge and Dr. Midgley—provided they are civil. Please try to exemplify the level of discourse that you wish to see in others.
-Allen
Brother dhogge, you indicate that you enjoyed this thread “until Midgley came to a fundamentalist defend [defense?] by insulting them.” I have been called several names before but never “fundamentalist.” I am interested in knowing why he chose that label. Since you are a graduate student in religion, what is there about anything that I have posted on this list or that I have published elsewhere that warrants the label fundamentalist. Please help me understand what you had in mind–that is, why you picked that always loaded and very often denigrating epitaph.
I fully agree with you that, as you put it, “we can keep believing in the Church but also ‘understand’ why others may not choose to.” And I fully agree that it is, again as you put it, “a matter of faith and faith is not exclusively a matter of worthiness.” I have witnessed those in prison for very serious crimes who turned to God (repented) and came to trust him (faith). If worthiness were a sufficient condition for faith, then none of us could have faith. And none of us could have hope of redemption. One of many reasons is that only God can save us from our sins. When we have faith, even a tiny bit of trust in God, are we not seeking God’s mercy?
But something is obviously irritating you. You are, for reasons that escape me, terribly troubled by what I have posted on this thread.
You claim to speak for “dozens and dozens of us faithful members of the Church who are involved in graduate studies that relate to religion.” And you claim that those graduate students “feel increasingly alienated by people like Midgley and others at FARMS who seem to be saying that we should be out of the Church if we do not believe as they do.” Who, I wonder, are those at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship who are annoyed by the Maxwell Institute? And why? Do you have in mind John Gee? Morgan Davis? Kristian Heal? Matt Roper? George Mitton? Jerry Bradford? Dan Peterson? I wonder how familiar you are with the Maxwell Institute. What exactly have you read that it has published? At last count this includes 117 books, and over one hundred thousand printed pages. The FARMS Review has been in print for twenty years. I wonder if you are familiar with the academic work of the 250 different authors whose essays we have published. Are all of these, from your perspective, objectionable in the way you have lashed out at me? Which of my essay has offended you? And why? Need I point out that it is not exactly wise to have opinions about books or essays one has not read. We have published the work of graduate students. And a great many of the authors we have published started out like you as graduate students. Need I remind you that it is not prudent to insult a potential publisher for what one might produce in the future.
Those involved with the FARMS Review, among many other things, defend Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon from criticism. In doing this we follow scholars like Richard Bushman and Terryl Givens. We do not thereby seek to drive people out of the Church; we seek, instead, as well as we can to deepen and defend the faith of the Saints. In doing this we may, of course, offend or annoy those who for various reasons desire a different Church–perhaps one in which Joseph Smith has been turned into a liar or lunatic and the Book of Mormon reduced to frontier fiction and so forth.
I probably can speak for my associates in saying that none of us believe the Brethren are or were infallible, or that the Saints both individually and collectively are faultless. And, of course, there are a host of interesting and challenging questions that face thoughtful Saints. We love questions. We live in a world filled with questions. And we can tolerate ambiguity. Our history is messy precisely because it is a real history of real people. But it is also a history in which divine beings have been actors.
Just as it is obvious that many are converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and are transformed by it into new beings, it is also true, for a host of reasons, that some cease to believe and go missing. It pains me greatly to see this happen. Here below there are real gains and also, unfortunately, real losses. No one can boast of having their celestial seat locked up. And none of us can be confident that God has accepted the offering we place on the altar. We hope for divine mercy.
I await your response. I really would like to know what has irritated you, since your remarks leave many questions open. I genuinely would like to know what it is that is behind your comments above. If you would prefer not to spell it out on this thread, then please–I beg you–right now phone me at 801-225-6680. Then you can lay out your objections. I really want to know what led to your remarks above.
Allen,
Thank you for the welcome. I recognize that I was quite disturbed by the posts and for this reason I may have expressed myself stronger than I wished. I do not wish to comment on Dr. Midgley as a person because I don’t know him (God will judge him and his heart) but I can comment about his abilities as an apologist and the effects that I believe emerge, in my imperfect opinion, from his way of being an apologist. For me an LDS apologist in a direct exchange with another should be first of all concerned with the individual. I feel my first concern as an LDS Christian should be to help somebody who comes in search of help, if he is indeed doing so sincerely as he/she seeks for understanding. In the bishop and others I see individuals who have come to this post because they want to find some help and possible solutions to problems and doubts. I say this because I have several friends among LDS intellectuals who feel similarly. How are we going to help them? By talking about how hypocrite they are and judging them and making all kinds of assumptions about what they should and should not do? It is not our place to judge in that way and responding in this way, with accusations about worthiness is only going to push people further and increase the tension within them. As the bishop had said he already feels this condemnation which is exactly the problem at the root of the tension and that inner tension is a problem among many who want to believe but struggle. Many are indeed wonderful people who have given a lot to the church. Why should we begin with the assumption that people have broken their covenants or are lying if they are sincerely struggling?
As I had previously stated your comments at the beginning of the posts did not express the kind of judgment towards the bishop that Dr. Midgley instead showed in a couple of his posts. Now, I’m puzzled by your change of attitude which seems to come in defense to Dr. Midgley’s approach. I can sympathize with you that I was not as cordial toward Dr. Midgely as I should have and for this I apologize but I’m wondering if you are advocating the kind of judging approach that he seems to show. Midgley wasn’t just wondering whether “the bishop should be in leadership positions while possessing doubts” and he didn’t express himself to say he was just sad for him. Maybe because I don’t live in America and I don’t really know anything about Dr. Midgley I read too much into his words.
I am just trying to understand what your objectives are in this blog because I learned about it with enthusiasm, both for my own research and for what I thought would benefit some of my friends.
I have several friends who have left or are leaving the Church with great pain and difficulty and when they look for help they receive condemnation. I feel they are often only pushed further and being kicked when they are down with their questions and doubts. I know that is how they would have read the comments by Dr. Midgley and that is why it hurt me because I felt as if he was talking to some of my friends who are in the Church and trying to decide what to do. I agree with you that you don’t need to leave the Church to deal with your doubts and I also feel sad for the bishop. But it is not my place to worry about the members in his ward, that is the Lord’s job, his stake president, and who in authority. After all it is the bishop who posted and not his ward members.
But I want to make a strong statement that from my experience we need more people who can at least ‘understand’ why somebody does not believe. It does not seem like Dr. Midgley can. I looked at this blog to see if I could recommend it to these struggling friends but I must recognize that Dr. Midgley’s made me wonder about doing it.
So let me restate what I said previously. Probably Dr. Midgley is sincerely trying to help others deal with doubts and problems. I’m sorry but I fail to see its efficacy.
Could you also please explain what you mean that dismissing what he says is to one’s peril. A blanket statement like that seems to raise him to a level of authority that I guess I have missed. Or did you mean something specific that he said? Perhaps you meant that one needs to look beyond the way in which he says it
I wouldn’t doubt that Dr. Midgley has a great deal that could be added to the conversation, nor would I suggest that he doesn’t have an argument regarding what he call’s B’s lack of “probity”. That being said, he does not call it like it is, rather he call’s it like he see’s it – which has generally been more convenient for his arguments. Overall his candor has been highly condescending. He entered the conversation by calling B a liar, and from there he steered the discussion to attacks on the character or intellect of either Thomas, B, myself, or Craig Paxton. I should parenthetically add that Craig Paxton was equally distasteful in the presentation of his perspective. In our last two exchanges, Louis did not issue his comments as though he were speaking to me, rather he offered a snide critique of me as though he was speaking to an assumed audience. Regarding my question to him, about those who turn their backs on former faith to covert to Mormonism he twice redirected the conversation to a comparative analysis regarding Baptists and the covenant relationship. He almost seemed to imply that only Mormons maintain convenants as an integral part of their theology. Even still, never once did he answer the question. Never once did he answer Thomas’s question regarding the origin of desire spoken of in Alma 32, which I thought was a fairly neutral question. Instead he labled Thomas a “functional atheist”. He misrepresented B’s complaints as though he were attacking God, yet others seemed to understand B’s objective. It appears that in the name of defense, Dr. Midgley has effectively turned off everybody but those who were ultimately on his side in the first place. Whatever points he may have had, and as legitimately valid as they may have been, are all lost in the delivery to those who could have been most benefited from the Church’s perspective. I think the real shame of it all is that on February 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am, Louis made some very good points and had post that many of us might have given greater credence to. Nevertheless, the ensuing conversation and tone has swept those comments into a pile of stuff many folks would rather not touch.
Dear brother Midgley,
Thank you for your latest post. I agree wholeheartedly with your statements and I wish I could meet you and really come to know you but I live in the UK. Given the evidence from this later post I feel I have read too much in your previous comments but allow me to say that there are indeed different tones in your posts.
And yes, you are right, I have not read enough from FARMS to make a blank statement as I did. I got carried away in my irritation and I apologize.
To answer your questions in addition to my previous post I think that I can add the following. I feel that the approach of defense of the Church without an accompanying recognition of the human filter is usually not effective among young Mormon intellectuals. You say that you don’t believe that Joseph Smith was perfect or that the prophet is ineffable but you probably recognize that much rhetoric in the Church makes it appear so for understandable reasons. I have a friend who shared with me some concerns about Joseph and polygamy only after repeated assurances that I was not going to think he was an apostate. But sharing the doubt made it more bearable. Because, as Givens writes in ‘People of Paradox’ we do not openly talk about doubts, doubts become immediately associated with apostasy. This fear of apostasy is one of the first internal struggles many experience and the last thing that is needed is to raise the anxiety that it is indeed so. There is a feel that one needs to repent but there is a lack of knowledge about how, how to exactly drive doubt out. It may end up feeling like an impossibility and some then throw the towel because they feel doubt has driven them unavoidably out. That is why I think that many need first pf all to feel that we recognize the difficulties with the human filter in Joseph or others but nevertheless we believe.
I guess my approach goes back to what Pres. Eyring was saying in the press conference about wanting people to come to partake of what we have to offer to ‘whatever degree they want to.’ Maybe I should be more concerned with the wolves we could end up having among us but my personal experience is a sadness that comes from seeing stalwart return missionaries feel driven out by the black or white approach they feel in the Church.
Maybe I’m wrong, but to be honest with you I would rather have someone believe the Book of Mormon to be inspired fiction than to leave the Church because they feel that they have to believe it to be fully historical and they cannot. I would rather have them partake of the goodness of the Book of Mormon whatever they want to think about it because truth has its own way to make itself manifest.
That is one other thing that I meant to say in regards to FARMS. Especially in the Review of books I felt that sometimes character assassination and extreme defensiveness was used to respond to attacks. Why not simply concentrate on the problems with the evidence presented rather than attacking Signature Books or others? There is a sense in which the anxiety expressed in some apologetic responses gives weight to the doubts and problems. That’s why I loved elder Hales talk from last Conference about responding in a Christian way. I think that works also within the Church for the brothers and sisters who are struggling and unfortunately are often given an extra push outward but feeling that the options are either ‘orthodoxy’ in whatever distorted manner is conceived or ‘apostasy.’ I think we have two levels of church activity, ‘chapel’ and ‘temple’ as Douglas Davies explains. Let’s not make the chapel requirements as strong as the temple’s.
Here are some thoughts. I’ll be interested in your views.
Dhogge said:
I sensed that you were disturbed; it came across in your post. I do have a simple question for you, however. What if I changed a single word in your comment so that it read, instead, as follows:
What is the difference? Cannot Lou (or anyone else for that matter) judge B on his abilities as a bishop based on his comments in the same manner that you judge Lou and his abilities as an apologist based on his comments?
People come to apologetics with different approaches and different abilities. You may not approve of Dr. Midgley’s approach to apologetics anymore than someone else may approve of B’s approach to bishoping.
Civility demands, however, that we look past the approach and try to get behind it to see the issues being raised. You seem to find it easy to understand the issues that B has raised, but obviously find it hard to understand the issues that Lou is raising. All I am saying is that Lou’s issues have merit. Treat the issues, civilly, without regard for the approach; use the same charity in evaluating Lou that you are using in evaluating B.
I can only accept B and Thomas (and everyone else on this thread) at face value. They haven’t expressed a desire for help in resolving their doubts. They’ve only expressed that they have doubts and that they understand others who also have doubts.
There are plenty of places that people can go to get information to allay doubts. There are plenty of places people can go to get information that will raise doubts. The effect of the information (regardless of the source) will depend on he individual. That is, after all, the purpose of this thread—to recognize that two people can read the same information and come to entirely different outcomes.
I can’t give B, Thomas, Craig, Lou, Cowboy, or you information that will allay doubts. I can only give you information that I have found helpful in dealing with any issues I may have faced or that others have found helpful. How that information affects the other person is (pardon the metaphor) a crap shoot. Much of it will depend on the person’s paradigm, how reliable they view the source, their ability to assimilate information, and their ability (in some cases) to recognize and live with paradoxes.
I agree that it isn’t helpful to judge another and express concerns about another’s worthiness. I certainly didn’t see that in Lou’s responses on this thread. In fact, I just went back and did a search of all responses for the words “worthy” or “worthiness.” Neither of them, when it comes to righteousness of the individual, is found in Lou’s comments. They are found, however, in B’s comments, Jared’s comments, and my comments.
We shouldn’t begin there, and I haven’t read that into any of the comments on this thread.
I haven’t gathered such a “judging approach” from Dr. Midgley’s comments, so it is not a matter of taking sides. I will suggest, however, that if you are reading his comments as overly critical or judgmental, that perhaps you are misreading him.
Perhaps.
Hopefully I am correct in assuming that you are asking about my objective in this blog post and thread, and not in the blog as a whole, which expresses lots of different views. In this post and subsequent thread, my objective is simply to understand others’ feelings relative to the original post—why we can all read the same things, go through the same process, and still have wildly different outcomes with some stronger in the Church and others out of it entirely.
That is a shame. I am sorry for their pain. I know several, as well, who either have gone through the process or are going through it now.
Note that I said “the process.” I can tell you that in my studies I’ve read some things that really rocked my view of things I thought I had previously understood. (Things like God, prophets, the Church, or people I had thought I knew.) Learning those things, assimilating them into my views, and coming out the “other side” was not an easy, enjoyable, or pain-free process. I can really feel for the pain your friends and mine have experienced.
But I can’t take it away from them. I can only be there to help them or be there as a resource for them. When it comes to “the process,” they really are on their own. I liken it to the “wrestle” which Enos had before God. Nobody else could do it for him; he had to tread the path alone and figure it out for himself.
Understood and agreed.
Understood.
Not a problem; I’d be glad to explain.
First, let me say that it has nothing to do with “authority” in an ecclesiastical sense. I refer to my personal experience with Lou. I have spent many, many hours sitting and talking with him. I have spent time eating with him. I have spent time reading his writings.
You haven’t had that advantage; I understand that. And perhaps because I have had that advantage, I can give him more “slack” than you have expressed a willingness to do. In my experience, Lou understands the relationship between faith, the Church, God, and the atonement. He understand the limitations of the knowledge of men. He knows that power of stories and their place within the Restoration.
Many of these things are areas in which people like B and Thomas have expressed doubts. They are also areas where people like Craig have analyzed the available information and jettisoned their faith, claiming greater freedom and happiness after the outcome.
To dismiss Lou’s comments and insights because one doesn’t like the approach used is to sell him short and cut oneself off from a valuable resource. That is what I meant.
I wish you the best with your own studies (in what area are you seeking your PhD?) and in your struggles with your friends. I know the pain you (and they) face.
-Allen
Allen,
Thank you for your post. I would like to address some of your points before I go to sleep and I hope that it helps you to understand where I am coming from.
You wrote:
“What is the difference? Cannot Lou (or anyone else for that matter) judge B on his abilities as a bishop based on his comments in the same manner that you judge Lou and his abilities as an apologist based on his comments?”
I find the two are quite different things. In the first place I am not sure that we should ever judge how people are doing in their calling except if we are in a position to do so ecclesiastically. The calling is from God whereas being an apologist is self-chosen. I agree with you that we should give people the benefit of the doubt and I already recognised that I didn’t fully do so with Lou (if I may also call him so) However, if I go to an apologist blog I see the written words as the primary way to create my own opinion on how someone is doing as an apologist. Being a bishop involves much more than what is and can be expressed in this post. After all I sensed a great concern from the bishop for his ward members and I didn’t feel the same concern from Lou in his regards. But as you said I just judged the words I read and not the whole person because I could not, not knowing him of course.
You also wrote
“People come to apologetics with different approaches and different abilities. You may not approve of Dr. Midgley’s approach to apologetics anymore than someone else may approve of B’s approach to bishoping.”
I had asked you if you approved of it but you did not respond to the question. Well, you actually stated that you did not feel his approach is really different from yours. However, others have felt that Lou’s comments, not all of them, but a few, were particularly insulting and unhelpful whereas they did not think the same of yours. I guess either you are more able to control your inner intensity or the readers are mistaken.
“Civility demands, however, that we look past the approach and try to get behind it to see the issues being raised. You seem to find it easy to understand the issues that B has raised, but obviously find it hard to understand the issues that Lou is raising. All I am saying is that Lou’s issues have merit. Treat the issues, civilly, without regard for the approach; use the same charity in evaluating Lou that you are using in evaluating B.”
Having already apologised for not having given Lou the benefit of the doubt I must again depart from you in my opinion of what you just stated. I’m not sure exactly what you mean by civility then. If you are returning to the very first post then I’m afraid you have overlooked my apology or have not accepted it. However, if you further mean to say that civility means that somebody cannot be criticized for how they are doing their job as an apologist I must disagree with you. I believe criticism to be potentially valuable and helpful. In fact, yours has helped me to see some points that I had neglected. Perhaps this is one larger problem I have with apologetics, the feeling that people’s actions or words, if on the right side of the equation, cannot be criticized no matter what. I still sense there is so much of a ‘friend or enemy’ dichotomy in our way of discussing the church and his doctrines and we don’t know how to deal with someone, like a doubter, who fits somewhere in the middle. So we push him on one side or the other. But I think you agree with this.
A point that I further disagree with you on is the idea of ‘Treat the issues, civilly, without regard for the approach’. I agree on the civilly part but I think the approach is very much important. Why? Because I don’t believe that issues can be separated from people. That is evident in politics where who says what and how they say is just as important as what they say. Perhaps it is so because I am so affected by our LDS understanding of spirit and I tend to judge whether something is preached in humility, shows love, and is edifying. Not that I always do so myself, but I am immediately suspicious of someone who consistently expresses negative feelings. Maybe I should not but that is a first indication of how I discern right from wrong. Then I agree that Lou had some good points but towards the end of the blog he seems to have become frustrated and I saw a different voice come out, one which began to attack. I want to give him some slack but at the same time I’m still unsure whether you feel there is anything he could learn on how to be a better apologist. I think a true and productive exchange would be when both I feel I have learned and you and he feel you have learned something.
I hope you found this post more civil. I wanted it to be. I think we need to have more criticism in civility but I recognize that both culturally and individually people often have different ideas of what is acceptable in conversations. Thank you for your wishes for my studies. I’m interested in various areas of sociology/anthropology of religion. Best wishes to you as well
A Few More Thoughts:
As I was going through the process of losing my faith and belief in Mormonism and trying to make all of the fractured pieces of my former faith fit together…I remember thinking to myself…everyone of these difficult mis-fitting pieces simply disappears and goes away, if I accept the fact that the church is simply not what it claims to be. Believe it or not…the thought that the church was not true had never entered my mind before this point. To me this was not even a possibility, nor an option. Yes, I had had doubts but it was ME who was the problem not the churches claims. But the crystallization of the idea that Mormonism was not what it claimed to be…was a new concept I had never entertained before.
Although this was a conclusion I had fought hard NOT to accept…I cannot deny the fact that everything basically fell into place and all of the problems I was struggling with to make Mormonism believable again…simply disappeared when I finally accepted this premise.
No longer did I have to struggle to make the reality of evolution fit the Mormon paradigm. No longer was the historicity of the Book of Mormon a problem. No longer were Joseph’s changes/additions to scripture an issue. No longer were the many conflicts of living prophets with their deceased predecessors a dilemma. No longer did polygamy matter. No longer did I have to hammer the Mormon round peg into the square hole of reality. In one single flash of enlightenment…everything became crystal clear to me. Mormonism was simply not what it claimed to be…and all of the problems simply melted away.
Now as a caveat: Coming to the conclusion that Mormonism was not true…did in fact create a whole new set of problems for my life…involving my loved ones. But as far as solving my struggles with making Mormonism believable…that problem was resolved…I was finally at peace.
What accounts for the difference in outcome? LDS scholar Terryl Givens makes an important point:
“I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice.
The option to believe must appear on our personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”
I agree fully with Terryl on the place of doubt in nurturing our own faith and faithfulness. But I go a bit further. I know we hear warnings about doubt. What I think is being said is that we should not use questions as an excuse for mischief. Now having said this, I have a very high regard for dubium. I do not want to be fooled by someone selling mock wisdom often for real money. I am what I am because I intentionally placed myself in situations where I could get the most radically different takes on the world–ways of seeing things that differed from what I had learned earlier. When I went to university, I sought out the very best and brightest cultural Mormons, and also the most radical atheists I could find. I sat at their feet trying hard to see the world through their eyes. When teaching the history of philosophy at BYU, I intentionally introduced my students to the most passionate and potent atheists. Why? The reason is that I firmly believed that by confronting alternative ways of picturing the world I would do for them what doing that had done for me–that is,deepen and increase faith. I have operated on the old idea of faith seeking understanding. I notice places in the scriptures where someone will thank God for faith and then beg God to heal their unbelief. I understand that desire and the emotions that go with it. So I insist that my faith pass thrugh a refiner’s fire of radical doubt. I also doubt the doubts that others take for granted. My remarks to B reflected, as you may have noticed, some of that.
When one can see the host of competing ideologies, all of which in different ways, challenge what I have called, see above, naive faith, and hence generate a crisis of faith,then and only then can faith begin to be grounded in a mature, somewhat more fully informed moral choice. But our faith in anything must begin before we know very much.
I do not, however, think that it is wise to tell children or naive, childlike adults more than they can understand. Only equals or what he ancients called friends can communicate fully. But whatever one can say about this matter, we all must strive own our faith and not live by borrowed light. I detest the expression “what does the Church teach.” The content of my faith is what I believe, what I currently see as true. The old “I was told in Sunday School” business irritates me because it manifests some measure of foolishness on the part of the person who was far too smug or lazy or both to do more than shuffle along dancing a dance whose point they have not even thought seriously about. So I see Craig Paxton’s problem, see Allen’s initial item above, as having believed too much but not wisely, to quote someone who was a master of the English language. And I am pained to see the results. But I am next to certain that some of those like him simply would not have been open to having their illusions corrected or supplemented. They started out believing they were the best Saint they had me, and then the bubble busrt or the snapped and now they are a sort of inverse mirror image of their earlier dogmatic selves. How and why this happens is a mystey to me. It is also painful to observe.
Allen’s timely defense of me, which I just noticed, was brilliant. I just hope that he was at least somewhat right.
One thing I must try to end is this business of calling me Dr. Midgley. I have, it is true, a Ph.D. I am tempted to say: “you have found me out, I am with child.” I find that title or the title Professor to be stuffy. I very much prefer to be known simply as Brother Midgley or as Louis. But I suspect that some who have posted on this thread have some other preferences in names.
I notice that Cowboy noticed what he thought was a badly wounded Midgley and could not resist inflicting still another wound. And so he proclaims that I call it like I see it, “which has generally been more convenient for his arguments,” while Cowboy, of course, presumably has that rare gift of calling it like it really is. I notice an effort to stack the deck. So how does he call it, whatever it is? Well, I did not answer some questions. For example, according to Cowboy, “never once did [I] answer Thomas’s question regarding the origin of desire spoken of in Alma 32, which [Cowboy] thought was a fairly neutral question.” I guess I did’t realize I was taking an exam. The reason that I ignored that question is that I simply do not know the answer. I suspect that the desire has a host of sources not all of which are available to the one who has the desire.
I am not, however, as Thomas darkly hints, someone who believes in some strong notion of predestination. I don’t think in those terms. I flatly reject and consider demonic every element of Five Point Calvinism (aka TULIP), and I am simply astonished to be suspected of holding ideas I abhor. I have glanced at what I have posted and can see nothing that would suggest that I might believe that God determines at the moment of creation or before we embark on our probation who will have faith and hence who will be saved. I think that our scriptures teach us that we are genuine moral agents who are here below in mortality to be tested so we and God can find out some things about us.
So I believe that anyone can turn or return to God–that is, repent–and then begin to put their trust in the Holy One of Israel. I like to think that right to the end even Hitler could have had a profound, genuine change of heart. I like to imagine that God’s mercy is such that he could have granted redemption. I have spent time ministering in a prison and have witnessed the mighty change of heart that can take place. So I have wondered if even someone like Hitler might have done so subsequently. But for a host of reasons, many of them obviously not especially praiseworthy, but some also understandable, many of those in the chains of darkness do not choose to respond to the Light–that is, Gospel.
One can hardly read a newspaper, or glance at a shopping mall, or visit one of those dreadful WW II death camps in Europe, or notice the suffering inflicted by humans upon themselves and others, and even on their own spouses and children, or have heard of Inquisitions and so forth, without being overwhelmed by the evil in the world and the sin that causes it. In one sense this is an amazing and beautiful place, but in anther it is, as someone once said, the moral privy of the universe. Only God can save us. But we have to realize that we need to be healed and to do this we need radical doubt, especially about ourselves.
So I am tethered to radical doubts about human things. These doubts have driven me more and more with a passion to preach the good news that whatever grinding wheel we may find ourselves in–that is, tribulation–God has overcome the world. But we must, whatever questions we have and however much we do not understand this and that, remain faithful to end.
I would be very pleased if dhogge would contact me by email. I can be reached at [email protected].
“I notice that Cowboy noticed what he thought was a badly wounded Midgley and could not resist inflicting still another wound.”
Louis:
That’s certainly not it at all, quite frankly I didn’t expect you regard my comments at all. I was referring to Allen’s defense of you in light of dhogge’s initial post where he expressed discontent for your candor. My point was that your approach from the beginning of this discussion has been to take the offensive, rather than to just say “Thomas, I don’t have an answer on that one, but I do reject the notion that our salvation is pre-determined”.
B.-
As a fellow bishop, I have to say that my first thought when reading your posts in this thread was “have you presided over any disciplinary councils? Have you counseled any of your members who need to work through painful and involved repentance?”
I take your posts at face value, and give you the benefit of the doubt that you are currently serving as a bishop. But when you say such things as
“The real question is whether I can trust that there is a God at all who has any interest in me.”
“But I can hardly be existed to trust God in the absence of a conviction that there exists such a being.”
“What do I want? Just about any communication will do. Just let me know that he actually exists and cares. I want to be able to confidently state that God has reached down to me and has assured me of his reality and his love. That alone would be great, but I would really like him to go one step further, and let me know that Jesus really is resurrected, and that the atonement is real”
“It is a very strange God indeed who miraculously intervenes in the life of a wretch like Alma the Younger but who ignores others who would be quite content with a simple spiritual impression of peace and assurance that the scriptures they are reading are actually true.”
I find it hard to reconcile this with your insistence that
“I am a closet doubter. I am also the Bishop of my ward. I was a doubter when I was called four years ago. I was terrified, but I accepted and I have done my best. Surprisingly, I am actually quite a good bishop. I think my weak faith has actually made me a better bishop in many ways. I am able to relate to my ward members in ways that some of their previous bishops could not.”
In my experience, you cannot “fake” these things to people who desperately need the power and authority of your priesthood keys as a judge in Israel. Based on my experience just as a bishop alone, to say nothing of my previous testimony experiences, I simply cannot understand how you could preside over disciplinary councils or wrestle with the hard and nigh impossible problems and dillemas that confront bishops, and be able to say that you have absolutely zero spiritual or empirical evidence that God is there, is mindful of you and your flock, responds to your pleas, etc.
The most powerful spiritual experiences I have had in my life have come in this context, and I cannot share the details of them with anyone, including my wife.
My main question for you is, do you confront or have you confronted any difficulties in the line of your calling that leave you sleepless, worried, etc. concerning members of your ward? Or has it been pretty smooth sailing because you find yourself able to relate to members better than would be the case if your faith were stronger, as you put it?
Ken Kyle Says:
What accounts for the difference in outcome? LDS scholar Terryl Givens makes an important point:
“I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice.
The option to believe must appear on our personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”
Craig’s Comments:
Given’s analysis seems to make the assumption that there is a point of choice between two equally balanced options and the tipping point in making a decision between these two equal options comes down to …”our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos.” He then asserts that…” What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.” Arggg…nothing could be further from the truth…
Sorry folks but, from my perspective, Givens has totally missed the mark. His assertion that people leave the church, lose faith and belief in Mormonism is once again just the stereotypical explanation of why people leave…once again it’s because we have such huge egos or have appetites to fill or that somehow our personal values were somehow not in sync with the teachings of the church. Once again Given’s has failed to list the one reason knowledgeable faithful active members of the church are leaving…it is because they discover that the church they have given their lives to is not what it claims to be.
Come on folks…those who leave the church are not the shallow people that you may want us to be. We leave because we conclude that it simple is not true. Many still love the church even after making this extremely difficult decision…but conclude, based on the evidence, that it is better to live honestly outside the church rather than live a lie inside it.
Mind you, other like minded thinkers make the decision to live the lie inside the church as well…
Craig wrote:
Sorry folks but, from my perspective, Givens has totally missed the mark. His assertion that people leave the church, lose faith and belief in Mormonism is once again just the stereotypical explanation of why people leave…once again it’s because we have such huge egos or have appetites to fill or that somehow our personal values were somehow not in sync with the teachings of the church. Once again Given’s has failed to list the one reason knowledgeable faithful active members of the church are leaving…it is because they discover that the church they have given their lives to is not what it claims to be.
I think this is what it boils down to. The Church is true. It’s the only true Church, with the only true authority, and the only Church which can give you the continuing benefit of having the Holy Ghost. So, when someone leaves there must be something wrong with them to reject, after all, the only way to full salvation.
Those who remain see themselves as enduring, not always happily, because guilt and “daily struggles” for perfection can often make life much more difficult. So the parables of Jesus comes into play – no Prodigal son is as good as the faithful son, and those who labour in the vineyard during the heat of the day will receive a greater reward. It would be unjust of God not to punish the leave-takers, because they have become faulty and fallen saints. Sickness, death, financial problems which befall the leave-takers will all be seen as “God’s punishment”. And a sense that their own deserved rewards for “hard work” will eventually pay off. The apostates have, plain and simply, become “defective”.
The problem is, the real world doesn’t always work that way. When the Saints see happy leave-takers, they wonder why. So step two of the theory takes place – they will be punished in the afterlife. Either way, the Saints win (at least to their own sense of satisfaction, for all the hard work).
Craig says:
I can understand believing that Givens stereotypes in his analysis, but might I suggest that you are just as guilty of stereotyping in your response?
To posit that “knowledgeable faithful active members” leave because of something they “discover” about the Church is to discount, entirely, those “knowledgeable faithful active members” who learn the same things and then choose to stay. That is where the stereotype comes into play. That is the quandry, Craig—why did I stay and you leave?
You haven’t come to terms with that seemingly simple question. I continue to believe, despite having read everything that you have read (based on comments earlier in this thread) and experienced everything you have experienced (except the excommunication) that the Church is what it claims to be, while you claim it is not.
The only difference I can think of is that we may both see the claims of the Church differently; that is certainly a possibility. (I’m talking about seeing them differently at the time we were both on the same path, not seeing them differently now that we have been on different paths for years.)
Point taken, with the notable exception of some I have run into over on RfM. <g>
More of the stereotype. I hope that you are not suggesting that I, having “uncovered” the same things you have, are somehow living a lie. If so, I would suggest that you are mistaken; I know myself better than you do. If not, then you may want to reconsider the presentation of the stereotype.
I agree with you, in the quote above, that you reached a decision and that it was no doubt a particularly difficult decision. And, as far as that goes, the recognition and ownership of your decision in the matter is in agreement with what Givens stated (to a point).
I disagree with you, however, that had you stayed you would have been “living a lie.” You may have been living a life with which you no longer felt comfortable or living a life with which you found no common ground or living a life that, for whatever reason, no longer worked for you. But suggesting that life in the Church is “living a lie” is to implicitly color all those who do live that life with a very broad brush.
That, my friend, is stereotyping.
-Allen
Ray,
In your own way you are using almost as broad a brush as Craig. While your analysis of how Church members view leave-takers is interesting—and probably spot-on for some members—I can’t help but see it as a nice, tidy box that you’ve created into which members can be placed.
The fact is, not all members view leave-takers in the way you mention. I have a member in my ward who had his named removed from the records; he used to be the Young Men’s Secretary when I was YM President. I still see him periodically as our paths sometimes cross. (He lives about a block from me.) We are friendly with each other, and I feel great happiness for him when he does well and when he does good in life. I empathize with him when life doesn’t go so well.
In short, while I may be anecdotal, I don’t fit so neatly into the box you created.
Craig noted that those who leave are not shallow; that they are complex and have different stories. It is the same with those who stay. They are nowhere near as shallow or as monolithic in thought as some assume.
-Allen
Can you please show how your analysis of how members of the
Allen wrote:
In your own way you are using almost as broad a brush as Craig. While your analysis of how Church members view leave-takers is interesting—and probably spot-on for some members—I can’t help but see it as a nice, tidy box that you’ve created into which members can be placed.
The fact is, not all members view leave-takers in the way you mention.
It is true that not everyone fits into the “tidy box”, but in my experience most do. From Section 121:
This, by the way, doesn’t offend me. I’m only analysing the mindset. I also realise that the above verses apply to a particularly aggressive type of apostate, those who “lift up the heel” against the Church and its leaders. (And I think I’ve expressed more than a few times how I disagree with this) But D&C 19:
I think the conclusion is obvious – if you “lose the Spirit”, you will be punished. There are many other scriptures like these. To step outside this “box” you have to believe there won’t be any consequences for leaving. In the final outcome, I have not found that to be the case. In fact I found a richness of variety in others who never experienced Mormonism, and will never be drawn to it. I have many Muslim friends and they can’t even conceive of ever leaving Islam, even the nominal Muslims. And I see no reason at all to consider them only having “a portion of God’s light”. My experience with Muslims has been a rich one, and I’ve grown to appreciate them in a way I never could until these close associations began about two years ago (before that I held many of the stereotypes). Like Mormons, they are often stereotyped, and some of them do believe Islam is “the only way”. In short, I have come to appreciate both Mormons and Muslims, but I am “the man in the middle”, who won’t step into their respective “boxes”.
Allen Said:
That, my friend, is stereotyping.
Craig’s Reply:
Actually Allen, I was not speaking to those who are able to maintain belief in the church at all. I applaud and envy you and other likeminded faithful believers who have become fully informed and yet are able to retain faith and belief in the church’s claims. In fact I have great respect for your ability to do so. I was only speaking to those who have come to the same conclusions as myself….they either leave the church…or are left to live a lie as a non-believer…acting as a believer for the sake of family, culture, business, status, ego or whatever other reason THEY have to live their life as a lie. You my friend, are not to be counted among this sad group of active-non-believing Saints.
Where you see the hand of God…I see the hand of man…perhaps an example would help.
I’m a fan of the TV show “Lost” rather than get into the details of this show…let me try to describe two of the main characters. John Lock…is a believer; he sees the invisible hand of some mysterious force moving the chess pieces of his life…quietly behind the scenes.
Jack, a doctor, is struggling to believe…and I’d refer to him as a doubter or a pragmatist.
During last night’s episode, John, who was looking all over the place for Jack, was involved in a terrible automobile accident that landed him in the hospital. When he awoke from having been knocked out…there sitting next to him was Jack. John saw this as a sign…as providence…as that invisible something moving his chess piece. When John pointed his reality out to Jack…Jack responded with his own view of reality, when he said. “John, you were involved in an auto accident here in west Los Angeles…the probability that you would be brought to this hospital where I just happen to work are pretty high…SINCE it is the closest hospital to where you had your accident. “
John sees the hand of providence…Jack sees the sum of probabilities…who is correct?
Recently I was in attendance at a fireside where a familiar GA spoke. As he bore his testimony he shared a very faith promoting spiritual experience. During a recent mission tour to South America, he met a young missionary who had recently discovered a cancerous tumor growing on a part of his body. He was preparing to return home to have this issue resolved. This GA gave this young Elder a Priesthood blessing and promised him that 1. He would be fully healed and 2. He would return to serve out the balance of his mission. Pretty heady, bold promises don’t you think? Well guess what…the tumor turned out to be fully contained and easily removed with minor surgery. The missionary was able to return and serve out the balance of his mission just as he had been promised…a seeming miracle…God himself had intervened in the life of this young missionary. Priesthood power works right?
Well, all I could think of as I was listening to this story was that this outcome would have been exactly the same with or without the priesthood blessing…and who’s to say that it wouldn’t have? But the mere fact that the blessing had been given…strengthened the testimony of believers…but would it have been as faith promoting had the story turned out differently? How many times have priesthood blessing promises NOT resulted in the promised outcome? Yet we never hear about these…why? Because they promote doubt rather than faith.
Case in point: As a youth James E. Talmage blinded his younger brother with a pitch fork in a farming accident. Many years later, after he had been called as an apostle, Talmage along with other members of the 12, laid their collective hands on Talmage’s younger brother and in the name of Jesus Christ promised him that he would be healed and have his sight restored. Despite the collective priesthood power of these anointed men…Talmage’s brother died many years later, a blind man.
But of course we have an escape clause…now that he was dead…he could can now see and of course his sight would be restored after the resurrection….but that was not the blessing he had been given. He was promised that his sight would be restored during his life.
Why is this story NOT heralded from the roof tops of Mormonism? Well it doesn’t hold the same cache as the previous faith promoting story.
So where I see the hand of man in Mormonism, you see the hand of God and somehow you are able to accommodate all of the seemingly difficult (for me) issues despite knowing the details and still see God…while I only see a man made church making unsubstantiatable claims. (In my view)
So Allen perhaps we should ask the reverse question …how is it that in light of all the difficult issue you see God…where I see man? What is the difference?
Craig said:
You already said the difference: “Where you see the hand of God…I see the hand of man.” That is choice, exactly as Givens stated.
I choose to see and believe; you choose to see and disbelieve. I cannot make you believe, because for every data point I would raise you could provide an alternative explanation. (Except one, which I will discuss shortly.) You cannot make me disbelieve, because for every data point you would raise I could provide an alternative explanation.
The difference is choice.
Now, as to the one data point for which, I believe, you cannot provide an alternative explanation: Personal interaction with the divine. I know my experiences, and the reality of those experiences cannot be explained away by others unless I allow them to be explained away.
If I say that I have received some divine intervention in my life (heard heavenly voices, had a vision, or hosted heavenly visitors), I cannot provide empirical evidence of such nor is such experience repeatable. But the lack of such evidence or repeatability doesn’t change the reality of the situation. I know what I know, and nothing can change that knowledge.
Now, those who no longer believe might say at this point “see, those Mormons always fall back to testimony.” That, to me, is a cop-out, as it does nothing other than limit the “playing field” to what the person finds acceptable. And, in the long run, it doesn’t matter whether someone else tries to limit the field, as (again) I know what I know, and nothing can change that knowledge—not even the efforts of another to discount or dismiss that knowledge.
But, to pull this back from my excursion down this side tangent, the difference between you and me—relative to seeing God in the acts around us—is a matter of choice.
You know, I have very much enjoyed this conversation. I suspect that I would enjoy, just as much, sitting across lunch some day ruminating with you about the vicissitudes of the universe. You do well at presenting your thoughts.
-Allen
As a caveat, I have had to come to terms with some pretty amazing so-called spiritual experiences in my own life…experiences that believers might describe as verifiable proof positive that the church is true.
In my lifetime I have had three “physical” experiences with the divine. Experiences that when viewed through the Mormon prism…are faith confirming. Following the collapses of my faith I have had to revisit these experiences and reframe them. I will share one of these experiences…but the other two are even more physical and direct….and ultimately can also be explained away through my current worldview.
As a youth, I played the drums in my Jr high school marching band. One of the high lights of our band experience was being able to march in the 24th of July parade (back then they let Jr high’s march in the parade)… As I prepared to go to the parade I realized that I had left my uniquely colored necktie in my locker at the now locked up school. I remember riding my bike to the school in the hopeless hope that somehow, someone would be at the school on a holiday and let me retrieve my necktie. I approached the first locked door…rattling and banging in a futile attempt to open it. It remained locked tight…I then ran frantically from door to door hoping that somehow that door might have been left ajar or I might attract the attention of someone who might let me in. But with each attempt I sadly came to realize that the school was in fact locked tight…dare I say, as a drum. Just when I was about to give up and return home I had the thought to offer a prayer (I get goose bumps even now as I type this out)…following the prayer I decided to return to the first door I had tried and give it one more tug. I closed my eyes, put my hands on the door knob and pulled…and just like the mythical boy Arthur and the Sword-in-the-stone…the door miraculously opened. I ran to my locker, retrieved my tie and made it to the parade just in the nick of time.
Throughout my life…this experience has been a touch stone of my personal experiences with God’s direct intervention in my life.
So how do I view this now as a non-believer? I view this through natural eyes. One of three conditions took place that day…either God opened a locked door for me, the door had been left open all along or someone WAS in the building that day heard my rattling and door pounding and opened the door…and then it remained open…till I found it ajar. For most of my life I only considered the first option…I now see that in fact there were other more probable possibilities to my finding that door ajar that day.
J. Ruban Clark once said regarding faith and belief that:
“…I came early to appreciate that I could not rationalize a religion for myself and that to attempt to do so would destroy my faith in God. I have always rather worshipped facts, and while I thought and read for a while, many of the incidents of life, experiences and circumstances, which led unaided by the spirit of faith, to the position of atheist, yet the faith of my father’s led me to abandon all that and refrain from following it..For me there seemed no alternative. I could only build up a doubt. If I were to attempt to rationalize about my life here I would be drowned in a sea of doubt.”
Clark made the decision to stop subjecting his Mormon faith to rational analyses, fearing that it may not endure an intellectual test. One the other hand, I subjected my faith to an intellectual test…and lost mine. So I guess Clark was right. Faith subjected to an intellectual test, often is lost.
I have also had several experiences like Craig, two of them with witnesses. There may well be a natural explanation, but I haven’t found one yet. With one of them I consulted more than 20 skeptics (probably more like 30), some of them on James Randi’s forum, and some of them “hardcore” (all of the detailed exchanges were done privately by email). None had an explanation, only theories (which I’ve seriously considered, but the physical evidence backed up what I recalled happening). Several became convinced it happened, and others were uncommitted. The only problem is the “big one” didn’t happen in response to a prayer, it was just weird, weird, weird, and defied the laws of physics, as we know them.
So I’m not saying there’s anything “faith-promoting” here, or even “miraculous”, but one thing I do believe, quite firmly, is that some things we now consider “impossible”, are not impossible at all. We just don’t understand yet how it happens.
I won’t be pursuing this publicly anymore. And I probably won’t answer any questions about it, with good reason. What happened to Craig may well have a natural explanation, or it may be in the same category of what I experienced – “file under unexplained”.
For the sake of clearing the field, we may want to stipulate that upon initial impressions, Dr. Midgley and I don’t like each other very much. He thinks I’m a stinking cultural Mormon, a “functional atheist,” and an “agnostic” who is guilty of “infidelity to Jesus Christ.” I, for my part, get the impression that Dr. Midgley, in his anxiety not to be unduly handicapped by “Mormon nice,”, has plowed clear from “nice” through “litigator sharp-elbowed” to “hard left-wing blogger minus the f-bombs.” That the gentle Allen Wyatt could fail to see a “judging approach” in Dr. Midgley’s comments leaves me scratching my head, but I do understand how friendship can affect judgment.
But no matter. As Allen suggested, our ideas stand or fall on their merits, irrespective of our character. If Dr. Midgley or I should declare that two and two are four, it remains true even if we enjoy kicking puppies. So here goes; please pardon the length:
It’s been argued that the declarations of those who have lost confidence in the LDS Church that they desperately wanted the Church to be true, must be false: Those who really want the Church to be true will move heaven and earth to make sure they stay true to it.
That’s probably true. Yet isn’t that equally the case of anyone who desperately wants something to be true? I believe, for example, that young-earth creationism is thoroughly indefensible — and yet there are those who do indeed move heaven and earth to maintain that belief, even if they have to mount Adam and Eve aboard dinosaurs. Why is our desire to believe the teachings of our heritage more virtuous than theirs?
Ordinarily, we have a word for people who approach a question with a preference that the answer be one thing rather than another. The word is biased. It’s not a compliment — because that mindset so often keeps us from the truth. For example, there are some people who deeply want to believe in the prospect of catastrophic manmade global warming, because it provides justification for their preexisting desire to increase the power of government. In many cases, that desire motivates them to make dire predictions that are simply indefensible scientifically.
(N.B.: Doubting Thomas is, perhaps contrary to some expectations here, politically and morally conservative and a proud supporter of Proposition 8.)
Why should bias — a vice in any other context — become a virtue in the religious context?
Ken Kyle quoted Terryl Givens: “What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”
Yes — up to a point. Not all choices to believe have moral significance. For instance, there is probably not enough evidence to know one way or the other whether or not Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag. We can choose to believe yes or no. But that choice has no substantial moral significance, does it? A person is not a moral stinker because he chooses to believe the Ross grandkids made up or misremembered the story. God’s judgments are just, not capricious. We may be judged by our thoughts, but not as they bear on moral irrelevancies.
When Givens says a choice to believe has “moral significance,” he’s not exactly saying that the choice to believe is virtuous in itself. He’s saying, in effect, that you can tell a good person by his choice to believe in things a good person ought to believe in. The choice doesn’t make a person good or bad; it’s more accurate to say that the choice reveals what is already there.
I can understand an argument that God could justly judge a person for his choice to believe — with the evidence in equipoise — that there is no God. Such a belief is effectively a surrender to the world — an acceptance of the suffering, injustice, and wickedness and disappointment that will always be with us, no matter how hard the agents of secular progress try to make the world a better place. (Which they have done, in many ways — I won’t sell them short — but there will never be a shortage of evil while the world lasts.) It is also a declaration to be bound by no law but one’s own will, which an honest reflection must acknowledge is fallible at best and self-centered at worst. It is, in a sense, the sin of despair — of accepting less than we are meant to accept. It is the turning of one’s back on eternity. A virtuous person should rage against such a sentence.
Thus, faith that there is a God in heaven, who has overcome the world, could be understood to be inherently virtuous.
But why should faith in a particular religious sect, to the exclusion of faith in the others, be similarly virtuous? Is the virtuous basic confession of faith in Deity necessarily pregnant with the conclusion that one particular sect must be right? Why should I not prefer a universally accessible faith, to one that only a tiny fraction of humanity will be lucky to stumble upon?
Why should a virtuous person choose or desire to believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is what it declares itself to be — in particular, the authorized administrator of certain ordinances that it declares are necessary to salvation? And by extension, wouldn’t it therefore follow that a person who desired, instead, to believe that the Roman Catholic Church was the true church must be morally inferior?
I can imagine a Father O’Midgley, in another time and place, furrowing his bushy dark eyebrows at someone who questioned, say, the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, and telling him he lacked faith in God, and that his manifest lack of desire to believe such an inherently worthy thing marked him as one of the goats on the Lord’s left hand.
Most of us here, I presume, have no desire to believe in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Why not? And why aren’t we judged for our unbelief? Sure, there are plenty of reasons not to believe in Catholicism. They have a much higher body count than we do, even accounting for their thousand-plus-year head start. And yet, as Dr. Midgley reminds us, we shouldn’t expect the true church to be infallible, or hold it to account for poor conduct by its members or even its leaders. Is Mormon theology more self-evidently consistent than Catholic theology? That depends who you ask. Are Mormons’ experiences of the Spirit more infallible than the Catholic mystics’ claims to have experienced the same? How would Teresa of Avila do against our Jared, above, in a visionary steel-cage match?
I suspect many Mormons’ desire to believe in the faith of their fathers has the exact same basis as many faithful Catholics’ desire to believe in their own tradition — a sense of familiarity, the natural desire to be on the right side, a fear of the family and social consequences of a change. Are the Mormons blessed for wanting the right thing for the wrong reason?
I see on this thread justifications for fidelity to Mormonism, that could be used as justifications for allegiance to any other faith. Doubt of the organization is equated with doubt of God, and met with more hostility than persuasive response. Par for the religious course, the triumphant, mocking atheists of our day would say. How could we respond? What is better about Mormon faith than the other man’s faith? What is different about Mormon faith?
At the very least, should not any virtuous religious desire be first and foremost the desire to believe what is true? Alma 32:21 states that a belief in something other than truth is not even faith. It is just as critical to be faithful to Christ the Truth as to Christ the Way, the “way” being defined by the Gospel as declared by the Church. John Locke wrote, and I agree, that the mark of one who loves truth is that he entertains no idea with greater certainty than can be justified. I cannot accept what seems to be the implication of some here that it constitutes “faith” to outwardly declare myself convinced of things of which I am not.
As for those who have received what they can honestly believe to be an infallible witness of the Holy Ghost that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the authority to proclaim and administer necessary ordinances, I respect your faith. I have not received any such experience. Neither can I quite understand why I should want to, or why my lack of such a desire should speak poorly of my moral character.
If the Church is true, I want to be convinced of it sufficiently to honestly believe it. I do not believe I am “putting God on trial” by asking Him, in effect, which church is true — the one I was born into, or otherwise.
I will ignore the remarks made against me by Doubting Thomas. I also must admit that I cannot follow much of what he has set out in this last item (see immediately above). But there are a few things that I will comment on.
1. In one place Doubting T. opines as follows: “should not any virtuous religious desire be first and foremost the desire to believe what is true? I suppose, but I am not sure what he means by religious desire. What is not generally known is that the word “religion” had in Europe a profoundly negative meaning until well after WW II. The great Swiss-German Protestant theologian insisted that religion was a skillfully administered narcotic. He lumped all the evils in this world under the label “religion.” And one ought to recall that Karl Marx insisted that religion was the opiate of the people. Even C. S. Lewis had a very negative opinion of what that word signifies. How ugly a word, how hard to imagine on the lips of the Savior, and so forth. Outside of the UK and the USA, the word religion right on through the history of Christianity identified either the pagan cults, and it was always contrasted with revelation and faith. The word identified either or both the works of man or of the demonic. But Doubting T. may consider this merely an academic matter raised by a nasty old professor who insisted that his students pay attention to intellectual history.
2. Then Doubting T. makes the following rather curious statement: “Alma 32:21 states that a belief in something other than truth is not even faith.” Ok, this is how that verse reads: “And now as I said concerning faith–faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” I wonder how DT gets from these words what he wrote. For us to understand what is being taught by Alma, we must grasp the context, and not merely gloss a proof text. It seems to me that part of the context–the textual material in which a passage in embedded–it seems to me to be relevant that Alma (see v17) mentions that “there are many who do say: If thou will show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.” I take that language to mean that faith comes long before we know much of anything. Please keep in mind that Doubting T. is appealing to a text that truth of which he doubts or perhaps even denies. This conclusion seems to follow from the following: “If the Church is true, I want to be convinced of it sufficiently to honestly believe it.” Perhaps DT has not been clear, but what I take that statement to mean is that he wants proof from God–that is he wants to be “convinced before he will believe.” However, he does not believe that he is “‘putting God on trial’ by asking Him, in effect, which church is true–the one I was born into, or otherwise.”
3. DT is nothing if not emboldened by what he insists are justifiable reservations about faith. He seems to rest his case on John Locke. Hence the following: “John Locke wrote, and I agree, that the mark of one who loves truth is that he entertains no idea with greater certainty than can be justified. I cannot accept what seems to be the implication of some here that it constitutes ‘faith’ to outwardly declare myself convinced of things of which I am not.” Well, what was Locke talking about? I will not use his technical jargon. What he was saying is that we know with certainty what we encounter without any mediation of a theory or explanation. If we taste bitter when we place alum on our tongue we instantly know with certainty bitterness. But when we surmise that we have been poison or that a devil has done something to us, we cannot be certain about such secondary matters. We might, if we were disciples of Locke, say that when we encounter God, we are certain of that fact. But whether this encounter was an illusion or delusion or whether that God we encountered was kind and loving and so forth, is something about which we cannot be entirely certain.
4. Now please recall that DT earlier asserted that he has chosen to have faith in a loving God. But he did not thing that the evidence for or against this choice compelling either way. This does not seem to trouble him. But he is profoundly skeptical about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church that is built around faith in the redemption from sin and death that defines the community of Saints. He insists that before he will have faith in the Holy One of Israel as redeemer and savior, he wants to be convinced before he will believe. And he seems to me to be insisting that his desire be gratified before he will have faith.
5. It is not at all clear if the loving God that DT says he has chose to have faith in is the in any sense one can find at work, from virtually every Christian perspective, in human history striving to redeem his children from sin and death. To begin to imagine that God is such a one that it will reward virtue seems to fly in the face of virtually every version of Christian faith. My own opinion is that God is not only loving, forgiving and merciful to those who put their trust in him–that is, exercise faith–but also just. What this means is that God will justify those who genuinely came unto Christ, entered into his Kingdom, and who diligently strive to keep his commandments. So I believe that the choice we make is exactly as Terryl Givens described it: ” “what we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis an action that is positively laden with moral significance.”
6. DT asserted that “it is just as critical to be faithful to Christ the Truth as to Christ the Way, the ‘way’ being defined by the Gospel as declared by the Church.” With that sentiment I fully agree, if by “declared” what is meant is what is found in our scriptures and taught in our pulpits and by missionaries and so forth. No one is asking DT to proclaim anything that is not found at the very core of our scriptures. So Jesus of Nazareth is the longed for Messiah (Christ) and the redeemer and savior of all who will come unto him. Hence is the Way, the Light, and the Truth, the only name under heaven that can forgive our sins and so forth.
Perhaps DT for some unspecified reason holds back from or even rejects this wonderful message, since it comes primarily to the Saints through Joseph Smith to the assembly of Saints or Covenant People of God–that is, the Church of Jesus Christ. Perhaps DT, like my friend from Oz, wrongly assumes that the Saints both individually or collectively are somehow infallible, inerrant, morally perfect or all-knowing or the exclusive possessors of Christian wisdom or virtues. There are in every nation and place peoples to whom God responds in his own way and according to the genuine desires of his children. If controversy and lingering doubts over Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon are the real reasons for holding back, then who do that must have specific objections to possibility that a frail human being could actually encounter real messengers from the heavens. But such objections are slight, when compared with the enormous pounding that Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions have taken from various clever critics. Despite every evil that preachers and popes have inflicted on this world, there are still many admirable examples of faith and the virtues flowing from faithfulness that can be seen in most versions of those traditions. If deeds are what really count with God, then the Saints can and must overlook the vast variety of differences in theologies and creeds. The reason is that we are not saved by such things, but by keeping the commandments–by deeds of love rather than mere words about love, and so forth. But we need the heavens to have been opened and we need to be open to the heavens for any of this to have the possibility of transforming our hearts and minds.
I have just glanced at what I posted above. It is far too complicated for a blog, where short assertions are the order of the day. I can, however, set out my key objection to what Doubting Thomas has written by pointing out that if one should only believe what is certain or only believe to the degree that one is certain, then it makes no sense to boast about having made a choice to believe in a loving God, when one also insists that there is no compelling evidence for or against that belief. If I am right about this, then DT’s stance is seriously flawed–that is, incoherent. This is not a criticism of DT’s standing with God, or an aspersion on his personality. It is merely an effort to examine the soundness of his opinions. But in Blogville, criticism of arguments are often seen as attacks on someone’s personality. I know nothing of DT other than what he has posted on this blog. For all I know he is a lovely fellow.
I am genuinely concerned about DT because his opinions seem rather odd coming from a returned missionary. I notice that he thinks I am an old goat, which is true. And he thinks my own missionary experience was so long ago that I could not possibly be aware of the immaturity of missionaries or the world opened before their eyes. He is wrong. My own second mission, during which I could observe missionaries closely, and talk constantly with very recently returned missionaries, as well as the 36 years I taught the history of philosophy to mostly returned missionaries, have given me, I am confident, much opportunity to observe closely returned missionaries. They are as a group, like everything else in this disconsolate world, a mixed bag. Unfortunately some went on their missions, learned the steps, did the dance, and six months after they were back they had lapsed back into gentile ways and soon some even begin to disengage from the faith they once sort of proclaimed. But the Church moves on even while some straggle behind or go missing for a host of reasons, some easily understandable, if not exactly laudable.
Lou said:
I find it interesting that Lou used this analysis of Locke’s position in reference to a statement made by Thomas, but it also has direct applicability to a statement I made earlier and subsequent comments by both Craig and Ray. Here’s what I had said:
Note that I am talking about “personal interaction with the divine.” I am talking about talking with God, actually hearing God speak, or being visited by heavenly messengers. I am talking about things for which the world has no explanation (other than madness or deception) and for which it will not accept the possibility of such interaction.
Craig shared an experience that was very close to his heart. (Thanks, Craig. I could sense the feeling in your recounting.) However, that experience does not fall into the category of which I spoke. There was physical evidence for the event; Craig was able to retrieve something physical from his locker. Craig also (at least in this recounting) had no interaction with the divine, but a desired answer to prayer without any interaction.
This is what Lou refers to relative to Locke, above. Because there is no direct interaction, there is room for reinterpretation at a later point–just as Craig has done. I suspect (admittedly without evidence) that had the door not only opened for Craig but been accompanied by a heavenly visitor on the other side of the door pushing the crash bar to facilitate the opening, Criag’s later reinterpretation would have been less likely–just as Lou reports concerning Locke.
Communication with the divine is a data point that cannot be proven, cannot be repeated on demand, and cannot (if one is honest with oneself) be denied. It can be related to others, but then the others must either judge the individual as mistaken, as a deceiver, or as a madman.
-Allen
Interesting discussion. I see different questions being posed here. On the one hand the initial question is why some people leave Mormonism and others choose to remain when faced with rational challenges to their faith. On the other hand questions have also been asked in relation to justification for theistic beliefs in general or for Mormon beliefs more specifically. Could we ask generally why does a religious belief gets ‘transferred’ from a basic belief to one that needs to be justified? A basic belief is unfalsifiable and beyond rationality (which is not the same as saying that it is irrational). What pushes it on the other side? What replaces the religious belief as the new basic belief? What criteria has made the new basic belief basic? Is it a sort of rational absolutism, change in intuitive feeling, shifting of sources of authority, or other things that cause the change?
An interesting post previously expressed the point that it was when the person entertained the previously inconceivable idea that the church is not true that things really changed. In that case it seems that the tension became unbearable and the full paradigm had to be changed. There was an inner tension between what the Church claims to be and the evidence. But why is the evidence important in the first place if belief in God is basic and unfalsifiable? I think both religions and secular people have come to buy into this idea that a rational, empirical, scientific method can be employed to discover all kinds of truth. This has become the new basic belief of modernity and the great delusion of post-enlightenment thinking. It is a delusion because it self-destructs in its own argument. Everything is verifiable through empirical or rational means and the truth is reachable in this manner. Therefore there cannot be anything basic and unfalsifiable, ‘except’ the very scientific method which is raised to the point of being unfalsifiable. Why should it be so, especially in light of the idea that the simplest explanation should be chosen, which is what the scientific method suggests. Nothing in this strikes me as necessarily true. High probabilities of truth have been repeatedly contradicted; history is full of implausibilities. Why should ‘mental gymnastics’ be considered more suspicious than an easier explanation? What of easiness is truer than complexity?
Modernist Mormons unfortunately have built a similar system of rational justification in the way that they look at spiritual experiences and interaction with God. They have joined the excited group of enlightenment absolutists by claiming that empiricism and rationality confirm the truth of Mormonism (whether in terms of BoM geographical studies, evidence of how Mormons are happier, healthier, etc.) And we sell Mormonism to the modernist crowd with all its rational and empirical evidence of truth. In that way we make it falsifiable and non-basic.
On the other hand, and here I just want to focus on theism in general, theism is unfalsifiable by definition. God is perfect by definition and any tantrum or disenchantment or protest against Him is by definition on the losing side. God cannot do wrong; he is always right no matter what. It is that idea that some come to reject because the drive and the need to understand and to have more benefits than costs ends up displacing the basic belief. And we simply don’t like the idea of someone else who is always right when we disagree.
No one likes tension but daily tension is the burden of living in the world. When you change your basic belief you may indeed become more comfortable, have to get involved in less mental exertion, but you may not be any closer to the truth than you were before. In fact, you may even be further, but you can counter that you are happier. But does that happiness come from having more truth as is often claimed or from having a more comfortable mental life?
I think the days of rational empirical absolutism for all kinds of truth should be over. They need to be kept in balance with intuitive, moral, socially contextualized methods, and if you believe it, supernatural methods. Enough with the poison of rational self-deception. I reject both scientific and religious kinds of positivisms. Instead, I accept the idea that I am here as a small piece of a huge universe that I can only understand very partially. The concept of the supernatural is intuitive enough and is so common, universal, and everlasting that I see it as more basic than empirical methods in absolutistic forms. Whatever form it takes, even of implicit religiosity, you cannot really destroy it because it is part of what it means to be human, just like morality is. I don’t subscribe to rational/empirical imperialism and I think there are other epistemological means and other ways of experiencing the world. I am bound to make little sense to many of you but that is the problem with us people with postmodern leanings. I don’t want to argue differently; in fact I think argument is overrated. Let’s get some pizza and watch some football!
I appreciated Craig and Ray’s sharing of undeniable, unexplainable miraculous experiences they have had, experiences that are still undeniable and unexplainable *after* they had lost their faith. This provided for me a fascinating twist on the old “put it on the shelf” motif we are familiar with: they swapped miracle stories from their personal lives that they cannot explain away, even given their current unbelieving orientation.
I find this fascinating, especially in light of the central question that has emerged in this thread about whether faith or unfaith is ultimately a choice. Craig reported still “getting goosebumps” just thinking about his experience, and Ray said that he has asked for and gotten over 30 opinions from fellow skeptics to explain it away, but all for naught.
I had never considered this angle before, but it appears that even those who find themselves in the agnostic/atheist/unbeliever/etc. camp have their “put it on the shelf” issues, too.
Is it possible that the discomfort of unbelievers’ “put it on the shelf” issues might rival or even exceed the discomfort of believers’ “put it on the shelf” issues (in light of human pride and psychology, resentment over “being duped,” etc.)?
This was a completely new train of thought for me in considering this.
I think it is also important to address context. While I cannot speak for everybody, many of the so-called “unbelievers” have expressed views of faith and/or belief. While the discussion could take off into many different angles, all of which would be worthy of discussion, the “unbelief” is not a rejection of either God or religion entirely, but rather the LDS Church. The context of the discussion has been largely, how do we reconcile the the fact that two groups of individuals can encounter the same controversies in LDS Church history (I imagine we are talking about the same old issues; race, polygamy, evidences for The Book of Mormon, treasure seeking, etc, etc.), and walk away with diametrically opposing views. I see a rational argument in favor of a faith based explanation for Craig’s experience with the door, which does not conflict with the overall perspective that the LDS is not true. Many former LDS would rather not throw out the baby with the bath water when it comes to their perpectives on religion.
I don’t feel that Lou’s comments were too complex, nor rambling. In fact, they made it quite clear what faith is, “foolishness”, at least in the eyes doubters like myself. A few months ago I listened to one of my Muslim friends explain what he believed, and I could immediately identify it with my own former beliefs. God, angels, heavenly protection, an afterlife of rewards and punishment according to how we live here, etc. And once again, for a few moments, I felt what Mormons call “the Spirit”. But this was coming from a Muslim. I also listened, previous to that, another Muslim who had just returned from Mecca, and I suppose I could say “his face glowed” as he recounted this “extraordinary experience” where he felt “the presence of God”. It could easily have been a Mormon just out from a temple experience.
Well, going back 33 years when I first went to the New Zealand temple (as Oz didn’t have one then), something Lou would know all about. Maybe he even remembers Brother Penny (I think that was his name), a mostly-blind man who used to say, “just direct me to the portrait of the Prophet (in the temple), and will find my way from there”. Anyway, I have to say that temple experience was quite extraordinary. I was literally “floating” for at least two days.
When I later went into Hamilton to do some browsing and shopping, I felt like I had just stepped from a Celestial world back into a Telestial. The difference, for me, was very marked. But I don’t see any way of distinguishing between what my Muslim friend felt, and expressed, to what I did. I can’t call it unique. One must also contemplete why people like Yusif Ali (the former Cat Stevens) would be so enrapt in Islam. But if you listen to Steven’s songs before he converted to Islam, you’ll hear a distinct “longing” for where he eventually ended up. It could have been Mormonism, but as fate would have it, it was Islam.
I consider these experiences universal, which Mormonism does not have a corner on. In regard to Thomas and B, I can only hypothesise why they didn’t have these sorts of experiences, and why, for example, a Muslim would. So maybe it has something to do with the personal make-up of an individual, and not something that would be frowned upon by God. My recollection is that Joseph Smith’s grandfather, Solomon Mack, was an unbeliever and skeptic, until very late in life when he was “converted to the Christian faith in an extraordinary manner”. So if there is some kind of “divine plan”, then I think only God is worthy to judge the desires and intent of the heart.
Same process, different outcome – one ends up a Mormon, the other a Muslim.
Not to sound too nerdy here, but I think this was the main issue, albeit in a non-LDS context, of the Movie “Signs” from a few years back. If you recall there is a point where the main protagonist is explaining how two different groups can view the same circumstances (In this case, the uncertainty surrounding global contact with and alien race), as a means of bolstering faith or confirming that “there is nobody watching over us”, in their minds of course.
McKay Jones wrote:
I had never considered this angle before, but it appears that even those who find themselves in the agnostic/atheist/unbeliever/etc. camp have their “put it on the shelf” issues, too.
I have lots of “put it on the shelf” issues. For example in regard to near death experiences. It’s a very complex subject with few answers, but one that still interests me.
That’s not quite the same as determining whether Jews living in 600 BC actually practised Christianity. I don’t have to put that one on the shelf.
Louis:
“However, he does not believe that he is ‘putting God on trial’ by asking Him, in effect, which church is true–the one I was born into, or otherwise.'”
Then was not Joseph Smith “putting God on trial” in the Sacred Grove?
“I can, however, set out my key objection to what Doubting Thomas has written by pointing out that if one should only believe what is certain or only believe to the degree that one is certain, then it makes no sense to boast about having made a choice to believe in a loving God, when one also insists that there is no compelling evidence for or against that belief.”
I believe that’s not quite an accurate statement of my argument. I said [paraphrasing poorly-remembered Locke) that one should not entertain any idea with more certainty than can be justified. I did not say that “one should only believe what is certain.” There is a difference.
I’m sure the common LDS phrase “I know the Church is true” has been discussed extensively on this board prior to my butting in. That is an example of a certainty that I, myself, could not honestly declare. I could, however, say with full honesty that I “believe” in God, in the sense that with the evidence in equipoise, I adopt a presumption that He is real, and order my actions accordingly.
Could I, however, say that I “believe” that the earth is only six thousand years old? No. It is one thing to express “belief” in something that the best evidence of reason can’t answer one way or the other. It is another thing to reject clear evidence (or as clear as anything can be in this world; let’s hold the relativistic ideas that nothing is certain until later) in favor of a mere desire to believe. William James, with his “The Will to Believe” thought this was permissible; I (being a naive young whippersnapper) still insist on thinking Truth is not so flexible that we can each create our own truth as we go along.
We can choose to believe in the uncertain. We can even, I suppose, choose to believe in the improbable. But to say one “chooses to believe” something that you are fairly convinced is false is effectively a declaration that truth doesn’t matter. From Locke, again:
“Reason is natural revelation, through which ·God·, the eternal father of light and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that portion of truth that he has put within the reach of their natural faculties. Revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated immediately by God, the truth of which is supported by reason through the testimony and proofs it gives that they do come from God. Thus, someone who takes away reason to make way for revelation puts out the light of both – like persuading a man to put out his eyes so that he can better to receive the remote light of an invisible star through a telescope!”
That’s what I meant, and thought I’d expressed. Faith without rational certainty is the only true faith. “Faith” in defiance of reason is not of God. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Faith and reason are the two means by which God reveals himself to man. If they appear to conflict, we’ve made a mistake somewhere, and need to rethink.
Lou, again:
“If controversy and lingering doubts over Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon are the real reasons for holding back, then who do that must have specific objections to possibility that a frail human being could actually encounter real messengers from the heavens.
Non sequitur. The question is not whether heavenly messengers can speak to prophets; the question is whether they did on a particular occasion.
You, like I, doubt that the nutso who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart was the authentic prophet he declared himself to be. That does not mean you don’t believe in prophecy — it just means that you doubt one particular prophetic claim.
As I wrote earlier, the vast majority of people who claim to be God’s exclusive prophetic mouthpiece, are false prophets. They must be, because their claims are mutually exclusive. If Mohammed was the last prophet, then Joseph Smith was not a prophet. If Warren Jeffs is the true living prophet of the Restored Church, then Thomas S. Monson is not — and vice versa. Given that any particular exclusive prophetic claim appears therefore to be more likely false than true, why is it not appropriate to recognize a rebuttable presumption against the authenticity of an exclusive prophetic claim?
“If deeds are what really count with God, then the Saints can and must overlook the vast variety of differences in theologies and creeds. The reason is that we are not saved by such things, but by keeping the commandments–by deeds of love rather than mere words about love, and so forth. But we need the heavens to have been opened and we need to be open to the heavens for any of this to have the possibility of transforming our hearts and minds.”
I agree completely. Which makes me wonder whether we’re not thoroughly misunderstanding each other’s arguments.
Louis, what you wrote sounds quite a bit like Sections 847 and 848 of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church, in which the Church maintains its teaching that it has exclusive teaching and sacramental authority, but also allows that men of good will who are not Catholics can nevertheless be considered part of the universal Church, and be saved:
“847 …Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.
848 “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”
But how do I square what you’ve just said, with what I understood you to say earlier — namely, that a person who was not convinced of the exclusive teaching and sacramental authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must lack faith in God?
I see in many at BYU an interesting variant of fideism, whose defenders urge people simply to believe the Church’s teaching regardless of rational objections. BYU scholars’ evident fascination with the work of the Arab fideist thinker al-Ghazali doesn’t surprise me.
Now, I’m not a Thomist, as you probably noticed. I believe that God can not be discovered by unaided human reason. But I think strong fideism goes too far, in that it seems to suggest that not only does reason have its limits (duh), faith is so superior to reason that it should prevail in the case of conflicts. I’m oversimplifying mightily here, but something happened in the High Middle Ages that gave us a good data point on the practical effects of strong fideism: The Islamic world listened to al-Ghazali, turned its back on progress, and proceeded to stagnate until pretty much this day. The West — although it remained shot through with unreason — didn’t throw reason quite so thoroughly out the door, and proceeded to conquer the world and invent indoor plumbing, religious freedom, and the Internet. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to which approach is superior.
I had decided that my continued involvement in this discussion would not be productive, but I just checked in again to read some more recent comments. I have to add this one (and probably my last) comment.
First, I really must protest the way that Louis has distorted my comments. He stated above that I “boasted” that I no longer believe certain claims made by the church. I certainly was not boasting, and I really can’t imagine what would prompt Louis to characterize my remarks in that way. I was summarizing the current state of my beliefs. If that is boasting, then Louis is surely a world class braggart. I don’t believe that about him, and I think it was quite unfair of him to make that accusation about me. Let me reiterate. My lack of belief is a cause of significant pain to me. It occupies my thoughts, and my prayers constantly. I am not proud of them, and I wish they were different. My beliefs may or may not be true, but I am certainly not boasting about them when I attempt to summarize them.
I also strenuously object to his caricature of me when he tries to reduce my argument to “if someone as morally qualified as B cannot get God to show him a sign, the God simply is not just”. That is a gross misrepresentation of my beliefs and my argument. My argument has been quite simple. I have prayed and pleaded for wisdom, just as Joseph Smith did. I have tried to knock, and I have sought God just as ancient and modern prophets have told me I should. I have not received a witness from God in a form that I can recognize that the LDS church is true. Louis would reduce me to a naïve (or worse), arrogant sign seeker who thinks that God should answer to my every whim. I have tried as hard as I know how to try. In fact, I continue to pray, study and serve to the best of my limited abilities. I am far from perfect, but I am trying to act in faith even if I cannot affirm certain beliefs. I am not your enemy Louis. I really want to believe that God has restored the true gospel, and that I am a part of his covenant people. It is frustrating, and not at all productive to have my concerns trivialized and dismissed in this manner.
As to some of the more substantive issues under discussion, I think that Louis has not effectively answered Thomas’ arguments. He continues to maintain that a lack of belief in the LDS church is indicative of a rejection of God and a lack of certain moral virtues. Surely that conclusion demands more support than he has offered thus far.
McKay Jones: In response to your earlier question of me, yes I have indeed had sleepless nights worrying about some of my ward members, and yes, I have presided over disciplinary councils. And yes, I do teach the doctrines of repentance and forgiveness as taught in the scriptures. I have had numerous wonderful and moving experiences counselling with repentant individuals. You need not worry about my ward members. I care deeply for them, and I try my best to magnify my calling. No calling, including my service as a missionary, has ever brought me more satisfaction(or more stress).
McKay Jones Says:
“I appreciated Craig and Ray’s sharing of undeniable, unexplainable miraculous experiences they have had, experiences that are still undeniable and unexplainable *after* they had lost their faith. This provided for me a fascinating twist on the old “put it on the shelf” motif we are familiar with: they swapped miracle stories from their personal lives that they cannot explain away, even given their current unbelieving orientation.”
Craig’s Reply Ummm…NO that is not what I was saying at all. I said that in light of my current non-belief in Mormonism’s claims…I have had to go back and reinterpret these experiences and “Explain” them through a natural lens rather than a magical Mormon prism.
These experiences were as real as the breath I breathe…they happened that is fact (at least to me)…so if the Mormon God did not intercede in my life, as I had once believed, then what did happen? In other words how do I come to terms with these experiences? I explain them…just as I did in my earlier post, through natural cause and effects…rather than the hand of a Mormon God.
Note to Allen: could you please contact me via my email address? “utah paxton at yahoo dot com” no spaces of course.
Actually, one can lose faith because one has actually studied the scriptures in depth.