Parable of the Toy Lantern

Little kids are fascinated with the world. Everything is new for them and they like to know how things work. Sometimes, they will invent stories to explain things. For example, I remember thinking that when you turned up the volume on the radio, it told the announcer to speak louder and that there was a little tiny band inside of the car that played the music.

On my sixth or seventh birthday, a friend gave me a Fisher-Price lantern as a present. It had a feature on it where it would automatically shut off after about twenty minutes if it was not being used. Being the curious kid that I was, I wanted to know how it worked, so I asked my mom. She told me that it had a clock. And of course in my child’s mind, I envisioned that a digital watch would be inside of it. So I found a screwdriver and opened it up to see this mystical clock. Once it was open, I was a little disillusioned to find nothing but a circuit board inside. It looked nothing like any clock or watch I had ever seen. As good as I was at taking things apart; I wasn’t terribly skilled at putting them back together. I remember hiding it in the back of my closest because I was too embarrassed to let my friend see that I broke his present.

At times our faith journey may be like this experience. We all have beliefs about what God is like, what heaven is like, how the world was created, how prayer works, etc. At some point we become curious enough to get out the screwdriver and disassemble those beliefs and see what we find inside. When we do, what we find on the inside may at the very least confuse us. We may feel upset. We may feel like we were lied to when we were told there was a clock inside.

But was it really a lie? My mom knew that the “clock” in there wasn’t one with a minute and second hand. But my mom was not an electrical engineer and neither was I. Describing the electronic workings as a clock was the easiest way to communicate her knowledge to me in a way I could at least partially understand.

We do not have a perfect understanding of God, nor do the leaders of the church. It is not likely that the writers of the Bible did either.  We may picture in our mind that when God created the world, he simply snapped His fingers and it appeared ex nihilo, or out of nothing. When we learn about evolution or geology, we might find that belief challenged. When we expected to find the allegorical clock, we found something else. This does not mean we need to throw away our faith, nor do we need to dismiss science as a lie. Instead, it might simply mean that we did not have a full understanding of how God works. As science continues to progress, we will find more and more of our suppositions about God and the universe challenged. Maybe we’ll find out that the soul isn’t quite what we expected, or that the Holy Ghost is not some kind of spiritual radio wave from heaven that we tune into. Instead of feeling threatened by new knowledge, perhaps we can see it as a manifestation that God is greater and more mysterious than we previously imagined. Each new discovery will be an opportunity to stand back and say, “Oh, so that’s how it works!”

Considerst Thou The Beam in Thine Own Eye?

One huge short-sight we often have as human beings, is trying to force our current world view unto those in the past. One area I think this is especially evident is in the way we view scripture or church history. In the 21^st century, when the newspaper quotes someone, there’s really not much question of whether or not those were the exact words they said. We have video and audio recording equipment that allows us to capture exactly what they said when they said it. While we may question whether or not the quotations are used in context, the word-for-word accuracy of the statement is generally an assumption. It is foolish to assume this for past eras though. Any historical documentation from the pre-recording era is likely to come from first-hand oral accounts, sometimes long after the fact. Any quotations are probably paraphrased. At best, there was someone at the event trained in shorthand who was taking notes, but even this will fall short of the word perfect accuracy we expect. 

The New Testament is an excellent case study for this issue. We have three accounts of essentially the same events from the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Please note that none of these men were among the twelve apostles. They were not physically present at many of the events they reported. Also, most scholars agree that the gospels were written around ten to twenty years after the fact. If you know a little about how the mind works, then you know that our memory does not work like a tape recorder. Instead when we ‘remember’ things, we actually reconstruct things in our mind. Our present knowledge and experiences actually change and influence the way we remember our past. I won’t go into the details at this point, but let’s just say that eye-witness accounts are only semi-reliable. What I’m getting at, is that it is crazy to read the Bible with an assumption that it is a word-for-word accurate account of Jesus’ life and sayings. I’m not suggesting that we can disregard it because of these limitations, but we need to recognize the human limitations of the writers. They were doing the best they could, but it is not 100% accurate. 

There are contradictions between the three gospels. Some of the more ignorant critics see this as a case against the historicity of the bible. It is really a case for it. Recognizing the limitations of the time period, it would be more suspect if all accounts of Jesus’ life did line up word-for-word. There should be some differences between independent accounts, especially if they are being given from memory. While I’m on the topic, let’s explore Joseph Smith’s accounts of the First Vision. Most church members are only familiar with the one found printed in the Pearl of Great Price that missionaries quote in the discussions. This one is actually quite late. It was written in 1838, eighteen years after the first vision occurred. There are three or four other accounts from much earlier that do not line up. In some of the earlier accounts, for example, Joseph reports seeing only one being instead of two. Some accounts he leaves out the part about feeling constrained by some dark power. You get the idea, there are some pretty big discrepancies. This is a cause of concern for some people when they hear about it. Was he just making the story up? Did he embellish and add details as time went on? Again, if you have a basic understanding of how memory works, you should expect these changes. Our memories about events actually change and are molded by our later experiences. The details of what actually happened in the vision, such as the exact words he heard, or whether he saw one person or two are pretty much lost to history. Joseph himself probably didn’t even know at the end of his life. That’s just how the mind works. 

Another thing we must take into account is the difference in values between our modern society and those of the past. As Richard Dawkin’s states:

It is a commonplace that good historians don't judge statements from past times by the standards of their own. Abraham Lincoln, like Huxley, was ahead of his time, yet his views on matters of race also sound backwardly racist in ours. Here he is in a debate in 1858 with Stephen A. Douglas:

 I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Dawkins, Richard (2008-01-16). The God Delusion (pp. 302-303). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

This is from Abraham Lincoln. Does that put the racist statements of Brigham Young into perspective a little bit? I would argue that if either of these great men were born into our time, they would not say the things they did. I would also argue that if we were born into their time, we would be no better. It is no great moral achievement to not be a racist in an age where racism is condemned. But choosing to be a little less racist than everyone else in a time when slavery is condoned may be an act of great courage. It is important to remember that. 

While I recognize that there are still some issues in church history that do not have easy answers, a good deal of the things that are brought up by critics of the church become non-issues when we have a mature understanding of what things were actually like in past times. I don’t think open and uncensored discussion of our church's history needs to destroy testimonies. If people are better educated about the historical context the events occurred in, and we are able to remember that the people involved are normal human beings with common weaknesses, we have nothing to fear in being open and candid.

O Say, What is Truth?

During the most acute phase of my faith crisis, I read every book I could get my hands on from Henry Eyreing’s “Mormon Scientist” to Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”. I think I probably read seven or eight books cover to cover and partially read a couple more in the space of about two months. I think the book that influenced me the most during that time was a book called the “Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell. He was a professor who studied and taught comparative mythology. If I were to put the book’s message into a single sentence, it would be this:

A story doesn’t have to be true in order to be “true”

What do I mean by that? Let’s take the story of the Good Samaritan for example. Did it actually happen? Probably not, but would the message of the story be any more true if it actually did? Most of us are ok with that. We are used to fables, fairy tales, and other stories which are entirely fictional but serve a useful purpose. However, when it comes to the Bible or another sacred book, it is more difficult for us to see things that way. In many religious traditions, inerrancy of scripture is a pillar of faith, and many believers take this to mean not only the principles are without error but also the historical accounts and stories are as well. Some feel that to challenge the historical accuracy of scripture is to commit blasphemy. But regardless of your personal feelings on the subject, step back and think about this:

• Would the 10 commandments be invalid if Moses didn’t actually write Exodus?

• Should we disregard the Bible as a source of moral guidance because it uses language that suggests the world is flat?

• Would the discourse on faith in Alma 32 lose its meaning if the weights and measures of Nephite coinage given two chapters earlier were incorrect?

What I’m getting at here, is that there are different kinds of truth. However, in our modern society, we tend to focus on semantic, or factual truth almost exclusively. There are other approaches to truth, but we don’t really hear about them much. One such approach is a philosophy called pragmatism. While semantic truth asks, “Is it accurate?” pragmatism asks “Does it work?” Take for example, Newton’s theory of gravity. It suggests that all objects attract one another, and that objects with greater mass have more of this attractive force. However, our current understanding of science is that this is not accurate. We now believe that rather than drawing each other in like magnets, objects instead bend the time and space which they occupy. It is somewhat like standing in the middle of a trampoline and seeing the fabric sink where you are standing; if someone were to place a ball at the edge of the trampoline, it would roll towards you. So while Newton’s theory of gravity doesn’t describe reality with 100% accuracy, physicists still use his math. Why? Because it works. Yes, when you start going close to the speed of light or start looking at really small things like electrons it breaks down, but for pretty much anything else that happens on this planet it works perfectly well, and the math is a lot simpler.

If we look at history, I think it is safe to say that a practical knowledge of something always comes first. People figured out pretty quick that eating uncooked or spoiled food would make you sick, but it has only been relatively recently that we knew about bacteria. People have been selectively breeding horses, dogs, and other animals for thousands of years to obtain certain characteristics, but we have only known about DNA and genetics for the last 100 years or so. People used to believe that mice spontaneously generated out of hay, because whenever they left it lying around the creatures always seemed to show up. Here is something to think about though: while people were wrong to think that mice magically generated from haystacks, the effect of that belief was that they wouldn’t leave it lying around near the house. If you believed that, you were wrong, but you also didn’t have mice in your house. Sometimes there are more important things than being right.

(to be continued)

Introduction

I started going through my crisis of faith in Januray 2012 during my last semester of college. This experience completely turned my world upside down and destroyed all my previous assumptions about people who left the church or "lost their testimonies". I'll give a short bio to provide some context. I come from a strong LDS family and can trace my ancestry to pioneer heritage on both sides. With few exceptions, all of my predecessors have been born and buried in Cache Valley, Utah for the last six generations. My background is about as Mormon as it gets. I grew up in the church never missing a Sunday unless I was sick or traveling. I had almost nothing but positive experiences with the church in my youth. I served a Spanish-speaking mission in Long Beach, California. It was difficult and stretched me in many ways, but I would consider the overall experience a net positive. When I returned home I finished my bachelor's degree at BYU-Idaho. I absolutely loved it there, and was the type of guy that actually liked the quirky subculture.

I had asked many serious questions earlier in life about religion. When I was about fifteen for example, I remember being really bothered wondering how we could claim to "know" that our church was true because of certain feelings we attributed to the Holy Ghost when people in other religions felt many of the same things.

While historical issues weren't the biggest issue in my faith crisis, I wrestled with many of these on my mission. In the end, I was either able to find answers that satisfied me for the moment or at least put the questions on the shelf and move on. I do remember being a little different on the mission. While other missionaries delighted in pointing out how 'ridiculous' the doctrines were in other churches, I couldn't quite accept that  people would commit their lives to something simply because they were stupid, and chose to find out what others actually believed, and why they believed it. This especially opened my eyes when I started learning more about the Jehovah's Witnesses and realized that some of the doctrines I thought were unique to Mormonism (like the ideas of apostasy and restoration) were also shared by them. 

I also hated the cop-out of bearing your testimony when you didn't know the answer to something, so I spent a lot of time studying arguments people raised against the church so I could respond to them better. This opened my eyes a lot as I began to see that not all criticisms against the church were anti-Mormon lies, but there were some legitimate questions that did not have easy answers. 

Despite all the questions I encountered on my mission, I returned home an extremely literal and devout believer and continued to be so for the next couple of years. 

I can't attribute my crisis to one or two issues; it's not that simple. But the thing most predominantly on my mind before the downward spiral began was the idea of "the one true church". I had started studying world religions fairly seriously about a year before my crisis. I had come to love the words of the Bhagavadgita, the Dhammapada, the Quran, and the Tao Te Ching and found great inspiration in these sacred books. The apologetic statement "all religions have some truth in them" didn't really work for me anymore. I found just as much truth in other religions as I did in my own, and the idea of there being only one true church became very difficult for me to accept. I had also recently learned some things about psychology from classes at school and other books I had read that made me a little skeptical of the religious indoctrination I had been receiving since I was a little child.

Under normal circumstances I may have struggled with these questions for a month or two and put them back on the shelf. However, there were many other things going on in my life at that time. I had been making serious plans to marry a girl, and things didn't work out, I was starting my last semester of college and was having second thoughts about my chosen career path, I was extremely over-scheduled, and under the weight of it all I started to experience depression. All of this created the perfect storm. I kept pushing things out of my mind in order to deal with my school work which was more pressing at the moment, and simply dealt with the tension I felt sitting in church every Sunday. But a few weeks after returning home from school everything collapsed for me. I went from not being sure if the Mormon Church was really the one true church to not being sure if God really existed in a relatively short time. 

Because the rhetoric in the church was so often presented as "it's either all true or it's all false" I initially felt my only two options were to continue faking it hoping that my doubts would eventually go away or leave entirely to preserve my intellectual integrity. Over the last several months however, I have come to abandon seeing the world in such a black-and-white, all-or-nothing way. I am beginning to find ways to rebuild my faith, although my current approach to faith may seem unusual and maybe even a little unorthodox to the traditional believer. I am beginning to be able to give up my desire for certainty and embrace ambiguity. I am beginning to find that there is beauty in simply admiring the mysteriousness of God and accepting that he may be unknowable. 

The purpose of this blog is to share the spiritual lessons I have learned while going through this faith crisis. I have found it much more productive to express my beliefs positively by expressing what I do believe as opposed to negatively by expressing what I do not believe. As such, I will avoid writing about any particular doubts or criticisms I may still have and instead choose to focus on the insights I have gained. I hope I am able to reach out to others who face serious doubts. While my experiences may be different than yours, there is comfort in knowing you are not alone.

The Trilemma: Something to Remember When Judging Others

During my last semester of college I took a class in project management. In one of the lectures a slide was shown which showed a triangle. The words “Time”, “Cost”, and “Quality” were each written on one of the corners. The short version of the lecture which could be placed as a caption at the bottom was, “Pick two”. The idea was that whenever you are providing a product or a service, people want it cheap, fast, and of high quality. However, you cannot deliver fully in one of these areas without compromising another. If you try to make a product cheaply and quickly, it will negatively affect the quality. If you try to make a product of premium quality, it will make it more expensive and take longer to produce. You get the idea; it is impossible to please everyone. It does not matter how powerful the company is or how talented its employees are, there are simply physical limitations to what can be done.

Remembering this lesson has helped me in my faith crisis as well. It is very easy to be critical of the church and its leaders. One common complaint in the disaffected community is that the church is not open and candid enough about the less pleasant aspects of church history. It is a fair criticism; many people who leave the church over historical issues often comment that the church’s apparent sweeping-under-the-rug of these issues is worse than the issues themselves. Perhaps had they learned about these things in Sunday school rather than from outside sources it would have been less of a challenge to their testimonies. I agree that the church could be more open about these things, but it is important to remember that there is a cost involved as well. It would better serve the needs of some members, but hurt others. So, as a church leader, what do you do? Stick to the bread and butter gospel lessons and ignore the difficult questions that some of the struggling members have, or cater to the needs of those with difficult questions at the risk of creating doubts in others that they wouldn’t experience otherwise? There will be casualties on either side. There is no solution that will perfectly serve the needs of all the individuals in the church.

These dilemmas exist at every level of decision making in the church. When planning youth activities, do you plan fun activities that will be well attended, but lack spiritual depth, or do you plan deep and meaningful experiences that may be less popular? Do we lower our baptismal and temple recommend requirements to make the church feel more comfortable and welcoming to potential converts and others who are struggling and risk moral laziness among the rest of our members, or do we keep them high and risk alienating those who fall short? Do we continue to emphasize the nuclear family as the ideal and risk hurting those who are divorced, single, or unable to have children, or do we instead choose to turn away from this emphasis and by so doing cheapen the importance of the traditional family? Please understand that as I present these problems, I am not saying that it has to be one way or the other. We can take an approach falls anywhere in between in most cases. What I am saying, is that it is impossible to serve both sides fully; there will always be a compromise.

While at the corporate level the church may choose to pick whichever side will help the most members (and as a side effect hurt those who are the outliers), one wonderful thing to remember is that when we serve at the local level it does not need to be this way. The church needs all kinds of people to function. There is not one right way to fulfill any calling. The zealous and hard-lining mission president may be just the thing one missionary needs, but the spirit-of-the-law zone leader may be the one who reaches another. The deep and contemplative scoutmaster will help deepen the testimonies of many of the youth, while the fun and charismatic young men’s leader may be the one to get the two or three kids that never come out to start attending again. We are all part of the body of Christ. We all serve a unique function and are able to reach certain people in ways that others cannot. As the church grows larger and larger and brings in more and more cultures, it will become less and less practical to address the unique challenges and circumstances of all individuals at a church-wide level. Rather than complain about what the church is not doing, perhaps we can be a little more proactive in filling those individual needs which our own experiences have prepared us for.