A Series of our Experience, Strength, and Hope.
Introduction
Lao Tzu once said, “A Journey of a thousand miles begins from beneath our feet.” The Journey of A Thoughtful Faith is one such journey.
Where does it start?
In this community of A Thoughtful Faith, we share one common attribute: we have realized that the certainties of our religion are not certain at all. Whether our uncertainty arises from learning about the facts of history, the origins of our doctrines, or the divinity of the practices, we have entered into a place where we doubt, we no longer are sure about the truth claims we have held so dear.
Sometimes we use the term “Faith Crisis” to talk about this starting point. Perhaps, in a way, it is a crisis, because if we no longer are certain about our fundamental beliefs, it can cause us a lot of disruption. But not everyone starts with a sudden crisis of faith. For many, it is a gradual process, a realization that what we once believed may not be the way we thought it was.
For others, faced with an “all or nothing”/black and white paradigm about religion, the realization that fundamental truth claims are not as neat and tidy as we once thought leads to an abrupt flipping from “all true” to “not true”.
Regardless of whether this “Faith Crisis” is gradual or abrupt, the truth is that our Faith Journey isn’t a point in time: it started much earlier, perhaps even before this life, and will continue into the eternities. We might call it “eternal progression”, but this hardly satisfies us when we are in the midst of profound doubt.
No. Our Faith Journey, our crisis of faith, has foundations in the very process we used to build testimony.
Whether as an investigator to the church, or as a child wanting to build a testimony, we have learned a simple approach for how we know the truth of all things. We read the Book of Mormon with an open heart, and as we read, we have an experience: something in the Book, or in the teachings of the Church whispers to us a feeling of “this is good”.
And it is. But what do we do with this feeling? We say in our heart, this must be of God, because it is good. As we embrace the origin story of the Book of Mormon, that it was an ancient record delivered by an angel, translated word-for-word from the plates as divine dictation, we come to believe that this book is a divine work, and it is “true”.
What does that “true” imply? It means that if it came from God, then the origin story, as taught, must also be true. And if it is true, then the person who delivered the Book of Mormon to us was indeed a Prophet of God, and that the Church he restored must be true in all of its particulars, including, the existence of the one and only true church upon the face of the whole earth, with covenants and ordinances containing the things we must know and do in order to be saved and return to heaven.
We learn to recite a “testimony”, consisting of five key statements:
1. I know that God is our Heavenly Father and He loves us.
2. I know that His Son, Jesus Christ, is our Savior and Redeemer.
3. I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. He restored the gospel of Jesus Christ to the earth and translated the Book of Mormon by the power of God.
4. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s Church on the earth today.
5. I know that this Church is led by a living prophet who receives revelation.
(The Friend, October 2008)
This set of statements, each beginning with “I Know”, is how we teach children to speak of our beliefs. And when children embrace this kind of certainty, they aren’t building their own sense of truth, but rather, echoing someone else’s. The term “I know” does not allow for any doubt. It doesn’t ask any questions. It is simply to receive and recite statements without development of one’s own perspective.
Yet for each Latter-day Saint, such recitations are not enough. Based upon reading, pondering, and praying, we have positive spiritual experiences with the scriptures, doctrines, history, and practices of the Church. And because we learn from the beginning to equate our positive feelings — “Burning of the Bosom” — as being indicators of truth, we assert that what we read, learn, and do is indeed “true”. We become certain, and thus, we can, in all personal honesty say “I know”, because our beliefs have been justified by our feelings.
And this is the beginning of both our Faith Journey, as well as dooming us to a Faith Crisis at some point in our lives.
But these are deeply positive spiritual experiences, and thus, many Latter-day Saints are unshakable in their personal testimonies. Certainty does not allow for questions or doubts, and such certainty empowers us to act and do the things the Church tells us with confidence. And without equivocation, many of the actions and impact of our Church are very positive indeed. Many will never come to question their unshakable testimonies.
We are not among those who can embrace certainty. For whatever reason, we have discovered something amiss in the foundations of our beliefs. We may even discover that almost all of the exclusive claims in our testimony are not so simple. Facts about our history, the origin of our doctrines, and indeed many of our practices, explained as “revelation”, often come from a distinctly human origin.
Oh, we can pass these things off as being just “blips on he radar”. We can tell ourselves that our doubts are Satan’s plan to deceive us. We can turn to apologists who have an explanation for why glaringly obvious falsehoods are somehow not false at all. So we put our doubts on a shelf, saying we’ll understand them later.
In time, however, the things we have placed on our shelf become so heavy, so compelling, that our shelf collapses under the weight. We may call this the moment of Faith Crisis, but it’s only the collapse of a shelf being loaded for years. It’s the moment we discover that this feeling of discomfort is not just a passing phase or temptation by Satan — It’s quite real and very present.
We discover that we are on a path to somewhere, perhaps. We are fearful, because we see so many of our friends and family, having learned of the same things we have learned, end up leaving the Church. We were once confident that they did so because they were weak or wanted to sin, or were offended by something. We could pass it off as yielding to Satan — of not passing the trial of faith.
But then, we discover we, too, are on this path.
We did not sin to get here. We did not yield to the enticings of Satan. We were not offended. We legitimately realized that there are some things deeply inconsistent within the truth claims of our dominant Latter-day Saint narrative. And we find ourselves on a path.
We call this path, “The Journey of A Thoughtful Faith”.
And we need help. We need support. We do not have answers. Ours is the Way of Faith, not the Way of Certainty. We are here together, as fellow wayfarers on this Journey.
In this series, we hope to share our experiences, strength, and hope — things we’ve learned about how we survive this Journey of A Thoughtful Faith. And in this process, we’ve discovered immense joy and community along the Way.
You are not alone. There is hope.
Welcome to the Journey!