Failed Expectations

This is my attempt at an essay for John’s book. Looking for all forms of feedback, this is just a rough start – please share anything that crosses your mind. If you don’t have time to read it don’t worry, my feelings won’t be hurt.

I have thought about this subject for some time, especially how to communicate the reasons and emotions to faithful “TBM” members in a way that they will respond to — in an effort to build understanding and compassion. This is what I come up with………..

Whenever I consider the question: “What causes people to lose their faith in the church?” I always come back to the same two words. Failed expectations.

I think Davis Bitton got it right when he said:

“What’s potentially damaging or challenging to faith depends entirely, I think, on one’s expectations, and not necessarily history [or doctrine, or policy, or the actions of leaders]. Any kind of experience can be shattering to faith if the expectation is such that one is not prepared for the experience. … A person can be converted to the Church in a distant part of the globe and have great pictures of Salt Lake City, the temple looming large in the center of the city. Here we have our home teaching in nice little blocks and we all go to church on Sunday, they believe. It won’t take very many hours or days before the reality of experiencing Salt Lake City can be devastating to a person with those expectations. The problem is not the religion; the problem is the incongruity between the expectation and the reality.”

Several years ago I experienced something similar to what brother Bitton has described here. It began as I was reading a book about Joseph Smith. It was a wonderful, faithful book, written by Susan Easton Black. The passage that caught me off guard was something that Joseph had written in 1832 about his experience as a youth:

“…by searching the scriptures I found that mankind did not come unto the Lord, but that they had apostatized from the true and living faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament…”

Joseph was talking here about events leading up to his first vision. Events that I had always imagined taking place in a different way. It was clear in my mind that Joseph wanted very much to follow God in the proper way. He had grown up studying the Bible, and had no greater desire than to live all the commandments and join God’s true church. He had never in his life imagined that the church he should join did not exist on the earth, because he said so in JSH 1:18 “for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong” (at least that is how I interpreted it at the time). I had always understood that he went to pray in the grove expecting a one word answer. It could have been “Baptists” or “Methodists” and he would have gone on his way, as happy as could be.

Now this “new” version seemed to be saying that before he ever went to pray he had decided “by searching the scriptures” that God’s true church did not exist on the earth. This new information was not something that my existing beliefs could assimilate. I was entrenched in the idea that Joseph had said he went to the grove believing the true church already existed, yet this new source seemed credible. I didn’t know what to do. Had I caught Joseph in a lie?

I felt guilty for even entertaining such a question. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt it was wrong to question in a way that might lead to doubt. I wanted to believe fully. I wanted to demonstrate that my hands and heart were pure.

Dr. Wendy Ulrich has said “I have noticed that many of the people I have known who have left the Church did not do so because they believed too little, but because they believed too much. In their excessive idealism, they have held Church leaders or God to expectations which were inevitably disappointed, and they have felt betrayed.”

Today I can see how at that time I believed “too much” about Joseph Smith’s early life. I can see that I was holding him to unrealistic expectations in the way I thought he should have told his story, and the details that he should have clearly remembered. Yes, I can now see how retelling an experience many years after it occurred could lead to confusion in some details. At the time however, I was too emotionally involved to think so clearly. I had no concept of believing “too much” as Dr. Ulrich described, everything I had ever conceived about belief in the church pointed me toward an absolute and unconditional belief in the church and its leaders; and for me that meant Joseph should have remembered all the minute details. I can’t tell you for sure how I came to be in that position, but I can tell you it was MY personal belief system, and I was wholly emotionally and mentally enmeshed in it. While my questions and concerns over time extended beyond this one example, I think this question illustrates the nature of the conflict sufficiently for now. The point is that some valid questions, and even more so when it becomes combinations of questions, can cause trauma to personal expectations or belief systems.

Having experienced this “gap” first hand, with all the depth of emotion that accompanies it, I see the potential for a significant chasm to exist between the “unrealistic expectations” that brother Bitton and sister Ulrich refer to, and reality. At least this is the case for individuals who may have idealistic beliefs such as I did. The difficulty, the hurdle that often seems insurmountable, is the emotional tie to the existing beliefs that one has built over a lifetime. It may be easy to talk about, but it is no easy feat to exchange one set of expectations for another. Especially when they are interwoven with core religious beliefs. I sometimes think it would be as easy to surgically transplant a central nervous system as to modify an established set of expectations. And my gut tells me we should probably anticipate a similar rate of success.

The difficulty is that we, as human individuals, come to lean so heavily on our particular view of the world. It is part of who we are, and how we interact with everyone and everything around us. To say we are attached to our belief system can be an enormous understatement. People have likened the attachment to relationships with a spouse or a child, but I feel it can be even closer than that. It is our relationship with ourselves. It can be devastating to learn that a core part of who we are is not what we always imagined it to be. We can all imagine mourning for the loss of a child, but unless you have experienced a similar depth of personal disillusionment, it can be a very difficult thing to relate to. I have heard many people say they became physically ill, as I experienced myself. It becomes difficult to focus on tasks, or even to have hope for the future. People may say things like “everything I thought I knew is wrong” but more often it comes out in language of “the church isn’t true” or “isn’t what it claims to be.”

Often well meaning friends and family members see the simplistic form of the issue: “there is a gap, you are here, reality is there, just make the hop and all will be good!” But I think they often underestimate the mental and emotional challenges that accompany such a “hop.” Struggling members may be given alternate explanations to their questions, or told to pray more fervently for a testimony of the truth. The intent of these suggestions is to help, but the “real” underlying issue too often goes untreated. Sadly most members don’t realize the depth of the emotional anguish that accompanies such a challenge to their personal faith paradigm. Instead of offering answers, or trying to make it right, much of the time what a struggling member needs to hear is something more like “I’m so sorry for your loss” or “I know it’s a difficult thing to deal with.” But these words can be difficult to speak when the faithful member views them as a concession of some kind to the claims being made against the church – instead of what they really are – consoling a soul in crisis. The crisis is the result of unrealistic personal expectations, regardless the source. The person is in the process of coming to terms with reality. Often this required adjustment can be a real shock from where they presently stand. And often the process may even cause them to “over-shoot” the spot where they will eventually end up.

These challenged members may find it extremely difficult to rebuild their personal faith paradigm. When the unique arrangement of their belief system leads to a catastrophic failure, the entire structure comes tumbling down. Condemnation in this scenario is completely and utterly counterproductive. Imagine your house has fallen to the ground. You go kicking through the pieces trying to find anything salvageable, when a friend stops by and starts commenting: “You should have… (this)”, or “you could have… (that).” “Did you update your homeowner’s policy lately?” It is just the wrong time for that type of conversation. What they really need to hear is “I believe in you.” And the trick is to mean it, even when you have some personal reservations.

Another feeling that accompanies this scenario is that of betrayal, as Dr. Ulrich described. I know I felt like my idealistic beliefs and expectations were in the norm. I thought every other member probably believed and viewed things very similar to the way I did. I never really thought about how I may have acquired my unique set of expectations, or that they were even unique. I assumed that the church must have handed them to me in a nicely wrapped package. If they were “wrong” the church must have lied to me! It is easy and natural to feel betrayed. It is the “default” pattern to fall into. Of course cooler minds can recognize that individual expectation sets are created from various unique inputs, and that understanding where our particular beliefs and expectations come from can help us own them and modify them when required. …That is probably a discussion for another day.

As I mentioned earlier it is often a combination of questions that eventually bring the scale to a tipping point. For me personally the question of Joseph’s mindset before his first vision probably would not have led to a crisis by itself. It was an accumulation of multiple “significant” questions that eventually grew into a body of doubt – framed by my set of expectations – that my substance of faith could no longer outweigh. It worked something like dropping pellets onto one side of a scale, one question at a time, until they eventually outweighed the amount of faith that was holding the scale down on the other side. The “tip” of the scale represents entrance into a faith crisis. The accumulation happened gradually at first. Then the questions started to come faster once my curiosity was piqued. “I have to find out more about this stuff” I thought, and the drive practically consumed me. What would normally be little things involving polygamy, translation methods, business failures, public declarations, old pastimes, alternate accounts, human weakness, poor judge of character, and less than perfect record keeping – all of a sudden, in that tipping point, united to form a mass of doubt greater than the sum of its individual parts. The sum of the parts was just enough to tip the scale, but once tipped all the little pieces merged into one, and a synergy effect boosted the weight of the doubt to roughly 10 times its previous mass – making the hope of it ever tipping back flee with the wind.

For a time.

I did manage to eventually get the scale tipped back the other way, but it took a lot of time and dedicated effort. On second thought I don’t think saying the scale tipped “back” is as accurate as saying it found a new balance point. I like to think I threw out all the doubt because doubt does not serve me well. My scale now balances between faith and reason, and I like to see it balanced. Leonard Arrington once wrote:

“The human soul, like a charioteer, must drive two horses as it progresses toward Heaven. The horses must work together or the chariot will just go round and round. …It would be unfortunate if either should outstretch the other. Over-emphasizing intellect to the neglect of spirituality, and over-emphasizing faith without the application of reason are both unworthy of practicing Latter-day Saints. We cannot achieve spiritual excellence without intellectual rigor, and intellectual excellence is hollow without active spirituality. We need to have the spirit as we learn, and we need to have learning as we build faith. Working together, faith and intellect help us achieve the Latter-day Saint goal of eternal progression.”

Today I have no use for doubt in my worldview. That is not to say I think I have all the answers, for I do not. Doubt has simply been replaced with uncertainty. I have many questions for which I have no clear answer, and I am okay with that. I reflect on the words of Henry Eyring the scientist: “I believe whichever way it turns out to have actually been” (Mormon Scientist p.228) and hope I will always be open to truth. In the end I realized I could reach through all the doubt and hold onto the gospel of Jesus Christ, with its message of hope and love.

I also relate to what Richard Bushman says about members who are “revived” from a crisis of faith:

“1. They often say they learned the Prophet was human. They don’t expect him to be a model of perfect deportment as they once thought. He may have taken a glass of wine from time to time, or scolded his associates, or even have made business errors. They see his virtues and believe in his revelations but don’t expect perfection.

4. Revived Latter-day Saints focus on the good things they derive from their faith–the community of believers, the comforts of the Holy Spirit, the orientation toward the large questions of life, contact with God, moral discipline, and many others. They don’t want to abandon these good things. Starting from that point of desired belief, they are willing to give Joseph Smith and the doctrine a favorable hearing. They may not be absolutely certain about every item, but they are inclined to see the good and the true in the Church. …Their confidence in the good things they knew before is at least partially restored. But they sort out the goodness that seems still vital from the parts that now seem no longer tenable. Knowledge not only has given them a choice, it has compelled them to choose. They have to decide what they really believe. In the end, many are more stable and convinced than before. They feel better prepared to confront criticism openly, confident they can withstand it.”

Today I feel that I am more firmly in the church than I have ever been, but I also understand the situations that can make others feel like leaving. I hope as a people we can overcome our fear of the apostate, because “a perfect love casteth out fear.” I believe that as we learn to frame the thoughts and views of others in terms of their own unique expectations and understanding, we will learn to be more charitable and forgiving. We know that God works with all humans “according to their language” and level of understanding. Line upon line. I feel that our urges to rebuke or condemn others, when they speak words we don’t agree with, says as much about our own level of spirituality as it does about theirs. For “there is no fear in love.”