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I have to teach Chapter 17 in the priesthood manual about The Strengthening the Power Faith. There are a couple comments which I find very unpleasant — and I’ve heard them a number of times. Here is the most offensive one… Quote:
If there are any of us who lack faith in this work it is because we have not kept the commandments of God. If there are any who do not know that this is the work of our father, it is because they ahvenot done their duty. I know as I know that I live that this is the Lord’s work, and that knowledge comes as a result of keeping His commandments.We know that fiath is a gift of God. it is the fruitage of righteous living. It does not come to use by our command, but is the result of doing the will of our Heavenly Father. If we lack faith let us exmine ourselves to see if we have been keeping his commandments and repent without delay if we have not…”
(p. 188)
We know from interacting with people here that doubt does not stem only from lack of commandment keeping. Certainly if people are sinning deeply there are temptations to reduce one’s faith in the necessity of certain commendments or their source – -God. But the Internet, behavior of church leaders and people, and just plain illogical inconsistencies in doctrine can all affect a person’s faith.
Is this passage from the lesson manual above an oversimplified, false dichotomy? I could just skip it and amplify the other parts of the lesson I agree with (a strategy that has worked pretty well for me so far) but I would appreciate an alternate perspective on it if anyone has one. Seems pretty unequivocally one-sided against people’s righteousness — as if the only thing that keeps a person faithful is obeying the gospel as defined by the church, and anyone who doubts is a sinner.
Oversimplified, yes. But it’s also about confirmation bias. What we do is what’s right because if it wasn’t right we wouldn’t have done it. If we follow the commandments, we find they were right. If we don’t follow them, confirmation bias will help us to justify that also. Faith follows the action. For me, confirmation is bias is simply circular reasoning. It’s all over the place in religion. You’re saved if you have faith. But if you don’t act righteous after you were saved, it was because you were never saved in the first place. SD, this sounds like it would be a good topic to discuss. I would be interested in how members of the quorum would answer this. If nothing else it would get members to think & hopefully discuss.
Mike from Milton.
This quote says that the intersection of the sets of people that 1) lack faith, and 2) keep the commandments is the empty set. Like many religious concepts, it’s an assertion of someone’s opinion — easy to defend/confirm on the one hand, since even though “keeping the commandments” is a fairly subjective idea, by any reasonable definition, nobody can do it perfectly, so if someone lacks faith I can always point to their shortcomings in keeping the commandments. This notion is fairly common in the church and has obvious negative consequences. By the same token, it’s easy to reject for the simple reason that there is no rational basis for making such an assertion, except maybe that others have made the same assertion. From my own experiences I know that the set in question is not empty, so although I do sometimes get a bit annoyed when I read things like this, I can recognize that it’s just someone’s opinion, likely well-intentioned, but that I have no obligation to pay any heed to it.
The best way that I know how to overcome the negative side of statements such as this is to become confident in what you believe. When you feel confident in your personal relationship with God then nobody else’s opinion is going to matter much to you. On one hand when you hear “I know that this is the Lord’s work because I keep His commandments” it’s easy to assume you know what their “this” is pointing to, but I’ve found it helpful to step back and ask “do I need to be absolute in my assumption of their understanding?” They may not be talking about the elements that come to mind for you with their “this” that seems to be pointed at our present day physical church. Sure I would love to hear a more personal “I know the Lord’s work because I keep His commandments” but we need to be charitable with all men and allow God to work through them in their weakness.
What that means to me is I need to improve my filter so that of all the words and thoughts they send my way only the divine part makes it through to touch my heart.
I realize it is a different topic to consider the effects on children, but this is where we need to focus on teaching them to “become” more like Christ and the prophets – to learn to bake the bread instead of always just following the trail of bread crumbs.
Because George Albert Smith said it, they will find ways to defend it. Because keeping the commandments is such a broad term, they could justify it a number of ways such as these: a) in viewing information online that is not church published, you are not nurturing the seed of testimony (as in Alma 32). Therefore, you have broken the commandments and therefore suffer from lack of testimony.
b) the book of Mormon says that if you do not watch your thoughts, you must surely perish. Therefore, reading negative comments about the church, or questioning whether things are true extensively (such as on discussion forums) is breaking this commandment in the Book of Mormon.
They could find some commandment and justify it this way.
Also, it’s a direct quote from a prophet — you start saying “I’m not sure that is correct” in a TBM meeting you are asking for trouble….I think like Mike said, though, it would be good to discuss, but not say one disagrees with it — put the seed of questioning in people’s mind and then let them answer it. I do that all the time.
SilentDawning wrote:…put the seed of questioning in people’s mind and then let them answer it. I do that all the time.
Sounds pretty subversive to me.
😈 Now that I think about it, I guess I do the same thing, but since my victims are innocent teenagers, I have to be a little more circumspect than I would otherwise be.
Ouch! I guess it is a bit under cover, although I wouldn’t say subversive…here’s why I think so. I’ve been delving into positive psychology and the findings are the optimists have the following characteristics:
When bad things happen, they attribute it to temporary circustances beyond their control that only affect one aspect of their life, not all of it. Pessimists, and people who suffer from depression look at mistakes as permanent, affecting their whole life, and due entirely to their own stupidity or actions.
i don’t believe the statement George Albert Smith helps people see the reason for faith loss clearly. I don’t believe it’s all the fault of the member; it’s because faith issues are hard to sort out. There is a lot of conflicting evidence, and sometimes, even Moroni 3:5 doesn’t work for people. To put the blame wholly on the member, whose heart may well in the right place, is certainly not very conducive to mental health and should be countered, gently, so as not to cause ejection from one’s teaching calling.
SilentDawning wrote:Ouch! I guess it is a bit under cover, although I wouldn’t say subversive…
Well, just so you know, while I was partially in jest, I was also trying to affirm your efforts. Subversion is not necessarily a bad thing. Subverting harmful ideas that have become ingrained in a culture for whatever reason is a noble effort that requires tact, skill, discernment, and above all love.
I am reminded of something Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said … something along the lines of the tree of liberty needing to be watered from time to time by the blood of patriots … and tyrants. I suspect that while a lot of people would think that was a great quote, if for no other reason than that TJ said it, most would recoil from the real implications of that statement. And while I’m in no way suggesting that blood needs to be spilt, I do think that somebody needs to take it upon themselves to clear away the detritus of sloppy thinking that has accumulated in the church, and that can feel like a bloody battle if not undertaken with the utmost care. I wish you luck, my friend.
Ugh, again with the splitting and cognitive distortions. That’s a very unhealthily way to look at things. Interpreted exactly as is I have seen countless depression and even emotional abuse from taking this seriously.
This does not promot healthy interaction between people who only see a lack of faith or commandment teaching as something “wrong with someone”. Isn’t that a easy escape goat.
Ok positivity,
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/intuition-vs-datadriven-decisionmaking-some-rough-ideas.html ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/intuition-vs-datadriven-decisionmaking-some-rough-ideas.html “The trouble with intuition is that we now have a HUGE pile of research on cognitive biases and related flaws in decision-making that show “gut feelings” are highly suspect. Look-up confirmation bias — people have a very hard time believing and remember evidence that contradicts their beliefs. There is also the fallacy of centrality, a lot more obscure, but important in that people — especially those in authority — believe that if something important happens, they will know about it. “
“My belief — and it is only partially evidence-based — is that intuition works best in the hands of wise people (this is all over hard facts), when people have the mindset to “act on their beliefs, while doubting what they know,” so that they are always looking for contradictory evidence, encouraging those around them to challenge what they believe, and constantly updating (but always moving forward), then I think that intuition — or acting on incomplete information, hunches, conclusions — is right. “
It’s hard to say how to positively spin this. But many times people’s faith crumbles after “trying and testing” and they don’t receive the percieved reward they were taught would come because of confirmation bias.
It’s destructive to say that a person has list some faith(usually temperary) because of tried and tested and has been “discouraged” when the promised rewards don’t come. It belittles them and their experince. They just had a diffferent one.
At the same time yes there are those that this can apply too. In my personal experince they would be the minority, not the majority. Perhaps it can be presented that way? As a small fraction of torn faith issues?
Honestly I would not be able to even speak that without feeling nauseous. But I always make effort to try to turn negative things into positive. Perhaps you could ask them if they have found this to apply to themselves in thier own lives(not a percieved someone else’s). That it could indeed apply to a small percentage of cases or people who just don’t desire to see things through faith instead of striving but not succeeding at times. Taken as a absolute, that is a very damaging to society way of thinking though. Not healthy at all.
SD, when you say, regarding the loss of faith: Quote:I don’t believe it’s all the fault of the member; it’s because faith issues are hard to sort out. There is a lot of conflicting evidence, and sometimes, even Moroni 3:5 doesn’t work for people. To put the blame wholly on the member, whose heart may well in the right place, is certainly not very conducive to mental health and should be countered, gently, so as not to cause ejection from one’s teaching calling.
This is very good. When you can’t sort it out, consider how we may react. In my crisis I wanted the following:
1. the HG to give me peace &/or understanding.
2. the Bishop to give me peace &/or understanding.
3. my DW to give me peace &/or understanding.
4. my scriptures to give me peace &/or understanding.
5. mental health workers … (you see where I’m going.)
When none of this worked, I (internally) went into a rage against everything.
Now, peace & understanding did (& continues) come. But, in my case, it took time.
If someone wants to assign blame to me, I could care less. Assigning blame doesn’t help anything.
Mike from Milton.
I disagree with the quote – and I probably would share a personal example of times in my life when I’ve been doing everything I could and still struggled with faith and not feeling blessed. I would say something like, Quote:“I know that this view works for a lot of people and fits their experiences, but it just doesn’t match my own. What are some things that have caused you in this group to struggle with faith?”
and I would turn it into a discussion about their reactions and not the material in the lesson itself.
Well, they finally set me apart — and in the blessing told me to strengthen and uplift them…so I feel that reflecting on the things that challenge our faith might run counter to that. However, I have an idea…. There is a scripture which says that the person who commits adultery will not be forgiven — I read it in the MIracle of Forgiveness. Spencer W Kimball then quoted a woman who felt doomed because she had committed adultery and read that scripture. He then comments that you can’t take any scripture in isolation — you have to take in the context of other scriptures that bear on the topic.
I think I could use the SWK approach to the George Albert Smith (GAS) objectionable quote. I could comment that his statement needs to be taken along with other scriptures and quotes from other prophets to have a fully rounded explanation of what causes people to lose faith.
Now, do any of you have any suggestions about other scriptures or quotes that might bear on this topic to tame GAS’s extreme comment, and again, provide these brethren with greater hope, and a kinder, gentler perception of God an the Church? They won’t get it if I stick only to what GAS said. (Pardon the GAS acronym but in this case I think it’s kind of fitting given the extremism in his comment
I went to lds.org to look for things that would be considered “official”. The following are possibilities – the best overall concrete examples I found: The article below in the Ensign talks about things that cause faith to waver that have nothing to do with righteousness or obedience or effort:
The next one from the Ensign has a section that deals with the effects of telling people to “toughen up” (which includes “just be more righteous / obedient”) when their issues are caused by depression. I absolutely would quote from the section about dealing with sever depression and talk about how devastating assumptions about apparent and actual struggles with faith can be for many people.
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