What WAS Your Testimony Based On?

The older I get, the more it seems to me that you need to have a certain thick skin – or maybe a certain serenity – to persist as a Mormon for very long. You need to be able to say, “OK, I can’t resolve this today, and that’s all right”, but not everybody can. Our faith is close enough to our hearts that it can make us panic. I think panic is the key word here.

There are people who cope very well with panic, faith-induced or otherwise, and they’re the ones who don’t seem to get shaken up. I don’t think “ignorance is bliss” explains it very often. You see an instantaneous snapshot of people, including family, when they’re not in crisis and/or haven’t been. Sooner or later, though, something will come up that they’ll have to wrestle with.

I don’t think there are any rules for cause and effect. Encountering something on the internet is just as likely to trigger a faith crisis as something a person does.

It’s true, though, that a person (prophet, personal friend, or otherwise) will eventually say something that just isn’t going to set well.

Related to that is the difference between church doctrine and church culture. Many members don’t distinguish. Culture allows little needling things like words or deeds of an individual (often falsely asserted as doctrine) to enter our craws and stick there.

Our preconceptions enter, too. The thing that shook me up is seeing something happen (in a specific case and not in general) that I believed inspiration was meant to guard against – as the result of church leaders either not receiving it or ignoring it. It was (well, is) hard for me to attribute it just to the leaders, though, because according to D&C 1, they speak for the Lord.

I’m not well-versed in the historical issues, other than to say that polygamy gives me the heebie jeebies (even though I’m descended from a church member who migrated from Independence to Far West to Nauvoo to Utah Valley and had nine wives over the course of his life, some at the same time). One thing I think is true, though, is that it’s often hard to infer the tone of a written record. A simple quote could have been a wisecrack or something in jest, and the reader might never know if all the author did is record it verbatim. Likewise, a narrative account could be fact, tabloid, or outright libel, and there might be no way to discern the agenda, especially if there isn’t much info about the author. These things don’t necessarily explain everything, though, and some unsavory things can be found.

I think your in-laws are right that doubt starts as a small seed, just as faith does. I wouldn’t equate doubt with desire, though, like Alma equates faith with desire.

When you do find something that shakes your faith, you can often counterbalance it with a different experience that you can’t reject off the cuff – something like a priesthood ordinance you’ve seen or your experience at a very spiritual meeting or event. I think a lot of members stay members because intangible things like that happen once in a while, despite the fact that history/dogma/jerks/ignoramuses/etc undercut its basis. Compartmentalizing like this is okay. Wait for your sample size to increase, i.e., other things to get thrown into the same compartment, and then try to balance the big picture by volume. This is another part of thick skin, patience, serenity, or whatever the right word is.

I agree with all that Ray said and add my two cents.

To the extent I’ve achieved any serenity it’s because of two things. First, it’s how I view the Gospel. The Gospel = the Atonement. Period. The WoW isn’t the Gospel. The BoM isn’t the Gospel. The BoA isn’t the Gospel. So even if I have questions and uncertainties about those things and their divinity, it doesn’t affect my belief in the Gospel. Second, to a very large extent, the things I believe about the Gospel, a.k.a. the Atonement, were revealed by Joseph Smith. So, did he marry Fanny Alger behind Emma’s back? I don’t know. But I do know that he taught that my spirit is eternal, that I existed with God before this life, that God created worlds without number, and that I can be an heir to all of that. A number of things JS did seem off to me. But so much of what he taught and said ring true as true to me. So that’s the relationship I have with JS, faith, the Church, the Gospel, etc.

I have a few thoughts on this so I will go in order.

“So, if someone comes across information on the internet their faith is shaken, it is because something was lacking in their faith already?”

She said, “Yes!”

I believe it is human nature to blame the victim. A young woman in my small town was murdered while cleaning rooms in broad daylight at the motel across the street from City Hall and the Library. Later I heard some people saying that she had posted her work schedule on Facebook – implying that her carelessness got her killed. I responded that I feel that we could be murdered almost anywhere by almost anyone and there isn’t a whole lot we could do about it (unless we are going to turn into total paranoid nutjobs).

I believe that we have this “blame the victim” mentality because we don’t want to believe that it could happen to us. We want to believe that we are smarter, more prepared, or righteous enough to avoid the tragedy.

Divine justice also factors in…if God is going to hold me accountable for maintaining my testimony then it must be within my power to do so.

“They’re testimony could be based on people – on prophets, their Primary or Sunday School teacher, or a priesthood or Relief Society leader. They believe in misconceptions instead of the Gospel.”

What is the Gospel? Is it belief in the Atonement? If so then all the Non-LDS Christians have a “stronger” testimony than the LDS. Their belief is not shaken when they hear about Fanny Alger because they never believed in JS to begin with. I do concur that the most “crisis” proof testimonies are those that are based upon ideas that are hypothetical and improvable. I can have a testimony that heaven exists and nothing can disprove this belief. Unfortunately, our church is heavily laden with belief in actual people, places, and events – So yes there is potential for disillusionment there.

I told those present that I believe church manuals should include snippets about church history so fewer people will be caught off-guard when they find certain information on the internet. MIL said it won’t make a difference. She said, “If it’s not concerns about church history, then something else will cause people to have faith issues.”

Yes some people, somewhere, will have faith issues anyway because many things can lead to a faith crisis (Prop. 8 or “the Mall” just being recent examples). But for some the history is THE issue, and if we can help mitigate the fallout from those historical revelations and retain just a portion of these brothers and sisters, should we not do it?

My biggest concern from this statement is if it implies the following: “If it’s not concerns about church history, then something else will cause [a particular person] to have faith issues.” IOW that this person is merely looking for excuses to get out.

Similar things are said about suicidal people – that they will find a way to end it and it is only a matter of time. The research though doesn’t support that. If a suicidal person can be helped through a depressive episode (a day, a week, a month) then they may not have another for some time – possibly never.

On the whole I wouldn’t recommend talking to the in-laws about these subjects. Your FIL’s statement of “You just need to step back. You’re going too deep with this and you’re just trying to spread controversy.” seems pretty clear to me. He seems to think that your questions immediately suggest things about your motives. The others may be giving you the benefit of the doubt but it sounds like if you were to reveal a full “faith crisis” to them, then it might be assumed that your faith and testimony were always flawed…always ticking time-bombs just waiting for an excuse to go off.

I’m not saying that they are bad people. Just that part of how they maintain their own testimony appears to be to not sympathize and especially not empathize (the ability to imagine oneself in the situation of another) with those who have doubts.

…the expectation of knowledge over acceptance of faith causes a lot of crises. Certainly breeds crises, imo. A crisis can’t occur without the breaking of certainty – and certainty IS lack of faith, in a way. If we insist on knowing everything, we lose the ability to believe the unseen – and seeing something that doesn’t fit our certainty shatters that certainty – since we can’t hold on to what is left – that which still is unseen.

Wow, I think you nailed it. I think someone who has a black-and-white view and insists on certainty is more likely to have a faith crisis compared to people like my MIL. She is more flexible in her faith. She also seems very understanding of the foibles of man.