Article on BYU’s website about mature faith

I found this article really interesting. It’s from Travis T. Anderson, a BYU philosophy professor, on the difference between naive and mature faith.

http://humanities.byu.edu/the-birth-of-faith-in-the-crises-of-self-understanding/

He quotes extensively from a devotion by Bruce C. Hafen, so that’s where the quotes are from in this excerpt:

“[We need] to be more realistic about life’s experiences, even if that means facing some questions and limitations that leave one a bit uncomfortable. That very discomfort can be a motivation toward real growth. . . .

If we are not willing to grapple with the frustration that comes from honestly and bravely facing the uncertainties we encounter, we may never develop the kind of spiritual maturity that is necessary. . . . We must develop sufficient independence of judgment and maturity of perspective that we are prepared to handle the shafts and whirlwinds of adversity and contradiction that are so likely to come along in our lives. When those times come, we cannot be living on borrowed light.”7

Real growth requires that we confront disappointment and tragedy with a sustained effort to understand life and its challenges, and it requires us to realize that a crisis of faith is less the consequence of changes in the world and in others than it is the result of a profound transformation in ourselves. To put it simply, when we progress from a satisfaction with the world as it appears to someone with simple faith toward an understanding troubled by ambiguity and uncertainty, we are growing up. And just as physical growth is awkward and often painful, so too is spiritual growth.

…

Hafen’s reflections on the transformations of faith end with the sage observation that at higher levels of spirituality we must learn to “not only view things with our eyes wide open but with our hearts wide open as well.”8 I will venture to suggest that the faith of someone who has learned to live with an open heart is a faith reborn—a faith of generosity, love, and trust, but also a faith tempered by the knowledge that becoming like the Christ requires us to haul in the net, feed the hungry, minister to the sick, strengthen the faithless, and even, at times, upend the tables of a few money-changers, rather than waiting for God and His angels to solve the world’s problems while we worship in the detached comfort of our pew at church. It also requires serious and consistent self-examination.

But those efforts to change the world and ourselves for the better still require God’s help if the results we truly long for are to be realized. Hence, at this stage, faith is still required—perhaps required more than ever. It just needs to be a mature faith, a faith rooted deeply in both a clear understanding of the world as it is and an informed trust in God’s willingness to help us transform it and ourselves into the form of what ought to be. Retreating into bitterness and disbelief is not a remedy for the immaturity and innocence of naïve faith—it is its dark reflection. Blind denial is simply the mirror image of the blind faith it abhors, not the wisdom it wants to be.

I highly recommend reading it, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts.