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What do you think of this blog post on 5 things to do when you struggle with faith doubtsThe 5 things suggested are:
Quote:1. Search your doubt to find its root.
2. Explicitly identify your alternative to Christianity.
3. Evaluate your unmet expectations.
4. Be honest with yourself about the nature of truth.
5. Pray.
What do you think of this author’s ideas? Have you tried these approaches?
What are your thoughts as you read how she presents things?
Doesn’t sound very effective to me. When I doubt, I don’t care. When you reduce your overall financial, and effort-related commitment to the church, you see it more as a community you belong to (or are STRUGGLING to belong to), rather than a true religion. It’s much easier to engage with something you don’t believe in, entirely, when you are not putting forth a lot of effort for it. Ask me to give all my disposable time and money to the church, then I’m going to have to resolve those doubts. The second coping mechanism is to get comfortable with an agnostic approach to Mormonism. Get comfortable not knowing what is true and what is not, but doing the best you can. Stop expecting to know, and embrace goodness instead.
I like what a musician said in an interview recently. He is a song writer and someone said they believe inspiration for songs comes from God. The musician replied “I’m curious about the spiritual side of songwriting, but I don’t presume to know where these ideas come from”. So, he had an interest in it, but never felt he had to know — all he really cared about, mostly, was writing a good song.
So, stop caring too much about what is true, and focus on living a good life.
Whether Marcus Aurelius said it or not, I love this thought attributed to him:
Quote:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.
If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
I am not afraid.
I think she gets some things right and other things (like prayer) are not any different from what we might hear from our TBM friends. From point 1 in the article:
Quote:In this case, I would suggest studying the evidence for God’s existence rather than diving into answers for every individual question in the ball of yarn. Once you are fully convicted of His existence, you can come back to your questions with a fresh look that is focused on gaining understanding rather than on proving to yourself that God makes sense. That can make all the difference in the world.
I admit that it was realizing a belief in God that was an impetus for me to remain in the church. Far from a surety or being “fully convicted” I simply came to a recognition that I didn’t believe the universe came into existence purely by chance and there there must have been a Creator or Supreme Being of some sort – God being my conclusion. My view of God is different from mainstream Mormon or Christian belief, although I do agree with the above quote that my experience did set me free from having to believe (prove) that God makes sense. What makes sense to me is that a Creator-God (or a Deist view of God) would let things happen because that God is not involved in our everyday lives (contrary to mainstream LDS belief).
From point 2:
Quote:It’s pretty easy to sit back and name your doubts about Christianity. Faith is often tough, and even the strongest Christians have unresolved questions about their beliefs. But most people struggling with Christianity never take the next mental step to ask, “If I decide Christianity is NOT true, what will I then believe?”
Ah, that which most people who have not experienced a faith crisis can’t understand, and why I think most people who experience a faith crisis leave their church or religion all together. It is a falsity that it’s either all true or it all isn’t true – a great catch 22. I did it and many others do it (and I think it’s more common among Mormons because the domino effect is taught). Indeed, if one decides the church isn’t true, then the alternative seems to be atheism because there is no other choice (which is the falsity). The author got that:
Quote:For some, it’s Christianity or atheism. If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re not going to believe there’s a God at all. If that’s you, explicitly consider what you would have to believe as an atheist: the universe has always existed (or created itself), life arose from unconscious matter by chance, there’s no basis for calling anything good or evil and there’s no objective purpose for your existence.
The author gets this one mostly right, I think, but I don’t think it can stand on its own. And I think one can believe in God and not Jesus (although her example is the other way around).
Quote:If you’ve never considered what exactly you would believe if you reject Christianity, take the time to think it through. You’ll see that there will be discomforts with and questions about your new beliefs too.
Agreed – that’s partly how I know it’s not all or nothing.
From point 3:
Quote:Radio host and author Dennis Prager once pointed out that unmet expectations are the source of all unhappiness. This powerful insight has stuck with me ever since. Our expectations can be a serious problem when it comes to faith.
I also think she gets this one mostly right, and expectations of God or the church definitely play a part in faith crisis. Going back to my comments on point 1, changing my viewpoint of God took away some of those expectations, and I likewise have fewer expectations of the church (very few really).
Point 4:
Quote:Truth doesn’t depend on what you like or on what makes most sense to you personally. Truth is something you have to commit to seeking outside of yourself. The wonderful thing about Christianity is that its truth hinges on a single event: Jesus’ resurrection.
I agree that truth isn’t dependent on our own likes or logic. The rest of the quote is testimony bearing, a Jedi mind trick that doesn’t work on me. While I do believe in the resurrection, I don’t know that it happened or that it really has a bearing on my personal salvation. I recognize that many people do “know” the resurrection and the atonement are actual events and vital to salvation – I still have my doubts, questions, and uncertainties and their testimonies don’t change that. I am “commit(ted) to seeking truth outside of (my)self” and don’t know the truth of the resurrection (and doubt I will).
Point 5:
Quote:When you’re struggling to believe, prayer feels almost impossible – it’s the last thing you want to do because you’re doubting God is even there. But it’s more important than ever to ask God to illuminate His truth for you when you’re at that point – especially through reading the Bible. Push through the doubt and pray that He will guide you to the understanding you need.
Nope, no way no how. It may work for others, it hasn’t worked for me and I refuse to spend any more time or energy pursuing it. And I particularly don’t like the “push through the doubt” phrase.
I think if this is how she dealt with her faith crisis, that’s great for her. I think it’s best to stay away from sounding like she knows the answers just because she went through a faith crisis. I find that a lot of people who have made it through faith crises, do it a way that worked for them. I often find things they advise, won’t work for me at all, or maybe a few things would work, but not all of them. Faith is a very complicated thing to rebuild from doubt and I think everyone will find their way back (or not) in a way that works best for them. Every faith crisis is so different and individual. I think it’s better to be sure to mention what helped her as ideas and not as a ‘this is how you do it’ type of advice. As for me personally, nothing really struck me as anything that would help me with my own situation. Especially prayer, seeing as that’s the core of my faith crisis. I could pray about help finding answers, but I won’t be able to believe anything that feels like an answer to a prayer at the moment because my trust in prayer answers has been broken. Therefore, I break one of her rules of not going by our own truths, because at the moment, everything based on prayer answers is now up in the air, and I feel like I have to re-learn every part of my faith, while not basing it on prayers. Or the scriptures or the prophets since my testimony of the scriptures never truly formed and prophets aren’t always right. I usually don’t think non-LDS writings apply very well to the LDS faith crisis. And this goes to what I dislike so much about apologetics as usual. At least up to now – maybe it’s going to change in round two – there aren’t tiers, categories or distinctions among “Doubts.” I think it borders on sacrilegious to lump my doubts about essay topics in with doubts about the very existence of God. The temple recommend interview creates a hierarchy, but it’s still all “required.” Ninety-nine days out of a hundred I can believe in a God that allows bad things to happen to good people, etc. From this author’s perspective, I’m now on totally solid ground. But if I have a crisis of confidence in Joseph Smith, I’m actually still on very shaky ground in our church.
I agree with Always Thinking, those are heranswers. That said, she’s probably just doing what we all try to do, help people we see in pain by giving them suggestions based on our experiences. I think our culture tends to make things harder by the way we employ our language. The “believer” (positive) and the “doubter” (negative). Both of those labels can only be assigned once we’ve significantly narrowed our perspective. Joseph was a doubter but we all view that as a positive thing. Now when we label someone a doubter we’re essentially saying that something is wrong with them. We dig a hole for people and often tell them to dig their way out with how we use labels. We are all believers and doubters. We’re both.
1. Search your doubt to find its root.
I’m going to translate this as allowing a curious nature to work for you instead of against you.
2. Explicitly identify your alternative to Christianity.
I may have misinterpreted the intent of this section but I get the impression that the author feels like Christianity is the only viable option. Sort of a “go ahead and consider the alternatives, you’ll be back.”
Quote:For others, it’s Christianity or some form of personalized spirituality where you pick and choose the beliefs that make sense to you. If that’s you, explicitly consider what that alternative means: you will effectively be deciding that you are the ultimate arbiter of truth, standing above all world religions with your personal selection of beliefs. You may feel comfortable with that, but it should raise some red flags if you’re honest with yourself about those implications.
Sounds like the author has issues with people that have chosen a more Individual-reflective faith.
3. Evaluate your unmet expectations.
Quote:Radio host and author Dennis Prager once pointed out that unmet expectations are the source of all unhappiness.
How about this one: Do I expect Christ to save me?
4. Be honest with yourself about the nature of truth.
Quote:Truth doesn’t depend on what you like or on what makes most sense to you personally. Truth is something you have to commit to seeking outside of yourself.
Again, I think they probably have issues with people that have chosen a more individual-reflective faith. Consider this, if we’ve spent so much of our lives trying to find truth outside ourselves and have come up empty what have we got to lose by looking inward? I’ve found that “truth” is relative. Sometimes believing truth is relative has helped me discover truth, other times believing truth is relative has made truth more elusive.
Quote:The wonderful thing about Christianity is that its truth hinges on a single event: Jesus’ resurrection. Any Christian who is struggling should read The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus and/or Cold Case Christianity to get grounded in the historical evidence for the truth of Christianity.
There’s much more to Christianity than the resurrection, at least for me. In that quote there’s another appeal to history as evidence for truth. I’d rather look to the living Christ for evidence. Crazy nibbler comment of the day:
weevidence the truth of Christianity by our actions. 5. Pray.
This reminds me of some advice I got early on. Pray and read your scriptures. You mean more than the 10 hours and dozens of prayers I was offering at the time? Maybe my lack of faith in one more prayer doing the trick is why I never got that answer.
Now I see prayer as more of a formality, a rite built up around something I never cease doing, communing with god.
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