Belief Crisis Instead of Faith Crisis

[Anonymous]

I have been enjoying the Maxwell Institute podcasts, and they’ve recently added transcripts of the interviews which makes blogging about them a whole lot easier. I listened to the one with Peter Enns who wrote The Sin of Certainty, and there were a lot of valuable points for a group like this one. Here’s the post: https://wheatandtares.org/2016/10/25/belief-is-not-faith/

One of my favorite quotes by Dr. Enns:

Quote:

doubt is not the opposite of faith—certainty is the opposite of faith

[Anonymous]

hawkgrrrl wrote:

One of my favorite quotes by Dr. Enns:

Quote:

doubt is not the opposite of faith—certainty is the opposite of faith

I know that to be true. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Or the more wordy: “Disbelieving foreign ideas because you’re already certain” is the opposite of faith.

[Anonymous]

From the post on W&T:

Quote:

But the point is rather obvious when you think about it. What makes a trust fall work is that you do have the queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that you don’t know it will work, and you recognize that you are not in control. When religion feels like we are in control, like we just need to check the boxes and all will be well in Zion, we aren’t actually operating under faith. We are just momentarily lucky. Enns refers to our luck running out or a “faith crisis” as “uh oh” moments:

Over the years I’ve been uneasy with the word “safety” when used to promote faith (obedience). In light of this quote I see now that it’s based on the idea that if you just check the boxes you’ll be fine but the reality is that you can never check them all.

[Anonymous]

fter reading this I wold agree that I have had a Belief Crisis and now I am on a Belief journey.

[Anonymous]

I’m still pondering this. I suppose what I have could be termed both a faith crisis and a belief crisis. Taking another idea from the blog, what I really may have had is a trust crisis. At its root, that is my doubt – I don’t trust God, but that lack of trust may be all about my beliefs.

I was not raised Christian or religious at all, although my family were good people. I never attended a church service growing up, and the only time we went to church at all for for weddings or funerals. I had been baptized Catholic as a baby, because if you aren’t you’re going to hell. But there were no other Catholic rites or practices we observed as a family. I was never confirmed (which in Catholicism usually happens around age 7 or . I don’t recall believing in God as a child or teen, and remember a conversation I had with an evangelical while in high school where I said I did not believe in God (something she apparently couldn’t fathom). As a young adult before joining the church, I did explore religion, attending some different services intermixed with periods of not going to any services. I mostly attended Catholic services and immediately prior to joining the church I was regularly attending Sunday mass. So, while I buy that our core beliefs are established before we remember (Psych 101), I can’t say my core beliefs were learned from a Christian/church perspective. I was born of “goodly parents” who were not very religious but probably ascribed to Horatio Alger’s ideas. I guess that’s where this is falling apart for me – my belief in God didn’t come until much later in life and I’m not sure it is a core belief (and I’m pretty sure it’s not). On the other hand, I can certainly relate to much of what Hawkgrrrl says.

[Anonymous]

I feel like some of this is semantics but if faith is defined as trust or confidence I’d say that having a belief crisis can lead to having a faith crisis. Here I’m not talking trust in the church, I’m talking trust in self.

Belief crisis: I believed A, I discovered compelling information that lead me to supplant my belief in A with a belief in B.

Faith crisis: I recognize how absolutely convinced I was when I believed in A and now I call into question my ability to place that same level of confidence in any new belief I may develop.

In one scenario I experience pain because I’m stuck with the laborious task of transitioning all my eggs from one basket to another. In the other scenario I question whether I should have all my eggs in one basket, I wonder whether an egg can be in more than one basket at the same time, and I wonder whether some eggs belong in any basket at all.

Joseph Smith wrote:

I take my ring from my finger and liken it unto the mind of man-the immortal part, because it has no beginning. Suppose you cut it in two; then it has a beginning and an end; but join it again, and it continues one eternal round. So with the spirit of man

I think doubt and belief can be expressed similarly. To create a beginning is to create an ending. To doubt is to create a new belief. To believe is to cease to doubt something. This is why I don’t care for labeling things as “doubts” at church, even though I appreciate the utility in helping people carry out a conversation. What we label as “doubts” at church can be expressed as “beliefs,” beliefs that are different from the established teachings, but beliefs nonetheless. People don’t typically “doubt” in the black and white sense of there being one Truth that is being deviated from, they doubt belief A but only because they believe B. There are no doubters, only people that believe differently.

The labels of doubt and belief only seek to reinforce our tribalism. Us: people who believe similarly. Them: people who doubt what I believe. It’s another division line. If the goal of the church is to bring male and female, black and white, gay and straight, rich and poor, etc. together why not believers and doubters? What’s the difference?

I’ll try to refocus. I may still be having trouble seeing the distinction between a belief and faith crisis. What if your belief is “I trust in god?” Is losing that trust in god a belief or faith crisis?

[Anonymous]

Quote:

There are no doubters, only people that believe differently.

An interesting proposition.

When you refer to losing trust in your ability to have the correct beliefs, I think this lack of confidence (I would say confidence rather than trust) is normal belief or faith crisis stuff. When you doubt, you recognize that your belief in something was untenable. You question an assumption that you’ve literally just ignored or not questioned before (or even put on a shelf for a time). Peter Enns is saying that this position of doubt is why you then trust in God because God’s understanding is better than ours, seeing the bigger picture that we cannot. You should realize your own ability to see everything is flawed, and that’s when you are able to “trust in God.” In a sense that means that having faith is having an optimism that the universe will catch you, that God will make up for what you lack and that God has your best interests at heart.

When people often say “faith crisis” I think they mean “I don’t believe X which is what Mormons are supposed to believe so I don’t trust Mormonism/fellow Mormons/church leaders to be accurate about X.” When we take that X and apply it more broadly to say “They are wrong about X, Y and Z, so I think they are probably wrong about A-W also, or at least wrong about enough things that I don’t want to associate or consider them authoritative.” Again, that’s a belief crisis with regard to a church. But the church is only supposed to be the finger than points to the moon, not the moon itself. Enns is saying that dumping a belief or several beliefs or even a church affiliation doesn’t have to mean dumping trust in God. God is bigger than all that stuff. That is his premise.

[Anonymous]

hawkgrrrl wrote:

When you refer to losing trust in your ability to have the correct beliefs…

What of when you lose the desire to prove a belief to be correct, even if only to yourself? You know that whatever new belief you adopt will likely be proven wrong in time but you chose to adopt it anyway, knowing that you will only temporarily reside in that belief. The correctness of the belief becomes immaterial.

hawkgrrrl wrote:

Peter Enns is saying that this position of doubt is why you then trust in God because God’s understanding is better than ours, seeing the bigger picture that we cannot. You should realize your own ability to see everything is flawed, and that’s when you are able to “trust in God.” In a sense that means that having faith is having an optimism that the universe will catch you, that God will make up for what you lack and that God has your best interests at heart.

I don’t know about most people but my crisis didn’t stop at the borders of Mormonism. If someone equated church and god pre-crisis, which isn’t uncommon with Mormonism, they may be more naturally predispositioned to put god in the crosshairs when something changes their beliefs in the church. Losing trust in the church might translate into losing trust in god for some people.

To give an example of my “depth of conviction” point from earlier: if the spirit testified to me that the moon was made of cheese when astronauts come back from the moon with rocks I have to question more than just my belief in moon cheese. I have to question my connection to the spirit, why I felt god confirmed my belief that the moon was made of cheese.

Borrowing from Fowler, maybe a belief crisis is remaining at your current faith stage (horizontal movement) and a faith crisis is transitioning from one stage to another.

[Anonymous]

Good thoughts.

I just think at some point I got off track…wanting certainty to replace belief in all things…impatiently wanting to be made perfect now, in all things.

It then becomes disappointing when I realize I can’t, things are too complicated.

If there is a God with a grand design…he has made by design things to be unknowable…so we can walk by faith and belief. We should value this, and the mystical things of our existence. Doubt with a positive view on it is a good thing.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

Good thoughts.

I just think at some point I got off track…wanting certainty to replace belief in all things…impatiently wanting to be made perfect now, in all things.

It then becomes disappointing when I realize I can’t, things are too complicated.

If there is a God with a grand design…he has made by design things to be unknowable…so we can walk by faith and belief. We should value this, and the mystical things of our existence. Doubt with a positive view on it is a good thing.

I think that’s part of the cultural problem and why some people have faith or truth crises. In those Sunday F&TMs, and at other times, everybody seems to “know” such and such is true, giving the impression that everybody else should also “know.” I admittedly used to speak that same language – until I realized I didn’t “know” as a result of the faith or belief or truth crisis (whichever it is, it may all be semantics). That recognition that we don’t know, and maybe can’t know, many of these things is just devastating to some people.

[Anonymous]

nibbler wrote:

There are no doubters, only people that believe differently.

I must say you sound a bit like Bednar, but not in a way he would agree with you.

[Anonymous]

I once heard a quote:

Quote:

The mark of a free person is that every-present uncertainty about whether they are right

So, for me, it’s healthy, humility-inducing, and open-minded to be agnostic about just about everything you believe. This means you can change when you are wrong, listen to others with kindness, and avoid judgmentalism. Beyond some basic black and whites (the wrongness of base crimes, for example, without extenuating circumstances, outright dishonesty, etcera) I’m not sure about anything I believe, or have believed, with certainty.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

I once heard a quote:

Quote:

The mark of a free person is that every-present uncertainty about whether they are right

So, for me, it’s healthy, humility-inducing, and open-minded to be agnostic about just about everything you believe. This means you can change when you are wrong, listen to others with kindness, and avoid judgmentalism. Beyond some basic black and whites (the wrongness of base crimes, for example, without extenuating circumstances, outright dishonesty, etcera) I’m not sure about anything I believe, or have believed, with certainty.

Another old idiom:

Quote:

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.

[Anonymous]

hawkgrrrl wrote:

…Again, that’s a belief crisis with regard to a church. But the church is only supposed to be the finger than points to the moon, not the moon itself. Enns is saying that dumping a belief or several beliefs or even a church affiliation doesn’t have to mean dumping trust in God. God is bigger than all that stuff. That is his premise. …

Isn’t that what Elder Ronald Poelman was saying in his conference talk “The Gospel and the Church”. I like to phrase it as the path to God is the Gospel. The church is a hiking stick to help on the trail. But some people use that stick to whack people instead.

[Author]

Posts