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Thanks Roy for your thoughtful evaluation. I really enjoy thinking through thoughtful discourse. Thanks chirchistrue. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Roy wrote:churchistrue wrote:I updated this topic with a post on Belief as a Choice. Interested to hear feedback on this.
http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/belief-as-choice/ I really like the post. Good food for thought. I am totally with you until you start quoting general authorities.
I believe that this is because in a church setting the words “belief” and “faith” are extremely hard to pin down what is meant in a given context.
Givens talks about there being enough room for choice. I agree. On the concepts of whether or not there is a God, on the concepts of what is the point or purpose of life, on the concept of determining to live a life full of goodness (as best as I can understand it) even though I have no guarantee that such a life will be rewarded – On those things there is both evidence for and against and I can will myself to somewhat tip the scale in favor of belief and hope in the more meaningful and beautiful outcome. This I believe is the realm of faith.
Unfortunately, The quotes from the general authorities quickly become confusing in this context. They are not sticking to a single definition of belief or being clear in what form of belief they mean. In some contexts they may simply mean “loyalty” and to stick to the heritage and religion of the group. You yourself show some of the same confusion in trying to reconcile the GA statements with the original context of belief and the limitations of choice in what we believe. It can be difficult if one is talking about apples and the other is talking about oranges but they are both using the word “fruit.”
Still, as I said, this was a very though provoking post.
Thanks, Roy. What do you mean by you were with me until I started quoting general authorities. Sounds like I have the same kind of feelings about the GA statements you do, which I expressed in the blog post. Sometimes they were confusing. Sometimes they seemed to mix up definitions.
ChurchIsTrue: Because of the culture in which I live, if I was to CHOOSE to believe something, it would be in my best interests to align myself with the Baptists, Catholics, or Jews. My neighborhood is heavy on Taoists and Hindus too. Mormons are few and far between.
All your arguments assume the LDS church is the majority church and culture in the region. In my area, the LDS church represents less than 1.5% of the population. On a daily basis, I interact with people who have never met a member of the LDS church.
Your logic doesn’t work in my region.
amateurparent wrote:ChurchIsTrue:
Because of the culture in which I live, if I was to CHOOSE to believe something, it would be in my best interests to align myself with the Baptists, Catholics, or Jews. My neighborhood is heavy on Taoists and Hindus too. Mormons are few and far between.
All your arguments assume the LDS church is the majority church and culture in the region. In my area, the LDS church represents less than 1.5% of the population. On a daily basis, I interact with people who have never met a member of the LDS church.
Your logic doesn’t work in my region.
Confused. What’s my logic? I didn’t think I was pushing anything related to choosing the church in this post.
churchistrue wrote:Thanks, Roy. What do you mean by you were with me until I started quoting general authorities.
I mean that I was following the train of thought up until that point. Some of the GA quotes seemed to support your definitions and conclusions of belief and some only served to muddy the water or even directly contradict what was said earlier.
amateurparent wrote:Because of the culture in which I live, if I was to CHOOSE to believe something, it would be in my best interests to align myself with the Baptists, Catholics, or Jews. My neighborhood is heavy on Taoists and Hindus too. Mormons are few and far between.
AP makes a good point. Are the choices that all the people she references to believe in these various religions all valid as choices to “believe” and “have faith”? Certainly they do believe and they are making the choice to believe in something unknowable in the concrete sense. They seem to fit Givens’ definition of belief.
That is partly where the positions of the GA’s become something other than just belief or faith in the abstract sense. They are proponents of a very specific belief system. Almost every time that they say belief or faith it seems to have an assumption of “belief in Mormonism” or “faith in Mormonism.”
I believe that it is this unstated assumption that AP is reacting to.
Of course that is their focus, just like Baptists focus on the Baptist faith. :clap: Roy wrote:I mean that I was following the train of thought up until that point. Some of the GA quotes seemed to support your definitions and conclusions of belief and some only served to muddy the water or even directly contradict what was said earlier.
I think a few people were confused by that. I edited it a little for clarity. The first portion was the review of philosophical literature to determine if belief really is a choice. The last portion where I quote GA talks was a review of those talks, given the literature. They weren’t used to support my logic.Quote:AP makes a good point. Are the choices that all the people she references to believe in these various religions all valid as choices to “believe” and “have faith”? Certainly they do believe and they are making the choice to believe in something unknowable in the concrete sense. They seem to fit Givens’ definition of belief.
First of all, my whole point is that belief is not a choice. But faith is. And I don’t get into that issue at all, in terms of what’s a valid choice. That’s completely irrelevant to my point. But, sure I do think different choices are valid.Quote:That is partly where the positions of the GA’s become something other than just belief or faith in the abstract sense. They are proponents of a very specific belief system. Almost every time that they say belief or faith it seems to have an assumption of “belief in Mormonism” or “faith in Mormonism.”
I believe that it is this unstated assumption that AP is reacting to.
Yes, I agree they do that, but that wasn’t the point of the blog article. My point was just to hone in on that concept of whether or not belief is a choice.I think as humans we learn as children to see things, process it and make choices. We rely a lot on parents. While some choice is there to go against parents, at younger ages the trust in authority makes belief come by choosing to go along with mom and dad and how they believe things. That is still a choice, but we don’t agonize over everything…our brains get efficient and when we’ve decided we believe something…then it becomes habits of how we see it, not a choice every time we process it. But then when we grow up, we start to get new information and ability to process, and we start to question and explore our habitual beliefs, and start to redefine belief and faith, both choices. We start to challenge the authorities (mom and dad) because there are other options and we want to know which belief to choose. As we grow into adulthood we take our choices and apply them and live them, until we get more experience in our 30s or 40s that sometimes leads to cog dis where it isn’t aligning to what we chose to believe before. So we start to choose different beliefs or reinforce our own. That is why I like Fowler’s Stages of Faith. I think it is a choice on how we develop over time. Beliefs are the same to me.
That’s how I see it. We may not choose in every case, because we develop habits or prejudiced views…but we can relearn habits and learn new viewpoints and choose to still have faith, despite our beliefs and changing faith.
It is clearly a choice to me. I could be completely wrong about all that I just wrote…but I choose to believe it until I see something that helps me choose to believe something else.
I think the bible dictionary nails faith and it matches my experience too. Faith comes from two things: experience and hearing testimony. Faith in Christ comes from experiencing the fruits of righteousness and also from hearing testimony from those who have faith in Him. So my choices create faith through my actions. So faith in and of itself is not a choice but is created by many previous choices. Trusting someone enough to jump off a cliff into their arms isn’t a choice, it’s the result of living with and around them and finding out if you trust them or not based on their choices. I can only let go of my sins if I trust Christ enough that He will take care of me when I let go of the comfort of my sins. Some sins require a little faith in Christ to let go of them. Others require more. As my choices to let go of easier sins demonstrate to me that Christ takes care of me when I do, it increases my faith and trust in Him and then I can let go of bigger sins. Just my 2¢. Quote:Rcronk wrote: I can only let go of my sins if I trust Christ enough that He will take care of me when I let go of the comfort of my sins. Some sins require a little faith in Christ to let go of them. Others require more. As my choices to let go of easier sins demonstrate to me that Christ takes care of me when I do, it increases my faith and trust in Him and then I can let go of bigger sins. Just my 2¢.
What if you are living a honorable life, as completely sinless as you can possibly be, doing everything in your power to be righteous in everyway, all big and little sins were given up years ago, and then you are blindsided by horrific life events.
Does that change your faith? Does that change your trust?
amateurparent wrote:Quote:Rcronk wrote: I can only let go of my sins if I trust Christ enough that He will take care of me when I let go of the comfort of my sins. Some sins require a little faith in Christ to let go of them. Others require more. As my choices to let go of easier sins demonstrate to me that Christ takes care of me when I do, it increases my faith and trust in Him and then I can let go of bigger sins. Just my 2¢.
What if you are living a honorable life, as completely sinless as you can possibly be, doing everything in your power to be righteous in everyway, all big and little sins were given up years ago, and then you are blindsided by horrific life events.
Does that change your faith? Does that change your trust?
I had exactly the same reaction as AP. There are people who have gone through very difficult life experiences. Their life experiences may have taught them not to trust but rather to be suspicious.
(For the sake of full disclosure from our discussion on our previous thread – when I say “There are people” I am only partially talking about myself. I did lose a child and that rocked my faith but overall I have had a good upbringing and a good family that are supportive and can be relied on. I am aware that many individuals have not had the privilege of such an ideal upbringing.)
1) For such an individual to trust in Jesus might be extraordinarily difficult (like turning their back on all life experiences) because every time that they trusted someone in the past it has gone badly. So even if there is an element of choice in faith it is not a choice that is available to everyone equally.
2) I am very interested to know what you mean by “my choices to let go of easier sins demonstrate to me that Christ takes care of me when I do”. I am most keenly interested to know what is meant by “takes care of me” in this context. I assume that you mean in a spiritual sense and therefore it may be difficult to explain but that doesn’t invalidate it. Spiritual truths are truths nonetheless.
When I say Christ takes care of me, I mean that I am reaching for comfort or escape or numbing from some difficulty when I sin. So when I sacrifice or let go of that sin and wait – Christ carries me through the difficulty I’m trying to escape from in whatever way helps me to progress most. When something tragic happens, certainly it can affect people’s faith – but I assert that their faith is affected by their interpretation of those tragic events, not the events themselves. Since we’re not omniscient, we are either going to have to make stuff up in our minds about why this horrible thing happened, or we’re going to have to sacrifice the temptation to make stuff up and sit in our discomfort waiting for Christ. It’s hard to do and nobody but Christ does it perfectly, but when I can do it, He works miracles.
I am still not getting it. rcronk wrote:Since we’re not omniscient, we are either going to have to make stuff up in our minds about why this horrible thing happened, or we’re going to have to sacrifice the temptation to make stuff up and sit in our discomfort waiting for Christ.
I agree that we as humans are wired to tell stories and bring meaning to our lives. I guess that I am not necessarily convinced that this is a bad thing.
I believe that to an outsider the story of Christ and his atonement would be a made up story that helps us Christians make sense of a chaotic and sometimes senseless world. How would our stories and interpretation of events be superior to someone else’s? To an outside observer it might appear that all humans are doing the same thing in story telling, interpreting, and deducing meaning from events.
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and
faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
The way I see it, faith is a choice in the sense that we can choose to feed it, or feed its opponent.
rcronk wrote:When I say Christ takes care of me, I mean that I am reaching for comfort or escape or numbing from some difficulty when I sin. So when I sacrifice or let go of that sin and wait – Christ carries me through the difficulty I’m trying to escape from in whatever way helps me to progress most.
When something tragic happens, certainly it can affect people’s faith – but I assert that their faith is affected by their interpretation of those tragic events, not the events themselves. Since we’re not omniscient, we are either going to have to make stuff up in our minds about why this horrible thing happened, or we’re going to have to sacrifice the temptation to make stuff up and sit in our discomfort waiting for Christ. It’s hard to do and nobody but Christ does it perfectly, but when I can do it, He works miracles.
There are other possibilities. Those that lean more deist or buddhist, for instance, aren’t trying to explain why anything happens nor are they waiting for Christ to fix it – it just is. My previous more orthodox self (before I discovered the power of the dark side
We each have our own brand of faith, and in some ways mine is much stronger and better than before my faith crisis. I do believe in Christ and I do believe Christ. I believe He will make all things right eventually, but none of it now.
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