On faith and belief

[Anonymous]

I’m grateful to have found a forum where I can air my doubts and heretical notions without recrimination. It meets a need I’ve felt for a long time. But I also feel a need to express things that I DO believe, though those things might not always accord with church orthodoxy.

It occurs to me that faith and belief are not quite the same thing. A person typically has numerous beliefs, many of them not having anything to do with religion at all. But we don’t speak of a person having a plurality of “faiths.” I understand faith to be something above beliefs, and orientation toward the transcendent. Faith can survive amendment or even abandonment of some of its subordinate “beliefs.” I “believed” in the historicity of the BofM until well after my mission. Though I still respect it as true in one sense, my belief regarding its historicity has changed dramatically. But that did not end my faith. I could mention numerous other examples. I hope this makes some kind of sense, but I see beliefs as subordinate to faith. Some people strike me as having a lot of beliefs to which they cling tenaciously, but I sometimes wonder how much faith they have.

In spite of my loss of various orthodox beliefs, my faith has remained intact. It is oriented toward and centered on a transcendent Other, God, If anything, faith plays a much greater role in my interior life than when I held more orthodox beliefs. More than ever, I find materialist explanations of reality to be so question-begging as to seem rather irrational. Life is like a river flowing uphill against forces of entropy, and attempts to explain it as merely “epiphenomenal” strain credibility. But my faith isn’t based only on such reasoning; I’ve often sensed God’s presence in my life, and been spoken to in wordless impressions that were most definitely not “manufactured.”

For me, airing my doubts and my heresies seems much easier than talking about the foundations of my faith. It somehow feels almost “exhibitionistic” to indulge such metaphysical musings, even anonymously. I wonder if that’s true for others. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s perspective on these questions.

[Anonymous]

Language is a tricky thing. What we write or say to convey an idea isn’t the idea itself. It’s just an expression of that idea through symbols. In this case the symbols are made up of our language.

Language got off the ground because people have generally settled on common definitions for words and phrases but the reader or listener is still subject to interpreting what they read or hear and filtering it through their symbolic meanings to reconstruct the idea in their minds. The reconstructed idea isn’t always 1:1 with the original idea.

I think a lot of the language we employ to express our spirituality is reductive. Not maliciously, more out of necessity to be more concise in communication.

Faith, doubt, belief, the gospel, hope. Sometimes those words can be used interchangeably, sometimes we choose one word when another might be a better fit.

I try not to get too hung up on beliefs. Beliefs change and I’ve experienced firsthand the trauma that can occur when becoming too attached to a specific set of beliefs.

You used the word faith. I might use the word hope instead, as I have a harder time nailing down a definition for faith. There are things I hope for. What I hope for also changes over time but I find I don’t get as attached to hopes as I once did to beliefs. A specific set of beliefs once defined a large part of my identity. I don’t know whether hopes form my identity. They probably do and I just can’t see it. Maybe hopes are generally things that you don’t currently have so it’s harder to build an identity on things you don’t yet have? I’m meandering.

Last random thought for now. I try not to pit faith or beliefs against doubt. They’re not at odds with one another. They’re largely all about a frame of reference anyway. To believe (something) is to doubt (something different).

These words are very hard for me to nail down. What do they actually mean and what frame of reference am I operating in when I’m reflecting on them?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your thoughtful response. You’re quite right: hope is an important part of our spiritual selves, even if we’re not always aware of it. Hope isn’t talked about often enough in church, though it’s one of the three cardinal virtues Paul speaks of (1 Cor. 13:13), and expands on it in Romans 8:24-25, among my favorite scriptures. The way he speaks of them, hope and faith could almost be used interchangeably.

I like your almost Taoist approach to language. In the Tao Te Ching there is a verse something to the effect that just as a path is made by people walking on it, so are words made by people using them, which is to say that their meanings depend on arbitrary conventions.

[Anonymous]

One of the things I love about this forum is the opportunity to “openly” discuss our questions and doubts as well as our beliefs, under the guise of some anonymity of course.

I think sometimes it’s a little hard to recognize that faith crisis is different for everybody. We each have our own unique experience with what we consider our own dark night of the soul and I think it’s human nature to apply our own experience to everyone else who has had a similar experience. But it’s really not like that – your experience was different from mine. During my faith crisis I lost a belief in God, and being very upfront about that, my loss of belief in God was directly related to LDS teachings about what/who God is and God’s relationship to me that led to that loss of belief. The God that they talked about was not the God I was experiencing. Like so many others, I was in that place where I couldn’t really separate what I held to be true from what might actually be true. I think many of the people who leave the church altogether s a result of faith crisis do so because they can’t get past the idea of “”if the church isn’t true, no church is true.” I experienced that same domino effect – one domino falls after the other – if Joseph wasn’t a prophet, the BoM isn’t scripture, therefore the church isn’t true, etc. The church sets up those dominoes and reiterates it all the time. But it’s a fallacy – it’s not that simple. Joseph could be a very flawed individual and still be a prophet. The BoM could contain errors and inconsistencies and still be a good book, even the “word of God.” The church and church leaders can make mistakes and still be “true.” I haven’t had the opportunity to give this advice to anyone new in a while because the opportunity hasn’t presented itself. My standard advice is take it slow, focus on what you do believe, and don’t dump all at once.

Elder Uchtdorf said (https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dieter-f-uchtdorf/what-is-truth/” class=”bbcode_url”>https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/dieter-f-uchtdorf/what-is-truth/):

Quote:

The “truths” we cling to shape the quality of our societies as well as our individual characters. All too often these “truths” are based on incomplete and inaccurate evidence, and at times they serve very selfish motives.

Part of the reason for poor judgment comes from the tendency of mankind to blur the line between belief and truth. We too often confuse belief with truth, thinking that because something makes sense or is convenient, it must be true. Conversely, we sometimes don’t believe truth or reject it—because it would require us to change or admit that we were wrong. Often, truth is rejected because it doesn’t appear to be consistent with previous experiences.

When the opinions or “truths” of others contradict our own, instead of considering the possibility that there could be information that might be helpful and augment or complement what we know, we often jump to conclusions or make assumptions that the other person is misinformed, mentally challenged, or even intentionally trying to deceive.

Unfortunately, this tendency can spread to all areas of our lives—from sports to family relationships and from religion to politics.

So I was in this spot of not really believing there was a God – I call it almost atheist. Interestingly, what brought me around was Carl Sagan talking about star stuff. I came to recognize that I did indeed still believe in God, just not the way God is often described in the church. With that basic belief (foundation) I was able to rebuild some of my faith or other beliefs. I like to focus much more on belief and hope as opposed to faith, and I know, to Nibbler’s point, some of that is just semantics. But I don’t know Joseph Smith was prophet. I believe he believed he had the experiences he said he had, and he very well could have. I don’t know that Jesus actually lived and said and did all those things recorded in the four gospels, but I hope at least some of it is true and I hope God really does care about us enough for salvation and eternal life to be possible. I believe the Bible and the BoM contain eternal truths, as do other churches and belief systems, and I hope to understand those truths. I can’t say I truly have faith in any of those things, but they do bring me hope – in the absence of knowledge or faith there is always hope. If Jesus brought nothing else to the people of his time, he did bring hope.

Lastly, I hope this ramble is not difficult to read and understand.

[Anonymous]

I haven’t seen that quote from DFU before. It certainly relevant to challenges that the world is facing today.

[Anonymous]

It’s an interesting conversation for sure.

VERBAL VS NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION:

Humans in general communicate (and miscommunicate) by gesture, tone, and a ton of other grounding contextual factors. I know this very well because of my research into “Non-Verbal Communication” associated with the “Non-Verbal Communication Disorder” that is a way of living that straddles (or bunny hops back and forth over) being described as an educational learning disability like Dyslexia or a mental health disorder like Autism.

People who live “a life of words” wind up wordless when essential concepts are left up in the unstated ether of non-words.

PERSONAL VALUES EXERCISE:

I did a values exercise as part of my personal introspection process. I was trying to identify essential aspects of who I was/am that I lost to some experiences of trauma in my life by using words:)

Quote:

https://www.think2perform.com/values/

I ended up valuing “Integrity”, “Spirituality”, “Security”, “Autonomy” and “Competence” the most out of all the 100 ish available values. and I could recall specific instances from when I was a teenager that were line with those values. NOTE: These values explain a lot about what my faith transition brought to light.

FAITH INCLUDED IN THE VALUES EXCERCISE:

But one of the distinct values was “Faith” included because it is a value that motivates people to act. I think that my husband values this value of “Faith” very highly even though a) he has never to my knowledge taken this random quiz (and we haven’t had many explicit conversations about what he specifically values – he staggers through life by implicit assumptions here but is “repenting” in part because I need as much as possible to be put into words), b) he is not actively participating in the church community and c) I don’t always hear or see him performing faith-based individual acts. He talks about his faith a lot and the ways that he has made different choices because of it, so it is important to him.

I see “Faith” much like being “left-handed”, it can be a part of how one lives one’s life and some accommodations may be useful.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your thoughts, Amy. I like your metaphor of faith as a banner with beliefs floating beneath it. One of my favorite writers on religious thought, David Bentley Hart, wrote that “Faith … is a trust in the reality of some living truth that transcends the forms it animates.” He could as easily have said that about hope, since faith and hope have an umbilical connection with each other.

[Anonymous]

In our culture, we treat “Hope” as “Fledgling Faith” aka “Hope Grows Into Faith” the way that a 5 year old “grows into” adult clothing after a decade or so.

During my faith transition, “Hope” became a far more useful value for me personally because Hope is much more flexible. You can “hope for” a lot of things and then work to stack the cards in your favor for that outcome (or be able to shake your head, finger, or butt at something when it doesn’t work out). “Dashed Hopes” can be mourned and re-grouped from (sometimes, most of the time on some levels, eventually).

If “Faith” is the banner, then “Hope” is the breeze that moves the decorations around and draws attention to the banner.

[Anonymous]

DarkJedi wrote:

I think sometimes it’s a little hard to recognize that faith crisis is different for everybody. We each have our own unique experience with what we consider our own dark night of the soul and I think it’s human nature to apply our own experience to everyone else who has had a similar experience. But it’s really not like that – your experience was different from mine.

I remember talking to a bishop that had gone through a faith crisis and if I remember correctly, I think he landed on the necessity of priesthood. Essentially that the LDS church has it and nobody else does. Church leaders can make mistakes and the entire institution can take an inadvisable detour now and then (priesthood and temple ban) but the priesthood remains and is essential to return and live with God in eternal families.

In a faith crisis, you fall until you hit “bedrock” and that thing is stable to allow you to rebuild.

I find it interesting that what is “bedrock” for one person is entirely shaky ground for another.

For that bishop, his “bedrock” allowed him to remain and participate in the church as a contributing (if somewhat unorthodox) member.

Not everyone that goes through a faith crisis is able to do that and they don’t seem to consciously choose what that bedrock is for them.

DarkJedi wrote:

My standard advice is take it slow, focus on what you do believe, and don’t dump all at once.

always great advice.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

In a faith crisis, you fall until you hit “bedrock” and that thing is stable to allow you to rebuild.

I find it interesting that what is “bedrock” for one person is entirely shaky ground for another.

For that bishop, his “bedrock” allowed him to remain and participate in the church as a contributing (if somewhat unorthodox) member.

I can relate. My “bedrock truth” was “Charity and Compassion” and eventually “God May Fail (and the systems of God I grew up with), but Charity Never Faileth”.

It was a mantra that made sense to me and allowed my understanding of God (and everything that the Belief in God was holding up) to “Fail” in a way that I could mourn without self-destructing and sending trails of destruction throughout countless lives I’m connected to.

– When it started, I needed a “safe landing” that didn’t blow up my family (toddler and grade schooler at the time), my marriage (jury is still out, but a lot has stabilized), and my soul. It’s really tough to segregate my faith transition from the transition to be the parent my child needed and connected to, being the Child of God that I was purported to be (news flash – I’m not the gender-performer that I was raised to understand that God expected), into who I really am and the family structures and values that I can engage with. I haven’t given my husband enough credit for the courage that he has chosen to love me even as I became someone whose values on some levels are extremely scary to him.

It’s parent identity, faith transition, and midlife crisis (variation likely) all rolled up into 1. NOTE: I do not recommend it – but if you find yourself in the middle of it, I can help. There are a lot of us out there and I know some good reads to provide grounding perspective:)

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

DarkJedi wrote:

I think sometimes it’s a little hard to recognize that faith crisis is different for everybody. We each have our own unique experience with what we consider our own dark night of the soul and I think it’s human nature to apply our own experience to everyone else who has had a similar experience. But it’s really not like that – your experience was different from mine.

I remember talking to a bishop that had gone through a faith crisis and if I remember correctly, I think he landed on the necessity of priesthood. Essentially that the LDS church has it and nobody else does. Church leaders can make mistakes and the entire institution can take an inadvisable detour now and then (priesthood and temple ban) but the priesthood remains and is essential to return and live with God in eternal families.

In a faith crisis, you fall until you hit “bedrock” and that thing is stable to allow you to rebuild.

I find it interesting that what is “bedrock” for one person is entirely shaky ground for another.

For that bishop, his “bedrock” allowed him to remain and participate in the church as a contributing (if somewhat unorthodox) member.

Not everyone that goes through a faith crisis is able to do that and they don’t seem to consciously choose what that bedrock is for them.

DarkJedi wrote:

My standard advice is take it slow, focus on what you do believe, and don’t dump all at once.

always great advice.

Thanks, Roy. I could probably use bedrock in place of foundation in my own analogies. My bedrock is certainly not what your bishop friend’s was/is, and as you say I think the priesthood is somewhat shaky. I do recognize that many people see the priesthood and priesthood authority as what sets us apart from other churches. My own bedrock is very much in common with other churches – that there is indeed a God who at the very least was a Creator. The only other thing that I am somewhat certain of is that God wants us to be nice to each other.

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