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I have a question about one’s sense of personal security after you hit your trial of faith, and potentially, start adopting a more personal way/middle way within Mormonism. As a traditional believing mormon, at times, I had this sense of security that everything would be OK (particularly my job and in my basic life circumstances) because I was a full tithe payer, was holding a calling, was trying to be a good priesthood holder, took on most things I was asked to do etcetera. I felt that having my heart in the right place, and doing my absolute best to meet the high standards of the Church somehow garnered favortism to my life. I honestly believed it.
However, many people find they are unable/unwilling to be that way (willingly meeting all the high standards) at some point — particularly after a trial of their faith. So, with all the faith gone in finding favor with God by doing all the things the Church says you should do…where does your personal security come from then? How do you feel at peace when you no longer feel that clinging to all the behaviors expected of you at Church are there to buoy you up and help you find the favor you feel you need?
I like how you’ve expressed the emptiness that can exist following a faith crisis. I probably experienced that emptiness without noticing it, and I think it was for two reasons. 1) I had been for years in a life crisis that was so dark that relatively speaking the faith crisis was more a change than a curse. 2) Though there was a faith “crisis” for me in 2001-2002, the main event was a faith “change” in October 2003, and it was the faith “change”, not the faith “crisis” that launched me forever from the LDS tradition into the outer cosmos. With that background, I think the following things combined to give me a continuous thread of personal security through my faith crisis and faith change.
THERE IS INCREDIBLE GOOD OUT THERE
An integral part of my journey was the discovery that the rest of the world wasn’t all evil and deceived. I discovered that the plain and precious truths of the gospel of the Lamb were all preserved or being revealed better in some place or another than in the LDS Church. Speaking from here and now, that doesn’t mean the LDS Church isn’t a pretty good package. It just means that there are many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of Heaven that are less likely to be found in the LDS package than elsewhere. There’s not some big danger in reading the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, near death experiences, Swedenborg, etc. To the contrary!
HEAVEN IS MERCIFUL
The contemporary revelation of near death experiences was an important part of my faith change. From these revelations, I learned that Heaven is far more merciful and loving than I ever had considered. With the powerful vision of a loving heaven in me, I felt perfectly secure, and I started (slowly) moving in a new direction (one that respected agency and used miraculous love) in my own relationships.
THE GOLDEN RULE IS ENOUGH
The entire meaning of life became pretty simple for me at my faith change. And the rules for it got simple too. Doing good to others is bulletproof security, and easy enough for a child to understand.
I have never had a moment’s doubt about the goodness of the step my life took in 2003. I don’t know much about where else I’m headed, but as Brian has said, God and I are on the same team. And I know it now. You don’t get much more secure than that.
Tom… I love your post! SilentDawning wrote:I had this sense of security that everything would be OK (particularly my job and in my basic life circumstances) because I was a full tithe payer, was holding a calling, was trying to be a good priesthood holder, took on most things I was asked to do etcetera. I felt that having my heart in the right place, and doing my absolute best to meet the high standards of the Church somehow garnered favortism to my life. I honestly believed it.
This is a description of an expectation you have, an assumption of how the universe operates (your “ultimate reality” in Fowler terms). I am guessing this expectation has mostly worked for you, so it seems like a hard thing to let go. If you were successful in life (according to how you defined that) while doing all these “righteous” things, then your faith framework seemed to accurately model expected results.
From that perspective, I can see how it would feel like a loss of security by abandoning it. Perhaps it really
isa loss of security. I can’t say for sure that God didn’t bless you with prosperity (fulfilled expectations) in exchange for obedience. I can’t disprove that. I wouldn’t want to. I understand the connection. My parents raised me with that world view. It worked for them. They don’t understand why I don’t believe it, because it worked correctly for them. And I am pretty sure somewhere in the back of their mind they think I am not as “successful” as them because I have not been as “righteous.” They don’t mean to be arrogant or insensitive like that. It just seems logical to them. If you work hard, and do the right things, and are righteous, you will be blessed. But the problem is that bad things happen to good righteous people all the time. And good things happen to really rotten people. In fact, it really seems to me that people who don’t sink so much time and energy into being “good” tend to prosper much easier in the
short term. God has seen fit to disabuse me of the notion several times that obedience and faith will bring me security in life. In fact, the time period I was doing my best at faithfully paying tithing and doing everything on the checklist was a time when I lost the most. On top of it, I went in to seek guidance from my Bishop and my father, they gave me really bad financial advice. Looking back, it was so completely stupid. I even doubted it at the time, thinking it was bad advice. But I “believed.” I take responsibility for my decisions. I made them. But that definitely broke me from my assumption that I was in a reciprocal prosperity relationship with God, and that PH leaders had any magical insights into life.
My constant attempts at being someone I am not, it was like banging my head against the wall. I found that peace and security I needed by finally letting go. I don’t really think God is watching out for me. It isn’t that I am not important or God doesn’t care. It just isn’t on this being’s agenda. In the words of the Buddha, “life is Dukkha.”
(dissatisfaction, stress, suffering, many meanings in English that sort of match the idea in Pali).
Brian Johnston wrote:But that definitely broke me from my assumption that I was in a reciprocal prosperity relationship with God, and that PH leaders had any magical insights into life.
I’ve wondered many times over the years where JS came up with the “law irrevocably decreed…” and the idea when you keep a commandament and then you get a blessing and this belief that you’re entitled. Some of it is a Calvinist ethic, I think, with the idea in the 1800s that if you were a success in business, etc. then God must love you and if you’re not doing so well then you must be a sinner or lacking spiritually in some way. It’s strange that people believe it when there’s so much evidence all around to the contrary. And then the idea that grace is a free gift, not something we buy by our actions.
To answer your question in short I have focused on the following: Quote:For as you love you shall be loved,
For as you forgive you shall be forgiven.
Your mention of losing a sense of security resonates with me. In the crisis I suddenly felt human and fragile. At times I was afraid to drive for fear of being in an accident. Then I slowly absorbed the idea that “we’re all in this thing together.” Nobody else is super-human either. Everyone will die at some point, live and enjoy.
GBSmith wrote:the idea when you keep a commandament and then you get a blessing
I still believe this. If we keep a commandment, we will get a spiritual result. I just don’t connect that with prosperity or safety. If I pay a tithe (sacrifice, learn to let go, etc.) then I will be blessed (with some insight and enlightenment about sacrifice). The “windows of heaven will be opened,” but what exactly pours out of heaven? gold? silver? or is it perhaps the things that are actually in heaven — like love, light, understanding, wisdom, etc.
I developed an alternative interpretation so that it describes my results.
Interestingly though, in spite of all that belief in some kind of protection due to righteousness and towing the line, I HAVEN’T been protected over the years in many ways. My marriage had a huge obstacle that made me miserable for a decade, in spite of righteousness beforehand. Absolutely miserable. I have a son with a chronic illness that could explode into something worse at any time. My Church experiences have triggered clinical depression at one point that 3 weeks on drugs snapped me out of, when other trying life experiences HAVEN’T. I have experienced major financial setbacks where most of my wealth has evaporated into thin air, in spite of calling on the Lord for guidance etcetera when I made the financial decisions that led me there. So, perhaps this belief that there was security (ie, things going relatively well in my life due to living hte LDS version of righteousness) was all an illusion born out of positive thinking, cognitive dissonace, and denying the many bad things that have happened to me?
I have to confess, I like the bedrock principles that Tom shared. They are universal. I think faith in the mercy of the heavens is key to it all — that the Lord will look at the complex mix of beliefs, tendencies, and experiences I’ve had an say “this guy did the best with the emotional set he was given, and the incomplete information I gave him to get through this life”.
I think perhaps I need to adopt that same sense of personal security that I thought I had during my TBM phase, but for different reasons. I think I need to believre that some form of protection is there because I follow my heart and try to obey universal principles of kindness and love toward others…not necessarily because I hold a TR, for example.
I’m musing again….I think other sources of personal security –intrinsic ones — would be helpful to hear as I try to regain that sense of personal security again.
As it stands, I don’t have it. My industry is undergoing radical changes due to the change in political landscape in washington, and I suspect I will be out of a job eventually….this makes me think the only way to keep my family afloat financially is to revert to TBM thinking. I’ve been in these shoes before — believing for temporal reasons, and they just aren’t satisfsying or sustainable. I start resenting them.
There are many ways to work towards security. Financial security is important. Mantaining a budget is something DH and I are working on. Although we don’t feel very secure at this moment we are working towards feeling more secure in this area. For example we have decided to take our spending habits more seriously by logging what we buy each month and seeing what we can do without or what we can save on. We do not pay tithing. When we did pay tithing (surprise) we also were not secure financially.
Security in relationships is important. Treat people with love, respect and kindness and you will probably recieve the same. I make sure (at least I try) to give my soon to be two year old security in her life. She eats, plays, and sleeps on a schedule. She gets love and bonding time every single day. Communication builds a strong sense of security through DH and I. We don’t agree on most religious theories but we defiantely “know” that we don’t! IOW – The cat is out of the bag, Dh knows I don’t believe. I don’t feel 100% secure in knowing if this truly bothers DH, as he seems very hush hush about his feelings – But there is no sense in trying to control or understand all of his thoughts. I can only be confident with my own spirituality. He reads my posts on here to “understand” me better! I love that.
I get a little aggravated when people say to put something in “God’s hands” … I’m hoping that is after they have worked it through their own hands time and time again beforehand ….. But for some reason I doubt some people put in the work to recieve the outcome they seek.
I stopped wearing G’s over a year ago. I honestly felt I might be killed in any one of my trips in a car or an airplane, soon after I gave them up. I feel secure enough now to not give them a thought whatsoever.
Overall I feel secure in my beliefs .. which are far from concrete. I believe in kindness and everything else is just fancy stuff … thoughts here and there mixed with God, Jesus, Buddha .. Love etc. Bad things happen to good people. None of us make it out of this world alive …. so you can only feel so secure!
Not any useful advice but just an acknowledgement that I have had the exact same experience as I have struggled with my faith and testimony. I have always felt that no matter what was going on in my life-good, bad or indifferent-that everything was going to be ok. I didn’t necessarily base that on living a righteous life by church standards but just always felt that way. I have definitely lost some of that peace as I have run into questions about the church and god in general. I want to get some of that peace back. I beleive I am blessed by keeping the commandents that I believe really are “divine” or “inspired” or whatever, but it’s almost completely because I really only care about one blessing – what kind of person I become (and what kind of impact it has on my family and others). Of course, it helps that I really don’t care much about financial prosperity. Keeping the cultural constructs is a crap shoot, however.
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