Quotes sustaining and challenging my faith lately

 Me: I’m not sure I actually believe in God anymore. 

Also Me: let’s stay up late and read the Bible!

Faith journeys are wild. Mine is progressing slower than I’d like. But if you’re curious for an update, this post might help you there. I also think some of my thoughts might be helpful to others. If you find that to be the case, please let me know, because I’m lonely a lot in my particular path and so I’m desperate to hear from people who relate even a little. 

I do also recognize that some people who relate to me in some ways with what's below, might have VERY different reactions to some of what I am finding sustaining or challenging. That's okay, and I think your reactions to these are valid--even if they are the opposite of mine.

Quotes sustaining my faith lately

Real faith

“Real faith, life-changing faith, Abrahamic faith is always in crisis. That’s how you find out if it’s faith at all. I promise you that more faith will mean less crisis until finally God says ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant.’” - Jeffery R. Holland

If you hear “Abrahamic faith” and think, “yikes, child sacrifice,” I think that’s half of the proper response. Abrahamic faith is complete resignation to the horror of both universal ethics and individual necessity followed by the bold embrace of the absurd. And Elder Holland has convinced me that true, life-changing faith like that, is indeed always in crisis. I actually take issue with the second part of the quote. If real faith is always in crisis, then a promise of less crisis is a promise of less faith. And I understand the teaching that when faith is nurtured it grows and bears fruit and that particular faith is dormant, but I’m not on board yet with the idea. I think all frameworks of thought should be constantly challenged. Religious or not, good thinking is always in crisis. But anyway, “real faith is always in crisis” has been a helpful mantra for me lately. 

The silence of God

“You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override human will (as His presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. . . He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Here the “Enemy” is God, in the old demon Screwtape’s letter to his nephew, Wormwood. I have long accepted that God is much quieter than we sometimes assume him to be–even for people I sustain as “prophets, seers, and revelators.” That quiet, I think, is a problem. It means that our own biased brains construct a much larger part of “revelation” than we probably want to admit. I even think that prophets have a tendency to overestimate how much of what they say is truly revelatory. 

But why???? Why doesn’t God, who must be quite powerful, make himself more apparent to prophets, more clear about what is really true, and more easily recognized by people like me? I think Lewis has a good response to this question in Screwtape’s letter. 

Also, thanks to my Brother Jeremy, who’s question in a family group chat helped this quote pop out as I was re-reading Lewis’s epistolary experiment. 

The poor in spirit

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,

    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 5:3

I’ve usually understood “poor in spirit” to mean “humble,” and maybe that’s part of it. But I also think it could mean “lacking in the Holy Ghost,” and I find this heartening as a person who has felt very poor in spirituality. I also think it’s a good admission that the leaders of what the Book of Mormon Introduction calls “The Kingdom of God on earth” are not so spiritually wealthy as we sometimes believe. 

The time it takes

Things take the time they take. Don’t

worry.

How many roads did Saint Augustine follow

before he became Saint Augustine?

• Mary Oliver “Don’t Worry” from Felicity

Another quote I have to repeat to myself as a mantra. I’m stuck in the middle of a lot of mental/spiritual things and I don’t know where the journey will end up. I wish sometimes that I could just figure it all out quickly. But I also strongly dislike any of the destinations I know right now that I could get to by rushing there. So I just have to be patient with myself, God, and others. Things take the time they take.

Quotes challenging me in my faith lately

Come, Follow Me

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  - Mark 10:21-22

This is the source of the “come follow me” quote that the church’s curriculum is named for. It’s also the source of this image hanging next to the door of the chapel in the church building I go to, like Jesus is gesturing into the room. 

 

 

Give up all and follow Jesus. That is the cost of entering the chapel with real intent. That is the cup we drink and the bread we eat. And, like the rich young man, I feel shocked and grieved at the weight of it.

Kevin Hamilton’s BYU Devotional 

My main thought on Elder Hamilton’s address is that I don’t know why the talk is shocking to so many ex-mormons and progressive mormons. It’s the same old stuff that has been taught over and over again. Is it over-simplified, narrow-minded, and toxic? Yes. But is it surprising? Not at all. I’ve wanted to get some of this off my chest for a while now, and now that the text of the speech is available, here’s a little speed run. Skip this part if you are really vibing with the otherwise quite faithful spirit of this post. 

“Occasionally I have heard people say that those who serve in the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve ‘are only human and are capable of making mistakes.’ While it is true that we are all fallible human beings, the safety net—for all of us—is the council system that we use at every level of the Church.” 

Councils are only a good safety net if they are big enough and diverse enough to provide enough tension between ideas. Plus if all council members subscribe to the same spiritual framework, that framework will filter out a lot of strings of discussion that are necessary to progress. The first presidency and quorum of the twelve are all fallible human beings, and they are wrong about things in unison with one another. 

“Another comment that I hear from time to time, especially on social media, is ‘Be the change,’ as in ‘I will be the change.’ You know, as in ‘I will stay in the Church and work for change from within.’ But how does this square with the invitation to simply be “the humble followers of Christ’?” 

I square it by humbly following a Messiah who was so rebellious he was literally crucified by the Roman empire. A Messiah who (at least in Matthew) never taught that Judaism was rejectable, but that it needed to change…from the inside. And honestly, it’s not so much about change for me, personally. I’m more interested in finding the people in the church who prove to me it’s not just full of the things I think are harmful. Those are the kinds of people I want to build zion with. And honestly, I think everyone will eventually get there anyway. 

“I occasionally meet people who feel that it is their duty to point out what they see as shortcomings or failings of the Lord’s Church. They feel that they are loyal to the Savior but opposed to certain teachings of His Church.

President Dallin H. Oaks has addressed this:

Some who use personal reasoning or wisdom to resist prophetic direction give themselves a label borrowed from elected bodies—”the loyal opposition.” However appropriate for a democracy, there is no warrant for this concept in the government of God’s kingdom, where questions are honored but opposition is not.” 

See above, but one more thing. I actually wish that the church was more democratic. That would be a much better “safety net” than councils of mostly straight white old dudes. For example, I’m heartened by what democracy in churches has done for progress in the Church of England. 

“Could I suggest an alternative approach? Substitute the word Savior or Lord or Jesus Christ in place of ‘the Church’—as in ‘I don’t support the Savior’s policy on (again, you fill in the blank)’ or “I don’t agree with the way Jesus Christ does (this or that).’”

This reframing changes nothing for me. I disagree with Jesus almost every time I open my scriptures. Also, do you think I’m trying to disbelieve some of the things the church teaches? It’s not some choice I’m making. The church just hasn’t done the work to convince me that it’s right about the things I can’t accept from them. 

The image of God (You can resume reading, faithfuls)

“The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient’s mind when he is praying, you will not find that. If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients. There will be images derived from pictures of the Enemy as He appeared during the discreditable episode known as the Incarnation: there will be vaguer — perhaps quite savage and puerile — images associated with the other two Persons. There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered. I have known cases where what the patient called his “God” was actually located — up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it — to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer. For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be”, our situation is, for the moment, desperate.” - C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Screwtape got me with this one. So much of my testimony has shifted from what I believe because of some kind of spiritual confirmation to what I “like” of all the possible theological options. I fear using the tools that my church promotes to deduce what God is really like. Those have led to some conclusions I cannot convince myself to believe. In some ways, I like the ambiguity in church doctrine and in scripture because it makes space for alternative interpretations. If the ambiguity went away on certain issues, I am pretty sure I would too unless the new clarity was a sharp turn in a new, more justice-oriented direction. I don’t even know how I would begin to pray “Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be.” But maybe I’ll get there. 

“You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids him to use. Merely to override human will (as His presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. . . He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles.”