FAITH AND DOUBTArmand L. Mauss

A message delivered during the Sacrament Meeting of the Woodbridge First Ward, Irvine California Stake, on Sunday, September 8, 2013

During the April, 2013, general conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland delivered a very important message on faith and doubt.1 The message opens with a reference to the story in Mark, Chapter 9: 17-29, where Jesus heals an afflicted boy after questioning whether the boy's father could believe that all things are possible. The father's anguished and ambivalent response was "Lord, I believe -- help thou my unbelief!" (v.24) Elder Holland's message was addressed primarily to Church members feeling some of that same ambivalence -- that is, to those among us who have been struggling to maintain their faith and commitment to the gospel and to the Church. Elder Holland’s subject was not chosen casually, but rather it arose from the present historical context. For we have entered a period when creeping doubts have undermined the faith – and the faithfulness – of increasing numbers of those who were once active and devoted members and workers in this Church. Elder Marlin K. Jensen of the Seventy, who was Church Historian until recently, has compared the present time to Kirtland in the late 1830s, when widespread apostasy greatly reduced the ranks of the faithful.2

We might be tempted to shrug off the loss of members who, we assume, are leaving because they were never really converted in the first place, or because they have been unable or unwilling to live according to gospel standards and are following a different path – perhaps a sinful path. Certainly there might be some in those categories. Yet the data we have on departing members suggest a different picture for most others: They come largely from the ranks of the formerly faithful – returned missionaries, temple workers, former bishops, Relief Society presidents, and others who have been leaders in the Church – and still in the prime of life (in their 20s, 30s, and 40s). And when they leave, of course their children leave with them. It is likely that some in this very ward, or some of their loved ones, might be included in this exodus of the formerly faithful. But why is this occurring, and why on such a relatively large scale compared to earlier times?

Certainly there is more than one reason, and some reasons are unique to individual circumstances. However, there are two general reasons that are easy to identify: (1) The history and practices of the Church have become more accessible to questioning members than ever before. The age of the internet gives us access to all kinds of information about teachings and practices in the early history of the Church that seem hard to understand today, whether for members or non-members. Anti-Mormon and ex-Mormon websites are constantly dredging up and highlighting these anomalies. Even contemporary practices and policies are disturbing to some people (such as the differences between men's and women's roles in the Church). Meanwhile, the Church itself, for its part, has become far more open and transparent about its teachings and practices, past and present, than it has ever been before, whether on its own websites or by means of its open archives and regular publication of important documents like the Joseph Smith Papers.

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A second reason (2) for the attrition among the formerly faithful is that as a Church and as families, we have not adequately prepared the recent generations of the Saints for this enormous proliferation of newly available information about Church history and practices. When members learn that there is more than one version of the prophet's account of the First Vision; or details on how the Book of Mormon was translated; or about the scope and persistence of plural marriage, even into the 20th century; or about earlier teachings and policies in the Church toward the different races, some find it difficult to reconcile those discoveries with what they have learned in Seminary, Institute, or Sunday School. As a result, they become concerned -- even alarmed -- about how to handle the discrepancies between the neat and coherent narrative that once undergirded their testimonies and the actually rather messy story of how the Lord had to work with ordinary human beings to establish the Church and spread the gospel.

So that's the predicament. Now what can we do about it? I speak to you now not as a priesthood leader or spokesman for the Church but only as one old-timer who has lived personally through almost half of the entire history of the Church. With my extraordinary wife and partner Ruth, we raised eight questioning children, and they their own questioning children. Furthermore, as part of a long academic career, I have been rummaging around in Church history, policies, and practices that run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. I have encountered all the doubts, complaints, and scandals that have swirled around the Church during my lifetime and right into the present. Through it all, I have retained my faith in the gospel and my loyalty to the Church. Let me tell you some important things that I have learned in the process. Maybe they will be helpful to you or your loved ones. I have only three basic points to make.

FIRST: In religion, as in many other traditions handed down to us, periodic doubts are normal for any thoughtful and reflective person. Many of the doubts can't be readily resolved, at least not in this life, so we all live with a certain amount of ambiguity. A tolerance for ambiguity, indeed, is a sign of spiritual and intellectual maturity, not of gullibility or indecision. Above all, there is no reason to feel guilty about our doubts, and we must be careful not to make others feel guilty about theirs (especially our children). That just shuts off communication. Yet we need not spend our lives just coping with doubts. As Elder Holland advises us, we must live by what we do know and not be sidetracked or demoralized by what we don't know. This is not a matter, he tells us, of pretending to have faith that we do not have. "The size of your faith or the degree of your knowledge is not the issue," he tells us; rather, "it is the integrity you demonstrate toward the faith you do have and the truth you already know." He advises us that we be candid about our doubts, but not let them stand in the way of exercising the faith that can help us resolve them. We must also be patient with others' doubts, as well as with our own. We are all taught to seek the confirmation of the Holy Spirit about the restoration of the 1 Jeffrey R. Holland, "Lord, I believe" - Ensign, May 2013 2 See story at - for example - http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53408134-78/church-lds-mormon-faith.html.csp ; http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/tag/usa-mormon-latter-day-saints-church-romney-apostasy-departure-demographics-modernity-secularism-polygamy/ ; and http://mormon-chronicles.blogspot.com/2012/01/rescue-plan-to-address-difficulties-of.html.

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gospel and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon; and blessed are those who have received such confirmation and retained it. Yet we have all encountered good people, in and out of the Church, who seem genuinely to have tried but not gained or kept such a confirmation. Are such persons, whether members or not, unwelcome among us if they can accept only some of the Church's teachings but retain doubts about others? Surely not.

SECOND: We claim that this is the Lord's Church, and we have faith that ultimately He is in charge. However, as Elder Holland says, ". . . imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we." We tend to underestimate the human element in the operation of the Church, and we are sometimes perplexed by failings that we see in its leaders or teachers. We must be prepared to accept the reality that Church leaders in the past -- and sometimes more recently -- have taught some things and acted in some ways that we cannot understand and would not now approve. Their times were not our times, and their historical situations were very different from ours. Yet, we are not entitled to expect more perfection or infallibility from our leaders and teachers in the Church, past or present, than we would claim for ourselves. We sometimes talk among ourselves as though it is the gospel that is perfect, while the Church can sometimes get pretty messy because of all the human beings in it. However, I have always been impressed by a great essay written a few decades ago, by BYU professor Eugene England, with the title "Why the Church is as true as the Gospel.3 He argues that although we look to the gospel for the truths and ideals to live by, it is in the Church (as in our families) where these ideals are tested, where we really find out if we can live the gospel. If we cannot successfully apply the gospel of Christ to life in the Church and in our families, then how can we expect the gospel to work anywhere in the world? In the Lord's Preface to the Doctrine & Covenants (Section 1), he refers to the founding leaders and members of the Church as "weak and simple;" and says that he has given his commandments to his "servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language;" and that they might err and need chastening -- yet will receive strength and knowledge contingent on their humility (1: 23-28). This doesn't sound much like infallibility, so we must accept the human element in our leaders, past and present, as in ourselves, even as we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in considering how best to follow them.

THIRD: Each of us is ultimately and personally responsible for our own knowledge and understanding of the gospel and of Church history -- and indeed for our own testimonies and how we act on them. Such is not the responsibility of the bishop, the stake president, or any priesthood leader -- not even the prophet. Such is not the responsibility of any teacher in Sunday School, Seminary, or Institute. They can all be helpful, but sometimes they are not. Our teachers are expected to apply the official Church curriculum in helping us build our testimonies. It is not their job to explore all the anomalies, peculiarities, and controversies that might be encountered in the study of Church history, practices, or policies. For many of the Saints, the lessons taught in the

3 Eugene England, “Why the Church Is As True As the Gospel,” Sunstone 22, nos. 3/4 (June 1999]), 61–69). Also reprinted as the first essay in the collection of essays by England entitled Why the Church is as True as the Gospel (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1986).

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various auxiliaries meet their needs perfectly well, and my remarks here might not seem very relevant to them. Others, however, feel the need for more than the standard lessons can provide. None of us is in a position to judge what others need, except perhaps in the case of minor children -- at least those in our own families. Each of us, you and I, must decide what spiritual and intellectual nourishment we need, what knowledge we lack, and then take the responsibility for diligently seeking learning, by "study and by faith," . . . "out of the best books," as we are taught in the Doctrine & Covenants.4 It is not enough to wait passively for someone else to teach us, or to complain that we were deliberately deceived because this or that lesson failed to cover all the gritty human details in a particular episode or event in Church history. Nor is it enough to seek only the facts of a situation. Truth is more than the facts. It requires an understanding of the context and the situation within which the facts occurred.

In our quest for such truth, we have many resources available, beginning with the Church's own websites and archives, plus other sites that are independent but faithful toward the Church.5 The publications of the Maxwell Institute at BYU can also be helpful,6 and there are several independent scholarly journals and magazines that are balanced and reliable.7 Furthermore, never in the history of the Church have we had as many good books as we have now, written by as many competent and fair-minded scholars, LDS and otherwise.8 There are people in this stake who are knowledgeable about such resources and can help you find them. We are fortunate that one of these is our own stake president, but there are many other knowledgeable individuals as well, presumably including our Institute instructors.

The Church itself has publicly recognized and recommended such independent scholarship in a remarkable 2009 press release from LDS Public Affairs, which reads, in part:

The new Church History Library . . . [supports] the growing emphasis on transparency in the Church’s interaction with the public. . . . The story of the

4 For example, D & C 88:118; 109:7 5 Go to www.lds.org and click on "Church Websites" in the upper right corner. For independent but faithful websites, see www.fairlds.org (in process of being renamed FairMormon - http://enfairmormon.org ), which is the most thorough in offering articles on specific issues and is available in four languages. See also the Times and Seasons, By Common Consent, and Juvenile Instructor blog sites for ongoing discussions of current issues, and search the archives of those sites (by author or key words) for fairly sophisticated and faithful discussions of various topics during the past decade.6 http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/ 7 The oldest and most readily accessible of these independent journals are BYU Studies Quarterly (https://byustudies.byu.edu/); Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (http://www.dialoguejournal.com/); Journal of Mormon History (http://www.mormonhistoryassociation.org/publications); and Sunstone magazine (https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/). Among these, BYU Studies Quarterly is obviously not fully independent, and it tends to avoid controversial topics, but the articles it does publish are thorough and reliable. 8 I'd recommend that readers who are new to the world of reliable scholarship outside LDS Church auspices should start by reading Matthew Bowman's The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith (Random House, 2012), which is available in Kindle as well as in hard copy. This is a candid and reliable overview of the history of the Church down to the present time. It takes on several difficult issues and questions, but it avoids salacious treatments of them. Its sources, in turn, will point you toward more good books for your future reading.

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Church will inevitably be told as historians of good faith [within and without the Church] are given access to the library’s records and archives. . . . It is in the interests of the Church to play a constructive role in advancing. . . honest and accurate history. In doing so, the Church strives to be relevant to contemporary audiences that operate under changing cultural assumptions and expectations. A careful, yet bold presentation of Church history, which delves into the contextual subtleties and nuances characteristic of serious historical writing, has become increasingly important. If a religion cannot explain its history, it cannot explain itself.9

IN CONCLUSION:

Thus we are not alone or without resources in our efforts to resolve doubts, or in our quest for truth and for a more thorough understanding about the history and practices of the Church. Elder Holland urges us that we must not be afraid to ask for help, which, he assures us, will be found "on both sides of the veil," if only we will approach our quest humbly and honestly, or, as Nephi counsels us (2 Nephi 31:13), "with real intent," and "with full purpose of heart, [and with] no hypocrisy and no deception before God." That we may all seek to do so is my hope and prayer.

(Footnotes follow on the next page)

9 "A Record Kept: Constructing Collective Memory," LDS Newsroom commentary, June 11, 2009: http://newsroom.lds.org/article/a-record-kept-constructing-collective-memory).

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