|
Demiurge
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 36,365
|
Letter circulating, supposedly from Richard Bushman
but that may not be accurate. The writing seems a little sloppy for his standards, unless it was just a private email or something.
Quote:
The Nature of Unbelief
May 1, 2014
Not long ago a friend sent me a long letter from a relative who had left the church. For forty-four years, the man said, he had lived a Mormon life and then after much anguish was overcome by the facts of Mormon history. He and his wife spent
two years reading history, studying, praying, fasting, and attending the temple while we also read all of the standard works. We were “honest seekers after truth” paying our tithing, living the commandments, supporting a missionary, and attending our church meetings. Despite this, history is what it is, and the history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young is appalling.
He was sure he had made the right decision. After all his inquiries, he is now “99.999% confident that the whole thing is a fraud.”
Questioners leave the Church for many reasons, but defections like this are becoming a familiar story. Faithful Latter-day Saints begin looking into Mormon history, are shocked by what they find, and eventually decide that the Church cannot possibly be what it claims to be. At the end of their researches, many of them achieve a remarkable certainty. “99.999 confident” is pretty close to absolutely sure. I have heard a recently lapsed Mormon say it is “impossible” to believe in Mormonism. Not that it is not possible for him personally to believe; he thinks it is impossible for any rational person to believe. Those who hold on to their faith are either uninformed or believe for sentimental reasons.
This sureness has puzzled me. There is a huge Mormon intellectual establishment assembling evidence to support the Church’s claims and answering objections. Does all this count for nothing? Take the problem of Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham manuscripts, for example. Egyptologists have translated the fragments that were found in Metropolitan Museum and found they do not refer to Abraham at all; they are a funeral document of a type commonly buried with eminent Egyptians. This discovery surprised many Mormons, and disturbed not a few. But Kevin Barney, the learned Chicago attorney, has given a plausible account that considers all the scholarly findings and still leaves room for inspiration and a divinely inspired text. The Book of Abraham, Barney argues is no more a translation in the conventional sense than the Book of Mormon. The Egyptian scrolls were the occasion for a revelation. Both books were given by the gift and power of God; both resulted in truly remarkable texts. I can imagine a critical investigator disagreeing with Barney, but with such finality and certainty? Other apologetic arguments receive the same treatment. It is as if all the explanations in support of the Church are not really worthy of serious consideration.
I recently received a 77 page document titled "Letter to a CES Director, Why I Lost My
Testimony," by Jeremy Runnells. It was a massive compilation of arguments against Church policies and beliefs, ranging from the Book of Mormon to current stands on gay marriage. A huge amount of labor had gone into the preparation of the document, including many tables, charts, and maps. But nowhere did the document consider the arguments on behalf of the Book of Mormon or Church policy. Nothing positive was to be found. It was unrelenting, undiluted attack. The critique did not take the form of weighing the evidence but was more like pounding one nail after another into the coffin to be sure the monster could not escape. The document was powerful but not judicious, passionate but not wise.
How are we to understand this mentality? Why the certainty, why the passion, why the lack of nuance and balance? Hearing the stories of lost faith over and over again, I was reminded of the famous Punch cartoon of the lady and the hag. This is the one you see first as a beautiful lady, her face turned away and her head adorned with a sweeping hat. Then when you look again, you see a hag with a large nose and a wizened mouth. In an instant, a picture you saw one way turns into something exactly its opposite. I heard of a pair of lady missionaries who stumbled on to some anti-Mormon material online and suffered this instantaneous switch. All of a sudden the Church looked like a hag rather than a beautiful lady--to their complete devastation. For two weeks they stopped missionary work, sunk in fear and panic. Eventually they righted themselves and, though shaken, went on with their work.
I am hypothesizing that many Mormons, especially those reared in faithful environments, may suffer these moments of dark revelation. It suddenly dawns on them that the whole story may be wrong. The Church is a gigantic error. When it comes, the realization is terrifying. The questioners feel sickened by the thought that everything they have believed in through their lives could be wrong. They may be thrown into a panic and frantically reach out for answers. They fast, pray, attend the temple, and study, study, study. They hunt for everything they can find to settle the question. They have to find the truth; their lives depend on it. Having read and believed the positive all their lives, they now are overwhelmed by the negative.
Eventually some of them arrive at the conclusion that the hag is the truth, and the lady is a fraud but they do so by in a particular fashion. These questioners are not necessarily weighing the evidence to see where the truth lies. It is not a matter of nuance and balance. In their letters to me, and in the “Letter to a CES Director,” they don’t try to refute particular arguments on the FAIR or the Maxwell Institute websites. They are inclined to dismiss the apologists as partisans and not really worthy of serious consideration. The important point for them is that there are so many arguments against the Church. Once in a critical mode, they are less interested in refuting the positive arguments than in seeing if the hag will go away, and she never does. Wherever they turn they find a haggish side to Church beliefs. Once thinking in that vein, all they can see is the bad. They try to see if the hag is still in the picture, and she always is. When that happens time after time, in fact invariably, 99.999% certainty seems possible.
From what some of the doubters tell me, this reversal originates in Church’s own understanding of itself. They have heard Church leaders say the Church is either God’s work or a great fraud. They have been told from their youth that this is the one true church on the earth. When anything wrong or untrue appears in the historical record, any contradiction to this overall view, the whole structure seems to collapse. One questioner offered an explanation for the doubters’ certainty.
I wonder if what many people who are saying they ‘are 99.99% sure it’s not true’ really mean is: ‘I am 99.99% sure it’s not 100% true. It looks like things aren’t exactly as I was taught my whole life. Since the Church says it is God’s only true church, when you find an error, or misinformation, or whatever, how do you reconcile this? They may not think the church is necessarily a complete fraud but it’s hard to see it as completely conforming to its truth claims. If you can’t feel it’s 100% true, can it be partially false and partially true?
The Church holds forth as the one true church and it seems this creates a logical paradox. Once you see the hag, it is very hard to reconcile with the church because it is set up as the Kingdom of God (both doctrinally and culturally). The institution has held out unequivocally the notion of its own truth and divine direction. Both the foundational stories/facts (as historically presented) and the current institution are presented as a black and white dichotomy; even to this day there are regular conference talks that do not allow any nuance of interpretation.
This illuminating comment reveals to my mind what may be the fundamental question in the struggle over belief: what is the nature of the Church? The doubters interpret “one true church” to mean constant and complete divine guidance at every point with little room for human error. Joseph Smith could not have been misled about the nature of the Book of Abraham scrolls they would say. The Lord would not let his prophet work in ignorance on so important a point. Brigham Young would not have been allowed to let his own racial prejudices affect his position on blacks and the priesthood. There is no place for mistakes in a divinely guided church. As my friend put it:
Having this dichotomous view of our own religion and faith is perhaps the real problem. People who were not really encouraged to think in gray areas or entertain nuance or doubt in their thinking/beliefs within the religion and it’s correlated teachings may find it difficult to see nuance on their way out. After all, we have often been told by our own leaders it’s either true or a fraud.
The negative reaction to the idea of an immaculate church causes us to ask: what do we mean by saying the Church is led by revelation and is the true church? In Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, I offered a view of divine guidance that differs from the questioners’ understanding. Looking closely at Joseph Smith’s experience I concluded that he was left on his own much of the time. He was given the plates but not detailed instructions on how to translate them. He had to move forward by trial and error until he finally understood how to interpret. Later he was told to practice plural marriage but not exactly how. He stumbled around, trying to do his best. In my opinion, that is the way God deals with all of us. The Lord hovers over our lives to keep us on the right path but does not necessarily give us a precise plan of how to proceed. By working together and constantly consulting Him, we make our way as best we can. That way we grow and develop. Precise instructions on every point would not enable us to mature spiritually.
I think the Church operates in the same way. The General Authorities are devoted, intelligent, hard-working men who have accepted responsibility for leading the Church. They sincerely seek and receive revelation in their callings to which they have a right by virtue of their offices. But personal viewpoints and feelings are not erased as they assume their duties. The impression of their own personalities is on everything they do--and rightly so. We would not want them to be robots of God. We want them to be human. The inspiration comes, frequently and powerfully I believe, but through their minds and hearts. Leaders at the top, like leaders at every level, have to use their own judgment as they respond to the inspiration they receive. That seems to me to be the common-sense, realistic view of the Church as both human and divine, but it does not seem to be accessible to people with an either-or mentality. For them the Church is either impeccable or fallen. For the critic disagrees, there is little room for toleration or forgiveness.
I have also been perplexed by the questioners’ tendency to see the Church as a glass half empty. Not only do they see the dark side, when given a choice, they tend to choose the worst. Offered alternate explanations, they are drawn to the one that puts the Church in a bad light. When the Historical Department began issuing statements on the history of blacks and the priesthood, instead of seeing this as positive development, some objected that the Church had not apologized and had not adequately publicized the statement. For another doubter, the tithing question in the temple recommend interview seems like a requirement to buy your way into the temple. He could not see it as a salutary sacrifice of worldly goods to purify us before coming before the Lord. The criticisms are not without merit, but why consistently emphasize the negative over the positive? The man who spoke of his 99.99% certainty wrote that “the history of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young is appalling.” To a believers’ ears, the reaction seems harsh and condemnatory. Are there no redeeming virtues in the lives of these Church presidents? It is hard not to see these reactions to the Church as a Rohrschach test where the critics project their own feelings onto the picture.
I am inclined to think that one reason for the negativity is that questioners more often than not have been wounded. The sudden revelation of the dark version of the story leaves them feeling betrayed. They cannot understand why the Church has kept all this information hidden for so long. Many suffer from bitterness and resentment. In answer to my query about why questioners pay so little attention to the positive arguments for the Church, one reader replied:
It is . . . difficult to ask members and nonmembers to take into account all of the available evidence when for a very long time (and still today in most part), the church has declined to give its members all of the information in making the initial decision. A sense of betrayal is inevitable in that context, and that sense will sully one side of the argument .
Believing they have been deceived before, the critics can no longer trust anything official. It all could be propaganda. Why don’t the Church leaders disclose financial information, they want to know? Why didn’t they immediately acknowledge the Egyptian scrolls had nothing to do with Abraham once the scholars translated the newly discovered texts. Why the pictures of Joseph Smith looking at the plates as he translates rather than looking at the seerstone in a hat? Disillusionment inclines skeptics toward the negative because they have lost confidence in the official Church’s integrity. Some of their hurt shows through in the bitterness of their reactions.
To this point, the disillusioned disbelievers I have known follow pretty much the same track. But then they take different courses. Some grow ever more bitter and repudiate the Church entirely. They spend huge amounts of energy writing blogs and letters to reinforce their arguments. The “Letter to the CES Director” is a case in point. It must have taken hundreds of hours to assemble and organize that material. Others endlessly air their complaints on the ex-Mormon blogs, mounting one new argument after another. Besides addressing the world at large, this type of critic often puts pressure on friends and family members. I hear of unbelieving spouses who insist that their partners look at the hard facts. If you will only open your eyes, they say, you will see what I see--an ugly woman. When the partner speaks of the Spirit of the Lord or the comfort the Church offers, it only confirms the skeptic’s conviction that emotion is clouding the spouse’s mind. The difference in viewpoint generates painful tension between the two, sometimes endangering the marriage.
I am both sympathetic and unsympathetic towards people on this track. I know they have searched sincerely, and somewhere along the line have made a difficult decision. They have probably met with astonishment and rejection from friends and family. They know that they have hurt people they have loved. Their decisions to leave required courage. But I am concerned that these unbelievers who blog about Mormonism and write long letters haven’t really left Mormonism. They are still in its thrall. Too much of their identity is defined by their anti-Mormonism. They are too absorbed in their resentment of the Church, in their efforts to liberate others, in their anger at what they have suffered. I don’t think it is healthy to be so parasitic.
On the other hand, many of the disillusioned make a valiant effort to remain in the Church. They don’t want to harm their families or abandon their friends. They hold on, often sticking with the Word of Wisdom, perhaps wearing their garments, taking various Church positions, baptizing their children when the time comes. It is hard to hold fast when they cannot help seeing the dark side of Church actions. They feel uncomfortable at Church and silently protest much of what they hear. But wounded though they are, they keep coming.
For this group I feel strong sympathies. We must be careful not to exclude them and should honor their willingness to remain under adverse conditions. They will benefit from a broad generous spirit which I wish would prevail on all sides. We must acknowledge that people can legitimately raise questions about the Church and still be our brothers and sisters. Mormons often reject unbelievers when they express their doubts or offer criticism. Families sometimes hurt their own children as they go their way. Moved by love as these efforts may be, they don’t show respect. That must change. At the same time, I would like the zealous ex-Mormons to moderate their zeal and let Mormons be without continually picking at the Church. They should tolerate the faith of their spouses, recognize the good in Mormonism, and respect Mormon rationality. We need peacemakers on both sides.
I am of the opinion that in time the lady-hag dichotomy will fade. As Mormons learn to tolerate ambiguity, the sharp alternatives will no longer seem applicable. Young Mormons will grow up knowing the historical facts that now startle naïve believers. The Joseph Smith Papers editors are setting a new standard for transparency and candor about all the difficult issue. What seem like startling discoveries now in time will be commonplace. In a recent article in the BYU Magazine, Rachel Cope and Spencer Fluhman proposed a set of guidelines for parents responding to children with questions.
• Don’t communicate that it’s wrong or unfaithful to have questions or doubts.
• Don’t express disappointment in your loved one or convey fear about his or her spiritual standing.
• Do create an atmosphere of warmth and openness in your home that invites conversations on difficult topics of all kinds.
• Do react matter-of-factly and kindly to questions, no matter how distressing they might be to you personally.
That attitude in parents and leaders could change the faith-doubt landscape in the Church in a generation.
Just as important, Mormons must not require the impossible of their leaders. Even while we believe them led by God, we must recognize that revelations have always come through fallible humans. What leaderes say will be mixed with their personalities and cultures. Good-hearted and sincere leaders at every level may make mistakes, but that does not vacate the Church’s divine commission. Though the Church may stumble, as a divine institution it will have the wisdom and inspiration to right itself. Through it all, we must be patient and understanding, approaching our leaders not with suspicion but good will.
If we are true to our best principles, a generous spirit will prevail. Believers will recognize that questioners have good reasons for questioning, and doubters will respect the strong reasons for Mormon belief. If we can reach that state, we will not only get along better, we will judge more wisely. We will see that all of us have a little ugliness in us, but, looked at in the right way, we all have beauty too.
|
|
03-27-2015, 02:47 PM
Linear Mode
