Faith and Evidence

Having grown up under the correlated all Seeing Eye of the COB, I learned relatively early to eschew the speculative doctrines and focus on the core doctrines of the Gospel.  Kolob?  Nah.  Armageddon?  Nope.  10 tribes coming down from the North?  No way. 

For whatever reason I hunkered down with a few subjects and puzzled and puzzled till my puzzler was sore.  Faith, atonement, sacrifice… but faith more than anything.

When all you’ve got is milk, you try to turn it into meat by the sheer weight of pondering.

The Lectures on Faith

Alma 32

Ether 12

Hebrews 11

Faith was, and is, truly fascinating to me.

Here’s the quick synopsis:

Faith is frequently taught incorrectly in the Church in two ways.  We equate it with belief, which is incorrect (although not so incorrect that General Authorities of all ranks aren’t guilty of doing it ALL THE TIME).  And we say it is like a seed; also incorrect (for the record faith is the nourishment  for  the seed, not the seed itself.  The seed is the word, or whatever else is being tested).

I would instead break it down like this:  Faith is an action or disposition characterized by one or more of the following: action, loyalty, trust, or obedience.

The lectures on faith teach that faith is the motivating power by which man does anything.  (Lest we miss the significance, that’s ANYTHING.)

Alma 32 teaches that faith is as testable as a science experiment and teaches a virtuous cycle of coming to perfect knowledge through application of faith.

My mission farewell was a talk about faith and Moroni’s promise from an action perspective. 

1.       Faith is meant to be tested.

2.       Moroni’s promise is the test.

3.       My mission is to get people to take the challenge.

4.       God will do the rest.

Yadda yadda yadda.

So, here’s the problem:  Faith, we are told, will prove itself out!  You plant the seed and it grows.  In the doctrine of faith there is a causal chain that does not imagine planting the seed, not having it grow, and then trying to come up with bogus excuses that still make the seed out to be viable. (Yes, I realize that there is the convenient caveat about my infertile ground.  All I can say is, although my ground today looks pretty barren, it didn’t used to be.  There are many serious problems with that line of thinking anyway, not the least of which is it invalidates the power of Christ’s atonement.  Maybe sometime we’ll get around to that.)

To bring in a tangible example, I would have told you that the faith involved in giving a priesthood blessing was not some inner gumption, or force of belief.  Faith is manifest in putting hands on someone’s head and listening for inspiration, and then by opening one’s mouth and going out on a limb.  Action, trust…

Marital fidelity (or faithfulness) is, likewise, a manifestation of action, loyalty, trust (and sometimes obedience). 

Ok.

When I began to counsel with my bishop about my slipping testimony, one of my big issues was Alma 32.  My certainty wasn’t growing in a virtuous cycle leading to sure knowledge.  It was exactly the opposite.  I felt like everything was less and less sure; less black and white.  And from what I could tell, it was like that for most of the people I knew. 

Informal surveys told me that, in general, the people I was talking to didn’t feel like they were getting the answers or clarity that they thought they should.  They just figured they were broken and that everyone else was having all the spiritual experiences.

This was a prime cause of my growing anxiety attacks.

The Bishop asked me to look at all of this with an eye of faith.  Everyone seems to think that if I just look at all of this with an “eye of faith” it’ll all get better. 

Hmm…

Here’s my problem:  I’m not motivated to believe unless it’s TRUE.  I have no desire to build faith on false premises.  I’m not sentimental about all of this.  If the Church is TRUE, I want to know it and live accordingly.  If the Church is NOT TRUE, I want to know it and live accordingly.  I don’t do all of this for fun, dammit.

Although I don’t think people do this consciously, the thinking seems to be that where evidence breaks down, it’s God testing our faith.  He’s messing with us.

But I don’t find any evidence for that in the scriptures.  There is no presumption ANYWHERE that God will mess with you by changing the tangible world to provide evidence against the gospel.  In fact, it says the precise opposite.  Alma 30:41 “I have ALL THINGS as a testimony that these things are true.” 

I don’t know about you, but ALL THINGS doesn’t seem to leave room for the DNA of the native Americans to not match up with Semitic people.  Nor does it leave room for the Book of Abraham to be a false translation.  Nor does it leave room for absolutely no credible archeological evidence of the Book of Mormon in the Americas.  It certainly doesn’t leave any room for Joseph to be a world-class sex fiend. 

These are not trifles/details/insignificant/irrelevant/the not very useful frailties of imperfect men! 

Please don’t ask me to be intellectually dishonest and disregard highly relevant evidence because you don’t find it convenient to the narrative you like!

What happened to “All truth can be circumscribed into one great whole”?

Why would I go against the evidence?  Why would I trust the (potentially) false traditions of my fathers AGAINST the evidence that God has provided?  (And against the advice of the Book of Mormon.  It seems like one of the great teaching themes of the Book of Mormon is to NOT GET SUCKED INTO FALLING FOR THE FALSE TRADITIONS OF YOUR ANCESTORS.)  Why would I feel justified in doing that? 

I can’t.  When I think about it, I imagine passing over to the other side and standing before God, confident and pleased with my “faithfulness”, deliberately hanging on for all those years to failing proof; loading the shelf up with every discomfiting concept and quandary, beating my intellect bloody to just KEEP THE FAITH.

I imagine him giving me a disgusted look and saying, “What the hell were you thinking?  What does it take to get through to you?  I gave you every possible indication to let go of that silly theology, and you just ignored me!”

That’s not a conversation I want to have.