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| A confused person. |
Since getting back from my mission and especially since coming back to BYU and studying engineering, I've tried to consider myself a science-oriented, rationally thinking human being. As a result I've become a bit more skeptical. This is also somewhat left over from my mission, during which I had many, many heated conversations with non-members about religious things, where all my beliefs were closely examined and called into question. I have questions about lots of different things, like evolution, homosexuality, feminism, polygamy, faith and reason, and so forth. Since none of these are typical sacrament meeting or Sunday school topics, I've tried to do some investigating on my own. For example, I read most of a book called Evolution vs. Creationism: an Introduction over the summer. That helped broaden my perspective quite a bit, and I feel more comfortable with the idea of God using the process of evolution to effect what may have been described figuratively to Moses as the Creation. However, none of the ideas I encountered in the book or in subsequent searching are definitely or obviously the correct, final answer to this or any other of my questions.
Since I don’t have a ton of time to investigate all these questions I have, and I’m also not quite sure where to start, I started feeling a bit frustrated when I heard several times in the space of a couple weeks (in sacrament meeting and then in general conference) Church leaders saying things along the lines of: “There are some people that doubt and question their faith and fall off the boat of faith and spiritually drown. This is sad. If only they were more righteous. But we welcome honest questioning, as in, when people listen to us and stop asking ‘why’.” Okay, I exaggerated that a bit, but only to demonstrate that I was feeling a bit bitter. I felt bitter because I kept hearing Church leaders say “please! Ask us honest questions!” but not seeing them actually provide any opportunities to do so.
I’m in an elders quorum presidency, and sometimes in our meetings, our elders quorum president asks how we can help people that were mentioned in the ward council as having special concerns like feeling lonely or having doubts about the Church. I remember thinking that if they knew that I was feeling lonely (this was a couple weeks ago, that is, a couple weeks closer in time to when I broke up with my now ex-girlfriend) and that I had questions and doubts about the Church, they would focus on me in ward council and then I would finally get the help I needed. (The bitterness just goes on and on.) In other words, I wondered why I wasn't receiving active help from the Church organization. I felt like people just assumed that since I am an RM, and have a calling, and come to Church and to ward activities, that I am doing completely peachy and the biggest problems I have are choosing which of my many adoring female fans to marry, which of the adoring law schools to attend, and which of my adoring non-member friends to baptize.
While I was wallowing in self-pity and thinking about how awful my life is, I started writing down my thoughts into a furious rant. I complained that the Church leaders say they want to answer questions, but never give us any chances to do so. I was even going through all the existing venues where a member could possibly ask a question (such as in sacrament meeting or Sunday school) and systematically tearing to shreds the possibility of anyone hypothetically getting a personal, satisfying answer to their question. And I was really doing a great job at it too, until I got hung up trying to prove that home teaching was a terrible place to ask personal questions.
I tried to prove that because I felt, as of then, uncomfortable when I thought about asking my questions to my home teachers. I suppose that was because as of then we had only had superficial conversations since they had only visited me once and just given the standard home teachers' 5-minute vague summary of that month's Ensign's 1st Presidency message and left. But then I was thinking of how nice it would be to have my own little highly dedicated missionaries to research my questions for me, and I remembered that quote in PMG which says “Home teaching is just missionary work to the members of the Church!” So I realized I was wrong, and after that, the only way I could think of proving that I couldn’t ask questions in home teaching was that my home teachers are just stupid. Unfortunately, they’re not. So after seething a bit more because my frustration and feelings of being the victim weren't completely justified, I was convicted by my conscience, and by the lack of initiative I had taken in actually asking my questions in Church or making it known to anyone other than my journal readers (who are, as far as I’m aware, nonexistent) that I had questions and doubts about the Church, so I decided to ask one of my questions to my home teachers.
It turned out pretty well. Today was the last Sunday of the month, so everyone did their home teaching (myself included) and when my home teachers came over, right at the end of the visit, when they asked me if they could do anything to help me out, I surprised them with a doctrinal question. I said something like this: in science, critical thinking is king. Scientists value questioning the prevailing theories, running experiments, and then adjusting the theories to match the truth that they see in nature. However, in the Church it seems like the opposite. We are taught the truth and told to accept it, and then leaders and missionaries are trained to help people kind of “get over” their critical thinking and logical concerns with the Church, by focusing on growing their faith instead. So how come we focus on faith in the church instead of on critical thinking?
Before I write a bit about their responses, let me just say that if any of you have thoughts about how to answer this question, and time to tell me about it, I’d be happy to hear it in the comments below.
My first home teacher responded by talking about how faith is necessary because we can’t truly know or prove doctrinal things. He shared an experience from when he was at the Conference Center and he felt the Spirit strongly right at the moment when President Monson walked through the door, and how this was such a strong confirmation for him that he hasn’t really had reason to doubt his testimony of the Prophet since then. He also talked about small little experiences he’s had, which are hard to remember the details of, but this resonated with me because I can think of lots of times when a good thing has happened and I have felt like maybe that was arranged by God to help me out, because it sure did make my life easier. My second home teacher responded by talking about repentance and his experience with feeling his sins wiped away, and how this is hard to explain psychologically. (He’s a psychology major.) This also resonated with me because I also remember having good, clean feelings when I’ve repented in the past.
I felt quite a bit more satisfied after asking my question and having a decent discussion about it. And it’s not even that my home teachers had extraordinary or mind-blowingly enlightening answers, but the fact that I just got the question off my chest and that they had any answer to it at all.
A couple hours later, my home teaching companion and I went to visit our home teachee who I respect a lot. He’s a super smart Physics major and I've always assumed that he was the perfect Church member with 100% enthusiasm and no questions. For some crazy coincidence, he took the chance today during our home teaching visit with him to candidly express a concern about not receiving revelation as strongly as he did on his mission. It kind of morphed into a discussion about knowing the Church is true in general, and we had a good talk, about doubts and questions and faith. I felt like we could relate really well and I was super happy to be talking to another person that also loves science and critical thinking, and is strong in the Church, yet has similar doubts and concerns to mine.
Anyways. Today I had a great experience, and the moral of the story is, when active members of the Church have serious doubts or questions about the Church, home teaching is actually a good place to start asking these questions.
Questions for you:
1. Have you expressed personal concerns in an official Church situation? If so, how did it go?
2. How do you think the Church could help active members discuss legitimate questions?
