When Beatrice and I were serving together as missionaries, we were lucky enough to be in a district that included the mission offices. The APs and office Elders were in our district, so more often than not we held district meetings in a cozy conference room in the main mission office building, giving us frequent [...]
A topic that came up several times at Sunstone this year, and generated some thought-provoking discussion, was that of crises of faith. This got me thinking about the kind of standard “crisis of faith” narrative. Such a crisis might be set off by any number of things–disturbing information about Church history, prayers that remain unanswered [...]
One sunny afternoon when I was a naive and relatively content eleven-year-old, quite by accident and to my own horrified shock, I became an atheist. The familiar image of God who had always hung around the peripheries of my vision, propping up the sky, vanished into thin air when I tried to look him in [...]
Today’s thread over at BCC arguing that the loss of faith is ultimately a choice included a comment that wrenched my heart. Subsequent discussion made reference to a passage in D&C 46 that has haunted me for most of my life, particularly these strange words: To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to [...]
I have no faith. In the stages of faith, that is. I believe in God. I just don’t believe in the universal human trajectory, the idea that everyone is sequentially following a similar path in regards to their personal belief, with a single end point in this life at which all sincere faith-pilgrims eventually congregate.
This afternoon one of my students met with me about his next paper, which he wants to write refuting The Da Vinci Code and defending the divinity of Jesus Christ. I found myself struggling to explain to him why he can’t write such a paper to fulfill a university assignment. I tried to help him [...]
If there is a secular religion in contemporary America, it is arguably the Gospel of Positive Thinking. Adherents of this particular sect seek to maintain a positive attitude at all times, and in all things, and in all place. Their canon of sacred texts is an extensive one, comprised of dozens of pop psychology books [...]
Thanks to our friends over at New Cool Thang, I’ve been provided with the stimulus to formulate more clearly, for myself, my position on the epistemological role personal revelation should play. Like Geoff, I believe the individual’s personal encounter with the divine lies at the heart of Mormonism; I believe that personal revelation should occupy [...]
The Gospel of Star Wars tells us repeatedly of the importance of trusting your feelings. (If you don’t recognize my title quote, it’s what Obi-Wan says to Luke in A New Hope, when Luke is deciding whether to come to Alderaan). Qui-Gon instructs Anakin at one point, “Feel. Don’t think.” Even those on the Dark [...]
I’ve never had the standard testimony experience. You know, the one that the missionaries promise investigators: if you pray about the Book of Mormon (or the church or Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling), the spirit will witness its truth to you. That isn’t to say that I haven’t prayed about all of these things. I’ve prayed [...]
A question which came up in Kiskilili’s latest thread on feminism (and has also arisen in a number of other conversations) is that of the relationship between happiness and belief. Should we believe the things which make us the happiest? Does it make any sense for a person to believe something which leaves her feeling [...]
I enjoy the smell of coffee. When I’m studying or hanging out with friends at coffee shops, I sometimes look with curiosity at all the varieties you can order. Though my friends have patiently attempted to explain, I have to confess that I still don’t understand what all the different words mean (espresso, cappuccino, etc.) [...]
When it comes to personal revelation, I’m a believer; I really do think that there have been moments in my life when I’ve been on the receiving end of divine communication. I like that the doctrine plays such a central role in LDS thought; I love the idea that you can go directly to God [...]
I’ve been reading a lot of Luther lately. He makes the point over and over that human reason is insufferably arrogant in its attempts to understand God; God’s actions may sometimes appear absurd to us, but it is not our place to judge. Faith, he says, includes believing in the goodness of God even if [...]
I’ve recently been doing work on the imagination and self-narrative, and it’s made me think a lot about the role of imagination in faith. This isn’t at all to say that I see faith as equivalent to belief in something imaginary, but simply that I think our faith is always shaped by our imagination. Our [...]
The question of whether church teachings “make sense” (and to what extent it matters whether or not they do) has come up in a couple of places lately, and I’ve been mulling over my own views on the subject. I’ve always been a bit fascinated when I’ve heard people assert that they find the LDS [...]
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