The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

by Terryl L. Givens

On the contrary, the best art penetrates the hard shell of habit to reimmerse us in the depths of experience, “refining the sense of beauty to agony,” “ making the stone more stony,” creating “anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration.

In each of the examples mentioned, the artist’s depiction of human emotion, informed by moral conscience, is shown to be one of the greatest mechanisms in civilization’s arsenal against the evils of this or any time.

In the most emphatic and urgent meaning of the word, love reveals truth. It does not create the impression of truth; love does not merely endow something with a subjective truth—love is the only position or emotional disposition from which we become fully aware of the already present reality of the other person as more than a mere object among other objects in a crowded universe. Love alone reveals the full reality and value of the other person.

the circumstances that define the reality of the human predicament are not a blatant choice between Good and Evil but a wrenching decision to be made between competing sets of Good.

Freedom to choose belief and a life of faith, freedom to choose one’s principles and abide by them, freedom to cherish one set of values over another, those kinds of freedom might best unfold when we are not commanded in all things, by God or by the facts. To be an agent unto oneself may very well require that we operate in the valley of incertitude. It is here that we act most authentically, calling upon intuition, spiritual intimations, or simple yearning.

Such self-revelation is a painful—but ultimately healing—process. This perspective represents a fundamental reorientation in attitude toward life’s incompleteness. The patterns of meaning only dimly perceived, the inspiration only partially (or negligibly) felt, may not be God’s indifference after all—or our spiritual failing. It may be the most potent form of the question most worth posing: What will you do now?

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religion is a way of life; a church is an institution designed to strengthen people in the exercise of that life.

the purposes for which we go to church should be to reenact, in microcosm, the motivations and objectives that Jesus had in laying down His life for us.

But what if we saw lessons and talks as connections to the sacrament rather than as unrelated secondary activities? What if we saw them as opportunities to bear with one another in all our infirmities and ineptitude? What if we saw the mediocre talk, the overbearing counselor, the lesson read straight from the manual, as a lay member’s equivalent of the widow’s mite? A humble offering, perhaps, but one to be measured in terms of the capacity of the giver rather than in the value received. And if the effort itself is negligible—well, then the gift is the opportunity given us to exercise patience and mercy.

It would be hard to overestimate the impact this physical boundedness has on the shaping of Mormon culture. Like the family into which one is born, wards become the inescapable condition of a Mormon’s social and spiritual life.

In this light and context, the seeming arbitrariness of gospel ordinances becomes the very ground on which the particularism of a specific, personal relationship with the Divine becomes enacted.

We need to search the scriptures in the company of the Holy Ghost. Reading them merely is insufficient to reveal the portions that most truly testify of Christ and His Father.

Many of our expectations about human institutions are so predicated on meritocracy that we are sure God must operate the same way. The head of the corporation should be the most talented business leader. The orchestra’s concertmaster should be the most skillful violinist. The starting quarterback is the one who plays the best football. Surely the leaders of the Church should be the most righteous and flawless of humans!

Airbrushing our leaders, past or present, is both a wrenching of the scriptural record and a form of idolatry. It generates an inaccurate paradigm that creates false expectations and disappointment. God specifically said that He called weak vessels so we wouldn’t place our faith in their strength or power, but in God’s. The prophetic mantle represents priesthood keys, not a level of holiness or infallibility.

Authority is the source of delegation, delegation involves humans, humans entail error, and error in the context of authority creates conflict and tension.

Is this not hubris, to expect God’s sanction for a decision made in error? Perhaps. It is also possible that the reply reveals the only understanding of delegation that is viable.

If God can transform cosmic entropy and malice alike into fire that purifies rather than destroys, how much more can He do this with the actions of well-intentioned but less-than-perfect leaders.

God said He would have a tried people. But He doesn’t have to do the trying. We do most of it to each other—through the very weakness designed to bring us all, fallible leaders and struggling disciples, to Christ the Healer.

Joseph Smith’s view is one of the most generous, liberal, and universalist conceptions of salvation in all Christendom.

In Salt Lake’s old Thirteenth Ward, Bishop Edwin D. Woolley frequently found himself at odds with President Brigham Young. On a certain occasion, as they ended one such fractious encounter, Young had a final parting remark: “Now, Bishop Woolley, I guess you will go off and apostatize.” To which the bishop rejoined, “If this were your church, President Young, I would be tempted to do so. But this is just as much my church as it is yours, and why should I apostatize from my own church?”

But the Creator God of Genesis is a Being who revels in distinctions, difference, and variation, an Artificer who separated man from woman as surely as He severed earth from sky.

Instead of explaining our suffering, God shares it.

Life can be excruciating at the worst of times, and unhappy at the best. To live without God in the world, without hopes or expectations, without spiritual balm or religious faith, is trying. To live a life of discipleship and then feel hopes dashed and expectations unfulfilled, the balm ineffective and the faith devoid of fruit, is to compound the pain with devastating disappointment and heartache. False hope seems worse than none; better to know one is alone in the sea than to wait for the rescue that never comes.

Our present, of course, is shaped by our past. We are in many ways its product. But at the same time, we tend to reinterpret the past on the basis of the present. We are creatures of the moment, so, rather than remember, we reconstruct what once we knew in the light of present uncertainty or loss, which can all too easily overwhelm what we once held as true and real. All too often we forget the gentle impressions we felt, the calm soothing of troubled hearts and minds, or even greater manifestations of divine love.

the Lord gently tutoring us to replace immediacy with memory

I decided to bet my entire life that the gospel was true.

“Everyone has to believe something. You don’t get to opt out. . . . That we will believe is not in question. The question is what we will believe in, and why.” Of course, he continues, our belief structure may suffer from new evidence, or new challenges. “In that case we do need to adjust our beliefs to accommodate less evidence than we had before. Even in that case, however, we ought not to fool ourselves into thinking that we can simply stop believing. We can only believe in different things.”

I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live forevermore believing as those that deny Him.17

The question may remain, how does one lock onto the propositional assertions of a restored gospel that is also laden with claims about gold plates and the Book of Abraham and a male priesthood and a polygamous past and a thousand other details we may find difficult? Perhaps, with those five core ideas in mind, one might focus on the message rather than the messenger. One might consider that the contingencies of history and culture and the human element will always constitute the garment in which God’s word and will are clothed. And one might refuse to allow our desire for the perfect to be the enemy of the present good. Finally, we might ask ourselves, with the early disciples, “to whom [else] shall we go?” The worst risk such a life of faith entails is not that such a life might be wrong—but that it might be incomprehensible to those unprepared to take such a risk. As Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard wrote, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist.”