The Crucible of Doubt Quotes

“The English historian Thomas Carlyle defined a person’s religion as the set of values evident in his or her actions, regardless of what the individual would claim to believe when asked.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“The first time the word worship appears in the King James Version of the Old Testament, it appears with appalling import. 'Abide ye here,' Abraham tells his servant, while 'I and the lad go yonder and worship.' The terrible offering of his son's life is what the Bible's first instance of 'worship' portends. In the New Testament, the word worship first appears again in conjunction with a costly offering. It is used in reference to the wise men, who 'worshipped' the Christ child by 'open[ing] their treasure' and 'present[ing] unto him gifts.' Worship, then, is about what we are prepared to relinquish--what we give up at personal cost.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“The Atonement is not a backup plan in case we happen to fall short in the process; it is the ordained means whereby we gradually become complete and whole, in a sin-strewn process of sanctification through which our Father patiently guides us.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“Life’s most wrenching choices are not between right and wrong but between competing demands on our time, our resources, our love and loyalty.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“A problem related to perceptions of Mormonism’s monopoly on truth is the impression that Mormons claim a monopoly on salvation. It grows increasingly difficult to imagine that a body of a few million, in a world of seven billion, can really be God’s only chosen people and heirs of salvation. That’s because they aren’t. One of the most unfortunate misperceptions about Mormonism is in this tragic irony: Joseph Smith’s view is one of the most generous, liberal, and universalist conceptions of salvation in all Christendom. In section 49, when the Lord refers to “holy men” about whom Joseph knew nothing, and whom the Lord had reserved unto Himself, He is clearly indicating that Mormons do not have a monopoly on righteousness, truth, or God’s approbation. That temple covenants may be made and kept here or hereafter, and the ordinances of salvation performed in person or vicariously, means our conception of His church should be as large and as generous as God’s heart. Joseph’s teachings suggest that the Church is best understood as a portal for the saved, not the reservoir of the righteous. As”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“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. In other words, it is reasonable to believe that in His infinite wisdom, God anticipates not only the devices and strategies of the wicked but also the foreseeable range of His leaders’ errors—and appoints them with those limitations already considered.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader’s zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche’s point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to “hard reason” rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of “the noblest part of our nature.”6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. p15”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“C. S. Lewis wrote that “sooner or later [God] withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs. . . . It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.” This is because “He wants servants who can finally become sons [and daughters].”22 That may simply be, unavoidably, a wrenching process of spiritual abandonment such as Eve and Adam felt in their expulsion from God’s presence, or we all must have felt upon leaving of our premortal estate. Perhaps this feeling of desolation was entailed in Joseph’s remark that in our quest for understanding, we “must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss.”23 Perhaps many of us will never find God by calling out His name at the entrance to the cave; we must enter its depths.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“...true religion is a way of life; a church is an institution designed to strengthen people in the exercise of that life. The English historian Thomas Carlyle defined a person's religion as the set of values evident in his or her actions, regardless of what the individual would claim to believe when asked. Our behavior is always oriented around a goal, a set of desires and aspirations, even if we are not always fully aware of them--or willing to own them.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“The gospel Christ taught was spectacularly designed to unsettle and disturb, not lull into pleasant serenity.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“In sum, disciples might do well to avoid the bibliolatry that characterizes scripture as unerring truth. Parley Pratt made this point himself in The Fountain of Knowledge, a small pamphlet he wrote in 1844. With elegant metaphor, he noted that scripture resulted from revelatory process and was thus the product of revealed truth, not the other way around. We do well to look to a stream for nourishing water, but we do better to secure the fountain. That fountain, Pratt noted, is “the gift of revelation,” which “the restoration of all things” heralds.21 Or, in George MacDonald’s metaphor, we should hold the scriptures as “the moon of our darkness, . . . not dear as the sun towards which we haste." p56”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“As individuals, we also are apt to use the canon as a cannon. We invoke the stripling warriors of Helaman and the iron rod of Lehi’s vision to ground our own version of unflinching obedience. Or we invoke the lessons of the Liahona to support our more spontaneous and flexible approach to gospel living. In America, some Mormons find Jesus’ ministry to the downtrodden and King Benjamin’s words about withholding judgment but not relief from the beggar to be apt endorsement of their preferred political policies. At the other end of the spectrum, some invoke the war in heaven fought over agency and consider the Mormon ethic of self-reliance to be adequate support for a different political outlook. Or, sometimes individuals even employ the cannon against the canon, citing inconsistencies and imperfections in the record as grounds for nonbelief in the principle of inspiration, one’s faith tradition, or even God.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“There are many kinds of silences and not all signify absence or vacancy....Those moments are but temporary ebbs before the flow of meaning rushes in to fill the space....God may be speaking 'in ways we have yet to recognize as speech.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“there is a type of flower that can bloom only in the desert of doubt. Faith that we elect to profess in the absence of certainty is an offering that is entirely free, unconditioned, and utterly authentic. Such a gesture represents our considered and chosen response to the universe, our assent to what we find beautiful and worthy and deserving of our risk. We”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“One comfort is to be found in a God whose power is in His magnanimity as well as His wisdom. These two traits mean that His divine energies are spent not in precluding chaos but in reordering it, not in preventing suffering but in alchemizing it, not in disallowing error but in transmuting it into goodness. Satan’s unhindered efforts in the garden were simply assimilated into God’s greater purpose. The malice of the biblical Joseph’s brothers became instrumental in their entire household’s salvation. (“The brothers of Joseph could have never done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred,” Thomas More noted.17) In the supernal instance of this principle, according to the felix culpa of Christian tradition, the expulsion from the garden was a happy catastrophe, since it brought forth a remedy that more than compensated for the loss of Eden. Christ’s sacrifice, so dazzling in its overflowing grace and mercy, made it possible for us, in leaving Eden, to return Home. p78-9”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“Faith is lived, not thought.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“We all exhibit our faith commitments by the way we live, and those commitments are oriented around a value or set of values, a belief or set of beliefs, by which we guide our lives. We may posit reason as the highest good. Or pleasure. Or love and kindness. But no foundation is without an act of faith to sustain it.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“Voltaire, “To believe in God is impossible; but not to believe is absurd.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“As Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it’s a cross.”13”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“In most of life’s greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart that we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. p16”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections On the Quest for Faith

“It is only with hindsight that we can see the paradigms of the past for the intellectual straitjackets they were.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand To hold the Ark, although it seem to shake Through th’ old sinnes and new doctrines of our land. Onely, since God doth often vessels make Of lowly matter for high uses meet, I throw me at his feet. —George Herbert1”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“The error of believing that science represents the highest, or purest, or only reliable guide to truth is the error of scientism.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“Atonement is not a backup plan in case we happen to fall short in the process; it is the ordained means whereby we gradually become complete and whole, in a sin-strewn process of sanctification”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“If all else fails, we may find solace in what we might call the fellowship of the desolate. With Mother Teresa, who lived in spiritual wilderness for decades, describing this terrible sense of loss—this untold darkness—this loneliness—this continual longing for God—which gives me that pain deep down in my heart.—Darkness is such that I really do not see—neither with my mind nor with my reason.—The place of God in my soul is blank.—There is no God in me.—When the pain of longing is so great—I just long and long for God and then it is that I feel—He does not want me—He is not there.— . . . God does not want me.—Sometimes—I just hear my own heart cry out—“My God” and nothing else comes. The torture and pain I can’t explain.24”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“The empathy shown by Brigham Young is striking: “To profess to be a Saint, and not enjoy the spirit of it, tries every fiber of the heart, and is one of the most painful experiences that man can suffer.”15 He realized that then, as now, thousands of Saints were paying the high price of discipleship and asking, “Where is the joy?” And he knew the question was born in agony and bewilderment.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“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. When devotion to prayer, scripture study, and obedience do not suffice, we might turn to patience, remembering, solace in the fellowship of the desolate, and hope.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“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. That is why our scripturally mandated duty to the prophets and apostles is not to idolize them but to uphold and sustain them “by the prayer of faith.”42”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“of sameness. This is as true of Zion as it is of marriage. The poet Coventry Patmore wrote that the bonds that unite us in community consist “not in similarity, but in dissimilarity; the happiness of love, in which alone happiness resid[es] . . . not in unison, but conjunction, which can only be between spiritual dissimilars.”30 This is why the body of Christ needs its full complement of members—the devout, the wayward, the uncomfortable, the struggling. “It does not mean that a man is not good because he errs in doctrine,” Joseph said of a Mormon rebuked by others for his preaching. “It feels so good not to be trammeled.”31 This is the spirit in which one Church leader recently noted that not only unique backgrounds but “unique talents and perspectives” and “diversity of persons and peoples” are “a strength of this Church.”32”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith

“Worship, then, is about what we are prepared to relinquish—what we give up at personal cost.”
― Terryl L. Givens, The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith