Posted on by Abe Austin

Criticizing Another’s Faith- Can You Change?

Follower of Truth)

Yesterday I spoke about how each of us not only require faith that God is real, but that we are following Him in the right way. Personally, I do believe in receiving spiritual witnesses from God, and I have received them myself, but even those still leave me in a place of faith and trust, not perfect knowledge.

In the end, this means that I have to accept that I could be wrong. I could be in the right church, but wrong in my conception of it. Or I could be in the right family of faith, Christianity, but wrong in the specific denomination I attend. Or I could be right about there being a God, but wrong about following Christ. Or I could be wrong about there even being a God. All of these are possible. At each deeper level, I feel more certain of my belief. I feel so certain of many of them that it would take a divine intervention to unseat me…but even so, I could still be wrong.

When it comes to the church that I am baptized in, the leaders that I listen to, the spiritual rituals that I observe, and the standard of life I try to live, I do these things because I think they are right and I am trying to follow the Truth. My first and foremost commitment is to the Truth, and I am trying to follow it wherever it leads me. It has led me to change some aspects of my discipleship, and it has reinforced others, and I expect it to continue to do so until I meet it face-to-face.

Willingness to Change)

I frankly do not believe that it is the same with many who come to accuse me of false beliefs. In conversations with them I have tried to express this shared foundation of uncertainty, the fact that both of us are operating on faith, the mutual possibility of being wrong, and the humility with which we should therefore approach one another…only to have them refuse to meet me on this common ground. They express that they know their creeds are divinely authored. They know their interpretations are correct. They know that I am wrong and going to hell.

I found this unjustifiable certainty very confusing, and I described a theoretical to make sure I was understanding them correctly: “Let’s suppose you and I both die tomorrow, and we meet at the gates to heaven, and Jesus is there to welcome us, and he informs me that I was misguided in my faith. He says that I should have belonged to your church all along and not the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this situation, I genuinely believe that I would accept his word. I would accept your position as being the correct one and mine as being wrong. What’s more, I would accept whatever judgment Christ has for me given that I went astray. Whatever his judgment is, it is, by definition, just and right. Or, if I would not be so gracious in correction, then I here admit it would be because I was proud, and arrogant, and more in love with my own conceptions than with my Savior.” And then, having given this theoretical and my personal feelings about it, my follow-up question to the person attacking my faith is very simple: “What about for you if the situation was reversed? If Jesus told you that you were wrong, would you renounce your faith and accept ‘Mormonism?'”

What I found very telling was how uncomfortable everyone became when I asked this question. They would not give me straight answers. They would tell me that what I was asking was a logical impossibility, and therefore pointless to engage with. They would say that Mormonism is false as an absolute fact, and that therefore the mental exercise was absurd. They would tell me that in my half of the theoretical it would be too late for me to accept the true faith after I had died, focusing on that aspect rather than addressing their half of the theoretical. One way or another, they simply would not entertain the possibility of receiving correction in their faith, even as a thought experiment. They were closed-minded and closed-hearted, and there really was no point in continuing a conversation with them.

A healthy dialogue of differences can only be had between two people who are both seeking the truth. But to be a seeker of truth, by definition, means not yet having it fully. When one of the people in the conversation is not a seeker, when they insist upon already being the haver and the other person being the not-haver, then they hold a fundamental air of superiority and have closed themselves to one direction of dialogue only: them telling you what is right, and you accepting it or staying wrong. There can be no back-and-forth, no mutual understanding, no lifting each other to greater clarity. This is a pattern of domineering and abuse, and it is not how Christ meant for us to reason with one another. Once a person shows that they will insist on such a dynamic, I will not continue to participate any further. I insist on better than “perfect” knowers. I insist on flawed seekers of truth.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Criticizing Another’s Faith- Admission of Uncertainty

Admission of Faith)

Today I wanted to cover one more example I frequently see of un-Christlike and ineffective doctrinal critique. An attitude that once it manifests, I conclude that the critic is acting in bad faith, more interested in winning a debate than convincing a brother.

And that is when they show absolute certainty of their position.

I believe this bad-faith approach is an extension of our debate culture. In a formal debate, there is no room for uncertainty and nuance. A debater must show absolute confidence in his opinion, and his only aim is to prove that position is correct. I find it very tiring that so much of online discourse falls into this same mindset, that people cannot merely share different views, or disagree, or even argue like real people anymore.

Because real people actually know very little and believe very much. And real people are able to admit that.

As I have said all throughout this series, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I believe that my church is true. I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, I believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, I believe that this church is uniquely endowed with the priesthood authority of Christ, I believe that the path to fulness of union with God is through the principles and ordinances of the gospel, I believe the unique teachings of the premortal existence and afterlife and the potential to become like God are true. I believe all of these points, some of them extremely strongly, and also…I could be wrong on all of them.

I admit to true and sincere faith, not to sure and certain knowing. I am an active member of my church because I genuinely believe in its divine mission, but I cannot claim that there is zero chance that I have been deceived. I genuinely think that I am both rational and well-attuned to the spirit and conscience within me, but I have been wrong about some things in the past, and I can be wrong about more.

I am willing to admit all this because it is honest. One might think this admission might present a weak and vulnerable point, but not really, because I know that any critic of my beliefs is also operating by faith in areas of uncertainty, just like me. Just as I cannot perfectly know my position is right, you cannot perfectly know that it is wrong. Yet there are many critics that pretend that they do know perfectly, and once they make that arrogance clear I have no interest in listening to them any further, because they are liars, deluded by their own pride.

Gaps in Every Faith)

The fact is that every single one of us has gaps in our knowledge of the truth. Gaps that have to be filled with faith. When we pretend to have no gaps, that is when we are truly deceived.

Every Christian has faith that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of the world, but even beyond that they have faith that their own church is in alignment with that Lord and Savior. Because, if we are being honest, every Christian church in the world today has a gap between them and Jesus, and that gap has to be filled with faith.

When we look at the earliest Christian churches, there is a gap of decades between the end of the New Testament, and the next Christian writers. And among those writers (Ignatius, Clement, Didache, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, etc.) we see disagreements and division. Thus, there is a gap of certainty to be filled with faith on which, if any, of the second wave Christian writers were correct. Eventually these doctrinal divisions led to the establishment of formal creeds to settle the disputes. This is another gap of certainty as to whether the conclusions of those creeds were correct, or whether the oppositions to them were. Eventually major schisms occurred, such as the separation of the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches, and this is another gap of certainty as to which side, if either, was correct. Later, some would accuse the church of having lost its way. Another gap of uncertainty. Reformers would attempt to correct the orthodoxy through the formation of new churches. Another gap. And in some cases, such as with my faith, it is believed the true authority had been lost long before, and had to be entirely restored, not just reformed. Another gap, to be sure.

And then, even after all that, even if a specific Christian church is the true embodiment of our Lord’s gospel today, an individual within that church will still need to correctly understand and interpret that church’s doctrine, which is yet another gap of certainty.

The reality is that each and every one of us has many gaps that we fill with faith to hold the beliefs that we do, and anyone who claims otherwise is deceived. If there were not these points of uncertainty, there could be no honest disagreement about what Christ’s truth was, and clearly that is not the world we live in. Ideally each of us would say that even though we believe we have found the truth that is most consistent, most justifiable, most supported by the evidence…that we can still acknowledge that others who disagree may have sincere and valid reasons for doing so.

On top of our faith in Christ, there is faith that we are also in his correct church, and there is faith that we understand the doctrines of that correct church correctly. And so, we believe and express that belief sincerely, but we also couple that conviction with the humble admission that our knowledge is imperfect, and that other people have good reasons for thinking something different.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Too Much Certainty

As I observe all of the angry discourse in our society today, I am left with a sense that we are much too certain of ourselves.

If the other side is wrong, we are certain that then we must be right, even though in most cases that is not necessarily so.

We are certain that we know causation, when all that has been demonstrated is correlation.

In the domains of definite uncertainty, where neither God nor science has spoken, we are nonetheless certain that our opinion is ultimately right.

I do believe that some things we can be certain of, and should be certain of, and should live with passionate conviction to those certainties. But I think that those are only a few, core things, and we should be nuanced enough to call all the rest a hunch, a belief, and an assumption.