Doubting Your Doubts

For the last few months, I’ve been having a very slow conversation on YouTube regarding the veracity of the Book of Abraham. (Longtime readers may remember I’ve dealt briefly with that topic here, as well.) Recently, one of the participants in that conversation, Kevin Lunt, shared a lengthy post in which he shared the following:

I remember when I was in the church hearing my teachers and church leaders say over and over “don’t believe it because we say so. Discover for yourself if these things are true.” Yet they then follow that by telling you to beware of anyone and anything that contradicts with the church and go on to explain why all other churches and beliefs are wrong and corrupt. All the while they are shoveling mormon literature into you. So it’s like they’re saying “Of course you should investigate other religions. They are all wicked and corrupt so I don’t know why you’d waste your time. But by all means, discover it for yourself.” Honestly I can't fathom how many times I’ve heard the word “beware” in my entire time in the church. My favorite was when I started college and my visiting teacher told me to beware of liberal college professors and their ideas. The church virtually forbids you from studying anything that disagrees with the church.

As usual, my response has gotten much too lengthy for YouTube, so I’m sharing it here. Kevin, this one’s for you!

First of all, thanks so much for sharing. I can totally understand what you’re saying, because I’ve heard the same things. The most difficult part of teaching a group is that you have to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Famed Latter-day Saint apologist Dr. Daniel Peterson spoke of this difficulty and its application in “Mormon” circles:

“[Stanley Kimball] spoke of three levels of Mormon history. Level A, he said, is the Sunday School version. Everything on Level A is obviously good and true and harmonious. Level B, however, is the anti- Mormon version of the same story.… On this level, everything that you thought was good and true and harmonious actually turns out to be evil and false and chaotic.

“He noted that the Church typically seeks to keep its members on Level A or, at least, feels no institutional obligation to bring them to a deeper level. Why? Because souls are lost on Level B. And, though Level C might be academically more desirable, it cannot be accessed without at least some exposure to Level B. Were he in a leadership position, he said, he would probably make the same decision.

“Once members of the Church have been exposed to Level B, though, he said, their only hope is to press on to the richer, more complicated version of history that is to be found on Level C–which, he contended and I agree, turns out to be essentially, and profoundly, like Level A. The only cure for bad historiography is better historiography. The only remedy for bad anti-Mormon arguments is better counterarguments…. Not everybody needs Level C. But some do, whether because they are troubled by Level B or because they find Level A insufficiently nourishing in some way. Many good saints will live their entire lives on Level A, and they will be saved.” (Quoted by Michael R. Ash, Shaken Faith Syndrome, 78.)

I’ve read several LdS-critical books and more than my share of critical videos and web sites, and while some of them are very scholarly (and a tiny minority even consider the alternative to their claims), there is one common thread among absolutely all of them: even when they get the facts right, they place them in a Weltanschauung so completely foreign to Latter-day Saints as to be unrecognizable. A simple example would be critics who call temple garments “magic underwear.” This floccinaucinihilipilificating phrase is extremely common among anti-Mormons, yet I’ve never once met a Latter-day Saint who believes his or her underwear to be magic.

This is why the Church discourages its members from reading “Level B” treatments. It’s not because it wants to hide the information; virtually any topic an “anti” can bring up has been discussed in the Ensign and is thus readily available on LDS.org. It’s quite simply because it wants people to have the appropriate context, and that context is rarely, if ever, presented by contra-LdS sources.

In last October’s General Conference, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf shared an invitation for all people to Come, Join with Us. As part of this invitation, he stated:

“To those who have separated themselves from the Church, I say, my dear friends, there is yet a place for you here.

“Come and add your talents, gifts, and energies to ours. We will all become better as a result.

“Some might ask, ‘But what about my doubts?’

“It’s natural to have questions—the acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding. There are few members of the Church who, at one time or another, have not wrestled with serious or sensitive questions. One of the purposes of the Church is to nurture and cultivate the seed of faith—even in the sometimes sandy soil of doubt and uncertainty. Faith is to hope for things which are not seen but which are true.

“Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters—my dear friends—please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I extend this invitation to you, Kevin. Doubting pro-Christian claims is natural, but anti-Christian claims are no less worthy of critique. I have doubted many things about the Church and the gospel, but every last doubt has been answered eventually—and on the rare occasion that new ones come up, I’ve now learned I need only wait, and the answer will shortly present itself. (Just look at the Jockers study, the methodology of which, it eventually turned out, could be used to prove Barack Obama wrote the Book of Mormon.) ;-)