In college I lived down the hall from a very serious Christian. He worked hard to encourage others to be more active and outspoken about their Christianity. He was antagonistic to my Mormonism, considering it as non-Christian and me as having been led astray. We still got along well enough, but we weren’t close. One day I happened upon a scripture study he was holding with a few other students in one of the common rooms. As I recall, they invited me to share the space and eventually we began a conversation about religion.
Somehow (these conversations never seem predictable), we turned to the topic of belief. While I held up Moroni’s promise as the central truth-process claim of Mormonism, he dismissed this, declaring that the Bible had replaced all such revelation. Honestly astounded by this position, I asked, “Then how do you know the Bible is true?” His response was that he just did. His position, as best I could understand it, was that one should read the Bible and simply accept it as truth. And if you didn’t? Well, then you were going to hell. There was no gray area. But there was also no revelation to buttress belief. It was just a matter of either unconscious decision (best, easiest) or conscious decision (a necessary but difficult step if you weren’t able to believe automatically).
I couldn’t accept that then and I still can’t. Insisting that someone believe what they don’t, without divine help, strikes me as an unreasonable demand. I can’t imagine that being the basis for salvation.
I believe because I’ve felt the spiritual confirmation that Moroni promised. I believe because, as a primary child, I felt a powerful spiritual witness while singing the song “The Spirit of God” and knew that personal revelation was real. I believe because the Book of Mormon continues to enlighten my mind as I devote myself to diligent study. I believe because I have seen the truths of the gospel reach people’s hearts and change their lives. I believe because being a worthy priesthood holder has made me a better person. I believe because I have witnessed good men and women overcome their own prejudices when they take up their mantle as Christ’s servants. I believe because I have seen the power my testimony recognized by others with no previous exposure to the gospel. I believe because I’ve felt the power of the temple, the joy of missionary work, and the presence that can accompany men and women of God called to lead us.
In short, I believe because of what I have experienced and because of what I have felt, not because I am capable of dictating to my own mind. One of the wonders of the Atonement, the power of grace won by Christ through a perfect life and infinitely compassionate death, is that Jesus can change our hearts. Part of that heart-changing includes the power to change our beliefs, something we are incapable of doing for ourselves.
And so, I will never ask someone to “choose to believe.” I might suggest that they choose to stay – because we need them even if they don’t believe and I hope they can benefit from remaining in the fellowship of the saints – but that’s a topic for another post.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
Michael Barker,
Thanks.
Hi Jason
Thanks for this. While I’ll go some of the way with you, I’m not sure I’d go as far as Michael. Do you not think we have any choice in what we believe? I’d be interested in your take on Terryl Givens’ thoughts below (sorry for the length of the quote):
I am convinced that there must be grounds for doubt as well as belief in order to render the choice more truly a choice—and, therefore, the more deliberate and laden with personal vulnerability and investment. The option to believe must appear on our personal horizon like the fruit of paradise, perched precariously between sets of demands held in dynamic tension. One is, it would seem, always provided with sufficient materials out of which to fashion a life of credible conviction or dismissive denial. We are acted upon, in other words, by appeals to our personal values, our yearnings, our fears, our appetites, and our egos. What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love. That is why faith, the choice to believe, is, in the final analysis, an action that is positively laden with moral significance.
I believe that we are—as reflective, thinking, pondering seekers—much like the proverbial ass of Buridan. If you remember, the beast starved to death because he was faced with two equally desirable and equally accessible piles of hay. Having no determinative reason to choose one over the other, he perished in indecision. In the case of us mortals, men and women are confronted with a world in which there are appealing arguments for God as a childish projection, for modern prophets as scheming or deluded imposters, and for modern scriptures as so much fabulous fiction. But there is also compelling evidence that a glorious divinity presides over the cosmos, that God calls and anoints prophets, and that His word and will are made manifest through a sacred canon that is never definitively closed. There is, as with the ass of Buridan, nothing to compel an individual’s preference for one over the other. But in the case of us mortals, there is something to tip the scale. There is something to predispose us to a life of faith or a life of unbelief. There is a heart that in these conditions of equilibrium and balance—and only in these conditions of equilibrium and balance, equally “enticed by the one or the other” (2 Nephi 2:16)—is truly free to choose belief or cynicism, faith or faithlessness.
James,
Thank you. What’s the source for this quotation?
Givens’ BYU address from back in 2005.
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/terryl-l-givens_joseph-smith-forging-community/
James,
Excellent question – and excellent quotation. It sounds to me as though what he’s suggesting is that, faced with an internal mix of belief and doubt (prompted by a mix of external evidence in both directions), we can choose faith (the process of living based on our belief). At least those are the words I would use to describe what I think he’s saying.
I might as easily have concluded my post like this: “And so, I will never ask someone to “choose to believe.” I might suggest that they choose to exercise faith – because there are rewards to a life based on belief in the face of doubt – but that’s a topic for another post.”
Does that help clarify what I mean by not being able to “choose to believe”?