Rethinking Religion: If the church is true, why are we so afraid to rethink our beliefs?

 “And when thou art converted, strengthen thy bretheren.” 

Jesus Christ (Luke 22:32)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about religious conversion and retention, particularly among our young members.

I think it started conference weekend when President Nelson admonished, “Stop increasing your doubts by rehearsing them with other doubters” (Christ is Risen; Faith in Him Will Move Mountains, 4 April 2021). Immediately following this statement, the progressive church community decried it as ridiculous while the orthodox community lauded the instruction inspired.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this type of partisan rhetoric about doubt at General Conference. In October 2013, Elder Uchtdorf famously coined the phrase, “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith,” which garnered similar backlash from self-proclaimed doubters (Come, Join with Us, 5 October 2013).

While I understand the sentiment, my feelings about it are complicated.

Essentially, I fear that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will continue stepping away from organized religion if we insistently admonish them to avoid their doubt. Even if true, responding to genuine intellectual questions with hollow spiritual adages like, “We don’t know all the mysteries of God,” “Have faith that God will work everything out,” “That doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme,” or “Just be obedient and follow the prophet,” doesn't help people understand the religion to which they’ve consecrated their lives.

I'm afraid that in today's social environment, preaching will do more to drive our young members from the church than it will to convert them to it. 

Why rethinking matters.

The things we believe are not always a pure product of authentic agency. More than we’re probably comfortable admitting, the things we believe are a result of our environment. A person born into a conservative family in a conservative area of the country, for example, is likely to identify as conservative in adulthood.

Somewhat responsible for this uniformity is that children are exposed to ideas, opinions, and biases by the adults in their lives. As they grow, they build a social network of people who hold the same beliefs they do (echo chamber), and then seek evidence that supports their beliefs (confirmation bias). In adulthood, people often choose to live in or move to places with cultures that promote their belief framework, so the cycle continues.

If we never learn the skills needed to rethink the things we've been taught, we end up stuck in the patterns of thought and behavior we adopted growing up. This significantly limits our ability to find and identify truth. 

If you still believe the same things the same way you believed them five or ten years ago, there’s a good chance your beliefs are more a product of you environment than you realize. When we learn something new, we should update our beliefs to accommodate that new understanding. If the only things you find yourself "learning" confirm what you already believe, or you only ever find ways to accommodate new information into your existing worldview, that's a pretty good indicator your echo chamber and/or confirmation bias are running the show.

When we learn to frequently rethink the things we think we know, we can begin to more comprehensively understand complex problems, including those relating to religion and social policy. This process leads us to be less attached to the things we believe, and more willing to update our worldview as we’re faced with new evidence and alternative perspectives. The better we understand a problem, the more effective the solutions we can develop to address it. 

Having a testimony of something doesn’t make it true.

The internet is a densely tangled pit of mis- and disinformation. The days of adopting truth via others’ personal testimony seem to be slipping away at an increasingly accelerated rate. In its place are diligent truth-seekers meticulously wading through opinion pieces and misguided half-truths until they discover fact on an obscure island of understanding. Some truth seekers are beginning to grow weary of those who preach “the answer” with emotional arguments—dangerously similar to the way we promote conversion through testimony in the church.

I anticipate a day will soon come, if it’s not already upon us, when learning to rethink our ideas and opinions—of thinking like scientists, who develop hypotheses and run experiments to identify truth—will become paramount to navigating what we each choose put on the pedestal of principle. If we fail to incorporate this style of rigorous scientific research into spiritual conversion, I fear we’ll have a difficult time retaining our younger generations of saints.

Interestingly, the word “scientist” (in this context) was coined at Cambridge in 1834—just two years after Joseph Smith restored the church in New York. This timing is compelling because we build testimony of spiritual truths the same way we gain knowledge and understanding of truth in the physical world: develop a hypothesis, and then test it to see if it holds up. The prophet Moroni profoundly taught, “Ask God…if these things are not true,” notably putting the responsibility of searching out and identifying truth on each of us individually (Moroni 10:4).

In fact, Joseph Smith was thinking like a scientist before he restored the Church of Jesus Christ to the Earth in the early 1800's. In his words (Joseph Smith—History 1:10):

In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?

If we acclaim Joseph Smith as our dispensation’s great example of asking questions, seeking answers, and uncovering truth, why do we teach our members to be so afraid of contemplating the same questions Joseph asked himself? "Are they all wrong together?" Joseph inquired. 

Why are we so afraid of allowing ourselves and our members to consider that, perhaps, the church isn't true? It's difficult for me to imagine a case where truth can be found—in any context—without considering contrary evidence. Why, then, are we so afraid of allowing our members to do just that?

Our youth are hypersensitive to propaganda.

Rigidity in belief is not akin to spiritual conversion. Holding rigidly to the things we believe provides only limited opportunity for rethinking and, by extension, understanding. A rigid structure will break when faced with a bit of opposition. A flexible one is sturdy when enduring adversity. When we’re rigid in our core beliefs, we make ourselves vulnerable to disillusion when our beliefs are threatened.

If the church really is true, it will withstand scrutiny. Rethinking the things we’ve always been taught can help us weed out decades or centuries of culture and tradition, and replace them in our belief system with genuine, authentic, doctrinal truth. The teachings that are true will withstand the test, and we can update our beliefs about the rest.

It’s not that the church isn’t good at teaching the importance of asking questions—they frequently teach their members to seek truth through inquisition. The hitch, as I see it, is the way they always tack on the same caveat. A caveat that our young members seem to be hyper-sensitive to, perhaps as a result of growing up in such a politically divisive social environment. For example, 

“The Lord wants us to ask every probing question we can muster because not asking questions can be far more dangerous than asking them. In other words, sin makes you stupid-and so does refusing to seek after truth. … My dear friends, questions are good. Questions are good if they are inspired questions, asked in faith, and asked of credible sources where the Spirit will direct and confirm the answer.” (Sheri Dew, Will You Engage in the Wrestle?, 2016)

Note the deliberately placed “if” here. Indeed, the church seems to teach, “We welcome your questions, as long as they're the right questions asked of the right people.”

I fear this caveat is turning our young members away from the church because of how much it feels like the emotionally-charged political propaganda they face every day online: “Listen to my voice, and only my voice. I’m the only one with the answers. You can trust the way you feel about what me and mine are telling you. Don't listen to the other guys—they don't know as much as we know.”

Facts don't care about feelings.

I fear we have done a disservice to church members by indoctrinating them with the belief that the way they feel about something (i.e., testimony) determines its truthfulness. The social sciences refer to this phenomenon as moral conviction, and it's been found to be incredibly powerful and potentially misleading. What makes a thing true is whether it maintains consistency through scrutiny and testing, not how it makes us feel.

Testimony is a personal, spiritual confirmation of truth. In order for us to have such a confirmation, we must first be able to identify what is true. When we suggest that saints skip the important first step of understanding for themselves (re: doubt) and simply encourage them to seek spiritual confirmation of something they've been taught (re: faith), we run the risk of stifling their understanding of the doctrine. This is problematic because it may make saints vulnerable to disillusion when their spiritual conviction is shaken, or persuade them to believe they have a testimony of something that isn't true.

When members base the things they believe primarily on how they feel, those beliefs tend to become more a part of who they are than simply a product of what they think. In this headspace, they grow heatedly defensive when their beliefs are challenged, which makes them unwilling (and possibly unable) to rethink the things they believe are true. In my experience, our culture of accepting testimony as truth and adopting moral convictions is not only making it difficult for members to weed through the misinformation they encounter online, it's also radicalizing many and making their social and religious belief systems rigidly fragile.

If we instead taught members to approach their spiritual beliefs as critically as they approach their beliefs about the social and physical world—as scientists—they would, perhaps, be much less likely to tie their beliefs wholly up in their identity. They would likely be better able to separate "I am" from "I believe" or even, "I know." By so doing, I anticipate we could help them be much more willing to update their beliefs when faced with new information (or when they’re unable to replicate the results of the spiritual hypotheses they’re testing), rather than feeling betrayed by the institution and abnegating the church altogether. 

When we approach spiritual conversion this way, we forge a safeguard to help keep doubters from deserting the church when they find their core beliefs challenged. By teaching members to separate "I think" from "I am," they can develop the ability to recognize when a belief, not their self, is being challenged, and can then approach what they believe critically without allowing it to destabilize their eternal identity.

Why do we care so much if people leave the church?

I understand why church leaders include their caveat when teaching members to ask questions. When we have a question about a specific topic, we should seek experts on that topic to help us adopt a more comprehensive understanding. If we are seeking information about astronomy, and we approach a medical doctor for his perspective, he might respond with potentially verifiable information like, “My emergency room is always busier on nights with a full moon.” In which case, we may be tempted to use that data as evidence that full moons cause catastrophes. If the doctor is our only source, however, our understanding of the effect that shifting celestial bodies in space have on Earth will be contorted. When seeking understanding about astronomy, we’re much better off utilizing the resources of astronomers foremost.

Likewise, if we’re seeking understanding about church history or doctrine from sources outside the church, the information we find will likely be incomplete or misrepresented. This is why leaders like Elder Holland have taught, “In matters of faith and conviction, it helps to direct your inquiry toward those who actually have some!” (The Message, TheMeaning, and The Multitude, 6 October 2019). 

On the other hand, by discouraging members from seeking non-church sponsored resources, I fear we're sowing distrust among them (re: propaganda). It's easy for me to see how that this experience may make them feel betrayed when faced with a broader understanding, which may ultimately lead them to abandon church resources altogether instead of incorporating them into their research and knowledge.

If our method of converting and retaining members is to shield them from certain trains of thought or informational resources, I believe we're doing something wrong. Teaching members to ask questions with the caveat to only ask certain questions and seek answers only from certain sources runs the risk of making them feel boxed in and skeptical of the organization as a whole. The message comes across, “Don’t ask those questions; they’ll only lead you, and others, away from the church."

Here are a handful of questions I've asked over the years and received that response:

If men and women have the same access to the same priesthood power, why are only men ordained to offices of the priesthood?

Why does God refer to both homosexuality and polygamy in the scriptures as “abominable,” yet polygamy is (has been) acceptable to the church but LGBTQ+ relationships are not (will never be), since neither are traditional units of the nuclear family?

If marriage in the church is strictly between a man and a woman, why can't a transman and a transwoman be married? Is there something eternally significant about gender identity that we don't know about?

Why is the family proclamation doctrine but the 1949 negro proclamation wasn’t?

How could First Presidency member N. Eldon Tanner claim that blacks would never have the priesthood because it wasn’t in line with God’s natural order, when black men are ordained to offices of the priesthood today?

Is this church really the only true religion on Earth? How do we know?

Why are we so afraid of questions like this? What’s the worst that could happen if we allow members to thoughtfully and scientifically entertain them? They’ll leave the church?

Why do we care so much about whether people choose to leave the church? Their decision has no effect on our individual salvation. They're likely already aware the doctrine teaches they'll miss out on eternal blessings if they leave. Why do we feel it's our duty to make sure they don't miss out on those blessings if they decide it's what they want? 

It feels a lot like helicopter parenting to me. Like children, members want to feel autonomous. If we push too hard to get the individuals in our spiritual family to conform, we may end up pushing them further away. We definitely can, and should, teach the doctrine and set boundaries where appropriate, but we should also recognize that using too much pressure to force conformity may end in ruined relationships (a particularly devastating casualty for a religion that so profoundly believes in the sanctity of the nuclear family). 

Where would we prefer members with unkosher questions turn for answers: outspoken, bitter ex-members, or converted, active ones? If we want them to confide in converted members, we must learn to respond to their explorations with curiosity and compassion, no matter the questions they’re investigating. It’s important they see it’s possible to ask their questions and remain faithful. If the only place doubters can find solidarity is with people who have left the church, it perpetuates the belief that vocalizing "dangerous" queries inevitably results in apostasy. 

Not so.

In my experience, curiosity—not rigidity—is the key to conversion for doubters.

Truth will prevail.

One thing I do know is preaching to doubters will rarely convince them to stay. We’re losing members already because we’ve so standardized gospel questions and answers, rather than allowing and welcoming saints who express a different perspective than the tradition. Important to remember is the way members choose to believe has no bearing on what’s actually true. As Elder Uchtdorf taught, “The thing about truth is that it exists beyond belief. It is true even if nobody believes it” (What is Truth?, 2013). I have a difficult time seeing the harm in welcoming the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of members who are wrestling with difficult doctrinal questions, even if the conclusions they're drawing are different than the ones you might draw yourself. Especially if they believe they can simultaneously hold those (potentially erroneous) beliefs and also remain converted, active members.

Indeed, "We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, and what they may" (Articles of Faith 1:11).

Please don’t misunderstand—I’m not suggesting we cease teaching the doctrine altogether. Nor am I advocating that individual truth is equivalent to doctrinal truth. I’m only proposing that as a church, we allow members to experience their doubts—to sit with the discomfort they may feel about a certain teaching, or believe a nonconforming conclusion they've reached through their personal study of the doctrine—instead of immediately and incessantly trying to force them to conform to our interpretation of the doctrine. After all, as none of us are omniscient we're all wrong about some things.  

It's okay to just...sit with doubt sometimes.

When I first began rethinking my relationship with religion and spiritualty nearly a decade ago, my first inclination was to shy away from the questions that were gnawing at back of my brain. As if preloaded to protect me from the path to apostasy, 2 Nephi 26:22 would incessantly coalesce around my attention, supposedly shielding me from exploring the doubts I was so tempted to entertain:

“[Satan] leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever.”

Growing up, I sat through many an object lesson where the teacher would wrap a small thread around a student's wrists, tying their hands together. The thread symbolized a deviant thought, question, or behavior. As the lesson goes, the more a person entertained those thoughts, the more layers of thread they got wrapped around their wrists. Eventually, though they could have easily broken through one or two bindings, the more times the thread is wound the less able they are to break free. 

So, fearing for my salvation, I repressed my doubts or simply kept them to myself. When I finally garnered enough courage to tentatively voice a question to a fellow member, I was inevitably met with a standard hollow adage (“just be obedient”) or a hasty jump to reconvert me. 

I didn't know it at the time, but what I wanted was to feel heard and understood. I wanted to talk with people who were willing to listen to my questions, seek to understand my experience, and consider my questions from my perspective. Unfortunately, I didn't find it in my conversations with most active members. 

Eventually, in college, I dragged myself into the office of one of my BYU religion professors: Dr. Anthony Sweat.

An educator.

Dr. Sweat recognized the importance of allowing me to grapple with hard questions—to sit with my doubt—instead of swooping in to rescue me from the discomfort my confusion was causing. He understood he could much better fulfill his role as a teacher if he listened carefully to the questions I was wrestling with, and then taught me the skills to teach myself instead of simply handing me answers to the questions he thought I was asking.

To date, finding an active member who was willing to listen, welcoming and exploring my doubt, sitting with confusion, and learning to discern truth from tradition has done more to convert me—a doubter—to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints than any testimony meeting, missionary discussion, general conference talk, or Sunday school lesson.

If our goal is to help convert doubters to the church, I recommend we stop encouraging them to avoid their doubt and try allowing them to experience it instead. 

I recognize this is a dramatic shift in the way we currently approach missionary work, and that it will take some practice to perfect. If you're interested in giving it a go, here are a few things I've found to be helpful. 

Help doubters feel safe confiding in you.

In my experience both having been a doubter and also interacting with other doubters, I've found two principles are paramount.

First, listen to understand, not to reply. 

There is a razor fine line between when it’s helpful to teach, and when it’s helpful to listen. This line is super difficult to find, takes a lot of practice to master, and if we walk it clumsily we'll push doubters away. In my experience, unfortunately, most members aren't adept at walking it well. More often than not, I watch members glance toward the line (if even that) and then proceed to bludgeon doubters over the head with a "teaching" club—often with reproach.

Our perfect example, Jesus Christ, did use the club-teaching method on occasion, but it was often directed toward believers who intentionally exercised their agency questionably and then attempted to justify their bad behavior, usually with scripture and religious teachings; it wasn't generally used on people who made mistakes for which they felt genuine remorse, nor those who found themselves in a place of physical, mental, or spiritual weakness.

I think the tendency to scold those who seem to be promoting beliefs inconsistent with the doctrine comes from an assumption that doubters are trying to justify bad behavior. Approaching conversations with doubters from this perspective, unfortunately, almost always results in more hurt than help. I believe we'll see much more success converting doubters if we condition ourselves to see their experience as spiritual shakiness and a desire to make sense of their belief system, rather than indignant justification, and then adjust our responses accordingly.

My recommendation, especially for those who are new to toeing the listen-or-teach line, is to always default to love, support, and seeking to understand, and only venturing into teaching if the doubter asks. They have to feel safe in expressing their most intimate thoughts and feelings with you. They have to feel that they are safe with you, no matter what they say they think or believe. This doesn't mean we have to shy away from teaching the truth, but it does mean teaching should always be secondary to listening, understanding, and empathizing (I wrote the post "You Do You" is Satan's Counterfeit for "Love One Another" a few years back to explore this idea a little more in depth). 

Remember, our role should be to help doubters develop the skills they need to find their own path to conversion, not to try to convince them to come to Christ ourselves. 

Second, empathy is not endorsement. 

Listening to understand does not obligate you to agree. You won't gain doubters' trust if you insist on staying stuck in the way you've always thought about the gospel—stuck in your perception of, and your experience with, religion. You need to be willing to learn to experience the gospel the way they do. You don't have to agree, you just have to understand. If you don't understand how a person can think what they do, or why they believe what they choose, or how they could consider leaving the church, you haven't done enough to understand their perspective and their experience. 

If the decisions they choose to make are different than the ones you would have made or the ones you wish they would have made, it's important to recognize they have the same prerogative to make the spiritual decisions they want with their life as you do with yours. 

We all have equal opportunity for agency. Supporting friends and family members in their personal faith journey does not mean you endorse their behavior, nor does it require you to compromise your own values or principles. Alternately, withholding your support from them does not put you on moral high ground, nor is it an effective method of convincing them to conform to your ideology. By supporting the people in your life who believe differently than you do, despite the spiritual decisions they may choose to make, you maintain a relationship with them that feels safe and supportive and enduring, which leaves the door open for them to maintain a relationship with you.

As influencer Charlie Bird profoundly taught, "Showing empathy...is not a compromise of moral values" (Deseret News, 26 Feb 2019, Guest Opinion: Everyone loved me as Cosmo the Cougar, but would they love who I was behind the mask?).

If you're a doubter yourself, don’t be afraid to seek non-church resources, but allow church resources their adequate weight.

If you're seeking answers to difficult questions yourself, develop a hypothesis about what you believe and then test your hypothesis to see if it holds up in every gospel scenario. If it doesn’t, revise your hypothesis and try again. The more times we do this, the more sound our gospel understanding will be. 

(For example, the family proclamation says marriage is between a man and a woman. What does that mean? What about a marriage between cis man and a transman? A transman and a transwoman? A lesbian and a transwoman? If those man/woman marriages aren't allowed, why not? What does the doctrine say, and what does it not say? If you don't feel like you can find the answers to your questions, it's okay to answer any or all of your questions with "I don't know." And it's okay to carry that uncertainty with you for an indefinite amount of time, until we have further revelation from church leaders.)

We can only understand the gospel if we're willing to study it. In your search for truth, knowledge, and understanding, be sure to allow church resources, scripture, and doctrine their adequate weight. Not just the things we're taught in Sunday school or over the pulpit at General Conference—a lot of those teachings are tailored to the time when they were given, and adapt as the social environment of the world changes—but the actual doctrine (If you want to know more about how to do separate doctrine from tradition, I wrote about it here: 2019 Alpine YSA Stake Conference: Doctrine & Clarity). 

Also, don't be afraid to seek resources from experts to supplement your spiritual research. As President M. Russell Ballard once taught (Questions and Answers, 14 November 2017),

“I worry sometimes that members expect too much from Church leaders and teachers—expecting them to be experts in subjects well beyond their duties and responsibilities. The Lord called the apostles and prophets to invite others to come unto Christ—not to obtain advanced degrees in ancient history, biblical studies, and other fields that may be useful in answering all the questions we may have about scriptures, history, and the Church. … If you have a question that requires an expert, please take the time to find a thoughtful and qualified expert to help you.”

This has been incredibly helpful advice for me. A lot of my understanding about (and testimony of) the gospel of Jesus Christ comes from my understanding about the way the world works and has worked, and how those concepts interact with church doctrine, principles, and teachings. The more I know about the world, the better I understand my religion. 

Let's let doubt propel us on our path to understanding. 

Each of us gets to decide what we want to believe. As a church, we can be so much better at responding to questions with curiosity rather than with preaching or with hollow retorts. Opening our minds to rethinking—to being wrong about what we have believed, and currently believe—can put us on a path to better understanding and deeper conviction. The more comfortable we become with sitting with confusing or conflicting feelings about what we believe, instead of immediately trying to explain or faith them away, the better I imagine we’ll be at retaining the younger populations in our congregations. If there really is only one truth, our rethinking will always lead us back to it.

So let’s encourage our young members (and all our members) to ask their hard questions, and listen with curiosity instead of preaching with rigidity. Let’s commit to being more flexible in what we believe, and more willing to rethink our beliefs as we come to new understandings. Let’s learn to sit with our doubts instead of constantly trying to identify an immediate answer for every difficult question. Let’s give the church adequate representation in our research to understand church teachings, but not be afraid to seek the resources of field experts to supplement that understanding. And finally, let’s stop trying to convert saints with our testimonies while simultaneously ignoring their tangible and rigorous intellectual processes of seeking and finding truth.

I know this formula can lead to profound conversion because I've experienced it myself. So let's stop shying from doubt, and instead let it to propel us on our path to understanding. 

What are we so afraid of?