How could people find much meaning in simply reciting the words of someone else? Especially when those words were written in a different time, under different circumstances and different emotions? In fact, the most boring Mormon prayers are typically those that are saturated with trite, pre-manufactured phrases that are so common in prayer vernacular that you could play bingo using them. Surely I’m always going to be most capable of expressing myself to God when I carefully choose my own words, right?

Well, I stand open to correction. In Jana Riess’s Flunking Sainthood, we get to read about the adventures of a Mormon who’s very well read in a variety of religious traditions as she takes up a foreign spiritual practice each month and seeks to live it out fully. One month she adopted fixed-hour prayer, which as far as I understand is a Judeo-Christian practice that involves reciting or singing psalms on a specified schedule. Riess, who is an editor by profession, obviously enjoys great comfort and familiarity with words. Yet she is sometimes frustrated by an inability to summon these words in the language of prayer. Admitting her preconceived aversion to using set language in prayer, she writes this:

…spontaneous prayers often came up empty…. They felt hollow.

What has filled the gap … is fixed-hour prayer, which is “prayer for the rest of us,” prayer for when we do not have the words. As someone heavily invested in language, I find that liberating. Six days a week, I try to come up with words: bits of sections of chapters of books, written piece by piece; new blog posts five days a week; dozens of e-mails a day. Maybe one reason I’m enjoying fixed-hour prayer so much is that it gives me a break from the me-me-me nature of my own spontaneous prayers. There is a deep rest associated with ancient prayers I didn’t contrive myself.

But it’s even deeper than that, because in fixed-hour prayer I am finding to my astonishment that I am most myself when I pray someone else’s words. Given that my faith tradition suggests that following someone else’s liturgy can be empty and confining, I’m surprised to discover that instead it is rich and freeing. I don’t have to be alone with my subjective experience, my little life. I am free to rest in the words of those who are often far wiser, and who have walked this path already.

-Flunking Sainthood, pg. 150

A common sentiment in Sunday School lessons on prayer is, “Pray even when you don’t feel like it. If you don’t feel like it, get down on your knees and stay there until you feel like it.” In practice, this never actually worked for me. I’d sooner hop into bed than wait for a desire to pray to magically enter into my tired body. Now that I’m married, my wife’s insistence on prayer has reduced the frequency of those cases. But what about those times when neither of us feels so inclined?

Enter fixed language. Maybe we can try this practice out and make it our own. I’m considering it, at least.

The following is an excerpt from Jana Riess‘s new memoir, Flunking Sainthood. In the following portion of her humorous book, this insightful LDS editor and blogger takes a unique approach to exploring the meaning of gratitude by examining what it is not.

Oddly, the root word for “gratitude,” gratia, didn’t start appearing in Christian literature until about eight hundred years ago. That’s not to say that Christians before the High Middle Ages didn’t feel gratitude—they just didn’t wax on about it. In her fascinating cultural study The Gift of Thanks, Margaret Visser writes that although contemporary Americans and some Europeans think that gratitude is ingrained, necessary, and automatic, there are entire cultures where the concept of saying thank you is still largely absent. Some languages have no word for thanks, a fact that’s hard for Americans to wrap our heads around. When European colonizers came to the New World back in the day, they were horrified that Native Americans didn’t thank them for the gifts they brought—because when someone brings you smallpox as a souvenir of their homeland, the least you can do is say thank you.

In contrast, other cultures have umpteen different ways to express gratitude, based on the giver’s relationship to the recipient. In Japan, if someone so much as passes you a salt shaker, you don’t merely thank the giver, but instead launch into a self-abnegating apology for your existence on the planet and your annoying and perpetual need to breathe.

As I’m reading, I think about Visser’s point that much of what we imagine as authentic gratitude is actually cultural expectation of what a polite, civilized person does. Politeness greases the wheels of society. We make nice. However, true gratitude rarely exists in these automatic, expected formalities. True gratitude is something else altogether.

I’m intrigued by the idea that gratitde is a relatively recent development in Western civilization. This strikes me as ironic, given how in my own experience, gratitude often springs from a remembrance of deprivation. When I get the stomach flu, I’m shocked to realize how quickly a healthy person can become a shaking mass on a chilly bathroom floor. But in twenty-first century America, we enjoy fabulous health and longevity compared to any other time in history. So why are our bookstore shelves littered with titles on the importance of gratitude and the quest for happiness, while our pockmarked ancestors just sucked it up in silence?

Maybe we focus on gratitude because we feel guilty—and scared. We know at a deep level that we’re ludicrously wealthy and healthy. We’re also terrified of that ease and comfort disappearing. So we read books and articles about gratitude as a cardinal virtue not because we genuinely feel grateful, but because we’re afraid of how God might smite us if we don’t. There’s a whole movement centered around “the power of gratitude,” promising that when we say thank you for our blessings, we will “unleash unlimited abundance and happiness.” You can find similar advice in books like How to Want What You Have and Thank You Power and Focus on the Good Stuff. The problem is that this so-called gratitude is actually more about manipulating the universe into giving us even greater blessings than it is about being grateful for the ones we already enjoy. It’s like a kid after a birthday party who only sends Grandma a thank-you card because he’s hoping for a more expensive present for Christmas.

I object to the proliferation of self-help books that promise that gratitude will magically make everything all better. Some years ago when the bestseller The Secret was all the rage, I wrote a blog review so sarcastic that I was contacted by a Dutch journalist who wanted to get the snarky American on camera to declare that merely saying thank you to the universe wasn’t going to alter a person’s reality. The reporter was charmed by the fact that I’d gone back through the diary of Dutch girl Anne Frank to refute the basic premise of Rhoda Byrne‘s self-help chartbuster: that only good things will happen to those who think good thoughts, and only bad things will happen to those who think negative thoughts. This pablum is known as the “Law of Attraction.” In the review, I pointed out how Anne Frank wasn’t exactly spewing negativity with statements such as, “I don’t think of all the misery but of all the beauty that remains,” and, “I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” And yet she was victimized, as were millions of others. Their “attitude of gratitude” had little to do with whether they lived through the Holocaust, though some survivors ave said that positive thinking helped them regroup and succeed after the war.

Gratitude didn’t save Anne Frank, and it won’t save us. It won’t heal our diseases, make us rich, or bring us fame. We’d love to make gratitude a talisman to magically protect us from disaster, but there is nothing Christian about this; it’s as pagan as the hills to stage-manage the universe into bending to our will. Gratitude is just a gentler way to force the issue, and it’s a lot less messy than, say, sacrificing a bison on the altar. But using gratitude as a carrot to precipitate the universe’s bestowal of a gift is as pagan as the blood sacrifice. If we ever catch ourselves thinking about how God should reward our sunny dispositions with worldly blessings, or imagining that if we’re not grateful for what we already have that God will justifiably withhold further blessings like Santa refusing to bring toys to naughty children at Christmas, then we need to take a long and hard look at what we believe about God. God doesn’t owe us anything, no matter how cheerful and uncomplaining we are. Period.

Underlying temple marriage is the core of the temple experience, the endowment. A ritualized depiction of humankind’s journey from the premortal existence through earth life and beyond, McKay referred to it as “one of the most beautiful things ever given to man,” yet lamented that “there are very few people in the Church who comprehend it.”¹ He was particularly concerned that the young people in the church, including those participating in the endowment just prior to being married in the temple, did so without comprehending its meaning or being jarred by the symbolism of the ritual. He lamented with his counselors “that many of our young people who go through the Temples gain a wrong impression, that they do not obtain a proper understanding of the Temple work and sometimes lose their faith by reason of the Temple ceremonies.”²

His concern stemmed, in part, from his own first encounter with the endowment ceremony, which had not been favorable. With rare candor, he once spoke of the disappointment of that encounter:

Do you remember when you first went through the House of the Lord? I do. And I went out disappointed. Just a young man, out of college, anticipating great things when I went to the Temple. I was disappointed and grieved, and I have met hundreds of young men and young women since who had that experience. I have now found out why. There are two things in every Temple: mechanics, to set forth certain ideals, and symbolism, what those mechanics symbolize. I saw only the mechanics when I first went through the Temple. I did not see the spiritual. I did not see the symbolism of spirituality. Speaking plainly, I saw men, physical state, which offended me. That is a mechanic of washing…. I was blind to the great lesson of purity behind the mechanics. I did not hear the message of the Lord, “By ye clean who bear the vessels of the Lord.” I did not hear that eternal truth, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” The symbolism was lost entirely…. And so with the anointing, following the washing. Do you see the symbolism?… How many of us young men saw that? We thought we were big enough and with intelligence sufficient to criticize the mechanics of it and we were blind to the symbolism, the message of the spirit. And then that great ordinance, the endowment. The whole thing is simple in the mechanical part of it, but sublime and eternal in its significance.³

By the time McKay became church president, he had over a half-century of experience with the endowment ceremony, and thus was intimately familiar with its mechanics. But his concern with making the symbolic content of the ceremony more accessible to church members, particularly the young people, led him to review again and again the mechanics with the goal “of subordinating the mechanics to the important mission of the Temple, the impressing of each member with the fact that he is an important factor in God’s Plan of Salvation for the human family.”⁴ Periodic diary entries indicate the intensity with which he approached this task: “My principle purpose in going through [participating in an endowment ceremony] that day was to observe the details of the ceremony and to study the mechanics of the presentation of the endowments.” “Spent most of the day in the Salt Lake Temple considering and studying the Temple Ceremony. Will make recommendations covering several items in the presentation of the Temple Ceremony.” “From 10 o’clock until 2 P.M. I was in the Salt Lake Temple, studying the ceremony for endowments.” “I had planned to drive down to Salt Lake so that I could go to the Salt Lake Temple in order to study and make corrections on the master copy of the endowment ceremony.”⁵

In 1959, after years of studying the formal procedures of the endowment, he finally introduced changes into the ceremony that would subordinate the physical aspects of the ceremony to the symbolic. Speaking to a group of stake presidents in Ogden, he commented on the alterations. According to the minutes of the meeting, “President McKay then briefly explained the new procedure as helping to overcome the consciousness of the people of the mechanics of the temple service, and in helping young people especially to understand the symbolism and the significance of the service. He briefly reviewed the purpose of the services to show the progress of men from the level of animal interests to spiritual forces which mold eternal life.”⁶

Footnotes

¹David O. McKay Diaries, November 8, 1961.

²David O. McKay Diaries, June 21, 1966.

³Address delivered by David O. McKay at the dedicatory services of the additions to the Arizona Temple, Mesa, Arizona, December 30, 1956, David O. McKay Scrapbooks #162.

⁴David O. McKay Diaries, December 27, 1957. Because the details of the endowment are considered so sacred that they are covered by a covenant of secrecy made by all parcipants, we provide no description.

⁵David O. McKay Diaries, March 28, 1951; August 15, 1954; February 2, 1958; July 20, 1958.

⁶Minutes of a meeting with Presidents of Stakes of Weber County, held in the Ogden Stake Tabernacle, March 2, 1959, David O. McKay Diaries

The topic I am going to talk about today has been described by LDS leaders with the following terms: “incomprehensible”, “inexplicable”, “mysterious”. Are you on the edge of your seats yet? How about “transcendent”, or “infinite”? Yes, my topic will be the Atonement of Jesus Christ. In some ways, it seems the more I study this topic, the less I understand it. But in other ways, I feel I come to understand it better. So I’m hoping that speaking on it will shed some new light on the matter and give us something useful to think about.

Whenever I prepare a lesson or a talk, I like to at least attempt to find some piece of information that most people would be unfamiliar with. As I contemplated the Atonement and reviewed any unique insights I might be able to provide, I immediately thought of one. Did you know that you can use the word expiation instead of atonement? (Maybe those who speak Spanish or Italian already knew that.) In any event, I hope his knowledge has been useful enough that everyone can leave this meeting today and honestly say it was the best they’ve been to in a long time.

As I thought about my audience today, I realized that there are many reasons why you might be here and what you might be looking for. Some came here out of tradition. Some came because they are hungering spiritually. Some were forced. Some are old, some young, some are religious veterans, some are novices. I hope to say something worthwhile on this topic that might edify you in some way, and I really hope that maybe someone will leave this meeting feeling their burden lightened.

The main source material I will be using is a General Conference speech given in April by Kent Richards, a talk given by David Bednar ten years ago (when he was the president of BYU-Idaho), some scripture verses, and all the crazy ideas I carry around in my head.

So what does the word atonement mean? For religious purposes, it generally has the connotation of reparation or reconciliation. Specific to the Gospel and Jesus Christ, Atonement means:

• bridging the chasm between us and the divine
• transforming sinners into saints, weakness into strength, sickness into health

The speaker that preceded me encouraged us all to not forget that Priesthood blessings aren’t just for helping us when we’re sick or afflicted; they can also help us excel in an upcoming endeavor or build confidence. I see a parallel in the way we might be under-utilizing the Atonement.

Elder Bednar talks about the power of the Atonement and puts it in two categories: its redemptive power, and its enabling power. Let me read what he said about this:

Most of us clearly understand that the Atonement is for sinners. I am not so sure, however, that we know and understand that the Atonement is also for saints—for good men and women who are obedient and worthy and conscientious and who are striving to become better and serve more faithfully. I frankly do not think many of us “get it” concerning this enabling and strengthening aspect of the Atonement, and I wonder if we mistakenly believe we must make the journey from good to better and become a saint all by ourselves through sheer grit, willpower, and discipline, and with our obviously limited capacities. … Individual willpower, personal determination, and motivation … are necessary but ultimately insufficient to triumphantly complete this mortal journey. Truly we must come to rely upon “the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah”.

He ends this statement by citing a verse in 2nd Nephi, which reads in part: “there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah”.

He then continues by explaining:

In the Bible Dictionary in our scriptures we learn that the word grace frequently is used in the scriptures to connote enabling power. Under the word grace, we read:
“A word that occurs frequently in the New Testament, especially in the writings of Paul. The main idea of the word is divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ.”

This grace, then, is divine assistance or heavenly help that represents the enabling power of the Atonement that strengthens us to do good while our individual abilities and efforts fall short.

Another part of the enabling power aspect of the Atonement deals with pain, whether physical or emotional. (Brother Richard’s talk is actually titled “The Atonement Covers All Pain”.) The most well-known scripture verse related to this is from the book of Isaiah, and it comes from a passage known as songs of the Suffering Servant.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we did esteem Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.

-Isaiah 53:4-5

Now, these verses have deeply symbolic meanings for Jews. But early Christians, seeking consolation and meaning in the Hebrew Bible after what had happened to their Messiah, saw in these verses a prophesy about Jesus.

In the Book of Mormon, Alma 7 echoes this concept:

And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.
And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

-Alma 7:11-12

So Jesus chose to experience all these pains and afflictions in order to better comfort us when we suffer pain of any kind, whether it be emotional or physical. Let’s ponder for a moment the mental imagery of our loving Savior undergoing the abuse he did in order that he might be able to better comfort us when we suffer—not focusing so much on the suffering per se as the ability for Him to comfort us from a position of knowing. That’s pretty powerful stuff, isn’t it?

I first ran into this talk from Elder Bednar when my Bishop handed it to me. It was a very low point in my life. For the sake of brevity, I will simply say that I had just gone through a really nasty relationship and really needed a major pick-me-up. My bishop told my, “Well, you know, you don’t have to work your way through this on your own. There is someone who has invited you to lay your burdens on his shoulders and he can understand your trials with great empathy.”

The feeling that I had divine help in the form of someone who knew exactly how I felt, and and a loving Father in Heaven that cared deeply for me, was a tremendous help that enabled me get through that difficult time.

When We Try to Do It Alone

There’s a saying about religion, that its purpose is to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”. I think there is great wisdom in this saying. However, what happens when we let religion afflict the afflicted?

Religion is supposed to relieve suffering. Look at just about any major movement, and you’ll find that principle is fundamental. Yet sadly some people are lost in a state of discouragement that is actually worsened by their religious views. “What am I talking about, exactly?” some of you might be wondering.

If you’ve ever heard The Parable of the Bicycle, it was conceived by this nice perspicacious professor of religion at BYU, Stephen Robinson. He was distraught that so many people fail to utilize the enabling power of the Atonement and instead use their own religious beliefs as a bludgeon and beat themselves up with it. This problem was so pervasive and so serious that he decided to write a short book about it to try to help them. He saw too many young people relying only on their own efforts; too many parents utterly discouraged with the way things were turning out. Yes, Jesus issued the commandment that we should all “be perfect”. But he knew perfectly well that nobody would actually be able to do it. What’s important is that we keep trying, and recognize that the Lord isn’t angrily disappointed in us when we fail, but instead he has his arm extended to pull us back on our feet. God never wants us to feel that we’ve sinned too much to turn things around, or that he is angry with us, or that we are unworthy to approach him in prayer or meditation.

Closing Thoughts

If anyone here today feels overwhelmed, overworked, dejected, unsuccessful, or unredeemable, I hope that you can find a way to lift your head higher and sense that you are not alone, and that there is always hope.

We read in the Book of Moses that God’s work and glory is to bring about the eternal life and immortality of man (Moses 1:39). The Atonement, this tremendous bridge between us and God, is an essential part of this process. If we are willing, we can let it transform us throughout our lives, change out hearts, help us overcome the trials and struggles of life, as well as rely on the grace of Jesus to triumph over our limitations and weaknesses.

To clarify, when I say Romney’s politics sometimes aren’t based on “principles”, I’m referring strictly to ideological principles, because I think you definitely have to agree Romney’s politics are indeed based on at least one principle: pragmatism. I’d even say it’s conservative pragmatism, but above all, Mitt is practical.

His executive experience is primarily business related, and his task was to fix problems. That type of work demands a lot of flexibility and compromise. You don’t always walk away with a win, and solutions are rarely going to be perfect, pre-packaged, or fit neatly inside a box. It requires lots of give and take, and the problems and the solutions are rarely able to be painted in stark black-and-white terms. It’s messy. Business philosophies are more like guidelines than unbreachable doctrines.

I think Romney sees politics the same way. Whereas it’s currently a core Republican doctrine that you must never ever raise taxes, I think in Romney’s head he’s thinking that it may sometimes be necessary to raise taxes, and that adhering rigidly to an anti-tax policy will take potentially promising options off the table. Whereas popular Republican bumper sticker rhetoric screams, “Class warfare!” at any discussion of a progressive tax rate, in his heart, I think Romney believes that the rich should indeed be paying more taxes. Whereas the Republican party platform contains strident language that denounces any form of “amnesty” in the search for a solution to illegal immigration, I think Romney might be thinking that there’s really no tenable solution that doesn’t involve some sort of path towards legal residence.

But are you going to hear him confess this in a GOP debate or at a stump speech? No way! Only if it’s a gaffe (read: accidentally telling the truth). Many in the party base believe that Republican principles are the only solution to political problems. Many believe that Reagonomics or other economic policies are conclusively proven. So Romney’s been spending this primary season trying to convince primary voters that he sees things the same way. That he’s “severely conservative”.

Meanwhile, the general election looms, and Romney will need to then persuade moderates and independents that he’s more of a problem solver than an ideologue. Because guess what? Moderates and independents don’t like ideologues! We read expert economists arguing on the merits of varying economic policies and conclude that there are often no solid conclusions. We can often see both sides of an issue and feel that an uncompromising approach to complex issues might result in disastrous decisions. We cringe at the extremely oversimplified light in which politicians often paint messy policy puzzles.

Does this make it harder to divine the specifics of a Romney presidency on certain issues? Absolutely. But presidential candidates always campaign as if the president had god-like powers to change the world. These candidates promise the world, and anyone who believes that a President Gingrich would bring $2.50 per gallon gasoline to Americans needs to contact me about some swampland in Florida I have for sale.

As a moderate independent myself, I find it amusingly ironic that Romney’s biggest weakness to far-right conservatives is his biggest strength to me. Republican primary voters who are insisting on ideological purity would do well to consider moderate and independent voters in swing states and how their minds work. Romney’s greatest liability in the primaries may end up being his greatest asset in the general election when he has to appeal to the entire country instead of a small group of party loyalists.

The idea that we might be able to link premortal righteousness to conditions under which people are born into this life can morph into a sick, twisted excuse to judge others as well as to withhold sympathy for those who are born into tragic circumstances. “After all,” we might smugly reason, “they may have brought this upon themselves in some way.” We might also be tempted to pat ourselves on the back if we are enjoying a lion’s share of blessings, as if we were more deserving of them than others are.

This teaching has been used to make awful justifications for withholding temple blessings and Priesthood ordinations from black people. Bruce McConkie, for instance, wrote in his book Mormon Doctrine, “The race and nation in which men are born in this world is a direct result of their pre-existent life.”¹ He later recanted these racist missteps by saying, “Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever [sic] has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world.”² Recently I have been heartened by the stark and official repudiation the Church has cast upon these idle and caustic speculations from the past. Yet these old notions still persist.

Racial implications aside, I think we need to seriously question the utility of linking privileges in this life with prior lives altogether. Even if our birth conditions were indeed affected to some degree by what happened before, this concept is so fraught with potential problems that it needs to be abandoned completely.

I ran into some words of wisdom on this topic from a beloved LDS instructor and essayist named Eugene England:

It is time to reaffirm what seems to me the only scriptural and logical doctrine of the relation of the pre-existence to this life, that our actions and decisions there helped form the internal quality of what we became there and continue to be here, not our color or other external “advantages” of birth. Of course, there is a connection between the pre-existence and what we are here, and it is the obvious one: We are the same people, continuing with the same general kind of character and qualities we had there, but that doesn’t mean that God grades us accordingly by color or condition of birth. In fact, since we are constantly changing and growing, sinning and repenting, we can’t really judge anything about anyone’s pre-existent life. The only thing we need to know and have any right to act upon is that we are all children of God, “alike unto God,” and of infinite potential. As Joseph Smith stated in the King Follett Discourse: “All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement and improvement.” This means that we do not have moral identity, fixed and determined by past actions and signalled by skin color or condition of birth, but rather a moral history and infinite moral potential; we should not be looking for signs by which to judge each other’s moral identity but rejoicing in and doing all we can to help develop every person’s infinite moral potential.

…

If there are any connections, for the rest of us, between our pre-existent character and the external conditions of our birth here—race, family, wealth, position, etc. — we do not have any clue as to what those connections are. We can only be certain, on scriptural warrant, that those connections are not a punishment nor a denial of the Atonement. In fact the most logical connection, given the assumption and scriptural evidence that our heavenly Parents are better than the best earthly ones, is quite different from the usual one in popular Mormon thought. If good earthly parents had a chance to send one child to a badly-run summer camp and one to an excellent one—and one child was sinful and troubled and the other righteous and a good influence—where would they send the troubled child? To the place the child could get the most help, I think the gospel would suggest and most of us would believe. But that means, assuming God is such a good parent, that we who are born into privileged white Mormon families were likely those least valiant in the preexistence and in need of help! I’m very serious about this; such a relationship to the pre-existence, if we insist on any at all, squares much better with what we know of God’s nature than the other notion, which makes God partial, racist, and vindictive.

-Eugene England: Are All Alike Unto God?

Footnotes

¹ Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1993 printing, pg. 616
² Bruce R. McConkie, All Are Alike unto God, CES Religious Educators Symposium, August 18, 1978

Terryl Givens: The point that I try to make is that we all understand what physical compulsion is. We all understand how incompatible that is with human freedom. But it’s my belief that intellectual compulsion works in an analogous way. You are not free to believe or disbelieve the Law of Gravity. It’s there. The evidence is so abundant that you are compelled to accept it. So, as a result, there’s no virtue that attaches to your belief in that law. Similarly, if I were to offer you a million dollars to believe in the Easter Bunny, you wouldn’t be able to do it. So, in both of these cases, belief seems to operate outside of the moral sphere. We don’t have control that we can exercise to believe or to disbelieve.

But what I’m saying is that faith is what operates or what unfolds in a middle ground, between the compulsion to affirm and the compulsion to deny. And I believe that God has structured our lives here on this Earth in such a way that, when it comes to those issues of eternal import, we have to be free to affirm or to deny. And therefore, there has to be a balance of evidence, both for the veracity of the Gospel, and against it. It’s essential to God’s divine purposes, and to the flowering of freedom itself, I believe, that there have to be compelling reasons to reject the Book of Mormon, to reject Joseph as a prophet, to reject the existence of God Himself. But they have to exist alongside compelling reasons to affirm those things. Only in those circumstances can we call upon our will and choose to believe or not to believe. And I think in those moments, our choice reflects the most important things about us: our souls, what we love, what is it that we choose to affirm. And so that’s how I think faith operates.

John Dehlin, the interviewer, then references the Native American parable of the two wolves inside each of us. Is the choice to believe similar to deciding which wolf to feed, the believing one or the disbelieving one?

Terryl Givens: Yeah!

The two then digress and briefly discuss Abrahamic tests, after which they come back to the topic of the how choice affects belief.

John Dehlin: I do love the idea that belief exists outside the moral realm, because I don’t like my disbelieving brothers and sisters being disrespected or judged.

Terryl Givens: Right. Well, what I described was an ideal circumstance, right? A balance of evidence pro and contra. But Earth is an uneven playing field, and depending on heredity, and environment, an upbringing, and intellectual proclivities, and what we happen to be exposed to, the possibility of choosing faith in any one context might not really be plausible. And that’s why I can’t ever judge, and you can’t conclude anything from a person’s decision to believe or not believe. But I think that God is striving to create that balance, so that at some point in your life, there will really be a choice that you are free to make.

What Remains for You to Do

In a word: plenty. Let me elaborate.

• One: own your religion, don’t borrow it. If you are to make it work for yourselves, and especially if you wish to make an impact on the larger Church, you have to read, think, and write deeply for the rest of your lives. Google will not get you there, and neither will the blogs.
• Second, pay your dues, and stay in those pews. The Church is as much yours as it was Edwin Woolley’s.
• Third, be political. The political intrigue for which the Vatican is famous meets its match in the Mormon church. If you really wish to improve things for the Church, as well as for yourself, consider that how you appear and how you act can easily block out what you are trying to accomplish. Take seriously the saying of Jesus: “Be wise as serpents, but gentle as doves.” [Matthew 10:16]
• Next, Christ-centered boredom—which is not always Christ centered in this Church—is killing the vitality of the Church and driving untold thousands away, many of them youth who represent our best hope for the future. Reform of curriculum and retooling of worship services should be in the forefront of your minds.
• Next, many of the most important doctrinal and historical issues within the Church are unfinished business. Choose one of the most important ones, research it deeply, and then speak and write of it in such an interesting way that it becomes integrated into Mormon thought and practice. And it is possible.
• Next, individualize your religion, and then be an example to others who need and individualized approach outside the mainstream.
• Next, inject your own flavor into your church experience, and show others how to do the same. Until the Church truly reflects all of its constituencies, and treats them fairly and wholly—and these include women, gays, people of color, people with disabilities, and foreign cultures of all types—it will be incomplete.
• Next, extend the reach of Mormonism by integrating yourselves into the larger world. Far too many Mormons pay attention to part of Jesus’s directive—that of being “not of the world”—but they ignore totally his demand that they be “in the world.” [John 15:19] Don’t be afraid to join with others whose faiths are different, and even with other different religious traditions. You will find that you give up nothing by joining with others, and indeed, you sharpen your own identity in the process. If we preach Mormonism by action instead of words, those who see those good works and want to be part of them are likely to join and stay, as opposed to the 9 out of 10 converts who currently join only to leave.*
• And finally, be patient and try not to complain too loudly. Most of the worthwhile things that happen do not happen quickly. The fruit that grows from seeds that you sow now may not be picked until your children and grandchildren come along.

Spencer Kimball kept a small plaque on his desk which simply read, “Do it.” One bit of Mormon humor that made the rounds during the ’70s was, “What do you get when you cross Spencer Kimball and Golden Kimball? ‘Do it, dammit.’”

*In a Q&A session immediately after the conference (56:51), Greg Prince explains his the “triangulation” he used to calculate this number. He explains, “We talked about this a little earlier in the back room. It is an accelerating process, and the accelerator is pushed in the wrong direction. A stake, by definition, is approximately 2,500 warm bodies. They don’t have to be active in the Church. There have to be enough of them active that they can adequately staff the ward and stake apparatus, ok? So every increase of 2,500—if you were at least hanging on to them so that you knew where they were and they acknowledged that they were LDS even if they weren’t showing up—that should give you one stake. In the 1990s, you had to have twice that number to get one stake. In the most recent decade, you have had to have four times that number to get one stake. And those numbers you can pull directly out of the Church Almanac. But they don’t know that; if they knew it, they probably wouldn’t publish them. But those are hard numbers to hide from, because all you need to do is take the total membership number and the delta of stakes since the previous year, and you’ve got it. … If you were identifying all of your converts so that you knew where they were, and they at least identified that they were LDS, you would get one out of every 2,500. Now you’re getting one out of every 10,000. So that tells you right off the bat that three-fourths of what you call ‘increase’ is gone—you can’t even find them—and then of the remaining one-fourth, half of that will be inactive. (Sorry, ‘less active’.) And when you consider that that delta in total membership includes baptism of children of record, who are more likely to stay, then it’s an easy triangulation to say we’re probably keeping one out of every ten converts as an active church member. That’s not a very good track record. I don’t know who would really be confronted with those numbers and claim victory.”

What My Generation of Mormon Thinkers Has Accomplished

Ephraim Ericksen, a Mormon philosopher for whom an endowed chair is named at the University of Utah, wrote in his landmark doctoral dissertation in the 20s of three great challenges that Mormonism had faced or would face. The first was “Us vs. Them”, and although its most daunting times were in the 19th century, parts of that challenge continue to this day.

The second was “Us vs. Nature: The Colonization of the Great Basin”.

The third, and most crucial for today’s Church, as he recognized, is “Us vs. Us”, as we struggle internally to make the Church work for members of all stripes. It is in this third area that this generation, which I define to include people older than myself whom I have known, has made its most important contributions, a few of which I name briefly.

First, the establishment of a tradition of thoughtfulness. Not a loyal opposition, but instead an effort by those wired different than the majority to make this religion work for themselves. Though there were many casualties, enough stayed the course to let us know that it is possible.

Second, dissemination of that tradition through independent publications, some of which have endured, while others have faded. Dialogue was the first, followed by Exponent II, Sunstone, Courage, The Carpenter, The Journal of Mormon History, the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, Irreantum, Segullah, Element, AMCAP, Mormon Historical Studies and other print publications, and more recently the explosion of online journals and blogs.

And third, movement on important issues because of smart and courageous work. In particular, Juanita Brooks’s book on the Mountain Meadows Massacre paved the way for the final exorcism of ghosts that had haunted the Church for a century and a half. And Lester Bush’s monograph on blacks and Priesthood helped to change the Church and allow it to become truly worldwide.

I’m not sure how typical my experience in this regard is, but I grew up understanding that Satan wasn’t particularly powerful. I recall clearly a lesson as a young boy where the teacher told us we had more power in one finger than Satan would ever have, because he didn’t have a physical body. Yet it’s not hard to find rhetoric from church leaders that grant the Devil great powers. “How cunning and sneaky and intelligent he is!”, they sometimes say. “He knows every trick in the book and has refined his trade for millennia. He has at his disposal a great part of the hosts of heaven that rebelled at the beginning in the War in Heaven.”

You see, on some days I find it hard enough to summon belief in a God that intervenes in my life. So get in line, Lucifer. I’ve got much bigger fish to fry. At the moment I keep my beliefs pretty simple. I don’t feel inclined to acquire belief in a devil figure, whether he’s a mythological figure with cloven hooves, horns, a tail and red skin, or the more traditional Mormon character that’s a spirit in the form of a human, or Will Ferrell dressed in red and exchanging killer guitar songs for people’s souls. I think that mankind is good enough at finding evil on its own, thank you very much. What’s the point in believing in a Devil?

Sometimes a church leader will bear testimony of Satan—his reality and his power. This unsettles me, because it seems like it gives him more power than he would otherwise have. Some might say that Satan has even more power over me because he’s able to tempt me and influence me behind my back, while I’m completely oblivious to the strings he’s pulling. As Baudelaire famously said, “the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!” Perhaps. Or perhaps my skepticism in the existence of a Devil ensures that no such being has influence over me.

Terryl Givens, one of my favorite Mormon thinkers, explained in his interview with Mormon Stories why he thinks that faith must be a reasonable choice and why it matters what we choose to place our faith in. He said:

…faith is what operates or what unfolds in a middle ground, between the compulsion to affirm and the compulsion to deny. And I believe that God has structured our lives here on this Earth in such a way that, when it comes to those issues of eternal import, we have to be free to affirm or to deny. And therefore, there has to be a balance of evidence, both for the veracity of the Gospel, and against it. It’s essential to God’s divine purposes, and to the flowering of freedom itself, I believe, that there have to be compelling reasons to reject the Book of Mormon, to reject Joseph as a prophet, to reject the existence of God Himself. But they have to exist alongside compelling reasons to affirm those things. Only in those circumstances can we call upon our will and choose to believe or not to believe. And I think in those moments, our choice reflects the most important things about us: our souls, what we love, what is it that we choose to affirm.

What Givens says here really resonates with me. My choice regarding the ideas in which I place my faith reflects the most important things about me. Under this paradigm, what possible reason would I have for wanting to believe in a Devil? Why would anyone want to believe in such a being?