If you’ve come to my blog for any length of time, you know that I complain a LOT. I find that the world is neither fair nor just. As a consequence of my consternation, my friends who actually know me come to me frequently and suggest that I either find a new Faith or start my own. Well-meaning though their suggestions may be, they ignore certain fundamental principles and ask me to throw away experiences and knowledge I possess in the pursuit of something more fitting. Faith for me isn’t like shopping for shoes, where you find out what the dimensions are and then try things on until you find something comfortable. Years ago I told the first such person to suggest I found “The Church of Thom and Doug” and invite people to join ME that I would not presume to form my own church. You see, I have never been asked, ordained, or called of God to start a church; He’s already done that. No man taketh this honour unto himself save he is called of God as was Aaron. I actually started writing this post on 10 August, almost exactly one week before the leadership of my Faith asked us not to use the nickname for our Faith anymore. Despite the fact that the name of Jesus Christ appears literally in the name of my Faith, on our buildings, on our nametags, and on our literature, all of my life people have considered me to be something other than Christian. If you have ever read anything on this blog for any period of time, you know that, although I might not belong to the Christian Faith with which you identify, and even if you disagree with my opinions, actions, or writings, I’m at least looking for the Christ and trying to serve Him.
Faith isn’t comfortable. From the very earliest times among believers after Jesus returned to His father, members of the church were mockingly called “Christians”. Although that titular nome de plume now unites us in our love, gratitude, and longing for the Savior Christ, at one time, it was used as to deride the “kooks” who listened to Paul, Peter, and the Apostles. Over the ages, God’s people have always been mocked. Elisha was mocked for being bald. David was mocked by Goliath for being small. Joseph was punished by Potiphar’s jealous wife when he rebuffed her invitation to biblically know her. The people laughed at Noah as he built an ark. Even the believers in Israel murmured in the Sinai when they ran out of food and water and exclaimed that it might have been better to remain in bondage in Egypt. In modernity, members of my Faith have been mocked by derisive terms for things we believe. We are in good company. It is natural to lionize what you prefer and paint your challengers in caricature. It is however not Christian to do so. People seem to automatically assume that 1. They know what I believe and that 2. My beliefs are incongruous with theirs even though they have never bothered to find out what I believe. When I invite them to come and see, instead they mock and flee. Very few people with whom I have ever discussed my Faith still even acknowledge my existence. Even women who betimes found me attractive found my religious beliefs to be a deal breaker.
The challenges of faith and the assault on people of faith makes some reticent to declare themselves believers. That’s also not new. Even Simon Peter thrice denied that he knew Jesus. Some of them put on their Faith like a jacket when it’s convenient or treat the dogma like it’s a buffet from which they can take only the parts they personally prefer. The wicked man changes the laws to match his behavior; the righteous man changes his behavior to match the Law. Every religion suffers from the neer-do-wells found on its rolls. We are told not to judge a group by the few dissidents and miscreants, but when someone from a religion does those who lecture us some ill, they find us all guilty by association. Most people don’t like to discuss religion for fear of losing friends as I have. Most people don’t want to be persecuted or prosecuted for having a different faith. The truth is that this is always and will always be the case. Jesus himself taught that (Matt 5:12) ”Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you”. More often than not, when people find out my Faith, they are no longer excited to discuss it with me or open to my opinions and interpretations. As I wrote elsewhere, it is not the message but the messenger with whom they take exception. My testimony and opinion is tainted because I am not of a Faith they acknowledge. That’s common too.
Unfortunately, many people, when challenged, either leave their Faith or abandon faith entirely. I have been challenged too. During my sophomore year of high school, a young man at school a certain classmate of mine we’ll call Richard sought me out at school. He was learned and well spoken. He was a known and powerful member of the debate team. For some reason, he studied Faiths even though he didn’t believe in religion himself. One day, he sought me out with the intent I see clearly now to shake me from my faith. In the course of our conversation, he concluded for those who listened that since I didn’t have clear and cognizant answers it was because there were none. In truth now, I realize that he spent hours, days, or even months preparing his diatribe and then, when I could not answer to a parallel degree of articulation to his satisfaction within seconds declared himself the winner. At the time, all I knew is that when he finished, I had questions I could not answer, so I went to my bishop and I confessed my sins. All of them. I wrote them down on a legal notepad like when I took cookies from the sheet that were for some activity or lying to my brother about who really busted his bicycle. You see, I knew that, if I wanted answers, clarity, and help from God, then I needed to get right by him. Instead, my bishop glanced at the multitudinous pages briefly, then slid the pad back to me and told me he wasn’t worried. He told me that people who have doubts don’t usually repent; they rebel. They conclude that if God doesn’t answer them in full and within a certain time frame that there must not be one or that He must not care. Since that day, I’ve been attacked MANY times, but I have never left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because He approves of its message. I still have issues, and I still speak out against malversation in leadership, but I remember that the prophets of old were people too, and so as long as there are men in positions of church leadership men will make mistakes, and I should keep in mind that God is as willing to forgive them as He is willing to forgive me. I don’t think I ever came up with proper rebuttals to Richard, but in time I felt ever more powerfully that I was doing God’s work, in harmony with His laws, and a member of a church He recognizes.
Faith isn’t easy. Many members of churches struggle both keeping the Faith as well as explaining it to others. Moreover, many people with whom you worship don’t share your Faith. Some of them come for optics; others come to please their spouse. More than you think are actually adrift, hoping to find answers and feeling they receive none at all. I find it somewhat paradoxical that when people want to learn about my Faith they turn to people who were never members or people who are former members rather than asking a member in good standing. That’s sort of like a potential girlfriend asking my ex-wife for an objective description of me as a potential mate. Even if you do ask a member in good standing, many people of faith are miseducated or undereducated. The only real textbooks for faith are books of scripture, which are often difficult to read and even more difficult to comprehend without inspiration, revelation, and study. Learning about and keeping your Faith requires work. Living your faith asks you to do something which demands more of you than the world and invites their ridicule. Often you will have to abstain from foods or drink, avoid certain activities at least for certain time periods, offer up your substance to the church or the poor, and sacrifice your weekend for worship and service. Always, you will be asked to consider others before yourself- your wife, your children, your fellow congregants, your community, and your God, which runs contrary to the instinctual inclinations of our species. Constantly, people of no faith wage a frontal assault on your faith, unjustly and illegitimately assailing you for failure to perfectly live a standard they refuse to even attempt. Faith asks you to walk by faith in a world governed by sight, to filter out the voices and elevate your choices. Faith means trusting even when it seems that you’re wrong and sticking fast to your decisions in the face of regular and lasting opposition, trial, and error. Living your belief demands that you prove every minute of every hour of every day that you mean it.
If you attempt to live your faith, be prepared for assaults on it when you either come up short or God appears to. One of my heroes in the Old Testament is Queen Esther. Although she never aspired to the monarchy (her uncle had to convince her to audition to be queen), her position put her into a predicament. When Haaman proposed to slaughter all Jews, Mordecai asked her to appeal to the king for clemency. However, if you went to the king without being asked, the king could kill you. Esther ran the risk of coming up short. She might die no matter what, so Mordecai, knowing this, wrote to her “Who knoweth but that thou hast come into the kingdom for a time such as this?” Ultimately Esther found favor with the king, saved her people, and lived in prosperity for her faithfulness. That’s not always the case. I know that I have come up short because of my Faith. Some women literally tell me they refuse to date me, be my friend, or acknowledge my existence because of my Faith. I suspect that some challenges I face at work, in the community, in academics, in applications, and in other relationships stem from the same bias and bigotry. I have actually been physically beaten because of my Faith. I have been imprisoned. I have been given extra fines/penalties. I am weighed, measured and found wanting. Even among my own congregants, many of them think I come up short for their expectations. I keep trying, because I agree with CS Lewis that “He [God] wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles” (The Screwtape Letters #8).
God appears to come up short in the eyes of many detractors. Far too many people of faith, when they pray and beg and plead and even live worthy of blessings conclude that when the blessings don’t come or don’t come when or how they prefer that there must not be a God. The devil likes to preach “heads I win, tails you lose” and convince people that things that happen would have happened anyway and that failure of events to transpire our way evinces that there is no God. This must have been a problem among early Christians, because Paul wrote to the Hebrews who converted to Christianity: (Heb 10:35-36) “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” God’s promises are not always swift, but they are certain. Sometimes the test of faith is to wait. I wonder how long Elijah lived by the brook Kidron, how Joshua felt about being one of the only males to make it to Israel after 40 years in the wilderness, or how Samuel’s mom felt when Eli told her that God would grant her petition at the temple after praying so long for a son. I know that Naaman was absolutely furious when the prophet told him to bathe in the Jordan River to cure his leprosy. I know that Gideon wasn’t sure 300 men would be enough to drive back Midian’s army. Imagine the Philistines looking at the boy David chosen as the Jewish champion to fight Goliath. Many times what God does, when He does it, and how He does it makes no sense to us until long after the fact. When you don’t get what you think you deserve the way you think you deserve it, it’s tempting to despair and abandon faith and your Faith. Cast not away therefore your confidence; if it was right to leave Egypt then, it’s still correct that we did so now.
Faith is personal, and so is revelation. Many of my experiences with faith and revelation are deeply personal, so much so that I share them with few people. What God says to me, how I feel about it, and how He feels about me is between Him and me. My state of grace is nobody else’s business but mine and nobody’s to decide but Father God. Faith has however been important to me all my life. From a very young age, my parents taught me about God, encouraged me to pray to Him and helped me desire a relationship with Him. Eventually, I found both reason and opportunity to do so. I first came to feel of God cognizant as a small child. Based on where we were living, I was 8-10 years of age when one day I crawled into the cave beneath the entryway in our split level entry to pour out my soul hoping there was a God to hear me. At the time, I foolishly thought I was alone and unloved; boy how untrue that seems now. I forget exactly how I felt or what I experienced, but from that day to this I have known with surety that there is a God. By the time I was 14, I knew that He approved of my particular Faith. At 18 I went forth to minister and preach in a foreign land. To this day, I see His hand in my life, hear His voice in my mind, speak on His behalf in my vocation, and feel of His approbation when I serve in His stead. I feel as His apostles did after Jesus announced He would no longer literally feed the throngs following Him after which “said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life (John 6:67-68)”. Where would I go? Here I find the power and doctrine that keeps my life and keeps it near harmony with God’s will.
God speaks to you in a way you understand. He knows you, and He knows what to say to you that will come across the way that makes sense to you even if other people disagree with your interpretation or think you’re nuts. While serving as a missionary in Austria, Elder Neal Maxwell, one of our apostles, spoke to missionaries about revelation. He told us to stop reading scripture in our mission language and read it in our native tongue because God will speak to you in your native tongue so that there is no misunderstanding. The gift of tongues is for the benefit of other people so that they understand what God would have them hear if you are sent as speaker. I sometimes chuckle at the words that come into my mind when I pray, because my vocabulary varies widely from yours. God likes to use words in my mind that He would probably not use for you because He knows what meaning I associate with them. Words connote and denote different things to different people. That’s why it’s important not only to pray but to listen and then record the promptings, impressions, and thoughts that come. Those are for YOU. He will say different things to other people, because they have different understandings, biases, experiences, perspectives, and needs. Sometimes the counsel is general. More often than not, His messages are catered to you. It’s not like He hits “Reply all” and spams us with exactly the selfsame message. That’s lazy and it’s not evincing of a loving God who knows you.
As the prophets before have written, I invite and entice you to come unto God, learn of Him, and deny yourself of all unrighteousness. Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the son of God, and the fullness of my intent is that I may persuade all men to come to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and be saved. I spent two years as a younger man witnessing of Him abroad. From time to time I do so here. I invite you to learn about what I believe, because living my beliefs has made me the man I am. If you find anything about it of good report or praiseworthy, come and join us, even if just for a season.
At the end of the day, if your Faith has not brought you to Christ, it matters very little what Faith you adopt. I try not to claim that I’m a paragon, that I’m a good example to follow, or that I have all the answers. If I ever did that, I apologize, because I have need of a Savior just as much as all of you. Sometimes people tell me that I’m hard on myself or critical of myself; I try to be honest on this blog, but I am also intimately familiar with my weaknesses, and so I know I am imperfect. I mean, I know that I’m awesome, and I also know I have much to learn, much to change, and a great deal of growth before I would ever suggest you follow my lead. Honestly, I’m willing to chronicle my tale so that you can learn to be wiser than I. Come and let us learn of Him together, worship Him with true intent, and be open to His direction and correction. I may not have all the answers, but I know who does. I challenge you to ask God, who giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not to seek truth, guidance, and correction from Him, without bias or ulterior motive. I promise you that if you diligently seek Him, you will find peace in this life and eternal happiness in the life to come.
My name is Doug, and I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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