Lifting too soon.
Why some Latter-Day Saints are leaving their church.
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I am impressed at the weight some people can bench press. At the extreme, the world record is 1320-pounds, which is a little over six times my current body weight!
Apparently, for most newcomers, aiming to lift your own bodyweight is a good starting goal. It’s been too long since I lifted weights so I couldn’t tell you if I could bench press 214-pounds today. But it’s more than just being able to lift the weight, there’s also technique.
I am not a weightlifter, but I could join a gym today and attempt to benchpress 200-pounds straight away… and I’d be a fool to try for two reasons. First I don’t know the techniques for lifting safely, and second, I’m just not strong enough. I might be able to do one rep but I’d likely tear or damage something in the process.
People who are able to benchpress heavy weights have paid a price of practice and persistence in order to do so, I have not. Fooling around bench pressing would likely lead to injury.
I have seen people leave The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because of questions about doctrine, history or policy.
I have wondered if perhaps too many people try to lift questions they are not trained or strong enough to answer…yet. I am not advocating brushing aside questions, or pretending they don’t matter, because they do. Asking questions is what leads to truth and knowledge.
But we need to stop walking into the spiritual gym believing we can pick up any question we please without consequence. If we try to lift a question without the technique or the strength to do so, we are likely to injure ourselves and kick ourselves out of the church of Jesus Christ.
We have to first pay a price. We need to show up every day and practice the basics of prayer, scripture study, obedience, fasting and temple attendance. Once we are doing this, we need to start with the first and basic questions first.
I believe the most fundamental question every Latter-Day Saint must answer is this, was the man named Jesus the literal Son of God. If we haven’t answered this question, all the other questions about policy, history and doctrine are literally irrelevant.
If we don’t believe in Jesus Christ, how could The Church of Jesus Christ possibly be His church? How could Joseph Smith have seen a being we don’t believe even exists? How could The Book of Mormon be another testament of a being we don’t believe is real?
Until we have answered and have settled in our minds whether of not Jesus Christ lived, died and was resurrected, we are literally wasting our time on questions that are irrelevant or pointless.
Once we have decided that Jesus really does live and loves us, then we can ask the secondary questions of whether or not we believe he appeared in the woods of upstate New York in 1820 with his father, or established his church on the earth, or caused The Book of Mormon to be translated.
Once we have these questions firmly settled, perhaps only then can we even begin to consider lifting those questions regarding the messy history, or painful policies, or difficult doctrine.
I am not saying we should never ask or discuss such questions, but that we must do things in wisdom and order. We must pay a price of practice and persistence first or else we run the risk of spiritual injury. We must learn the techniques, develop our spiritual muscles and build up to them.
Some might argue that I am afraid to explore certain questions, and they’d be right. I am scared… of hurting myself spiritually. My faith is precious to me and I am nurturing it, strengthening it and developing it. As a result, I have been able to lift some of the questions that have caused friends to quit coming.
But I am not foolish enough to believe that I am currently able to lift every question in the figurative spiritual gym. I spend most of my time working on the primary and secondary questions and when required, I tackle some of those tertiary questions too. But I am not interested in lifting questions I know I am not strong enough yet to answer.
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Hey Matt!
Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts on this. Your analogy really made me think back.
My experience with having questions about the church at all stages of testimony has been more like training for the bench press, lifting just fine but not knowing how to put the weights down safely. Knowing that if I try to lay them down, I’ll end up hurting myself in the process. Needing a little help here and there and using recommended, experienced people/resources to guide me through.
I guess with practice I did get better at laying them down more gently, but the weights kept coming and got heavier until there was no technique I could safely use to escape the hurt that came when they landed.
I really trained hard, and I was sincere in wanting to believe and cultivate my faith. But I truly believe that when your conscience is in jeopardy and the pain keeps coming, you have to know when to walk away from the bench. Not because you haven’t worked incredibly hard and been extremely vigilant and faithful, but because you realise it’s all lies and your world has collapsed.
Huge respect to you for knowing where your limits and boundaries are. That will serve you and your family well.
All of the very best x