This I Believe
By Rory on May 9, 2007
I enjoy listening to the This I Believe segment on National Public Radio. If you haven’t heard it before, you can see an archive here.
What strikes me about these essays is their positive nature, with the authors stating what they do believe. It seems that we, in this community, struggle sometimes to share our beliefs in a positive, affirming nature. Often we fall into juxtaposing our personal beliefs against a particular doctrine or cultural belief – “I’m Mormon, but I don’t necessarily believe or agree with…”
I’m curious. What do you believe? I’ll start with a small essay:
I believe in taking the long view.
I’m grateful for the way my family raised me, for their example in facing adversities in life with a stoic resolve and indomitable spirit. I witnessed my father experience several setbacks, but each time, despite the stresses and the uncertainty, he would shrug off the problems he had no control over and redouble his efforts to solve those he could. It was an example that has served me well as I face my own challenges in this life.
This belief in taking the long view is supported by a belief in God informed by the history of nature, a history of natural processes and evolutionary changes on a grand scale. In the words of John Polkinghorne, a quantum physicist turned Anglican priest:
…God is not in a hurry. That’s clear. God is patient and subtle. God works through process and not through magic; not through snapping the divine fingers… That’s what we learn from seeing the history of creation as science has revealed it.
This belief in the long view extends into one of the doctrines I am drawn to – eternal progression. I like the concept of an eternity to grow, to improve, to get it right. I cling to subtle references to such a future, references like the first edition of Talmage’s Articles of Faith, wherein he touches on the idea of progression within and between the kingdoms.
This belief in the long view also influences my concept of the atonement, as I lean toward the idea of a moral atonement that inspires me to be better, to reach higher, and away from a magical day when I get a pass. I want to grow, I want the experiences, I want the responsibility. I actually quite enjoy it, lumps and all.
So, I believe in taking the long view, in being patient, and in having a quiet faith and confidence in my ability to face the challenges and obstacles of life. And when the day comes where I can no longer face challenges in this life, I fully expect – or hope – that I may continue to face them in the next. Such is the long view.
What do you believe?
Thank you for this thread, Rory! I acknowledge being among those who have been less than positive in my view of our culture and society, so I welcome the opportunity to rectify that a bit.
I believe I chose to be born into a challenged family, where my father (this time around) was an illegal alien refugee from the Russian Revolution-Civil war of 1917, and my mother (this time around) was a descendant of Mormon pioneers. This unlikely union was further complicated by the fact that my chosen father was himself a fatherless boy soldier and thus missed a loving, structured upbringing. He had to learn to fend from himself to survive. Regarding my chosen mother, she also became fatherless when her father was murdered before her teens, over complications with roots in illegal polygamy.
My challenge in this life has been to find truth and meaning within the context of such a traumatic parental background, which was never talked about as I grew up in an apparently typical Mormon community. The church structure became the lifeline for this dysfunctional, unconscious family. Finding the God of Love within a family ruled by the God of Judgment and Condemnation has been my primary challenge.
After 73 years, it has been an exhilarating, exasperating, traumatic, surprising, amazing and increasingly wonderful ride. And it is getting more interesting and meaningful all the time! I have found the God of Love.
Comment # 1 by Eugene Kovalenko | May 9, 2007 | Reply
Five or six years ago, I participated in the recurring Sunstone session series, “My Creed.” In my remarks then, I led with the statement, “God is not a jerk.” It was my far less eloquent way of stating what I once heard attributed to Lowell Bennion (but could never find the reference for) to the effect that baseline, God is “at least as good as the best person I know.”
A year or so ago, Phil McLemore, in his Sunstone article “Mormon Mantras” offered what he called his “Lowell Bennion mantra” (for he’d adapted it from a statement in Bennion’s book, I Believe): “I am not bound to accept anything that is contrary to the character and attributes manifested in Jesus.”
This same starting point of trust in God’s loving character, which allows me to cut through all the noise of claims about God’s actions and motives that in no way seem godlike to me, has continued to be the bottom line conviction that orients my life. For shorthand these days, I generally now turn to the simple exchange in John 14 in which Philip asks Jesus to show the disciples the Father, and Jesus replies simply that if we’ve seen him, we’ve seen the Father (verse 9). If God the Father is even close to the kind of God I meet in Jesus, I can trust in that God. And I do trust who I meet in Jesus.
A very moving statement of conviction in this same vein comes in the following excerpt from Dorothy Solle’s poem, “Revolutionary Patience”:
I don’t as they put it believe in god
but to him I cannot say no hard as I try
take a look at him in the garden
when his friends ran out on him
his face wet with fear
and with the spit of his enemies
him I have to believe
Him I cannot bear to abandon
to the great disregard for life
to the monotonous passing of millions of years
to the moronic rhythm of work leisure and work
to the boredom we fail to dispel
in cars in beds in stores
That’s how it is the say, what do you want
Uncertain and not uncritically
I subscribe to the other hypothesis
which is his story
that not how it is he said for god is
and he staked his life on this claim
Thinking about it I find
one cannot let him pay alone
for his hypothesis
so I believe him about
god
The way one believes another’s laughter
his tears
or marriage or no for an answer
that’s how you’ll learn
to believe him about life
promised to all
Comment # 2 by Dan | May 10, 2007 | Reply
Nice post.
“This I Believe” could have been the title of the 1.5 hour interview I had with my bishop two nights ago in his office. First, let me state that I probably have the coolest bishop who ever donned the mantle. He was very interested in talking about what I believed. I kept it as positive as possible, focusing on the many beliefs we shared in common. If there were two “themes” that kept popping up over and over again during that interview, the first would be my dogged belief in taking “the long view,” and the second was my high degree of comfort liviing with “ambiguity.” Though it may seem counterintuitive, ambiguity often brings issues into sharper focus than clarity.
Comment # 3 by Matt Thurston | May 10, 2007 | Reply
This is cheating a bit, but below is the written version of something I presented at the sunstone symposium a while back (that is southern for two or three years ago).
My experiences, or at least my interpretation of my experiences have led me to formulate my own articles of belief. I believe that life has a plot—life is trying to take us some place. I believe life is a mystery, and one of the greatest mysteries is the mystery of faith, which allows us to step into the unknown, to trust God by trusting ourselves. I believe that having too many answers puts us to sleep and we neglect the important questions. I believe that we should allow our questions to take us wherever they take us.
I believe doubt is an honored part of faith. I believe that the Lord will reveal to me, rather than to others, how I should serve. I believe in community, like this assembly, where people voluntarily come together to worship, believing they have some say in the way the program is administered.
Comment # 4 by Parker | May 11, 2007 | Reply
I choose to believe (having no compelling evidence one way or the other) that there is more in heaven and earth than reason can know.
I conclude (by means of a ridiculously Rube Goldberg riff on Pascal’s Wager, which I won’t bother reproducing here) that the only one of the countless theoretically possible metaphysical entities worth giving any thought, is a benevolent God.
I conclude that I necessarily must always have an uncertain understanding of God, despite my best efforts. But I sense peculiar impressions when I hear certain things attributed to him. I choose to believe (again, the evidence being inconclusive either way) that these impressions originate from outside myself, and may guide me in my search for the truth of God.
Those are my basic assumptions. I believe that what is properly called faith is best used only for the great questions that reason cannot answer. It is not “faith” to say we believe something, when we are fairly convinced that it is not. But faith is literally the only way we access the things hoped for and not seen. Once we take the foundational leap of faith in the existence of a loving God, our reason is allowed to play on fields that are closed to reason if we had not leaped. Faith gets us across the veil — but then study needs to kick back in, and we are under a duty to use our best rational judgment in discerning what is consistent with the divine goodness we have exercised faith in.
I believe that all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
I believe that this “one word” is perfectly exemplified, and actually given life that can be put into our hearts, by the Savior. I believe that Jesus Christ truly does redeem us, working a steady change in our hearts as we draw near to him. That change goes beyond mere motivation by good advice — it is God working in us, something independent of ourselves, and it is real.
I believe that a teaching that God requires obedience to commandments that are not materially connected with this basic teaching — which subsumes the whole law — is a waste of the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. I believe we ought to obey God rather than men. I believe it follows from this that while ordinances, Sabbath and Word of Wisdom observance, tithing, and so forth may be useful symbols of our commitment to obey God and aids in remembering him, their observance or omission has no inherent bearing on God’s regard for us.
(There, I said it. That’s my biggest heresy. Book of Mormon/Book of Abraham quibbles are trivial compared to that.)
I believe that the teaching that Saints will be blessed for following their leaders, even if they know they are being asked to do something wrong, goes beyond innocent error into outright unrighteousness. I believe the only proper response of a true Saint at Mountain Meadows to the order “Do your duty!” would have been to shoot down the man giving the order — priesthood leader or not — and take the consequences.
It follows that I believe that the Church’s priesthood authority is something a bit different from what others believe. Since I believe ordinances are essentially symbolic, I question whether “authority,” in the sense of “binding on earth as in heaven,” is actually necessary. Instead, I believe that the Church’s authority is something similar to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church: I believe the Church has, in fact, been assigned a specific teaching mission by the Lord. I believe it has a special role to play in preserving faith on the earth, and its authority lies in its calling to perform this mission.
That’s what I believe.
Comment # 5 by Thomas | May 11, 2007 | Reply
Wow, Thomas, very well said. I believe that too.
Comment # 6 by Matt Thurston | May 11, 2007 | Reply
Great post and responses. Here is what I believe (and as I’ve re-read this and thought about it, I realized I believe them in this order of importance, the most important at the top):
I believe that thinking is really good but not as important as doing - as in, I spend too much time thinking about what is right and wrong and true and false and not enough time doing right things like helping people, and spending time with family and friends. I believe that works are really important.
I believe in life after death and that relationships are eternal.
I believe that my salvation is connected to Christ (I’d really like to learn more about the moral atonement theory you mention, Rory) and that it is good to be a follower of Christ.
I believe that there is something divinely feminine in the grand scheme of deity. I think that probably means two seperate beings (Heavenly Father and Mother), but I’m not positive. I believe that it is ok for me to relate better to God the Mother figure than God the Father figure.
I believe that Joseph Smith experienced something incredibly divine as a result of his desires for truth and that I can learn from his experiences and his life.
Comment # 7 by Elise Eggett Johnson | May 12, 2007 | Reply
Excellent posts. I’m new here, and am extremely happy to have found you all…finally.
I believe that every single human being on this planet is a child of god (whomever or whatever that god may be). I believe that every single human being on this planet has access to this god, through his/her built in spirituality.
I believe that the religions of the world represent our best efforts as a species, as humanity, to approach god in our daily lives. I also believe that some of our best efforts have been pretty poor to start with or were overrun with the concerns and desires of men.
I cant accept that there is only ONE correct way to approach god, and ONE correct way to live, across all cultures and all continents. I find this belief leads to arrogance, intolerance, and a general lack of critical thinking. To quote Karen Armstrong, this kind of thinking can “encourage people to think that it is not necessary to apply normal standards of decency and rationality to behavior supposedly inspired by “God”. Karen Armstrong - A History of God p. 394
I believe that while there are many churches and cultures, this one is mine. It is the tradition and gift, handed down to me from my ancestors, people who sacrificed a great deal for it.
I believe that as inheritor of this tradition, it is my duty to apply rational thinking to it, and to not allow the shrill voice of intolerance to overrun the true purpose of the church.
I, like Thomas in the post above, believe that the message of Jesus Christ in its entirety is compassion and love for our fellow beings. So simple.
I believe that we as a people need to let go of our belief that we, and only we are special in the eyes of god, and that we, and only we, are living in the right way, and that we, and only we, have the truth.
I believe that all of humankind needs to discard that belief, and respect and honor the traditions of others. “Love thy neighbor as thyself”.
And finally, I believe that the rites and rituals of the church are important, not in the literal sense, but in the symbolic sense - in the end the details matter little. What matters is what they teach us in the end. They are they ferries to the shore of the island of human spirtuality. Its humankind’s island, and this is our particular ferry.
Comment # 8 by Boyd | May 31, 2007 | Reply
Here is something in addition to my first comment that deeply I believe. I read it only a few days ago and for me it has the weight of modern scripture. It also brought to mind a better understanding of the ancient scripture “…and a little child shall lead them” [Isaiah 11:16].
Love is a natural emotion. When it is allowed to be expressed, and received, by a child, normally and naturally, without limitation or condition, inhibition or embarrassment, it does not require any thing more. For the joy of love expressed and received in this way is sufficient unto itself. Yet love which has been conditioned, limited, warped by rules and regulations, rituals and restrictions, controlled, manipulated, and withheld, becomes unnatural.
Children who are made to feel that their natural love is not okay–that it is wrong to express it, and, in fact, that they shouldn’t even experience it–will have a difficult time appropriately dealing with love as adults.
Love that is continually repressed becomes possessiveness, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of possessiveness. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
And so it is that the natural emotions, when repressed, produce repressed unnatural reactions and responses. And most natural emotions are repressed in most people. Yet these are your friends. These are your gifts. These are your divine tools, with which to craft your experience.
You were given these tools at birth. They are to help you negotiate life.
[CWG, Book 3, p 439.]
Comment # 9 by Eugene Kovalenko | Jun 2, 2007 | Reply