To Those Questioning the Church Based on Its History

(also written as an email to a family member)

We had a good lesson on First Corinthians in Church on Sunday.

Basically, God's wisdom is not our wisdom and trying to understand it as such could be our downfall.

I don't think it's wrong by any means to try to understand Church history, under the following parameters:

1.  We acknowledge that there is no way for us to understand perfectly what happened  (as we were discussing the other day).  We will never know exactly what happened behind closed doors in the 1800s, and I don't believe even corroborating first person accounts can be relied upon given the reasons so many people had for conspiring to make things up.  And in the case of the early church, yes I am something of a conspiracy theorist, but that's neither here nor there:  accept we will never in this life know exactly what took place, what the exact motives were, or what people were thinking.

2.  We acknowledge that even if we DO think we have at least a pretty good grasp on what happened (given that there are certain indisputable facts, and then given that we think we have the rest at least 80% correct), we do not possess God's wisdom so we can't understand the motives. If we accept that we CAN'T understand the events with God's wisdom, but we enjoy researching, pondering, grappling with the ideas, then fine, do it.  If we however do NOT enjoy these things, and researching, pondering, grappling with ideas instead brings us to tears and makes us depressed, and ruins a culture/religion for us that we otherwise enjoy, then perhaps we should not try to understand certain aspects, since, as I mentioned above, we're not going to get it anyway.

I think the Gospel has set the precedent on multiple occasions that we are meant to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, and that God unfolds his wisdom a little at a time.  Intelligence has always been held from us, partly because our human minds can't comprehend it, but mostly because it wasn't his plan for us to know.

Bringing us back to Faith (and to Moroni's promise).

We can simply pray and ask, a la Moroni's promise, but to be honest, I am not to that point in what I consider to be my own "lifelong member" version of conversion.  For me, for now, it is more a matter of Faith, of relying on my own intuition--or maybe that's the Spirit...  If I feel good at Church, if somewhere in my heart I love the Gospel, if I trust the testimonies of others, I think for now perhaps that's my answer without pinning everything on an "all or nothing" prayer.  I Believe in the Gospel and in Jesus Christ, and so I choose to believe his Prophets.  This takes immense Faith and Trust because I am believing that what the Church has shared with us about the Restoration and early Church History is true to the extent of their knowledge.  I'm also trusting that if God thought we should know more, he would let it be known through his Prophets and on to us.  

I choose to believe this.  I also happen to believe that there's plenty he could potentially clear up, but that we make our own messes and he lets us sort through it and deal with it ourselves since it is not Essential to Our Salvation.   Once again, back to Sunday school answers, stick to the issues essential to our salvation, which are all laid out pretty darn clear.

I like to share my feelings because my heart goes out to those questioning the Church because I understand.  At some point, however, I do think one has to Choose Faith, because the straightforward answers a historian might yearn for simply are not there (at least in my opinion).  Look at the mess in the history of the Catholic church--there's all kinds of bizzarro stuff that we consider as fact, and even more weird and disgusting rumors that we can today simply only speculate about (i.e. the Borgias).  And yet so many Catholics choose to believe...and we can too.  And yes, I believe our religion has many more legs to stand on than Catholicism.  And in my heart I believe that it might even be true--this is certainly my greatest hope.  There are certainly way more good and positive and miraculous things in the history of the Church (and in our own lives) that would have to be explained away to prove that it was a farce than there are negative or hard-to-understand things that we need to accept (or not think about) in order to make room for Belief.  The Church blesses my life, and I choose to believe.