Evolving in the Gospel as an Alternative to Apostasy

The Servant
Sep 3, 2018 · 7 min read

I recently read an article discussing the works of Vaclav Smil. So many parts of it ring true to my experience and the conclusions life has lead me to.

Smil says…“Confusing models with reality is a cardinal sin of clear thinking. If you believe too strongly in your models of the world, you can start to ignore evidence that your model is wrong.”

While some may apply this principal to contemporary cultural debates, I apply it to all of the internal models of gospel living that I have previously held that have proven to be inadequate, immature, partial or wrong.

I have learned and unlearned all of these things while a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and never seen the rational for leaving the church, blaming my misunderstandings on the church, expecting the church to be full of fully evolved Christians, or going on a crusade to uncover all of the possible flaws that exist within the church.

I have learned how important my own experience and ability to think and draw conclusions about what makes sense is to my spiritual evolution. I don’t just accept all of the cultural fads and norms and behaviors common in the church. At the same time, I am ever unwilling to believe that I know much about anything. This leads me to crave and seek input from my wise, genius, loving, billion year old(+) Heavenly Father. And I get it. It is these epiphanies that light my way.

What I have just described is what might be labeled “faith and humility” in church. It is faithful to marshal all of our own intellectual energy and experience to try to ascertain truth and not just follow the crowd. It is humble to realize that, although I may have read 5 or 10 or 50 books on doctrine or church history, or apolagetics, my Heavenly Father is only about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 trillion years older than me and it is really Him that I need to defer to and focus on getting information from.

Sometimes I hear the question posed in church, “How can we be more humble”. My answer is always, “Raise your sights.” Raise your standards.” Anyone who desperately needs God’s help to get where they want to go will automatically be humble. Anyone who is spending most of the time trying to convince others of truth they have discovered will run into issues trying to be humble.

The prophets and the scriptures teach truth, but there is no reason to expect to comprehend it all from the start or be concerned when we travel down the path and realize that we previously misunderstood things that we thought we understood. This is true of all intellectual pursuits regardless of whether the Holy Spirit is involved in the teaching.

It makes sense that in a fallen world, full of confusion, it takes a while to pick up truth while at the same time identifying and discarding false beliefs and incorrect mental models. This realization should not be alarming.

Yet, some get shaken by the realization that they held false beliefs about the gospel previously. Rather than confidently evolving to a better understanding of the gospel and the scriptures, they rebel against the institution that they believe fostered and bred that misunderstanding within them.
In other words, they rebel against the church because that is the framework they resided in while attempting to learn truth.

Those who irrationally expect to understand all truth at once and who attach a higher level of loyalty and passion and absolutism to the people, institutions and cultural aspects of the church than is appropriate seem more subject to this type of disillusionment. Those who have a certain pragmatism understand more readily that truth and practice must be implemented in an imperfect world in an iterative and constantly evolving, faith fueled, effort to achieve the desired results within the church collectively and its members individually.

Disillusioned members often mistakenly believe that everyone in the organization has misunderstood truth in the same ways that they have, and that, rather than it being a personal issue of failing to understand, it is an institutional issue of the church teaching falsehoods or encouraging undesirable cultures and behaviors.

The prophets and the scriptures teach truth, but the ability of the church members collectively to implement and live it is evolving much the same way institutionally as a person does individually. Fortunately we have true prophetic leadership and the principles of counsels and unanimous consent that keep the church from being subject to going off in erroneous directions even if it is an evolutionary process for the church to move its membership toward being a Zion people.

As a result of the discovery that they have been “lead astray” some of those who discover that they picked up misunderstandings while in the context of being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints seek to set everyone else straight on the misunderstanding that they had. This attempt can be helpful to the continuing evolution of the church membership as a whole if the helpers first recognize that the teachings of the church are not flawed because some (even sometimes a majority) of its members don’t understand the truths the church is teaching or behave accordingly.

I think we are better off, (when our current foundations and models are challenged or we recognize that our understanding of the gospel has been immature) to focus all of our energy on personally evolving. Like a caterpillar trying to become a butterfly, we need to conserve energy and attention and direct it to calling upon Heavenly Father and increasing our obedience and sensitivity to the spirit rather than immediately dissipating all of our energy running around telling others that we have discovered that we have all been deceived.

It is more helpful to move steadily forward keeping our eyes and minds and hearts open to new truth than it is to succumb to feeling threatened and panicked that our world is falling apart because we aren’t as sure and stable as we thought we were.

Many inside and outside the church inappropriately cite the good or bad events in a persons life or an individuals general “happiness” or lack of happiness in the church as evidence of whether they are doing or believing the right things. In fact, attempting to learn, in any field of endeavor, often creates high stress and frustration with resultant “unhappiness” even when and individual is where they should be trying to learn what they should learn.

A child attending school who can’t currently understand math could sit in the same classroom with someone who does understand and they could be having two entirely different experiences.

This is all the more true of two people sitting in the same pew at church.
One may be experiencing wonderful feelings while the other experiences frustration, anxiety, and the sense that going to church is only adding to his or her unhappiness.

This person has two choices. They can increase, energy, effort, attention to detail, humility, obedience, faithful questioning, and practice, until they can understand and live the gospel in a way that gets the expected result of peace, joy and spiritual security or…they can skip school (church) and tell everyone else how much fun they are having and how much happier they are now that they don’t go.

Nobody should expect to come to Heavenly Father’s classroom and avoid the unhappiness that accompanies confusion and things not coming naturally, or temporary disillusionment, the behavior of others not living up to the ideal, our own behavior not living up the the ideal, weakness, etc.

Humility and intellectual honesty help us recognize our flaws, call ourselves out and address the pride, carnal desires, laziness, and lack of exertion and faith that can make trying to become like Heavenly Father more confusing and frustrating than it otherwise could be.

It is a mistake to assume that, because ones personal internal model of the gospel was previously flawed or immature in some way, that the scriptures and prophets are flawed or the church that teaches the gospel is teaching falsehoods. There are millions of members of the church teaching in the church and living in the church and acting in the church and behaving in the church in ways that are influenced by their own current level of understanding. This has no bearing on whether it is the church that you should stay in and receive ordinances through and count on to supply you with the prophetic guidance, the modern day scripture and the body of saints that you can progress through this life and into the eternities with.

We can be perfectly spiritually secure as long as our false models are temporary and our foundation isn’t shaken when we find we need to do a mental and intellectual “remodel”. We are learning line upon line precept upon precept just as intended.

But, it may sometimes come as a surprise to us that “line upon line” isn’t always just adding to our knowledge “brick by brick” in the typical imagery. Growing “line upon line” may often feel more like disruption, renovation, or evolution of our current knowledge.

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