A novice view of belief and non-belief
I am a seventh generation Mormon who has also been inactive for the last seven years. I was born in the faith. I zealously believed in it as a child, as a teenage seminary student, and eventually as a faithful missionary. Today, I push a varying distance from the Church. That distance exists because of my own choices and the also the actions of the church. I watch from outside the faith of my fathers.
I am not interested in attacking faith, nor am I interested in preserving it. I am interested in documenting my own feelings, thoughts, concerns, and joys around faith. All of it originates from my Mormon upbringing. If you find this writing helpful, I am happy for that secondary affect, but I am mostly doing this for my own personal growth.
If at some point you find this blog offensive, I would hope that you first examine some of your own personal beliefs. Your life doesn't have to include a single bit of my personal opinion, but I hope that you as a reader will assume good will on my part. Everyone has their own mental and social values to work out. I'm still working on many of my own irrational feelings and I would be happy to hear how you resolve your own internal conflicts. Maybe you are like me a decade ago and unable to see value in putting belief and non-belief on equal footing. I think it is okay to experience life in the way you define it.
Today, I find that I get an anxious but worthwhile humility when I listen to both belief and non-belief, especially when people strive to create spaces where both can coexist. I hope to write here some of my attempts to chart a middle course between these two competing world views. Of course, that makes me a fence sitter. The kind of person John the Beloved describes as lukewarm [1]. Regardless of that label, I hope to be able to write in a way that increases humility and understanding, and that readers might have additional insight into the ways we resolve the competition between facts and faiths.
My views should not be considered the final authority on defining Latter-day Sainthood. They shouldn't even be considered the final authority on my own opinion. They are nothing but a snapshot of feelings that were documented as part of the process to grow into a better person. Today, I zealously claim the privilege to change my own belief. You may find some of my thoughts too inconsistent or even self-defeating. All I can offer you is a genuine attempt to document my own process as I search for the middle path between belief and non-belief.
-Grey
When dark clouds of trouble hang o’er us
And threaten our peace to destroy,
There is hope smiling brightly before us,
And we know that deliverance is nigh. [2]
[1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/nt/rev/3.16?lang=eng#p16#16
[2] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/music/library/hymns/we-thank-thee-o-god-for-a-prophet?lang=eng