Nearly twelve years ago, shortly after I returned home from my mission, I moved in with my grandmother to provide some live-in caregiving and have a free place to stay as I prepared to start attending BYU. She loved to watch movies in the evenings and I did a lot of catching up on movies I’d missed while on my mission while I was there. One evening my uncle stopped by with a movie I had not heard and he insisted we needed to watch it. The film was “Doubt” starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It tells the story of a nun (played by Streep) who suspects that the new Father in their parish (Hoffman) is sexually abusing some of the altar boys. In the end she fights to get him reassigned based entirely on her conviction and circumstantial evidence. At the end she delivers a heart-wrenching monologue to another nun (Amy Adams) questioning whether she’s done the right thing and sobs that she has “such doubts.” The film notably does not ever really let you know whether he was in fact guilty, because that wasn’t the point. The point of the story was a woman’s efforts to act with conviction to do what she truly believed was right in the face of doubt. It was for me a poignant film that spoke highly to one of my great struggles: that of doubt.
Back in February when I was disclosing my transgressions
of the last few years to my Bishop, he said something that resonated deeply
with me. He explained that just as I should always expect the possibility that
I will be attracted to men my whole life, I will similarly always experience
the trial of doubt, and will have to navigate that trial and make choices
despite the pressure of that trial. This was actually very eye-opening to me
and immediately struck me as true. It’s interesting that I have settled to a
point of calm with my attraction to men for nearly a decade now. But I have
never thought of doubt in that same way as something I will simply continue to
experience and need to plan for the long haul. And yes, I know some of you are
thinking that if I really was at peace with my attractions, why did I do the
things I did these last few years? But truthfully, my actions weren’t because of
my attractions; sure, those influenced the flavor, so to speak, of the
transgressions, but the choices themselves were more a crisis of both unresolved
trauma requiring therapy and of a crisis of faith caused by unchecked doubt.
Two posts ago I explained a
lot more of the details of my various transgressions over the last few years,
and explained how I came to understand what the scriptures refer to as being a “double-minded
man.” After explaining at length in that post what that means, I wanted to
follow-up and counter with what it isn’t. Being double-minded doesn’t
mean having conflicting feelings, thoughts, inclinations, or temptations.
Double-minded is when we actively try to live both of those things or try to
give place for both sides. In fact, only minutes after publishing that post in
late March, I read this quote from an excellent interview with three historians on the Joseph Smith Papers Project,
regarding those who struggle with questions:
A friend of mine gave this
advice. If you have two beliefs in your mind that appear to be contradictory,
you can allow them to coexist. For example, you may have a spiritual witness of
the Book of Mormon that led you to become converted to the church, and at the
same time you may have questions or doubts about some aspect of church history.
It is totally compatible to have a testimony of the gospel and the Restoration
while having questions or confusion about some aspects of the history.
Questions and doubts are natural. Turn to the Lord in humility and be patient
as you wait for his help and his answers. Seek, seek, seek, and wait, wait,
wait for answers. Don’t stop doing the spiritual things while you are seeking
and waiting. Sometimes the answer is to be at peace with something even though
you don’t understand it. The answers and comfort and peace you seek will come,
and they will come through the Spirit. I know many people whose testimonies
became stronger after periods of doubt and uncertainty.
Note that second sentence. You CAN have two contradictory
beliefs without resolution and I don’t think this makes you “double-minded” in
the sense I was describing. Once again, double-mindedness occurs when we try to
ACT in contradictory ways and live two conflicting realities—a way of living I
became quite familiar with.
I have for years carried great guilt and shame for my
doubts. I now realize that my doubts are no more reason for guilt or shame than
my attraction to men, my love for chocolate, or my penchant for music by
Rachmaninoff. These are all things I experience, and they CAN influence my
decision-making, some for better, some for worse, and some for neutral. But it’s
the choices that matter. I gave a lot of place to grow and entertain and act
upon my doubts. That was my choice, and I am responsible for those choices. But
having doubt is simply part of my nature.
I think some confusion on this matter comes from how some
scriptures are worded, which may require a distinguishing of how the same
terminology can be meant in different ways. For example, Doctrine &
Covenants 6:36 says, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
We are here commanded not to doubt, which can certainly lead to feelings of
shame or guilt when we inevitably experience doubts. But I think this scripture,
like any scripture that is commandment, is still speaking only to our choices. Maybe
I’m pulling at semantic straws here, but I think there is big difference
between experiencing doubt and choosing actively to doubt. And I’m kind of an
authority on the subject because I’ve experienced a lot of both! I don’t think
the Lord condemns us for our doubts, but He may chasten us for what we choose to
do with them. We can choose to reach to Him when we doubt. Two stories from the
New Testament illustrate this principle well.
In Mark chapter nine, we read of a desperate father with a
child overcome with “a dumb spirit” and seemingly from the description, perhaps
several medical maladies of various sorts. He loves his son and has tried many
things to help him for years. In desperation he has already come to the disciples,
who have been unsuccessful in helping him. He now has come directly to Jesus to
petition for relief. Christ counsels him in verse 23, “If thou canst
believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Without hesitation
(“straightaway” in the scriptural parlance) the father in verse 24 “cried
out and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” The
Lord then heals the man’s son. The man in the story acknowledged his doubts.
But he has clearly acted in faith, trying repeatedly for years to seek healing
for his son. He has held onto his faith after repeatedly pleading and seeing no
miracles yet through all that time. When even the Savior’s disciples, who by
then already had their own reputations as miracle-workers, could also not cure
him, he had every reason to give into those doubts. But he acted in faith. He
cried out, with tears, for the Lord to bless him for whatever faith he could
muster and fill in the gaps where his faith fell short. And the Lord blessed
him for acting in faith rather than rebuking him for experiencing doubt.
On another particularly famous occasion, as recorded in
Matthew chapter fourteen, Christ’s apostles are struggling in a boat without
him amidst a storm. They’ve already seen him calm a storm previously, but now
they are without him as they cross the sea of Galilee and fear for their lives.
Just then they see him, miraculously, walking across the water towards them. His
bold chief apostle Peter immediately asks permission to do the same. As we
know, he walks a few steps and then, seeing the “boisterous wind” begins to
sink in his fear. He immediately cries out for the Lord to save him, and the
Lord does so. When I hear people recount this story a lot of emphasis is often placed
on Peter’s doubt, as if to hold him up as a bad example of faith. But I would
ask, how many other disciples even got out of the boat? Peter’s faith let him
walk on water. He DID doubt, but even when he did, his immediate response was
to call out to the Lord for help. What a wonderful example and spiritual
victory! The point of the story, to me, is not that Peter doubted, but that he
acted in faith and when confronted with doubt, he called on the Lord for help.
We will all experience doubt, and when we call on the Lord to help us amidst
those doubts, he will do so instead of letting us drown because we doubted.
Interestingly, and as an echo to the counsel my bishop gave
me, it seems Peter continued to struggle with doubt his whole life as well. There
are several instances which show glimpses of that doubt during the Savior’s ministry, but
even long after when Peter has been leading the Church for a decade, we read in
Acts 10:17 that Peter continued to face doubts, even in the moments after receiving
glorious visions from on high. Peter was a man who faced doubts and acted in
faith and it seems abundantly clear that the Lord is very pleased with his
ministry and the bold acts of faith he made despite being someone who chronically
experienced doubt. His sometimes-great doubts coexisted with his faith—a faith
mighty enough to walk on water. I experience the comingling of doubt and faith
every day.
So, having established that the experience of doubt does not
condemn us, we turn now to the choices which can. May I offer
some terminology to clarify this distinction? The doubt in these two stories I
would term passive doubt: a condition which we deal with wherein we
naturally will experience doubt while in mortality, and which may coexist with
mighty faith. A second term would be active doubt: when we choose to act
in doubt rather than acting in faith. This can be in subtle ways we entertain
those doubts and begin spending time trying to align our beliefs more with our
doubts than our faith. In can be in more flagrant ways, such as using our
doubts as justification for our behaviors of unfaithfulness to our spouse. This
is the form of doubt which we are counseled against when told to “doubt not,
fear not.”
While studying references related to doubt, I was initially
surprised to see a passage I’ve actually considered to be a hallmark scripture
on faith listed in the Topical Guide under “Doubt.” In fact, I referenced this scripture
in my last post to demonstrate how the scriptures
build faith. But, sure enough, there is in the middle of the verse, a warning
about active doubt. The verse is Alma 32:28, which reads (with my emphasis):
Now, we will compare the word
unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart,
behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by
your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will
begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions,
ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good
seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it
beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to
me.
In the middle we see a caution to not cast the seed out
because of our unbelief or doubt. In doing so we “resist” the Lord. He sends us
His Spirit and the scriptures to entice us towards doing what is right. Active
doubt tries to build a defense system against those spiritual pulls. Sometimes
we WANT our doubts to win, so that we don’t have to accept the harder parts of
the gospel. I certainly have been there. And of course, the sad result of doing
so is missing out on the “delicious” fruit of the gospel which grows when we
act in faith instead, even if the best we can do to act in faith is to cry out
for help when the doubt seems too great, even as Peter and the afflicted boy’s
father did.
Active doubt is, of course, self-sustaining. When we act in
doubt, we breed greater doubt. And acting against the commandments naturally
breeds doubt as our brains have to grab a life raft of justification to keep
from being crushed under a blanket of cognitive dissonance. The Lord warns us
of this in Deuteronomy, a book which serves as the Lord’s ancient dissertation on
faithfulness to covenant life. In chapter 28 we are warned of the effects and
natural consequences of sin. Among those consequences, we are warned in verse
66 that our lives will “hang in doubt” when we turn away from the Lord. So
active doubt breeds sin breeds more doubt.
The great turning point of regaining my testimony this year
after years of repeating that cycle of active doubt began when in desperation I
prayed privately for the Lord to help me feel my faith, or in other words, to
help me in mine unbelief. Reflecting back on this consequential prayer I offered
five months ago, I note that I did not find myself praying for relief from
sexual addiction or temptation. I was praying for faith amidst doubt and to
feel the influence of the Spirit which I had cast out and resisted, and that
is what helped everything start to turn for me. I still experience doubts. Some
days they are small and some days they seem mighty and overwhelming. But I am choosing
faith, because I also experience faith. Some days it seems small and some days
it feels mighty and empowering. But I’m learning to not condemn myself for the
current status of my mix of faith and passive doubt. I am choosing to act in
faith and leave active doubt behind, and it has begun to be delicious to me. I
feel the Lord offering the miracle of spiritual healing and pulling me from the
depths of the sea before I drown. And those witnesses are building my faith.
The overall trajectory is upwards, even if there is some oscillation along the
way. And I have hope that through Christ I will continue to conquer my doubts
through controlling them, even if I recognize that they will be with me for the
long run.
--Obadiah
