A supplementary podcast to this letter can be read here.
To Truth Seekers,
The author of this segment of the CES letter poses a difficult question for Latter-day Saints: “If faith and feelings can lead one to believe and accept the truth claims of any one of the hundreds of thousands of contradictory religions and thousands of contradictory gods... how then are faith and feelings reliable pathways to truth?” Methodists pray, Muslims pray, Catholics pray. They all get their answers, but they can’t all be right. So how can we possibly rely on inspiration to guide us?
The question strikes home because inspiration is so fundamental to our way of life. Missionaries tell investigators to rely on prayer and the Spirit to confirm the truth of the Book of Mormon. Young Latter-day Saints are encouraged to find out for themselves if the Church is true by praying and listening to the Spirit. We are encouraged to listen to spiritual promptings all through the day in the belief that they will lead us to people in need of our help or steer us away from evil. Is all of this untrustworthy and to be avoided? Are we well-advised to stop listening to the Spirit?
It is a big question, bigger than the Latter-day Saint example. It is a question for every religious believer in the modern world today. As the letter points out, not just Latter-day Saints but Catholics and Muslims are praying and getting confirmation of the truth they hold to. If Latter-day Saints are misled, so are lots of others. As the letter says, they can’t all be right.
But that kind of black and white judgments is not the way most modern people think. Most Latter-day Saints don’t believe that they have all the truth, and that Catholics and Muslims are dead wrong. One summer my wife and I spent six weeks in Bellagio, a town on Lake Como in northern Italy. With no LDS service within reach, we went to a Catholic mass every Sunday. As I watched the priest managing the Eucharist with a half dozen young acolytes scurrying around to help him, it reminded me of Mormon kids passing the sacrament and giving talks. Moving to the theological, I thought to myself how much we Latter-day Saints are indebted to Catholicism for having preserved the name of Christ for two millennia. The Catholic church has done a great work for mankind and still brings good into the lives of people. As I sat in the Bellagio church, I felt no conflict between the prayers of other worshippers and mine. We both had truth despite the seeming contradiction.
What seems like a logical necessity—not all churches with their opposing viewpoints can be true—simply does not work in the modern world. To believe otherwise leads to inquisitions and holy wars. In the past black and white thinking, especially about salvation, required that untruth be stamped out. To make it possible to live together peacefully, people had to acknowledge the merits of other beliefs. That is the basis of tolerance. Modern society with its emphasis on toleration operates on the assumption that there can be many forms of truth, and God sustains them all. He answers all those prayers rising to heaven from the four quarters of the earth. That millions of others are praying in faith does not invalidate our prayers for inspiration.
We take this position even though each partisan group believes they are the ones with the truth. Each one believes that theirs is the true church; religion is not just a matter of personal taste. Although I value other religions and see the hand of God acting in cathedrals and mosques, I believe that we Latter-day Saints have priesthood authority, that our prophets are led by God, that the Book of Mormon is true. If I were not so convinced, I doubt if I would be able to give all I do to the Church. I would be an insipid believer. I recognize that Roman Catholics feel the same, and I say all power to them. But I still insist that what we Latter-day Saints claim to be true is true. A lifetime of experience has led me to that, and any line of reason that says it is impossible for me to be so certain is, in my opinion, wrong. The world would be much more insipid and stale if firm convictions were deemed impossible.
The main thrust of the CES letter is that because of conflicts and uncertainties we are better off without prayer. Because sometimes “inspiration” leads us astray and is easily confused with emotion, we, and by implication everyone else, should stop praying and find other ways to find truth and make decisions. But can that be right? Do we really want to say that everyone, Latter-day Saints and all the other believers in the world, should cease praying and stop listening for inspiration? Granted that inspiration is notoriously uncertain. We get impulses we think are inspired and turn out not to be. People feel they are meant to marry someone, and it doesn’t work out. The job offer we are inspired to accept turns out to be a dead end. Does that mean we should depend on strictly rational, evidence-based decision-making only and shut down our spiritual impulses.
When I was a single student, my male classmates and I used to work up lists of qualities we sought for in a future spouse and measure our girlfriends by our reasoned criteria. When it came down to it, however, I fell in love with my wife at first meeting and had no choice thereafter. I simply had to marry her because she was the one for me. Rationality be damned. My heart told me what to do.
I would not want to discourage listening to the Spirit just because sometimes it does not work out. Powerful minds frequently rely on hunches or inspiration to guide them, even in science. The mind has powers far beyond what we label as rational, and we curtail our capacities unnecessarily if we quench inspiration.
That does not mean we abandon rationality altogether and do nothing without guidance from the Spirit. In my experience, evidence and reasoning tend to collect around the best inspirations. After a while the inspiration begins to make sense. If our impulses lead us into bad situations, we should not follow them come what may; mind and heart have to interact. But just because we make mistakes in heeding deep feelings, that should not stop us from striving to listen to the Spirit as best we can.
Inspiration it of greatest importance in seeking answers to the large questions: how to make a marriage work, how to deal with pain, suffering, failure, how to become a better person. And what about the largest question of all: what is the meaning of life? Without some deep spiritual orientation, we have trouble coping with these encompassing issues. Our materialism-based, strictly rational searching falls short. We need the aid of powers that are best evoked by prayer and spiritual searching. It is a mistake to deny that resource to ourselves and to others.
Some people are burned by listening to the Spirit. They are hurt or humiliated and resolve never to be put in that position again. They try to find reasons for everything they do and pride themselves on being hard-headed. They may lose trust in God altogether and stop praying. In such cases, it may be advisable to step back from “spiritual” experiences and not try to force them into existence. But I would hope that denial would not be the final outcome of anyone’s life. We are given powers beyond the narrowly rational. Such powers can open into beautiful life experiences and deeper forms of truth. Everyone, in my opinion, should be open to such visitations and, when they can, listen to the Spirit.
Sincerely,
Dr. Richard Bushman
Biography:
Dr. Richard Lyman Bushman is
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