One of the things I chose to abstain from for Lent was Twitch – both streaming and viewing other streams. But it has cut me off socially from good friends I enjoy interacting with there, and it occurred to me during a sleepless night last night that I'm feeling socially isolated.

It doesn't help that, in addition to taking a break from Twitch, I deleted my Discord because I don't trust the company anymore. So I've been trying to seek out other online communities on IRC, Jabber, etc. but not really finding any that click with me.

I plan to reengage with Twitch before Easter while trying to be careful about not using it as mindless entertainment or background noise.

But I also realized: I have no real-life friends that live near me. My only IRL social interaction is with my family and my church community. I love my family dearly, but we need friends, too. And I love my church community, but I don't interact with them much outside of church meetings – with the exception of occasional visits in their homes as part of my leadership role, which I absolutely love.

Online friends are great, and I have met some genuinely good people that way, but electronic interaction is no substitute for in-person interaction.

We need people. And I need to make more friends in real life.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 156) #faith #Lent #Twitch #family #friends #loneliness #tech

Earlier this Lenten season, I expressed some thoughts and questions I had about the influence of the Holy Spirit. Does He communicate with us through feelings? Thoughts? Reason? I think it's all of the above. Chapter 1 of the book “The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith” by Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens helped me understand this.

The Givens make the case that there are different ways of knowing. We can learn much through reason, but not everything. We can learn much through emotion, but not everything. Reason and emotion don't have to be mutually exclusive, nor should they be.

They use art as an example. Reason tells us how a beautiful painting was created, but it cannot tell us what it means or how we are supposed to interpret or react to it.

In most of life’s greatest transactions, where the stakes are the highest, it is to the heart that we rightly turn, although not in utter isolation from the rational and reasonable. But whom to marry, when to discipline a child, when to let go of a dream, what sacrifices to make and promises to keep—these are decisions best made when emotion is moderated but not obliterated by reason, by logic, by “scientific” thinking. And these decisions are certainly made, not in the absence of truth, but in recognizing those very truths which logic and science may be powerless to detect. (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)

I had begun to think that some past experiences where I believed I felt the influence of the Holy Spirit testifying of truth to my heart might have been just me feeling really good at the time. After the fact, it would be so easy for me to rationalize them into irrelevance. But I cannot do that. Because if I am honest with myself, those experiences were more than just me being overly emotional. They were God communing with me. I know this because in those moments, I felt His love for me.

Do a camera, a DNA sequencer, and a full-spectrum lab report provide the truest, the richest account of who I am? Or do my spouse, my children, and my circle of friends? Love does not blur the reality behind the appearance. Love reveals reality. So why would we privilege scientific rationality over our intuitive, emotion-laden ways of perceiving truth? (“The Crucible of Doubt,” Chapter 1)

#100DaysToOffload (No. 155) #faith #Lent #Christianity

Sundays are often so busy for me that by the end of the day I'm ready to crash (hence my lack of a post yesterday). But the past few Sundays, instead of feeling overwhelmed as I have every Sunday for the past five months, I've felt gratitude and peace. So what changed? Mostly my perspective.

Sundays are busy because I am serving as the First Counselor in my ward bishopric. I accepted this calling in the midst of a faith crisis as I allowed myself to question for the first time: “what if it isn't true? And if it isn't, then what?”

At the same time, I began a deep study of Catholicism. I have always had a genuine interest in learning more about other faiths, but my curiosity soon became a serious investigation and consideration of potentially becoming Catholic, myself.

This all began about six months ago, and my guiding mission statement at the outset was that I wanted to know God's will for me and to have the faith and courage to do it. So when I was called into the bishopric, I thought “well maybe this is my answer”. In retrospect, I believe it was, but until a few weeks ago I was struggling so much that I was seriously considering asking to be released.

So what happened? The turning point was when I read the book I mentioned earlier called “The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith” by Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens. But it's simplistic to say it was the book by itself that did it. I see now that my reading of the book was the culmination of a series of events that led me to being open and receptive to the concepts and ideas the book explains. And it resonated with me in a powerful way.

That week I had been feeling particularly troubled and unsettled. I was praying, studying, pondering, and listening to podcasts throughout each day, as I had since the beginning of Lent (and really since before then). I had been listening to contemporary Christian music, as well, but then I discovered a vocal group whose music I can only describe as heavenly (VOCES8). As I listened to their music – and one song in particular that really resonated with me called “Even When He Is Silent” – I felt that I was finally reconnecting with God in a spiritual way after feeling disconnected for months.

It was in this spiritually receptive state that I felt it was time to read “The Crucible of Doubt,” which has been recommended repeatedly by Latter-day Saints who had left and come back, or who had struggled with their faith. But it was out of print and I wasn't sure I wanted to spend $30+ dollars on a used physical copy, so I bought the Kindle version, not having high expectations. I had recently read another book by Terryl Givens called “The Doors of Faith” that didn't really click at the time (I plan to read that one again with fresh eyes), so my expectations were low.

But, to my surprise, the book resonated with me so much that I read most of it in a day (not an impressive feat as it's a short book) rather than over several days. And more than once, the things I read hit me so powerfully that I had to stop and weep. The authors were telling me what God needed me to hear.

And as I reflected on what I read, my perspective changed. I was reminded of the richness and beauty of Latter-day Saint theology, how inclusive it is, how hopeful it is. I learned more about how God works through imperfect people, that our church does not have a monopoly on truth, that goodness and truth can be found everywhere. And I came away understanding that there is room in the church for people who doubt, who question, who really don't know for themselves that some or any of it is true.

But I also learned that sometimes, the very way we approach our quest for truth can be flawed and need adjusting. It can cause us to ask the wrong questions based on incorrect assumptions or to be completely oblivious to the questions we should be asking.

In the introduction, the Givens write:

Various faulty conceptual frameworks, or paradigmatic pathogens, may undermine our spiritual immune systems and create an environment where the search for truth becomes all search and no truth, where we find ourselves “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” To be open to truth, we must invest in the effort to free ourselves from our own conditioning and expectations.

When I first read that passage I thought “that's me – ever learning about the LDS and Catholic faiths for the past six months, yet no closer to knowing the truth than when I started.” I realized I needed to be open to the possibility that I was approaching my personal search for truth with flawed preconceptions. If there's one thing I had come to realize, even before reading this book, it was how little I actually knew about my own church's theology and history, let alone Catholicism.

The introduction is a great foundation the rest of the book. It made me want to make an honest effort to look for and think outside my own faulty framework. I am reading it again, and in the next several blog posts I plan to discuss each chapter and what I learned from it.

#100DaysToOffload (No. 154) #faith #Lent #Christianity