Mistakes of People Who Lose (or Never Had) Faith

There are two types of opponents of the Church of Jesus Christ.  There are some who are former members of the Church who have lost their faith, and there are others who never were members of the Church but who have been told bad things about it and consequently feel a need to combat an evil they perceive.  In either case, they tend to make the same types of mistakes when considering and discussing various aspects of the doctrine, practices, and history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  We should always remember the second great commandment and show love to everyone, including those who have bad things to say about our religion.  But we needn't make the same mistakes they are making.  After examining many complaints of people who either doubt or aggressively attack the Church of Jesus Christ, I find that each generally falls into one of five categories:

1. Sometimes, the information they present has an element of truth or historic basis, but ignores a lot of other truth and history in order to present a negative view of the Church or its leaders.  Again, sometimes this is done out of ignorance, and I think this happens quite often.  People talk about "doing research" without having done enough research themselves, because what is presented to them appears, at first glance, to be solid and adequate.  In the other cases, it seems clear that much of the history is being ignored because it doesn't support their position.  To be clear, serious historians do have to evaluate the reliability and consistency of various records, and we're not automatically obligated to accept any particular piece of information as fully authoritative and accurate, but there's a difference between questioning the validity of some information and completely disregarding a lot of information.  One example of incomplete information I've encountered was a person complaining about Joseph Smith being taken to court for "treasure digging" while employed by Josiah Stoal/Stowell.  I wasn't inclined to give great heed to the accuser, but I got curious about what the real situation was, so I looked up the court record, which is included in the Joseph Smith papers made available online by the Church; as it turns out, Josiah Stoal originally wanted Joseph to find treasure, but was dissuaded from the effort by Joseph.  The complaint came from a relative, but Josiah Stoal was always happy with Joseph Smith, whom he continued to employ for other work.  The court didn't find Joseph to be at fault.  So while I could have initially assumed something bad about Joseph Smith based on the negative report I heard, after examining information for myself I found nothing to worry about.  As I've listened to multiple faithful latter-day saint scholars it's clear that they are giving unbiased consideration to all available information and that it ends up strengthening their faith in Jesus Christ and His work in our time through His restored Church.

2. Sometimes, the information they present is simply false.  We can't trust everything that everyone claims.  Sometimes people unknowingly pass on bad information, and sometimes they're deliberately lying.  Sometimes they actually think it's okay to lie for what they consider is a righteous cause.  Ironically, I've heard people accuse members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of practicing something they call "lying for the Lord", which of course is absolutely contrary to what the Church really teaches, and it seems that it is exactly what they are doing in the moment.  I've also heard people claim to be former members of the Church, with the assumption that it lends more credence to their criticism of the Church, and while this is true in some cases, it appears to not be in others; it ends up looking like a complete fabrication after they evince little knowledge about the Church.  There are cases when there may have originally been some truth to a statement, but in the manner of the Telephone Game, after multiple biased retellings it is so distorted that no truth remains.  It doesn't hurt to fact-check people before devoting extensive consideration to their claims.

3. Sometimes, their information is outdated.  Opponents of the Church have been publishing their opposition since before the Church was actually founded.  Some information they present--such as Fawn Brodie's early biography of Joseph Smith or lists of supposed anachronisms in the Book of Mormon--just don't hold up when compared with additional information that has been discovered in the many years since they were written.  It is easy to assume that they're valid without taking into consideration the large amounts of newer information and analysis, but to do so is a mistake.  Scholars who are faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ do reshape their understandings based on their own and others' new scholarly work.  Granted, by definition, physical evidences alone are never an adequate foundation for faith, but it is pleasing to find multiple discoveries that actually do support the ideas we hold about the Restoration.

4. Sometimes, people make unwarranted assumptions and come to unwarranted conclusions based on unknowns.  There's a lot we don't know about doctrine and history.  Unknowns are the norm in any scientific endeavor; they're why science exists.  Unknowns are also normal in anthropological studies.  There is simply a lot about the past that we don't know.  Scholarly efforts in history and archaeology provide us glimpses and snippets that require some interpretation.  Beyond changing our minds about some ideas, there are others that we just can't formulate with high confidence.  Any scholar should be comfortable with some unknowns, and any disciple of Christ has the privilege of not only revelation but also comfort through the Holy Ghost.  In many cases, we learn things, years down the road, that answer questions we first had much earlier.  For many other questions, we just can't expect to learn the answers during our mortal lives, and that's okay.  We know that God will provide everything we need in order to fulfill our purpose here on Earth and to be prepared for eternity.  One example of this is the translation of the Book of Abraham; there's much we don't know about it--partially because Joseph Smith was murdered.  If he had lived longer, he would have had more opportunities to speak and to write, and we would doubtless have had more explanations about a number of topics.  When we don't have a particular answer, God will tell us, through the Holy Ghost, something along the lines of, "I know you don't have that answer.  I'm glad you want to learn and I know you'll be okay in the meanwhile.  Keep going with what I've already given you; you still have plenty to learn and do that is immediately available."  (Granted, the reassurance is unlikely to be anywhere near that wordy.)  In a related scenario, sometimes there is information available that supports positive ideas about the Church more than negative ideas, but we don't have access to all of it or don't have the analytical background needed to make sense of it all.  Other people succeed in figuring things out, and if we had access to them we would see that there are good answers available, but we don't have access to them (at least yet) and don't yet see that good answers do exist.  This puts us in essentially the same situation as when no answer will ever come before we die.  In all of these cases, faith and seeking revelation from God helps us stay on the right track, but people are subject to influences that undermine our faith and our decisions to seek revelation, and sometimes people allow themselves to be affected by those influences, thus missing out on the best ideas and the comfort that God gives when we have to be left, at least temporarily, with some unknowns.

5. Sometimes people just choose faithless conclusions.  Our evaluation of evidence is always impacted by our choices to exercise or abandon faith.  I love the movie 12 Angry Men (based on a play), in which there is a consensus that a young man accused of murder is obviously guilty based on the available evidence.  Over the course of the film/play, people experience beautiful moments of moral concern and mental reevaluation, and eventually they unanimously declare the young man to be Not Guilty.  The same evidence, when viewed differently, leads them to a different conclusion.  In matters of Church history, practice, and doctrine, sometimes people oversimplify the situation.  Sometimes biased language contributes to this problem.  A person might ask, for example, "Why does the Church hoard money?"  The word "hoard" is chosen instead of "save" only for the sake of putting a pejorative spin on the conversation.  Many people were surprised to learn that the Church had saved so much money from donations.  It is always easy for one person to accuse another of not doing enough good.  The actual financial situation of the Church of Jesus Christ is wonderful; it's great that we're not struggling like we have in the past, that we're keeping the Church running and building more temples, that we're able to do so much good to meet people's material needs on both a local level and also supporting thousands of global relief projects, and that we were able to do so without going broke during a pandemic that caused worldwide financial strain.  It's easy for people to merely accuse without thinking through all of that, but a faithful response allows us to be open to larger realization, and again, to hold to the goodness God provides while we're still thinking through things.

Last thoughts for now:
Everyone has different beliefs in some ways--even within a given religion and even within the Church of Jesus Christ--and it's okay to be unsure about some things.  We should tolerate some uncertainty.  What we should never doubt is what comes to us from God.  He is both wise and loving to the greatest degree, and he wants to give us truth.  We should never let uncertainty undermine our confidence in Him, His Son, and His Spirit.  We should keep learning and allow our beliefs to change at times, but considering all that God gives us, we should never allow our faith in God and in Jesus Christ to be undermined.  We should be aware of faith-damaging mistakes and avoid making them for ourselves.  We should show the greatest love to everyone, including people who do struggle with their faith, and we should help others to build their faith.

My Own Story (a short version)

I often like to inquire with others about their beliefs and the foundation of their faith, if they profess any.  I find value in what they say.  I believe it helps open up mutually beneficial conversation.  I learn things from people, and I hope that they'll want to hear from me, because after being given so much from God I certainly have things to share.  The other day, someone in a video comments section asked me about my own experiences.  They didn't ask specifics, so I have to summarize a bit.  I doubt that anyone will ever want to read a full biography that would be drastically longer, but here's a short version of my history with my religious faith and knowledge:

I was born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  My parents were divorced when I was three years old.  I was baptized at the standard age of eight years old.  As I grew up, I had many positive (if probably very typical) experiences with the Church, including study, friendship, and service opportunities.  Another part of being in the Church was commonly eating food from the Bishop's Storehouse that my mother didn't have to pay for.  When I got older and went off to college, I got a bit lazy when it came to religion.  For example, sometimes I just didn't go to church on Sundays, for no particular reason.  All young latter-day saint men were expected to serve as missionaries upon turning nineteen, but as I thought about it, I knew I didn't want to go just because other people expected me to.  So I went back to college for another year, and then began to serve.  I also began to want more of a relationship with my father, and at my request he supported me financially when I left to serve as a full-time missionary.

Both before and after my missionary service, at times I came across information about Church procedures or Church history, perhaps relating to individual leaders, that seemed strange.  Broadly speaking, I found a way to be patient with not completely understanding some things immediately.  One morning, when I was 18 or 19 and I was playing hymns on the piano in an empty classroom in the Institute of Religion at the college, some words in the second verse of "Be Still, My Soul" really struck me: "Be still, my soul, thy God doth undertake / To guide the future as He has the past. / Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake / All now mysterious shall be bright at last."  As the years have passed, I've had opportunities here and there to learn more or gain better insights from people who have shared them with me, and many things that felt mysterious or strange before turned out to not be worrisome at all.  When dealing with information from opponents of the Church, I also realized that, at least partially because they don't have the Church's best interests in mind, they sometimes promote information that is partially or wholly untrue, but even when only relying on reliable facts they frequently choose the worst possible conclusion from available data instead of the best possible conclusion.  I have found that while seeking truth and answers to questions, sometimes it comes quickly and sometimes not, but I always eventually learn more and I find great reason to trust what God has given me.

Trust in God is one of the great life lessons I learned as a missionary, but I also became much more able to recognize God's influence in my life, particularly through the Holy Ghost.  When at the missionary training center, our teachers (former missionaries themselves) taught us about how important it was to help people to recognize the Holy Ghost as we taught them.  I remember struggling with this; I wasn't sure that I knew how to do this.  I asked one of my teachers about it, and he suggested that because I had grown up with the Church, perhaps I was accustomed to it so much that I sometimes took it for granted.  He spoke to reassure me, and I wasn't fully satisfied, but I hoped to figure it out.  Several days later, as I was being taught again by a different teacher, I thought to myself, "The Spirit of God is very strong here today."  And then I realized what I had just done; I had listened to God in my heart and felt Him there, and recognized it.  As I did so, I realized that it was indeed something I had felt and known many times in my life.  I then gladly taught others about it and have enjoyed God's joy and peace not only during my mission but also many, many times since.

I will share one particular experience I had with the Holy Ghost during my mission.  I lived and taught in the city of Yamoussoukro for five months.  One day, while walking through a corridor of a housing area, I looked to the side and noticed one of the housing units and its number.  (I think it was 157 or 152, but it's been two decades ago and I don't have a great memory.)  That was all, at first; I just noticed it.  Some time later--maybe a few days or weeks--my companion and I had some time available in the evening, and he asked me what I thought we should do.  I mentioned the door I'd seen before and suggested that we could visit the people who lived there.  So we did.  Either that evening or upon making an appointment and returning (I don't remember which), we were greeted by the couple who lived there and we taught the first missionary lesson to them.  The husband was somehow employed by a local church and accommodated us more out of patient courtesy than anything else, and in the end didn't seem particularly interested.  I imagine that he later discouraged his wife; in any event, we didn't end up teaching them further and I don't know the end of her story.  But I do remember very well what happened during the lesson.  We spoke of God, of Jesus Christ, of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and then of the Holy Ghost.  After teaching, I turned to the woman and asked her (in French, the local national language), "What do you feel right now?"  She paused, with an almost troubled or slightly perplexed look on her face, and I asked her again, "What do you feel inside right now?"  With little more pause, she answered with these exact words: "La joie du cœur."  Translated into English, that means, "joy of heart."  Her husband looked directly at her with evident surprise.  I don't think she was even literate, but she knew what she felt inside.  I told her it was the Holy Ghost, and I knew that she knew that we had spoken truth from God.

One other major life lesson I learned as a missionary was that God is merciful.  I have long considered myself the most blessed person I know, and I realize that while I've tried to do good things in life, nothing I've done could merit the many blessings I've received.  I'm blessed far beyond what I feel I deserve by my own worthiness.

In the decades following my mission, I've had a great many other experiences that continue to shape my faith and knowledge.  I've seen other people grow in faith or abandon faith, I've seen people die, I've witnessed the Church as a worldwide body with the same spirit of fellowship and Spirit of God everywhere, I've had glimpses into Church administration, and I've learned more about Church history.  I have had very difficult trials that would require much more space to write about.  I've been blessed to know many disciples of Christ and many other good people across the United States and the world; I've been served by them and I've done what I could to serve them.  I've seen the Church help people with material needs, and I've been blessed to be able to give now instead of receiving.  I have had witness after witness from God about the truth of the gospel and his desire for me to participate in His Church, despite my many failings and the many failings I've witnessed in other people even as we try to follow our Savior.  I have hoped to be of service to the people around me and I've certainly hoped to show love in everything I do.  I think I'm learning that love better; it sure means a lot to me to learn it.  I am happy to extend an offer of support to anyone, and if you ever think I can help you in any way, whether to answer questions or even just as a listening ear.  If I were without you in person, I would offer a hug also, but alas, that's not possible over the Internet.  But I hope you know that I find myself with the best of reasons to follow the two great commandments, and though I can't express it as perfectly as God can, I am happy to say that I love you, and I hope that you seek and receive God's greatest blessings.

Last thoughts for now:
To anyone who ever cares enough to read these things, please know that I share them with the utmost sincerity and a real, if imperfect, desire to share truth and love.  Reach out to me any time, and as a disciple of Christ, I will reach back out to you.