'Help Thou Mine Unbelief': Rescuing Faith in a Post-Secular Era

Speaker 1

Carl Youngblood, our next speaker, has been an avid technology enthusiast since early childhood and has been earning a living as a software engineer since 1997. He was a Mormon missionary for two years in Brazil, where his newfound aptitude for language led him to eventually get a degree in Portuguese from Brigham Young University and later a master’s in computer science from the University of Washington. Carl’s struggle to apply his faith meaningfully in today’s rapidly changing world led him to co-found the Mormon Transhumanist Association in 2006. Carl is passionate about science, technology, religion, philosophy, and the performing arts. Carl is the vice president, a board member, and a founder of the MTA. Please welcome Carl.

Carl Youngblood

In the course of his interactions with Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt was once said to have proclaimed that after the practice of polygamy was made public, he had assumed that the cat had finally been let out of the proverbial bag. Brigham Young, however, let him know that he had another thing coming. Allow me to tell you, elders of Israel and delegates to Congress. You may expect an eternity of cats that have not yet escaped from the bag.

Carl Youngblood

Lately, widespread access To information, vastly accelerated by the Internet, seems to have caused the number of cats in bags to multiply inordinately, much to the consternation of Brigham Young’s successors. The arcane and sometimes disturbing details of a tight-knit provincial faith community on the western frontier and its uncomfortable transition out of obscurity have been documented in excruciating detail. And this information is now widely available to lay audiences. While Mormon history enthusiasts and apologists sometimes complain to those who are surprised by this information that it has been available all along, few dispute that its accessibility has increased dramatically, and that this accessibility has presented new challenges. It has made it difficult for the LDS Church to control its narrative as tightly as it used to be able to.

Carl Youngblood

During prior eras, such as the one in which LDS general authority Legrand Richards published his well-known A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, Mormon modernism ruled the day, convinced of its ability to circumscribe all truth neatly into one great whole. and that all the answers and proofs necessary to overwhelm the faith’s opponents would shortly be forthcoming if they hadn’t arrived already. Richards and his contemporaries, some of whom I continued to encounter on a weekly basis at church, were convinced they had tailor-made answers to all the questions of the day. And they were probably right, especially if one judges by the explosive growth of the church during the sixties and seventies.

Carl Youngblood

But as theologian Richard Holloway has observed, Though the truths that undergird our world view may be fixed, static, and immovable, we are not. The goalposts of our post-secular culture seem to be changing around these Mormon modernists, and they begin to find themselves in a difficult position.

Carl Youngblood

Unlike prior generations of Mormon missionaries who could draw from a common religious narrative when interacting with potential converts, the missionaries of today have an especially difficult pitch. Now they must first convince potential converts that they have a problem, and then they must convince them that they have the solution to that problem. Prior generations tended not to dispute missionaries’ emphasis on the importance of priesthood authority and the necessity of salvific sacraments, though they may have disputed the Mormons’ particular claims. But claiming that anything is important merely because God said so is becoming more difficult, especially when one’s audience is not certain of God’s existence. even those who do believe in God seem increasingly to think that requiring particular sacraments for salvation is arbitrary and capricious.

Carl Youngblood

The dichotomies of true or false, historical or fictitious, are the catchphrases of the modernist generation. They can often be heard doubling down on this rhetoric, encouraging members of the faith that theirs is an all or nothing proposition Either the Book of Mormon is true, by which they mean it is an accurate history of an ancient civilization, or it is worthless. Either Joseph Smith experienced everything the Neo Orthodox narrative claims, or he is a fraud, and church participation is without value.

Carl Youngblood

But to these and other claims the millennial generation increasingly seems to ask, Why should I care? And judging by current trends in church growth and attrition, the answers they’re getting are less and less convincing.

Carl Youngblood

One can observe a number of different reactions or approaches to this growing disaffection and difficulty in proselytizing from inside and outside the faith. One approach can be broadly characterized as an appeal to apologetics in academic research. Questions and concerns about flaws in the narrative are answered with research. That attempts to reframe the controversies in ways that make them more comprehensible and acceptable to today’s churchgoers. Religious scholars who remain faithful despite their rigorous academic training are also valorized as examples of how to handle faith struggles appropriately. While apologetics sometimes help, they have limitations.

Carl Youngblood

Paul Tillich explains that apologetics can provide temporary relief from perceived flaws in one’s religious narratives and symbols. if one’s concerns are not too difficult to answer, and if one’s conviction of the faith’s truth claims remain essentially intact. Another challenge of apologetics is that apologists often distance themselves somewhat from more mystical or superstitious aspects of the faith in an effort to justify their position rationally. but in doing so they weaken their ties to the symbols of the faith that are necessary to maintain its vitality.

Carl Youngblood

As Tillich describes it It often happens that in opposition to literalism, myth and cult are attacked as such and almost removed from a community of faith. The myth is replaced by a philosophy of religion. The cult is replaced by a code of moral demands. It is possible for such a state to last for a while because the original faith is still effective in it. Even the negation of the expressions of faith does not negate the faith itself, at least not in the beginning. This is the reason one can point to a non religious morality of a high order and can attempt to deny the interdependence of faith and morals. But there is a limit to this possibility. Without an ultimate concern as its basis, every system of morals degenerates into a method of adjustment to social demands. whether they are ultimately justified or not, and the infinite passion which characterizes a genuine faith evaporates and is replaced by a clever calculation which is unable to withstand the passionate attacks of an idolatrous faith.

Carl Youngblood

For Tillich, he talks about our ultimate concern. So for him, everyone has an ultimate concern, even atheists. Only the truly apathetic have no ultimate concern. And so if you distance the faith from this ultimate concern, then it it becomes weaker.

Carl Youngblood

Another approach to lagging faith is an appeal to institutional authority. The authority of present and past institutional leaders is sometimes used to downplay or dismiss doubts or concerns about doctrinal inconsistencies, changes in doctrine or liturgy, ethical challenges. historical controversies or failures of leadership.

Carl Youngblood

The difficulty of this approach is that it undermines the values That originally attracted others to the religion, including a commitment to truth-seeking and a willingness to depart from the status quo to follow a prophetic mandate. faith in historical connectedness and consistency, and a commitment to equal treatment under divine law.

Carl Youngblood

By valuing loyalty to authority above other principles Those who employ this approach also run a similar risk to the apologists, that of replacing the infinite passion of a genuine faith for a clever calculation that will not be able to withstand the passionate attacks of an idolatrous faith.

Carl Youngblood

What Tillich means by an idolatrous faith is not necessarily religion in the traditional sense. It may be that, but it may also be any movement or community that is centered around an ultimate concern. for Tillich, nationalism, obsession with worldly success, political ideologies, and atheism, to name a few can be, and have often been, ultimate concerns in which many individuals and communities have exercised faith.

Carl Youngblood

Whenever a religion mistakenly places a finite human construct As its ultimate concern, it engages in idolatry, expecting of its ultimate concern something that it is incapable of delivering.

Carl Youngblood

One example of an idolatrous faith is an appeal to fundamentalism. Disillusioned by an apparent lack of consistency or commitment to principle by present leaders or by challenges to the Orthodox narrative, some seek refuge in a more distant past where doctrinal purity and consistency can be more easily imagined. and where increased isolation makes inconsistencies and paradigm mismatches less apparent.

Carl Youngblood

Ironically, those who embrace fundamentalism and literalism Are able to do so because of the scientific precision that they have inherited from secularism.

Carl Youngblood

Another common approach is an appeal to secularism. This also qualifies as what Tillett calls non-religious morality, which ultimately fails to provide the communal rigor and motivation necessary to resist more virulent forms of idolatry.

Carl Youngblood

Each of these approaches is a different way of avoiding what Tillich calls breaking the myth. or recognizing religious symbols as such rather than as literal reifications of the divine, while still retaining rather than discarding them, he explains.

Carl Youngblood

Christianity denies by its very nature any unbroken myth, because its presupposition is the first commandment. which we will remember is, Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. The affirmation of the ultimate as ultimate and the rejection of any kind of idolatry. All mythological elements in the Bible and doctrine and liturgy should be recognized as mythological. but they should be maintained in their symbolic form and not replaced by scientific substitutes. For there is no substitute for the use of symbols and myths. They are the language of faith.

Carl Youngblood

So if we mistake our symbols and myths for God Himself or Herself, we are committing idolatry. It’s a very ironic thing that most religionists would not think of themselves as engaging in.

Carl Youngblood

It’s important to clarify that when he talks about myth, he’s not referring to a fable, but to a deeply valued narrative or overarching moral truth. These myths may even be based on historical incidents, but that’s not where their key value is. Breaking a myth isn’t to discard it as wholly flawed or irrelevant, but to recognize and retain those aspects of it that are of greatest value, namely its ability to transcend the circumstances of its emergence. and inspire and help us in our present challenges.

Carl Youngblood

A friend, Holly Huff, recently shared such a paradigm shattering period in her life. Her account is a powerful example of the very myth-breaking process that Tillich describes. And I’m sharing this with her permission.

Carl Youngblood

Recognizing my faith crisis as the smashing of an idolatrous God figure gave powerful meaning to that painful process. These idols fall because they confront a true reality that extends beyond them. God can’t be contained. The living God is impervious to our attempts to wholly rationalize the Divine. I had so many idolatrous beliefs about God God rewards obedience and punishes disobedience. God is a respecter of persons who treats some groups of people differently than others. God is indifferent or distantly dispassionate about suffering because it is the just result of wickedness, and many more. All of those false and limiting ideas were baked into my concept of God, and I had to start over in some pretty fundamental ways. I was an atheist for a while and I slowly came back to believing in God in an entirely different manner. It’s the best, worst thing that ever happened to me.

Carl Youngblood

Here is one possible reading of the Empty Tomb, she says. Something goes wrong in our religious life, it seems. We are confronted with harsh realities, and God gets killed. The figure we revered as master dies a harsh death, and we are at a loss. What now? Our sense of purpose is devastated. Did we really get it so wrong? Were we just fooling ourselves the whole time? In this moment it seems like perhaps we were. We go about our lives anguished, empty, and mourning. We make preparations to bury our dead, and then we stumble, still grieving, on to the miracle. The God we thought we’d seen murdered lives. We hadn’t understood who He was in the first place. We looked for Him in the wrong places. God’s power to redeem is revealed in what seems like the utter disaster of His death. Easter promises that this pain so many of us feel or have felt in doubting can be redemptive and that a faith crisis doesn’t have the final say. It, in fact, may point to the greater truth of a living God. Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen.

Carl Youngblood

In the july, nineteen oh six Improvement Era, Elder BH Roberts wrote presciently of the need for disciples who are capable of managing such tensions. He begins by quoting Josiah Boyce Disciples and partisans in the world of religious and philosophical opinion are of two sorts

Carl Youngblood

There are first the disciples pure and simple, people who fall under the spell of a person or of a doctrine, and whose whole intellectual life thenceforth consists in their partisanship. They expound and defend, and ward off foes, and live and die faithful to the one formula. Such disciples may be indispensable at first in helping a new teaching to get a popular hearing. But in the long run they rather hinder than help the wholesome growth of the very ideas that they defend. For great ideas live by growing, and a doctrine that has merely to be preached over and over in the same terms cannot possibly be the whole truth. No one ought to be merely a disci a faithful disciple of any one else. Yes, no one ought to be a mere disciple even of oneself. We live spiritually by outliving our formulas, and by thus enriching our sense of their deeper meaning. Now the disciples of the first sort do not live in this larger and more spiritual sense. they repeat, and true life is never mere repetition.

Carl Youngblood

On the other hand, there are disciples of a second sort They are the people who have been attracted to a new doctrine by the fact that it gave expression, in a novel way, to some large and deep interest which had already grown up in themselves and which had already come more or less independently to their own consciousness. They thus bring to the new teaching from the first their own personal contribution. The truth that they gain is changed as it enters their souls. The seed that the sower strews upon their fields springs up in their soil, and bears fruit thirty, sixty, and hundredfold They return to their master his own with usury. Such individuals are the disciples that it is worth while for a master to have.

Carl Youngblood

Disciples of the first sort often become, as Schopenhauer said, merely magnifying mirrors wherein one sees enlarged all the defects of a doctrine. Disciples of the second sort co operate in the works of the Spirit, and even if they always remain rather disciples than originators, They help to lead the thought that they accept to a truer expression. They force it beyond its earlier and cruder stages of development.

Carl Youngblood

Roberts comments on this passage I believe Mormonism affords opportunity for disciples of the second sort nay, that its crying need is for such disciples. It calls for thoughtful disciples who will not be content with merely repeating some of its truths, but will develop its truths. and enlarge it by that development. Not half, not one hundredth part, not a thousandth part of that which Joseph Smith revealed to the Church has yet been unfolded, either to the Church or to the world. The work of the expounder has scarcely begun. The prophet planted by teaching the germ truths of the great dispensation of the fulness of times The watering and the weeding is going on, and God is giving the increase, and will give it more abundantly in the future, as more intelligent disciples shall obtain. the disciples of Mormonism, growing discontented with the necessarily primitive methods which have hitherto prevailed in sustaining the doctrine, will yet take profounder and broader views of the great doctrines committed to the Church. and departing from mere repetition will cast them in new formulas, cooperating in the works of the Spirit, until they help to give to the truths received a more forceful expression. and carry it beyond the earlier and cruder stages of its development.

Carl Youngblood

The Mormon Transhumanist Association seeks to cultivate disciples of the second sort. We believe in confronting paradigm tensions with courage and compassion. Recognizing the lasting value in our theological and cultural inheritance while yet being unafraid to examine and reconsider areas of weakness. We reject fundamentalism, neo-orthodoxy, cynicism, and complacency. We are running out of alternatives as the paradigm tension increases. May we respond prophetically to the challenges of our times.

Carl Youngblood

and meet the passionate attacks of idolatrous faith with a more compelling alternative that is true and faithful to the best in Mormonism. Thank you.