Faith, Uncertainty, and the Search for Something True

Not long ago, my mission president asked me to be ready to share my testimony of Jesus Christ. I spent the next day trying to figure out what I actually meant by that.

I believe in Christ. That sentence is still true. It also carries less certainty than it used to.

Over the past year, I have been trying to separate two questions that Mormonism taught me to treat as one:

Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints literally, historically, and supernaturally true?

Is Mormonism a worthwhile religious, moral, philosophical, and spiritual tradition to participate in?

I have become less confident about the first. I have retained, and in some ways gained, appreciation for the second. That may sound contradictory. It does not feel that way to me.

I would not describe this as losing my faith. I would describe it as trying to understand what faith actually is, what I can reasonably claim to know, and which parts of my religious inheritance are worth keeping.

Faith and knowledge

One question I keep returning to is the difference between faith, belief, and knowledge.

Robert Sapolsky and Sam Harris have sophisticated arguments that free will is an illusion. Their conclusions are grounded in neuroscience and philosophy, and they express considerable confidence in them. But have they actually established that humans do not possess free will? I do not think so. Their arguments may be compelling, but a compelling argument is not the same thing as proof. Serious philosophical alternatives remain, and the question is unsettled.

Now consider a religious leader declaring that he knows Jesus Christ lives.

We tend to treat those claims differently. One is presented as a scientific or philosophical conclusion. The other is presented as religious faith. But what fundamentally distinguishes their certainty? All three people have beliefs they consider sufficiently justified to call knowledge. All three might be correct. None of their confidence establishes that their conclusions are true.

I have come to think that faith is closer to trust than to certainty. Knowledge, classically defined as justified true belief, may be a subset of belief rather than its replacement. If that is right, faith is not what remains when knowledge runs out. It is part of how we move through a world where certainty is rarely available.

This does not make every belief equally reasonable. Reasons matter. Evidence matters. The strength of our conviction is not the same as the strength of our justification. That distinction has become one of the most important in my life.

I lean toward believing that human beings possess genuine agency. Not because I can prove it, but because I do not think the evidence conclusively settles the question, and because I find living as though agency exists more coherent and more productive. That is faith, and I am comfortable calling it that.

What concerns me is when we confuse the confidence of a claim with the quality of its evidence. I do not think uncertainty necessarily means someone has not studied enough, thought deeply enough, or exercised enough faith. Sometimes uncertainty is the most intellectually honest position available. Recognizing where our knowledge ends may be part of faith itself.

The problem of authority

The harder part of this exploration has been authority.

The Church has changed a great deal over its history. I have found myself looking at early Mormonism through the lens of high-control religious groups, not because I am interested in arguing over whether the word cult applies, but because the underlying behaviors are worth understanding. Labels are blunt. The more useful question is what an institution does with its authority.

There are uncomfortable parallels in early Mormon history: geographic gathering, the expectation of obedience, control of information, and the social cost of leaving. The Church today is not the Church of the 1850s, and I am grateful for that. It has become healthier in several important ways. But the pattern of change bothers me.

It often seems that secular ideas incubate in the broader world, gain acceptance, and eventually find their way into Church policy and rhetoric. The institution then presents the resulting change as part of an ongoing restoration.

I believe institutions can change for the better. I believe leaders can learn. I do not need them to be perfect, and I do not think religious authority requires perfection. But if prophets are fallible, their teachings deserve examination. If revelation is ongoing, the possibility of institutional error must be taken seriously. And if personal revelation is meaningful, individuals must have some genuine freedom to reach conclusions that differ from institutional expectations.

I do not think intellectual independence is incompatible with faith. A faith that cannot withstand honest examination is a fragile thing.

Scripture and history

I have also had to rethink what scripture is.

I do not know what happened to Joseph Smith. I am not persuaded by the traditional account of a prophet who received consistent, unambiguous direction from God. But I am not willing to conclude that nothing meaningful happened to him either. I can hold the possibility of a genuine experience alongside the possibility that the traditional interpretation of that experience is exaggerated, mistaken, or incomplete.

The Book of Mormon raises similar questions for me. I am increasingly skeptical that it is an ancient historical record in the way the Church has traditionally claimed. But I have resisted the conclusion that if it is not historically authentic, it must be worthless. Historical authenticity and spiritual value are different questions. A book can contain wisdom, moral instruction, and genuine religious insight without being historically accurate. Human authorship does not rule out divine inspiration.

The Bible has its own historical and theological complications. I do not think any scripture can bear the weight of being treated as automatically true in every detail. Scripture deserves examination, not automatic acceptance or automatic rejection.

That has been one of the more freeing developments in this exploration. I no longer need to defend every historical claim in order to preserve whatever value I find in the text.

Commandments should make our lives better

Another shift has been in how I understand commandments.

I no longer see them as arbitrary hurdles. I see them as tools intended to make individual lives and societies better, more stable, and more meaningful. We keep them because of what they do for us, not because they give us a way to rank ourselves against each other.

Consider the commandment not to steal. Stealing might benefit someone in the short term, but it undermines the trust that makes cooperation possible. A society where people cannot trust one another eventually becomes worse for everyone. The commandment has a purpose beyond the act it prohibits.

I think that framework applies to much of religious life. Unfortunately, religious communities sometimes turn commandments into social policing. Righteousness becomes a competition. Someone does not wear their garments the way another person thinks they should. Someone does not pay tithing. Someone observes the Sabbath differently. Rather than asking whether a decision is helping or hurting the person making it, we become preoccupied with whether they are complying.

I have become fundamentally opposed to what I would call a gospel of suffering. Discomfort is not inherently virtuous. Self-denial is not automatically productive. Following a rule simply because it is difficult does not make someone more righteous.

There are times when doing the right thing is uncomfortable. But discomfort should be a consequence of pursuing something worthwhile, not the objective itself.

This changes how I think about religious practice. If someone believes paying tithing brings blessings, they do not need to be jealous of someone who does not pay it. If the promise is real, the person paying is not falling behind. They are receiving something they consider more valuable. Likewise, if a standard improves someone’s life, that is wonderful. It does not give them a reason to resent someone whose circumstances or convictions lead them in another direction.

The point is not to lower standards. It is to understand why we have them.

Taking the Lord’s name in vain

One of my favorite examples of this shift is something relatively simple: what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain.

I grew up understanding this commandment primarily as a prohibition against using God’s name in profanity. I do not particularly endorse that language, but I have come to think there is a more consequential interpretation.

Taking the Lord’s name in vain means invoking God’s authority to justify something that does not reflect His character. Murdering in God’s name. Manipulating people in God’s name. Using religion to elevate yourself over someone else. Claiming divine endorsement for something motivated by personal ambition.

When we act in God’s name, we are presenting our actions as something God would endorse. That is a tremendous responsibility.

It also changes how I understand the phrase “in the name of Jesus Christ.” When we pray in His name, I think we are reminding ourselves that we are trying to align with His will. And perhaps the best way to demonstrate that alignment is not through religious language at all. It is through how we treat people.

There is something deeply ironic about using Christianity as a vehicle for personal branding, status, or political power while policing the language someone uses in casual conversation. If we are concerned about taking the Lord’s name in vain, we should be much more concerned about how we represent Him.

Christ and the life we choose

Despite my increasing uncertainty about many traditional religious claims, Christ remains central to how I think about religion.

I believe in Christ. He is the great teacher and the perfect example. His teachings show us how to love God and our neighbors, how to forgive, how to serve, and how to attend to people who are overlooked.

I am particularly drawn to His emphasis on the individual. The person who is forgotten. The person who does not belong. The person who needs help but is not particularly useful to anyone else. Christ consistently directs attention toward those people.

I have increasingly come to believe that we demonstrate our love for Him through how we treat one another. We testify of Christ better by how we live than by what we say we believe.

I do not know precisely what to make of every theological claim surrounding His life, His divinity, or the Atonement. I have questions about the mechanics of salvation and the nature of God’s relationship with humanity. But I do not think those questions prevent me from finding tremendous value in His teachings.

I hope that when I meet Christ, I will already know Him. Not because I memorized the correct answers or checked every religious box, but because I spent my life trying to become the kind of person He taught us to be.

Eternal progression and judgment

One of the concepts that has historically frightened me most is final judgment. The idea that there comes a point when growth stops, our circumstances become permanent, and some external authority determines our eternal fate.

I have never found that particularly comforting.

But I have started thinking about judgment differently. What if judgment is not primarily an external authority arbitrating our souls? What if it is the natural consequence of the lives we choose to build?

Consider the decisions we make every day. Do we labor for our neighbors or primarily for ourselves? Do we help others develop, or are we exclusively concerned with our own progression? Are we content with our current capacity, or are we trying to become stronger, wiser, and more compassionate?

The communities we choose, the values we cultivate, and the relationships we build are already shaping the people we are becoming. In that sense, the decisions we make today indicate something about the paths we will follow tomorrow.

And sometime after tomorrow, there will be a final day.

I find this interpretation more compatible with the idea of eternal progression. It also makes more sense to me alongside the imagery of Christ advocating for us and God running to greet us. Perhaps salvation is not primarily about passing an examination. Perhaps it is about becoming someone who wants to live the life being offered.

I do not know whether that is theologically correct. But it is a conception of judgment that I find both more compassionate and more compelling.

Making peace with uncertainty

The biggest change in my relationship with Mormonism is that I have stopped feeling obligated to resolve every contradiction.

I can appreciate the Church without believing it is perfect. I can value the Book of Mormon without being certain it is an ancient historical record. I can appreciate Joseph Smith without knowing whether his visions were genuine. I can find meaning in Christ without having a fully developed understanding of His divinity or the Atonement. I can recognize that prophets may be inspired while also recognizing that they are fallible human beings. And I can participate in a religious tradition without surrendering my intellectual independence to it.

I do not think those positions are necessarily contradictory.

For much of my life, religion was presented as something that required a fairly comprehensive set of beliefs. The Church was either true or it was not. Prophets either spoke for God or they did not. Scripture was either divinely inspired or it was simply the product of human imagination.

I have become less interested in those binaries.

I am more interested in what is true, what is good, what can be reasonably defended, and what helps us become better people.

I do not know where this exploration will ultimately lead. I may become more convinced of certain religious claims. I may become less convinced of others. My relationship with the Church will probably continue to evolve.

But I do not feel the same urgency to force certainty where it does not exist.

I think often about what I want to pass on. I want the stories, the community, the moral seriousness, and the figure of Christ. I do not want to pass on a demand for certainty. The freedom to ask questions is part of what I hope to give the people I love.

I want to preserve the parts of Mormonism that I genuinely believe are worthwhile: Christ, service, compassion, eternal progression, community, and the aspiration to become something greater than we are today. I also want to preserve the freedom to question, reconsider, and change my mind.

Perhaps that is the most important thing I have learned about faith. It is not the absence of doubt, or even the possession of knowledge. It is the willingness to pursue what we believe is good and true while remaining honest about how much we actually know.

And I am increasingly comfortable living in that space.