In Debt to Faith

 

I was in debt the moment I was born into this church.

For more than four decades since I took that first breath, I continued to fall further and further into debt. In debt to my parents. In debt to God. In debt to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Expected to give everything that I have and am, even laying down my life if necessary, for the church. At least, that is what I was taught.

“…knoweth that ye are eternally indebted to your heavenly Father, to render to him all that you have and are…” Mosiah 2:34

An eternal debt that could never be repaid. No matter how much you do, you are never out of debt.

There are many types of debt. By far, the most commonly understood debt is of the financial kind, but there are others. In systems where there is an exchange of value in one form or another there is the potential of creating a debt; for example, technical debt in software development or emotional debt in relationships.

With regards to the church, it has not been in financial debt since 1907. Except for a deficit in 1962, the church has been able to grow its assets and resources to unimaginable levels.

While the church may be sitting on a mountain of assets and financial resources, I have found that the church has incurred significant levels of debt; not in the traditional financial sense, but with regards to faith. The church is suffering from a mountain of debt — a debt to faith.

For the purposes of this writing, and since I could not find a better term, I will use the term “faithal debt” to mean “a debt with regards to faith” so that we have a descriptive term consistent with other types of debt. With that established, let’s get back to it.

Why faithal debt? Why not something like spiritual debt?

Faith is defined within this church as a belief or a “hope​ for things which are ​​​not​ seen, which are true” (Alma 32:21). By this definition, a foundational relationship between faith and truth is established. Truth becomes a conditional requirement of faith, and without it, that faith becomes fallacious — a myth, a misconception, a misbelief.

The line that separates the faithful from the foolish is truth.

Another way to look at faith is a belief in a truth that is unsubstantiated, yet given that there is a relationship between the belief and the truth, the unwritten expectation of that faith is that it will be, at some point, in this life or the next, be unequivocally true.

Everything that members of the church are taught is wrapped up in “truth” — the true church, a true prophet, the truest book (Book of Mormon), the true priesthood, the true path, the truest form of the gospel, and so on. All of this truth-speak is designed to capture the faith, and therefore the trust, of the members. As trust is captured, truth becomes an integral component of the foundation on which the system operates.

The trust that members place in the church is purchased with faith, that faith is paid for with truth.

In order for the church to remain a functional organization, it needs to have the trust of its members. It’s that trust that enables the leadership of the church to lay claim to the resources of its membership, more specifically a member’s time, money, and agency. As long as the integrity of truth remains intact, or the truth remains unquestioned, then the spiritual system will continue to function as intended in this aspect.

A falsehood claimed as truth under the guise of faith incurs a faithal debt. As long as the falsehood remains undiscovered the spiritual system operates as intended, but only on borrowed time. Once a falsehood is discovered, truth demands that it be paid what is due, which cost is usually the faith and trust that the individual had built on the so-called truth.

This is particularly impactful within the black-and-white, light-vs-dark, good-vs-evil faithal paradigms of the church. In a system where truth is of God and lies and deceit are of the devil, when an individual discovers that their faith is based on untruth the impacts are significant and consequential.

When truth comes to collect what is due of faith the consequences vary based on the individual (and their spirituality, personality type, and other internal and external forces). The resulting cognitive dissonance often leads to a loss of one form or another. A cost must be paid, and when our faith cannot make the required payments to truth, truth may come to collect our confidence, our trust, or even our very spiritual self. Those that refuse the cost must deny the validity of the truth and entrench even further, which ultimately increases said faithal debt.

Rather than addressing the faithal debt caused by the church’s truth claims, the leadership has shifted the burden of payment to its members. Recent responses to the compounding issues such as doubting one’s doubts, avoiding deception, staying in the boat, and taffy pulling are desperate attempts to protect the belief in, and office of, the leaders by drawing on obedience and trust, but the cost of said obedience and trust is paid for with the faithal credit of its members.

Rather than reaching out to its members who find themselves facing a faith crisis — a crisis created by the church’s own faithal debt — the leaders instead have chosen to marginalize, trivialize, and mock the very members that had placed their trust in them. Correctional systems based on fear, shame, guilt, and social exile are not sustainable. These tactics are desperate attempts to bandage the hemorrhaging of membership and do nothing to address the actual issues or root causes.

Until the leadership takes ownership of the faithal debt created by all of the untruths, historical whitewashing, misinterpretation, cover-ups, etc, the debt will continue to grow. Which will just become a larger barrier for not only potential new members but also existing members.

The part that I find the most disheartening is many of the church’s best critical thinkers are being sacrificed on an altar of blind obedience to the leaders of the church. Many of the issues found within the church’s faithal debt are heavy and complicated, the church needs those kinds of thinkers to help reconcile the issues. Unfortunately, an organization that is never wrong and will not apologize is not likely to change.

Also published on Medium.

Author’s note: This is a revision of a post I originally made in April 2019.