How can I research church history spiritually but yet objectively or scientifically as well?
Question
Hi Gramps!
I’m a curious, empirical person and a devout RM attending BYU. I’ve researched Church history/doctrine and know by my nature that I will continue. I avoid biased material but include academic non-Church sources. I risk disaffiliation and knowing you’ve researched church history and are still here want advice on how to research spiritually, yet objectively/scientifically. I’m not proving the Church true. Because it is, if I know as much as I can, nothing I learn will invalidate it.
Spencer
Answer
Dear Spencer,
First off, I want to congratulate you on your curious and inquisitive mind. The church falsely gets the reputation of not being open to research or scholarly wisdom, and that is a falsehood that needs to be overturned in our society. One can be an active and devout LDS and still be a skeptical historian who seeks out the truth.
As you go about your scholarly research, I want you to remember several things: there is a huge difference between “skeptical research” and “nothing I find can satisfy my cynicism”. It is one thing to want proof of what happened. It is quite another to set the bar so high that no proof can ever satisfy it. The philosopher Descartes, for all his brilliance (and he was brilliant) tried to logically “prove” that God exists. Unfortunately while doing so, he set the bar so high in his proofs that he ended up not proving anything. Sometimes you need to accept things on faith and realize that you can’t prove everything by way of research and logic.
I’d like you to also remember that virtually no scholar who writes and publishes is able to do so without their own subjective, personal opinions coming through. Everything you read, especially about such controversial and personal subjects such as faith and religion can be twisted, spun and turned one way or another. So truly objective academic works without the authors personal opinions are virtually impossible to find.
To help you along with this I’d suggest you read Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass by Hugh Nibley. It will help you understand just how twisted something can be with very little effort.
Spencer, I’d like you to remember one more thing. One thing I wish I knew as a younger man. Knowledge of a subject does not make you smarter than anyone else. You will still make mistakes intellectually and you’ll make mistakes personally. No matter how intelligent you are, you are still accountable for your actions. I see many young people place a high value on education and intelligence-and that’s a good thing-but it should not be your sole goal in life.
Gramps
On a side note to compare with this I have a thought that might make sense to help you.
Have you heard of the idea that most scientists and engineers deeply believe in God? They often get to the point where they see and say; this world is so beautiful and so organized. It’s impossible this could have just happened without a plan. And for it to be so beautiful of course it makes sense that there’s a Heavenly Father / Creator figure. And there absolutely is something after this life, it can’t just end just at death.
In terms of comparison these scientists are studying earthly evidence which is much like looking at ‘blueprints’. Isn’t it interesting that when you are building a house you have both a house that’s real, a builder, and a blueprints!
This means we don’t say…the blueprints exist so the house can’t possibly have a builder! Or the blueprints exist so the house must have built itself! That doesn’t make sense right?
The point is that many people have a desire to have power over others, not just with money but with authority and the concept of power. We can be led astray if we don’t have spiritual things first.
It’s OK to think how wonderful it is to study those blueprints of how to build a house! We just want to remember the builder was the one that ‘wrote’ the blueprints in terms of how our world was built, and how church history worked out is a similar concept. There are people that want you to put the blueprints first, or not question sources so that they can alter the blueprints for their version. And you should be aware of this.
When DNA evidence first came out and when it was in its early stages some LDS scholars were tricked into apostasy because they had been trained into thinking that the blueprints are more important than the one who made the blueprints. In other words they’d been trained to put evidence before Heavenly Father and answers to prayers and spiritual answers. Then imagine their agony and bitterness when just a few years later after they’d fallen, several LDS DNA specialists came forward with new evidence that showed both the Book of Mormon to be real, and that there WAS book of Mormon DNA even though some people had been tricked into thinking there wasn’t any!
The point of this is to always to put the spiritual parts first and you’ll be OK, and its still fun to like the scientific aspect of things. But the scientific aspect is just the blue prints you know? How clever those blueprints are can be pretty exciting sometimes! But if you stick to answers to prayers and following heavenly father by love and faith and repentance you will get there faster than the scholars who ignore answers to prayers and faith.
Dear Mildred,
People fake evidence all the time. They also rewrite history and forge things.
What’s important in faith is to put the love of Jesus and Heavenly Father first. Joseph Smith absolutely wasn’t an evil man. All the people of the scriptures who were great prophets put their love of Jesus and Heavenly Father first and foremost. Modern prophets are also real.
People want to trick you to think that its not about those things but it is. Going to church and the basis for church authority all come down to those that follow Jesus absolutely obeyed him, loved him, and used faith and repentance.
We just have to focus on reading the scriptures to feel the love of God. People who attack the church always focus on something like pulling people away from the love of God and loyalty, focusing on hate or blame, twisting their identity away from being a child of god, and here’s another point; they also can’t handle that someone else could have more blessings than they have. It’s OK if others have more or were blessed with things that we currently don’t have. By so accepting that we’re also accepting that some day we could be blessed (through obedience) to have things maybe someone a hundred years from now might not be able to comprehend. Don’t worry about those things, just think about how you are a child of God and that you are loved.
Don’t dwell on negative feelings. Try to look for faith, repentance, and love centered through Christ.