There are two kinds of religious knowledge. If they were houses, one would be a rambling single-story affair, haphazardly designed, with useful nooks and alcoves, family pictures on the walls, and trinkets and souvenirs in every drawer. The other would be the opposite-a carefully designed architectural vision that would tower above surrounding structures and appear to be only incidentally attached to its foundation.
The first kind of knowledge is built a little at a time from life experience. It’s a trial-and-error process. A wall here, an additional room there. It’s a do-it-yourself project, guided by rules of thumb and questions like “do we need another room here?” “is this space useful?” and “maybe we should tear this part down and build something else?” It’s a single-story because religious beliefs are too contingent-too provisional-for vertical structures.
The second approach requires careful planning and a commitment to spiritual engineering. Bits of spiritual knowledge are squared up, reinforced, and then stacked like toy blocks. The goal is a Trump Tower of personal spiritual knowledge capable of supporting the burden of logical daisy-chains, black-and-white thinking, and sweeping resolutions to life’s great mysteries. Folks that live on the top floors of these structures are secure in their conviction that everyone else is mistaken, or at least misguided. Phrases like “I know that. . .” or “I testify that. . .” roll off their tongues with ease.
If religious knowledge is limited to building spiritual towers, then we Mormons in the cheap seats don’t know much. If you stick around, we’ll probably try to convince you that you don’t know much either. The problem is that we don’t have much faith in the structural integrity of the materials we see others using as they busily build their towers.
For example, Mormons often use Moroni’s promise (Moroni 10:3-5) as a kind of spiritual cornerstone. It’s a method for testing the validity of the Book of Mormon. It’s an easy three-step process: Read, then ponder, then pray-and divine affirmation will follow. At first blush, the process appears to be something that could be used to vet building materials. Those of us in the cheap seats aren’t so sure, though.
Is it a problem, for example, that the process for determining the truth of the Book of Mormon is, itself, part of the Book of Mormon?
And what about false positives? Life experience suggests that spiritual experiences are often the result of prayer, meditation and contemplation of the divine, regardless of context. What if, as research suggests, certain behaviors produce spiritual experiences as reliably as a tap on the tendon below the patella produces a reflex kick? What does that imply about the nature of religious knowledge? Do daisy-chains of “if this is true, then that is true” statements still seem like a good idea?
Here’s another related question: Why do we spend so much time telling each other what spiritual experiences mean? Group expectations, norms, culture, and everything from the stories grandparents tell, to the subtle cues of parents and church leaders, work to define and control the process of making sense of spiritual experiences. Add to that the explicit instructions in books, conferences talks, and instruction manuals. Good Mormons, by the time we’re old enough to read, have an intuitive understanding of the proper conclusions to be drawn from these experiences. The result is that the meaning we attach to religious experiences is carefully focused, like sun through a magnifying glass, on one particular ant on the sidewalk-and that ant is the question of whether or not Mormonism is “true” (or in Mormon-speak, on whether or not “the church is true”). If we engage in the right behaviors, we’ll have religious experiences. If we attach the right meaning to those experiences, we’ll reach the right conclusion. In this case, the right conclusion is a smoldering ant–or a conviction that Mormonism is the most direct route to God.
I used to think that the success of a church or religion could be measured by how effectively it delivered spiritual experiences to its members. I’m a business professor; it’s hard for me not to think in terms of output and exchange. Now I see the inadequacy of that approach. Spiritual experiences are the easy part. Bottled water is popular these days. It’s sold by quite a few different companies. Spiritual experiences are like the water these companies sell. It’s all pretty much the same. For bottled water companies, it’s not the water that’s important, it’s the branding, or the meaning they can attach to it (through subtle differences in impurities, for example, or differences in packaging or marketing). By analogy, what distinguishes religions is the meaning that they attach to spiritual experiences. Put another way, spiritual experiences are like vases. Not all vases are the same, but they’re more or less functionally equivalent. The real question-the real challenge-for religions is to get adherents to put the right flowers in their vases.
We know that religious affiliation, for almost everyone, is largely determined by birth and circumstance. We know that the meaning many of us extract from spiritual experience is entangled in years of spiritual conditioning. And still some of us, as arbitrary as it may seem, choose to believe. Some of us choose to have faith. Can a religion be built on faith? Just plain faith? Faith that isn’t looking for a promotion, or a pay raise, or that isn’t on its way to becoming something else? Faith that is contingent, provisional, and that won’t support a second story?
Those of us in the cheap seats aren’t interesting in spiritual towers. If we’re busy building, we’re building out, not up.
You won’t catch us throwing phrases around like “I know . . .” or “I testify. . . ” We’re not that sure of our ourselves-and we’re often annoyed by those who are. This makes for an interesting mix of reactions on fast and testimony Sundays.
Next week: A Mormon in the cheap seats goes to fast and testimony meeting. . . .
Wow wow wow. There were about twenty phrases I wanted to copy and paste & comment on. I’ll keep it a bit shorter: this is thought provoking. And that’s a high compliment in my book! I love these metaphors, especially the bottled water. But also the house building and the vase choices and the rest. I’ve spent a little bit of my life thinking about religion from a relationship angle, from a psychological angle, from an emotional angle … but as a person who most definitely does not have biz prof skill set, I really appreciate this additional way, the organizational angle, of viewing. Keep it up!
Fascinating post, Brent.
I think this analogy is very useful, although, I would argue that spiritual experiences are like the water — human beings are made up of water, all living things have water flowing in and around them. Vases are a way to contain and give form to the experience, but they are not the experience itself.
@Heidi, good point about the vases–vases probably would work better in the analogy as an element that “contains” (since they are containers).
Brent, I also think about how water is everywhere, but has no actual shape of its own.
I’ve been thinking about this post all morning. Like Erin, I could have quoted huge portions of it and I know I’ll be coming back to it.
I too find this very thought-provoking, along with your other “cheap seats” posts. This makes so much sense to me. Thank you.
Great post, Brent! I particularly like your question about spending time telling each other what spiritual experiences mean. It kind of reminds me of what my sister has explained to me about the role of narrative in theology, where so much depends on how we interpret our experiences, and we sometimes reinterpret our experiences to mean something different long after the fact.
“The goal is a Trump Tower of personal spiritual knowledge capable of supporting the burden of logical daisy-chains, black-and-white thinking, and sweeping resolutions to life’s great mysteries”… Priceless, Brent…this post is priceless, this series gets better and better…please keep the insights coming.
Very insightful and candid post. Thank you for the wonderful thoughts!