Practicing a relational faith

We began this book by talking about the intellectual and spiritual questions that can challenge our faith. We’ve spent the chapters since then building a new framework—shifting from idea-truth to person-truth—to help reframe those questions. In this final chapter, we want to get personal. The journey of faith is not just a public, collective experience; it is an intensely individual one. And the moments when we wrestle with our beliefs—when our faith feels like an object in our hands to be examined, rather than a lens through which we see the world—can feel lonely.¶

To explore this, one of us (Jeffrey) will share a more personal reflection, drawing on a philosophical distinction that has been profoundly helpful in navigating these two different ways of experiencing our faith. Some modern philosophers argue that there are two basic “ways of being,” or two different modes with which we engage with the world. The following example from the philosopher Hubert Dreyfus may help to illustrate this distinction:¶

In the first mode, the blind man can examine his cane, feel its weight in his hands, inspect it for flaws, repair it if it is broken. In this mode, the cane is thing to be contemplated, analyzed, and categorized. The same is true of our beliefs and our faith. At times and occasions, we can analyze our convictions. We can “heft” them, measure them, feel them. They can be broken, repaired, improved upon, discussed, and analyzed in the abstract. This mode of exploration is very friendly with the philosophical tradition we’ve discussed so far. It represents the more abstract, detached, reflective, or more “intellectual” or “theoretical” way in which we sometimes study our beliefs and doctrines. This is the world of idea-truth. Philosophers sometimes refer to this as present-at-hand.¶

In the second mode, the blind man is hardly aware of the cane at all, but rather is using the cane to extend his awareness of the world around him. Similarly, our beliefs and our faith extend our awareness of the world in a particular way. In this mode, we are not examining our beliefs so much as we are examining the world with and through our beliefs. And just as the cane becomes “invisible” to the blind man, our beliefs and convictions fall invisibly to the background. When we are ministering, serving, loving, and teaching, we are usually not acting as proto-philosophers examining the cane itself—we are simply using the cane to reveal the world. We are seeing the needs of others, and responding to those needs, with the cane. This is the world of person-truth. It is the mode of being where our faith is a living, covenantal relationship that allows us to connect with God and serve others. This is what philosophers call ready-to-hand.¶

The terms present-at-hand and ready-to-hand are not super important by themselves. You can think of them as philosophical jargon that you’ll likely not need later. We just need a handy label for these two modes of engagement for a moment. This distinction can be seen in every aspect of human life. For example, an auto mechanic working to fix the steering of an automobile will engage the car and its steering mechanisms as objects of analysis, things possessing certain qualities or features that can be measured, manipulated, or specified. The car is present-at-hand.¶

In contrast, someone driving a car and on their way to visit a dear friend is fully engaged with the car in a very different way. To that person, the steering wheel is not one object among many that she is moving in a circle to exert an influence on a vehicle by means of a steering mechanism and drive train. Rather, she is merely turning left onto the street where her dearest and oldest friend lives—in a quaint red house at the end of the block. The steering wheel, as an object independent from the driver, is almost entirely invisible to her. The steering wheel and the car becomes extensions of herself. The car is ready-to-hand.¶

Religious belief as the blind man’s cane

Our religious beliefs, assumptions, and narratives are much like the blind man’s cane: they disclose the world to us in particular ways. They disclose to us priorities, duties, and lifestyles that clothe our lives and relationships with meaning and purpose. Most often, we engage with our beliefs ready-to-hand. That is, we aren’t examining our beliefs (as, for example, abstract doctrines or theological principles) nearly so much as we are examining the world with them and through them. As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”¶

On occasion, however, like the blind man above, we must examine our cane. Perhaps it isn’t functioning like it’s supposed to be. We keep running into things we weren’t expecting or detecting. Maybe the cane isn’t long enough. Or maybe it’s too long. Perhaps it has been damaged in some way and needs to be repaired. The same thing can occur with our religious beliefs and assumptions. When we shift into idea-truth and examine our beliefs in the present-at-hand mode on occasion, maybe to refine, clarify, improve, or expand them, we can then delight in new surprises and discoveries once we step back into ready-to-hand engagement with our faith.¶

We could use eyeglasses as another analogy. Most of the time, eyeglasses are invisible to us—we forget that they are even there. We are just seeing the world through them. (This is ready-to-hand.) However, sometimes, they need cleaning or adjustment. As we are cleaning and adjusting them, they are now present-at-hand. But the goal is not to stay there—when we have cleaned and adjusted them, the goal is to put them back on and to forget them once again. And once we have cleaned them, the world can look quite different to us. Indeed, we may now detect some things that we had before entirely missed.¶

This whole book has been such an exercise. We’ve engaged in all these discussions in a very present-at-hand way—in fact, you might even say that we wrote this book in the philosophical tradition. We are examining our beliefs and assumptions as ideas. The difference between idea-truth and person-truth is itself an idea. The goal, however, is not to endlessly dwell on the philosophical arguments—the goal is to step back into ready-to-hand engagement with faith once again. The goal is to put the glasses back on and to forget about them once more.¶

In other words, the present-at-hand mode should not be the default mode of our engagement with the world or with our faith. Rather, the present-at-hand mode is an interruption of what religion really is: a practical way of life. If we dwell always in the present-at-hand mode with respect to our religious beliefs, we risk losing sight of the very purpose of our faith to begin with. We end up like a blind man who spends all of his time examining his cane and never leaves his house to travel to a friend’s or attend to his work. If we spend all our time analyzing our convictions, we might never actually see what the world looks like through our convictions. It would be like always studying and repairing the glasses but rarely looking through them and moving on with the day.¶

Building a living faith by living your faith

So, what does it look like to consciously shift our daily spiritual practices from the analytical present-at-hand mode to the relational ready-to-hand mode? Here are a few personal examples from our own lives. We have both found that when we pray and ask God if He is real, we rarely receive a direct answer. And, when we have each examined our own faith assumptions and then appealed to God for more certainty, we each have seldom (if ever) gotten a direct response. However, when our prayers are less about ourselves and our own personal need for certainty—when we have relinquished sign-seeking and instead framed our questions differently—we have experienced revelation in our lives far more reliably.¶

For example, when I (Jeffrey) pray and ask God to help me see ways to be a better husband or a better father, my own shortcomings are revealed to me throughout the day—and not in a self-disparaging way, but in a manner that makes me excited to be and do better for my family. I experience a divine hand guiding me towards ways to improve the way I think and feel about my spouse and children. But beyond that, I walk forward with a deeper conviction that God is real and cares about me and my family.¶

Similarly, when I (Ed) pray and ask God if the Book of Mormon is true— an idea-truth question aimed at the present-at-hand object—I have not always gotten a direct answer. But when I pray a person-truth question—asking God to help me understand Alma and live more like him—I enter the ready-to-hand mode, and conviction follows. Details in Alma’s story become clearer as I read, and I walk forward with a deeper conviction that this story was not invented by a 23 year-old man in 1829, that these are the stories of real people, real men of God with life experiences to learn from.¶

In other words, when we read and study scripture not to compile lists of doctrines or principles, but rather to come to know the authors and the Author who inspired them—our entire focus shifts. We shift from reading to find proof-texts, analyzing verb tenses, or winning doctrinal debates—all examples of “examining the glasses”— reading to understand God's character. We might ask instead, “What does this story teach me about who God is and how He feels about His children?” It is looking through the glasses to find an step into a relationship with God.¶

When we have prayed and asked God if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, neither of us have gotten the sort of direct answer that question is aiming at. But when we have prayed and asked God to help us use His priesthood power to bless the lives of others, we have both has profound and sacred experiences that have bless our families and ministered to those in our individual stewardships. When we have asked our Heavenly Father for help in being true to our covenants, we have both been able to walk forward with a deeper conviction that this institution is, indeed, Christ’s kingdom and that we are acting as His hands in working miracles in the lives of His children.¶

In these examples, we have found answers to prayer as we each engaged with our religious beliefs and assumptions ready-to-hand. It is when those beliefs and assumptions were invisible, and we were instead reaching out into the world with those beliefs, that we encountered God’s guiding, steadying hand in our lives. By examining the cane, the blind man does not find evidence of its utility or value. It is only in using the cane that he does so. The same is true of our religious beliefs, but with the added proviso that the measure of our beliefs is more than mere utility, but divine provenance. God is found, not in the space between us and our beliefs, but in the space between us and our service to our fellow man.¶

This may be a complicated and overly-philosophical way of saying, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). But it extends this verse from merely “applying” doctrines in our lives (in an abstract idea-truth way), to the added insight that God Himself is found in our practical engagement through Gospel, not in our abstract analysis of the Gospel. It is found in our relationships with those we serve. We can examine at our eyeglasses all we want, but clarity is ultimately found as we put them on and get to work in the project of redemption for the living and the dead.¶

The epistemological storm in present-at-hand

As we (Jeffrey and Ed) have each looked out into and “taken up” the world through the lens of the Restored Gospel, we’ve had experiences of direct revelation during and following such prayers, so distinctly that we cannot deny the existence and love of God and yet be honest men. This doesn’t mean that we can’t abstractly analyze our beliefs and probe whether those experiences were entirely due to a “undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato,” as a skeptical Ebeneezer Scrooge might say. Of course, we can . . . and do! We can always abstractly wonder if we’re somewhere in a coma dreaming it all up, or a brain in a vat being manipulated in some alien lab!¶

The philosophical study of how we know things can, however, become an obsession. This abstract project of “knowing” can inadvertently consume all other questions. As ordinary human beings, however, we all engage in a world of moral duties, religious narratives, personal relationships, and meaningful interaction on a daily basis without ever resolving the intractable problems of absolute certainty. If this weren’t so, we’d be quickly lost in the endless depths of skepticism, doubt, and even paranoia. How do I know my wife is real and not a figment of my imagination? How do I know the parental duties I feel towards my children are binding? How can I be certain I actually enjoy this hamburger? How do I know you aren’t continually lying to me?¶

Questions of doubt and certainty are the natural weather of the idea-truth world. They rise to the fore only when we examine our beliefs in the abstract, detached mode of present-at-hand. Unfortunately, the longer we dwell there, the more fully we give ourselves over to abstraction and speculative detachment, the more apt we are to be lost in a labyrinth of abstract questions about what can truly be known. That’s a fancy way of saying that if we endlessly study and examine our glasses, we might find ourselves functionally blind.¶

When we engage with our beliefs in the ready-to-hand mode, however, questions of how we know and can we be certain usually recede into the background, hardly raised at all in the hum and thrum of lived-experience, interpersonal relationship, and practical engagement with the world. In short, “doubt” can never be evicted from the world of abstract analysis, but it can be evicted from the realm of ready-to-hand, where we put our religious worldviews to work as we engage in building the kingdom of God. We want to not just lay hold upon revealed truth—we want that truth to reveal the world.¶

Those who are struggling with their faith often have their gaze fixated on the glasses, or fixated on the cane itself. What they often need is not more time examining their beliefs, dissecting their logic, analyzing the various propositions and parts in some abstract manner—but rather, more occasions for encounters with God in the concrete, interpersonal and practical work of building the kingdom of God.¶

This, we believe, is the ultimate promise of shifting our faith’s foundation from abstract doctrines and ideas to trust in a Person with whom we are in a relationship. While the analytical, idea-truth mode will always have its place for study and clarification, conviction is not born there. Genuine, resilient conviction—the kind that becomes a part of us—is found in the practical, relational, person-truth mode. It is discovered when we stop staring at our glasses and start seeing the world through them; when we stop inspecting the cane and start walking with it. It is found in the peace, humility, and clarity that come only when we engage in service to the living God of Israel and His children.¶

Reframing our questions: Chapter 14

The first question treats spiritual disciplines as tools for analysis—a way to examine, verify, and shore up our beliefs as abstract objects. It is the question of the person who is endlessly inspecting the cane (present-at-hand). The second question treats these same practices as channels for connection and action. It is the question of the person who is using the cane to navigate the world and connect with others. The first seeks certainty, the second seeks relationship.¶

The first question approaches God as a spiritual search engine, submitting a query and expecting a data point in return. It is a transactional request for information. The second question approaches God as a mentor and father. It is relational, asking for wisdom and personal transformation, not just a fact. It shifts the goal from knowing a correct thing to becoming a better person through a relationship with God.¶

The first question assumes that the measure of faith is the permanent absence of intellectual uncertainty. It gets caught in the “storm of uncertainty” that is a natural feature of the analytical, present-at-hand mode. The second question reframes the entire goal. It suggests that the true evidence of our faith is not found in abstract certainty, but in the “fruits of the Spirit”—the peace, clarity, and love we feel when we are actively engaged in the ready-to-hand work of the gospel. Conviction, in this view, is not an object we possess, but an experience we have when we live in a covenant relationship with God.¶