I can be a fairly private person, keeping to myself and not going out of my way to share things with others. Yet I’ve had remarkable moments of connection at Church when I’ve been open and vulnerable. Now, I know that not everyone that has shared their vulnerabilities has been received as openly as I have and I honestly don’t know why that is. What I do know is what has worked for me and what I think can work for most of us.
I’ve been going through a faith remodel (what I prefer to “faith crisis”) for the past four years or so (basically since I got back from my mission, although there are earlier roots). This made Church less pleasant than it usually was for quite some time. However, about two years ago I started making a somewhat regular habit of sharing my testimony during testimony meeting.
One Sunday I did this and focused on how I’ve never really felt comfortable saying that “I know” certain things are true, but have for much of my life because that’s what you say, before talking about spiritual gifts and how scripture says for some it is given to know and to others it is given to believe on the words of those that know. I testified that I am one who believes, but doesn’t know. I believe that God gave me the gift of not knowing and believing. As I shared those thoughts, I had numerous people come up to me and thank me for sharing and that they felt the same and that I had articulated something they’d felt, but never really felt comfortable sharing.
This happens to me almost every time I bear my testimony. More often than not it’s just one person, but I feel like it opens things up a little. I try to do the same thing when I teach, to share some experience that’s real or some struggle that I have (perhaps with Nephi being somewhat of a self-righteous prick or maybe with Captain Moroni going crazy killing people or sometimes about needing to tweet snarky things during GenConf to get anything positive out of it).
By doing so, I feel like I belong. I’ve never seen a miraculous night and day transformation among my fellow ward members, but I’ve sensed people being more genuine and sincere, at least for a brief moment or two.
These are the moments where I feel real connections to those in my ward, when I start to see them as people and not perfect, Jesus-loving automatons (that likely has something to do with my biases and isn’t wholly related to how they present themselves). I think it’s only when we are vulnerable and open that we can truly come together, mourning with those that mourn.
It’s not easy. Church culture can make it incredibly difficult to voice divergent or just different opinions, but I’ve found that there are usually more open to different perspectives than I anticipate. Or maybe people just let my skeptical-doubting oddities fly because they’re distracted by my mustache or openly liberal bordering on socialist political beliefs…I don’t know.
But I’ve felt it work and that’s good enough for me.