Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Religious Authoritarianism and Relative Truth

On the topic of religious authoritarianism I find myself conceptually somewhat divided. I have met plenty of people who don’t think organized religion has the best answers, or all of the answers. My best friend, in fact, feels exactly this way. I can remember him coming to church with me so many times, and so many LDS core doctrines resonated within him. And yet, he was never baptized, and I couldn’t figure out why. During my mission, I wrote to him often, seeking to see some sort of change in him, that if somehow I could ask the right questions, or provide the right answers, he would have that lightbulb moment and come around to my way of seeing the world. It never happened, and a year after being home from my mission, I recall we had the conversation again. I just wanted to know, honestly and sincerely why he couldn’t accept baptism into the LDS faith. He explained to me, clearly and plainly, “I find so much truth with LDS people, but I don’t see all of it. I don’t think it’s untrue, necessarily, I just don’t think it’s all of the truth.” I was dumbfounded. I had nothing else to say but that I respected his views on it, and would seek to understand it better in the future.


I relate this experience because I feel like it was all I could think about while reading Erasmus and Luther. Truth is a difficult concept to capture in these rhetorical terms. As I read Erasmus, I found myself nodding my head, feeling some form of wisdom in his words. Then, reading Luther I thought, wow what was Erasmus, and myself by association, thinking?! I find truth to be whatever resonates within one’s own soul, and I think the contradiction of interpretation in the scriptural proofs to be evident of that, just as I found in my discussions with this old friend. I think that is a large part of what I have felt in the Renaissance and the Reformation. Man, being unwilling to follow a course in which his soul finds no comfort, reaches out for something else. Some would use the term, he is reaching higher, but I can’t willingly associate this with a vertical plane. It is not higher or lower, simply different.

1 comment:

  1. I think your respect of your friend's opinion is a perfect demonstration of the humanistic and in this case the gospel's respect of will. I too have many good friends who don't see any point of organized religion. Honestly it's really rough. It's frustrating too because we see how much more they can gain and learn if they accept, but it depends on them. It's the respect of their choice that I feel demonstrates the most love to them and simply keeping the invitation constant and warm. Everyone has their own time :)

    ReplyDelete