René Krywult’s “Fear Leads to the Dark Side: How to Navigate the Shallows of (Mis)Information” opened the last portion of the Thursday afternoon session of the 2019 FairMormon Conference.
René offered very practical advice about how to deal with challenges to one’s faith, intermingled with his own autobiography as a boy growing up in Vienna with a convert mother who occasionally reverted to Catholicism and encountering anti-Mormon writing already in his early teens.
In a very real sense, the concluding presentation for the day — “Faith is Not Blind,” by Elder Bruce C. Hafen and Marie K. Hafen — continued the theme of practical counsel for dealing with challenges to belief. As Sister Hafen described their intent, it was “To teach a pattern and tools that can help us learn and grow through complexity — rather than being overcome by it.”
Their remarks drew upon their recent book that bears precisely the same title, Faith is Not Blind. I wrote about their book in a column for the Deseret News that I published on 13 December 2018. In my column, I outline the same three stages on which they focused today: Naïve simplicity is the first of those stages. It can be overwhelmed by complexity. But, in turn, difficult and challenging complexity can be overcome by a deeper, richer, renewed simplicity:
“Exploring how ‘Faith is Not Blind'”
Elder Hafen told a wonderful story about an experience that he had with a new and very naïve companion during his mission to Germany. It’s worth listening to the talk, I think, just to hear that powerfully instructive story.
Four practical pieces of advice, unaccompanied by the several excellent illustrations that they gave:
- Invite faithful questions.
- Be cautious about the Internet’s weaknesses.
- Focus on the Restoration’s hugely positive doctrinal content.
- Cultivate an attitude of meekness.
Very important for the long term, the Hafens introduced their website, https://www.faithisnotblind.org/blog.
Unusually for FairMormon and similar gatherings, they ended their presentation by teaching the audience a hymn from Sweden (“Day by Day”) and having us sing it together. I quite liked it, and perhaps you will, as well:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/deseretbook/misc/assets/Day_by_day_sheet_music.pdf
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If any of you are planning to be in Finland between 20-22 September — and specifically in or around either Tampere or Helsinki — please drop in. Since the Fall academic term will have begun by then, this trip is going to involve a little bit of time on the ground, bounded on either side by very nearly as much time in airports and in the air. So I hope that somebody will be there!
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Finally, here’s an interesting article in the Deseret News by Taylor Halverson, with whom I was just speaking about an hour ago:
“Why the most important changes in the church are yet to happen”
Posted from Provo, Utah
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