Not only has our local public affairs rep come to our stake YM/YW meetings and pitched the idea of having some interfaith discussion groups or firesides or whatever, but I'm now getting hit up simultaneously for representing on an interfaith network at work and again by our elder's quorum for something very similar to what's being requested for the youth. I suspect the latter is at the request of the same public affairs rep; the work thing is something that I've been aware of for many years and have dabbled in a little bit here and there; mostly to the tune of participating in a hymn that we've sung as a small men's acapella choir on the National Day of Prayer because I was specifically asked if I would participate by friends of mine who were doing it and wanted to bulk up the numbers.
While I don't have any problem with the idea per se, I've decided after giving it a fair bit of a go—several years of dabbling participation in the group at work, anyway—that I'm politely disinterested in participating, and with regards to the YM, I would not encourage my teenaged boys to do so either.
Shortly after my mission, I actually got fairly interested in comparative religious studies, and although I never attended BYU, I do note that they had a class that surveyed the world's major religions. I bought (and read) the textbook because of my own interest. I've read through some Jehovah's Witness texts. I've read some Mahometan texts; portions of the Koran and the Hadiths. I've read portions of the Talmud. I'm not really (curiously) as familiar with the doctrines of the various sects of Christianity compared to each other, with the possible exception of the Catholic faith, which I've read a fair bit about, in part because it's also such an important part of the history of Western Civilization anyway. I think that my breadth of knowledge about faiths beyond my own is considerably better than average, and for many of those religions, I can tell you more about their beliefs than most people who allegedly practice them. But mostly that's been the result of my own curiosity and independent study. I know for sure that I'm not going to have gotten anything at all like that from going to an interfaith fireside and listening to teenager girls talk about what it's like wearing a hijab or whatever.
And that's in part the crux of my disinterest in the whole conceit. Not only will you not really learn anything that isn't incredibly superficial (and honestly quite boring and banal, for that matter) but one lesson I've picked up from the whole affair is that you aren't likely to strengthen your testimony or understanding about true doctrine very much by studying false doctrine. Occasionally you'll learn something that seems so "whack" that you'll feel better about true doctrine and the place of the Church to teach it to you, but that's a far cry from anything truly inspirational. You can learn about righteous men of the past who didn't have the full truth and be inspired by their faith—I've certainly had that happen to me while studying the Founding Fathers—but not from talking to some random member of another church or religion about what they believe. It's just an incredibly thin and unfulfilling avenue for spiritual nourishment. There's a reason why Ammon and Aaron, when preaching to Lamoni and his father respectively, didn't get sidetracked into a discussion where Lamoni told them all about his Great Spirit faith. No, they quickly said, "yeah, yeah, Great Spirit—close enough, but let me tell you about the real nature of God."—because sharing common beliefs wasn't going to strengthen anyone's faith. Sharing true doctrine was.
Rather than spirituality, what you are most likely to nourish in this type of exercise is the dopamine emotional hit that some people get (myself not really included, in most cases) by doing things that promote "togetherness." However, not only does this not do much of anything for me personally, but my experience with this kind of togetherness is that it's largely illusory. There isn't really any "togetherness". It's a vacuous, empty gesture and feel-good virtue signaling that accomplishes nothing other than to allow you to bask in the delusional glory that you've done something significant.
If you recall Elder Oaks talk from twelve years or so ago about "Good, Better, Best" you'll recall that we are counseled to not fritter away our spiritual capital in efforts that are merely good when we can (and should) be doing better and best. These kinds of interfaith initiatives are, at most, only good. And honestly, I find it a stretch to even call them that—they're just neutral things that you can do if it's the kind of thing that makes you feel good about yourself; but don't run around telling yourself that you're doing much of anything else. I don't have any problem with people wanting to do them, I'm just not interested myself.
Now, keep in mind that I'm talking specifically about these kinds of interfaith sharing experiences. I'm not saying that it's a bad idea to have good relationships with people, including clerical and ecclesiastical leaders of other faiths, and that we couldn't or shouldn't join forces to accomplish things that are good in the community. Those absolutely should be done. But if all we're going to do is sit around talking about what it's like to be a member of the Church vs being a Catholic vs being Russian Orthodox vs being Jewish, then leave me out. That sounds not only incredibly boring but also incredibly useless.
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