EP. 6 RESOLUTE & UNSURE

0:00Welcome to Like a Rock. I'm your host, Connor Chekkits, and I'm unsure about a lot of things. Doing this show has been really humbling. I would never consider myself well-read enough or firm enough in my faith or confident enough in myself to bring these messages that I so desperately want to be shared to you. Yet, I'm here. I'm doing it. So I pose the question, can you speak with true conviction while being unsteady or unsure? Let's talk about it. So I knew that I'd want to speak pretty early on in this process about my family complexities. My parents got divorced when I was two. I am the only child between the two of them,

1:07and there was a lot of complexity with that. I'm sure many of you grew up in a split home, and that being said, I'm very close with both of my parents. I have very healthy and great relationships with both my mom and my dad. I have a great relationship with my stepdad and my siblings. I have three more siblings with my mom in my stepdad. And because of the nature of being in a split home, it really did take a village. I'm really close with all of my grandparents, with a lot of my aunts and my uncles and my cousins, all who had their little hand in raising me. The formation of my family, while maybe complicated and complex, is really sacred to me. But it didn't really feel like it fit perfectly in the box that sometimes, at church, it can feel presented as the ideal family unit. And so at times that could also feel complex

2:12or complicated to me. The concept of families being together forever wasn't just immediately some beautiful and great concept. It was confusing. I didn't know, and in a lot of ways still don't know how that's going to manifest for me. That's actually kind of a daily struggle. It's a lot of questions that I still have yet to have answers to. And that I don't think I will have answers to for a while. Those questions at times have been paralyzing in my faith journey. I have a lot of questions that have felt paralyzing at times. There's a lot of things in church history and the past are difficult for me to handle. There's things about Christianity in general that are difficult for me to wrap my mind around. There are things and decisions in the church that I simply disagree with. Yet once again, I'm here. I have a very similar relationship that I have with

3:18gospel in me, when it's the church. As I do with myself, there are things in the core of my being that I love. And there are things and habits and aspects of myself that I struggle with. Things that I really deeply wish weren't a part of my journey. And so this struggle and this uncertainty from, you can say, a macro view with the church or how one lives their life. And you can also look at it on a micro level with yourself individually. Is uncertainty okay? I think there is a stigma around that it's not that if you are uncertain or uneasy about something, then that means that you are weak or that you don't have enough faith or that you're viewing things in an incorrect or wrong way. I'm here to dispel a lot of that. If being uneasy about

4:21your beliefs or about your way of life or about yourself weren't allowed, then I don't think any of us would be able to accomplish anything. Perfect faith doesn't yet exist for many of us. It certainly doesn't exist for me in any aspect of my life. Whether that be faith in God or faith in my church leaders or faith in the gospel or Jesus Christ himself or faith in myself and my own capabilities or faith in those around me or the system around me. There's complexities with all of it. I have perfect faith in none of it. I'm working through a lot of these things. So how do we move forward if we are unsteady and unsure? How can we have confidence and conviction? If we sometimes feel paralyzed with our imperfection? A lot of people that I look up to seem to have that perfect faith whether that be in God or in themselves or in what they're doing. But as I began to read up and

5:27study up on one of my favorite role models, I actually saw a lot of similarity with my own path and my own story. My favorite character in the scriptures is Moroni. And I think I can describe now why. And I think it's because of the uncertainty and unsettled nature that Moroni writes about in his book. This is one of my favorite books ever. It's just called Moroni, a brief theological introduction. It's by David F. Holland. And you can totally tell someone like the Holland Echrecy, Holland Echrecies. The Hollandisms? You can tell a Holland wrote this book. It's part of why I love it. And he has a section in here titled Resolute and Unshore. I love the and that ties those two words together. Two words that don't feel like they belong anywhere close to each other.

6:28Yet both are true from Moroni's story. He starts this section with saying, the book of Moroni opens on a complex note of uncertainty and conviction. Moroni is strikingly transparent about his lack of clarity. He will not pretend to know more than he does. It is almost as if in his state of unsettled expectations, he is determined to challenge his readers' easy assumptions. We expect the prophetic voice to be confident, but his is hesitant. We expect a prophesied future to be clear, but his is cloudy. We do not expect prophets to flee from a fight with the forces of evil, but Moroni is on the run. Or more precisely, he wanders. The meaning conjured by such a verb suggests motion without a set destination. The wanderer does not know where the journey leads only that he must keep moving. He is certain about the Christ so much else seems unsure. So there's a lot there, but I want to focus in on the wandering aspect. We were taught

7:35correctly so about holding on to the iron rod that even if you drift slightly, that you can go into this darkened dreariness. The concept is true and I don't want to dispute that. I just want to couple it with the concept of wandering. What happens when we wander? I think it's sometimes presented to us that when we wander, if we wander, all hope may be lost, but here we see a prophet wandering without a set destination. The rod points to the truth. Our path realistically isn't a straight line. Progress isn't a straight line. It often looks very squiggly, and that's what I liked about the definition of wandering here. Is that maybe we don't know where the journey leads. We just know that we need to keep moving. My point here is that our progress and our path

8:37does not have to be perfect. In fact, it won't be. And sometimes taking an incorrect step or being unsure about where the next right step is can fuel paralyzing to the point where we don't move forward. That if we aren't sure if we're going in a straight line directly to that tree, that we don't take a step at all. And my argument is that stepping forward and progressing forward is more important than having the angle exactly right. David says again in here, the inability to pinpoint the source of one's unease can turn potentially motivating to satisfaction into a kind of paralyzing anxiety. Moroni is clearly haunted by the thought that errors are lurking somewhere in this offering that he had hoped to be perfect. I'll use this show as an example. My first couple episodes took so long to make. Mostly because I would prepare so much,

9:40set everything up, and then be so paralyzed of saying something wrong or not having something come across the way that I wanted that I just couldn't do it. It took so many times coming back. And funny enough, a lot of my episodes came in this band of one day. Roger said, nope, we're doing it, we're shutting the doubt out, and we're just moving forward. Our offerings are never perfect. We can be happy with where we are right now, but not satisfied. And that satisfaction should motivate us to continue to progress, not paralyze us in holding us and moving forward. And if that dissatisfaction becomes paralyzing, then maybe it's time to re-evaluate where you are. Maybe it's time to ask for help. Maybe it's time to reconsider where Heavenly Father truly views you. Because if those expectations are becoming too much, then they're incorrect. And I would then ask you

10:46to go through that same process with your faith, that your expectations for church leaders or your dissatisfaction with some elements or principles or policies, if those become paralyzing, then it might be time to re-evaluate how you look at it. That doesn't mean that there aren't imperfections. There are. But the core is what should be moving you forward. Your relationships with the Godhead, the atonement of Jesus Christ, those are the things that should propel you forward. And you should be asking questions, you should be seeking truth. Those things can be an added benefit and grow your testimony. I know that because it's done it for me. I had to ask really hard and crippling questions from a really young age. Aspects of the gospel that have driven a lot of people away, that actually grown my faith. Because I wasn't afraid of the imperfection

11:49that I inevitably saw. I didn't know any other way. My family unit was never presented as perfect. Myself was never presented as perfect. And the church was never presented as some perfect, untouchable organization. That outlook from a really early age really helped aid me in my belief. I never do... I never believed that divinity and humanity were polar opposites. I discovered really early on that they work beautifully together, beautifully imperfectly. And I'm still trying to teach myself that same principle in regards to my day-to-day life and how I am. I keep having to remind myself of the divinity that is in me, that I am a true son of God. And that the humanity that I am sometimes oftentimes frustrated with can actually be really beautiful for my progress. David goes on to say, this deep recognition of one's own deficiency coupled with her profound belief in God's empowering

12:53grace, which combination of humility and trust he posits as the activating agent of all divine gifts. Mormon calls it meekness. We truly have an example here of a prophet having self-doubting questions, having questions about his situation, about his future, about his work. We can have those questions too. I've talked in the past about struggling with depression and oftentimes the partner in crime is anxiety. And it's been crippling to not really know how to deal with that. A lot of my tools for having to deal with this mental stuff has come with depression because that's typically been more serious. The anxiety is a little more new. I didn't want to have to add another one to the mental on this list. And so it's been hard to know how to deal with it because I just don't know if I have the tools to. But this outlook on it actually brought me a lot of peace and kind of showed me

13:59where to look for those tools. David goes on to say here, when Moroni seems to be at his most anxious about the errors in his record, he repeatedly comes to see his heightened awareness of his own imperfection as a source of potential power, a resource that can be mined for future capacity through the Lord's gift of grace. The promise that God would turn weakness to strength, a process in which faith in Jesus Christ is paramount, is immediately fulfilled in Moroni's declaration of that principle. That is, he does not just preach it. In the preaching of it, he demonstrates it. His own anxiety has been the means to profound theological insight, his awareness of his own weakness, a pathway to some of the records of most poignant moments. How cool is that? That one sentence, his heightened awareness of his own imperfection as a source of potential power. How amazing would it be if we saw our own weaknesses that way?

15:01And it is a reminder that the atonement of Jesus Christ exists, that our mistakes and our sins have been paid for. Brad Wilcox gave a very famous and amazing talk on grace, saying that we don't earn heaven, but that we learn heaven. We're not trying to repay the Savior for a gift that He gave us. We are simply trying to show the Savior that we appreciate that gift, and that we desire that we want to use it. And our imperfection simply means that there's more potential for more power and for more growth. And that should be exciting. Now look, I struggle to view it that way. I'm telling myself this as much as I'm telling you, but how amazing would it be if we viewed our weaknesses and our imperfections as just more room to come closer to God?

16:05And now we're just asked to have a similar outlook on the restored gospel. We believe in the restored church. One of the coolest aspects of that is the concept of continual revelation. I think we could all point to a few things in the last just a couple years. Things that we feel are probably more in alignment to the Savior's teachings than maybe the way we did it in the past. And I think that's awesome. I think that's really cool that there are still things that can continue to happen to draw closer to the Savior. Now it's not necessarily our job to pinpoint what those things are, but we can support that when those do happen. And we can be in support for continual progress. And we can advocate and strive for continued progress in the church, the gospel, and within ourselves as well. And so my one thing today comes from this last page that I'll read.

17:10Throughout his writings, then Marona can base self-doubting questions about himself, his future, and his work. These questions are recurrently transformed into a source of light at that point where they intersect with enduring faith in Jesus Christ. The first two theological declarations of the Book of Maronae intertwine in its opening verses. Jesus is the Christ. And uncertainty is an unavoidable part of our existence in this mortal world. The uncertainty affects even the most devouted disciples at even their most urgent moments of need. The sustaining gifts of faith in Christ are the necessary compliment to that uncertainty. And those gifts come not only despite our inadequacies, but also sometimes through them. Maronae's anxiety and questions come to a head when he realizes this eternal truth. Rather than succumb to such paralysis, Maronae resolves to press

18:11on. And he asks the readers to do likewise. Holding out hope that God's work will be done despite human imperfection. Indeed, at some points, he seems to take courage from the idea that God's work will be done through human imperfection. Now I'm not fully sure what classifies as working despite human imperfection and through human imperfection. But what I can testify of is that both do happen. What a comforting truth that is that despite our own imperfection, God's work can be done. In fact, because of our imperfection, God's work can be done. And I will once again take a macro view of that principle when it comes to gathering Israel. That the kingdom of God isn't perfect. But that God's work can be done despite human imperfection in the Lord's Church.

19:12And sometimes even through human imperfection. So to come back to that question that I posed earlier, can you speak with true conviction if you are unsteady and unsure? Of course, now the necessary compliment to that uncertainty is faith in Jesus Christ. As Joseph Smith said, the atonement of Jesus Christ is the core. Everything else is an appendage to it. As you focus on the only one that was indeed perfect. As you strive to point your faith back to him, you will see that unsteadiness and uneasiness ease away. And you will find confidence in the Savior. So move forward, step forward, in spite of your imperfection because of your imperfection. And remember to stay like a rock.