In an admittedly brief meditation on issues associated with an earlier post in which I asserted that certain youth programs bear much blame for having young people leave the church, I began mulling over two big ideas: 1) epistemology, or how we know, and 2) ontology, or who or what we are. One of the great intellectual battles of the 20th century was fought over which philosophical perspective was of greater priority. With the extraordinary achievements of science and technology, the apparent certainty of their knowledge and its universal applicability, epistemology seemed to have carried the day. One reason we want to know something with certainty is simply to know in the same way that physicists or mathematicians know their stuff. So, when we want to sound certain or to express certainty, we usually find ourselves using an epistemological vocabulary or trying to adapt or mimic such a method. I might therefore say, I aver that Socrates lived in Athens in the 5th century. I can say this with some confidence because the relatively meager evidence of Socrates’ life fits the general method I employ.
Similarly, sentences like, “I know Billy lives on 124th street,” make good sense, as do sentences like, “I know that rock is quartz, or basalt, or granite.” The object of knowledge in each case is a generally agreed upon fact.
Americans are very fond of using this sort of language. It brings us a good deal of confidence and security when we have the full authority of science and technology on our side. The American rhetoric of certainty is grounded in science. Even the most basic questions about physical life and death must be expressed within such an epistemological paradigm.
I think this has some telling consequences for the way we teach young people about testimony. As long as American Mormons have been bearing testimony, we have felt comfortable envisioning a testimony as an object of knowledge that may be procured in something like the same way we procure a block of granite for use in our home or garden. The knowledge is depicted as existing independently of selves and choices. One can have a testimony in the same way one can possess the date of the invention of the light bulb.
But what if a testimony is not an object be possessed? Knowledge as a possession can be inconsequential. Most young people know this by instinct. They attend school, answer questions on standardized tests, and see or feel no consequences. In an epistemological sense, knowledge must be functional or have utility. If the utility is not obvious, the knowledge can easily be set aside or forgotten. It becomes trivial. If we believe testimony to be such a possession, then it has the chance of becoming trivial if it has not already been trivialized.
This is where I think ontology enters the picture. Who or what I am is surely different than what I know. The difference between knowing and being is crucial for young Latter-day Saints. I think that we LDS have come to believe that knowing is the critical component of our faith. I also believe it allows us to downplay the question of being.
What, then, does it mean to say I am a Mormon? In part, it must mean that I am not someone else. It implies some kind of personal transformation. It suggests a deepening of commitment. It suggests being a testimony rather than having one.
In short, it must include conversion. It is not simply a change of behavior, though that is important. It is a change of self. It is becoming a new person. It is having different desires. It is moving beyond what I know or what I do to who I am.
What do I glean from such musings? First, that knowing in the way many young people of my acquaintance use the term is insufficient to keep a young person in the Church. Second, that attending Church in order to care for myself, to seek personal valorization or validation, will not keep me coming. Third, that conversion is deeper than knowing and is more likely to keep me coming for the sake of others than for myself.
Being a Mormon is very demanding. To trivialize the demands of true discipleship is to stop short of conversion. It is to resist the tribulation of being born again. It is to shrink from the crisis of being that Jesus guides us to experience. It is to deny the peril of wholesomeness.
Am I therefore saying that testimony as knowledge is inadequate to keep us faithful? Maybe. My musings suggest that being is more important than knowing and that to focus on knowing or doing at the expense of being may not offer young LDS enough to keep them active.