Making Sense of Shifting Faith | Q&A Discussion

Conversations with Dr. Jennifer

Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Self-improvement, Education, Mental Health, Sexuality, Health & Fitness

4.4 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When you or your loved ones' relationship to faith shifts, it can feel as though the world is collapsing beneath you. Because, in a very real sense, it is. When we are early in our development (which most of us are) our primary concern is feeling a sense of safety and then belonging in our social groups. So when our thinking no longer aligns with our faith community (or family, or spouse), it pushes on the very question of who we are and whether or not we still belong in our group. These are uncomfortable questions but ones that are fundamental to our moral and spiritual growth. When we are courageous enough to sort out our own relationship with faith and God we can forge a better internal compass and a deeper relationship to our own integrity. It is in our willingness to live honestly, even when we risk disappointing others, that we can develop a faith robust enough to withstand the complexities of living and loving in an imperfect world. During this hopeful discussion, Dr. Finlayson-Fife addressed questions from her audience about faith development, how to find peace when our thinking doesn't align with our group, and how our understanding of faith and relationship to spirituality can change over the course of a lifetime. You can watch the recording of this discussion HERE.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're going to do what Christ told us to do, which is to love one another. Well, me loving you is to know you and to know in what ways you are different than me and the ways that you think differently than I do and how you came to the conclusions that you did. And that process of caring about somebody is going to stretch your soul. It doesn't mean that you'll come to think like they think
0:21.5	necessarily, but it's going to at least make you really think about what really matters.
0:26.9	How do we make room for each other? That's the soul work of a ward. That's the soul work of love.
0:39.5	Welcome to Convers conversations with Dr. Jennifer, a collection of interviews on the topics of
0:44.8	relationships, sexuality, spirituality, and more.
0:48.9	All featuring Dr. Finlayson-Fife.
0:55.0	Welcome, everybody.
0:56.0	We're going to talk a little bit about faith and faith changes and relationships and go through
1:03.6	several questions that were submitted.
1:06.8	You know, very often there is this deep anxiety and fear around what's happening if your relationship to faith is shifting or your relationship to the church is shifting.
1:23.7	And because of how we've often been thought to think about faith and think about what it
1:29.8	is to be righteous or what it is to be good, this can be very, very disruptive to our sense
1:38.7	of self, to our sense of God.
1:41.7	It also can be very disruptive in relationships because, and I'll explain some
1:49.0	of this, but because so much of our faith, not just as in Latter-day Saints, but in any faith
1:56.0	community, there is a sense of collective belief that everyone depends upon. Like if we can all
2:05.1	agree on the same ideas and we can affirm those ideas together, it gives us confidence and it
2:11.2	gives us a sense of clarity and a sense of belonging and a sense that together we can make it in this world that's full of uncertainty and anxiety.
2:21.3	And then if somebody in that group says, hey, I don't believe this, I don't think this anymore, I think this is wrong, that can feel really disruptive not only to our sense of confidence in our faith, if somebody's questioning it,
2:35.0	but also just to the basic questions of, do you belong? Are you part of us or are you not a part of us?
2:41.0	And so the issues around faith are deeply linked to the issue of differentiation.
2:50.0	And for those of you who are new to me
	...

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