General Conference will be held in just over 2 weeks from now. I just realized this means it will be the 5 year anniversary of the somewhat famous talk, “Come Join with Us” by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf. Some parts of the talk are at par for a talk from President Uchtdorf – that is to say quite good. He starts of making a bit of a joke at just how much time is required of an active member of the church. He can make Mormons laugh at how outsider would probably look at this with shock and amazement. Of course that isn’t what is most remembered from this talk. There were several very notable things said that I don’t recall ever hearing myself in a conference setting – let along any other church meeting.
The first item was that some people leave the church not for the reasons always given (being offended, lazy, or sinful), but there were many reasons and often it was after years of struggle. He said:
“We honor their right to worship almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience.”
The second notable item was insinuated to be one of the reasons people left. President Uchtdorf said that mistakes were made.
“There have been some things said and done that could cause people to questions”
“And to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine.”
He of course then goes on to say the most quoted line: [1]
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith”
This talk was very impactful to me. I was in the emotional turmoil of a fresh faith crisis. I was glad to hear a bit of validation that there can be some really hard things in church history. I really appreciated the honesty about this. I felt President Uchtdorf somewhat said, “those that have left have some reasons to be troubled.” I disagree with calling the LDS church a cult, but when I go through the B.I.T.E. model I am uncomfortable with many things do describe the lived LDS experience. This really felt like me an attempt to remove one of those check marks – that being, “A cult will not let you leave with your integrity.” It felt like President Uchtdorf was saying, “if someone leaves, respect their decision.”
I went away from conference feeling very upbeat and validated. It motivated me to, “try a bit harder to make it work” and I felt like the church was moving to meet those like me somewhere near half way.
I can’t say I still have that optimism. I wonder if he could give such a talk like this today.
What do you think the legacy and impact of this talk is now going forward?
[1] This quote seems to have been in use by Christian apologist for years before this talk.
Wheat & Tares 
Thanks for this. It’s been a while since I read that talk, and I (like many others) tended to zero in on the “Doubt your doubts” portion. There was a lot of good in this talk and I think it puts the comment in doubt into a slightly more complicated context as well.
I think the legacy is that instead of it building a bridge of understanding the phrase has been weaponized against people who express doubt. “Well uchtdorf said to doubt your doubts, so….” which leads to further thinking that people who explore doubts and questions are being disobedient. At least in my experience.
Kristine, So are you saying the parts about “don’t be so hard and assume the worst about those that leave” are ignored and the only memorable takeaway was, “you are supposed to doubt your doubts” (and that even leaves off the “before you doubt your faith” part that follows)?
Happy Hubby, that is what I have observed in my ward and with many of my Facebook friends. “Doubt your doubts” is the only thing they got out of the talk.
It’s true there are some Mormons who are always looking for encouragement to judge their neighbor. “Doubt your doubts” gets morphed into “stigmatize the doubter,” and off they go. But of course that’s not what Pres. Uchtdorf intended and that’s not what his encouraging and challenging talk did for many listeners. It challenged mainstream Mormons to think more broadly and more charitably about those with issues and it encouraged those with issues to lean on faith before embracing doubt.
Unfortunately, the direction Pres. Uchtdorf laid out is not the direction the Church has taken, with a change of leader at the top, elevation of a hardline counselor, putting Pres. Uchtdorf out to pasture, and Pres. Eyring becoming sort of a “seen but not heard” counselor. “Doubt your doubts” has been replaced by “doubt yourself.”
I do think “doubt your doubts” are the only words from that talk that were made into vinyl lettering and hung on a wall.
“Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” Ah, but the question is, your faith in what? The Fourth Article of Faith teaches us that the first principle of the gospel is “Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” It says nothing about having faith in the church or its leaders.
This does not mean that I do not have a relatively high degree of confidence that the church generally strives to do good and that its leaders are sincere men and women trying to do their best. Nevertheless, I know they (like myself) have made, and will continue to make, mistakes. However, those errors, however egregious, will not shake my faith in the Savior. As the apostle and counselor to three church presidents, George Q. Cannon once said: “Do not, brethren, put your trust in man though he be a bishop, an apostle, or a president .” Only Christ deserves our unreserved loyalty.
Footnote: I sorely miss Elder Uchtdorf’s presence in the First Presidency.
Eric – I think many can’t grasp the difference between faith in Christ and faith in church leaders.
I almost put in my post that I miss hearing from him as much as we used to, but I figured it wasn’t core to the post.
Elder Uchtdorf, now free from First President commitments, is able to get out among the church more. For example, he is coming to our priesthood leadership seminar in a couple of months, where bishops and stake presidencies will get personal instruction from this great man. This would not happen were he still in the First Presidency. He is now in direct charge of several key departments of the church, where his influence will be huge (Correlation, for example). The “Doubt Your Doubts” talk has had a huge impact in our area, and you still hear it quoted from time to time, usually with great love and gratitude (and not just the “doubt your doubts” line!). I have not seen this talk wielded as a weapon in my area, but more as a bridge to members who have certain concerns and experiences. This talk opened many eyes and hearts. This talk, and many others, as well as an amazing ministry of outreach and understanding, are part of the immense legacy that Elder Uchtdorf is leaving for us. I believe his legacy and influence will endure. I believe he is a transitional figure in the modern church.
About that BITE model… very interesting but it seems to describe pretty much any society and rather a lot of U.S. law:
https://freedomofmind.com/bite-model/
Promote dependence and obedience (police, law, sociology)
Modify behavior with rewards and punishments (the American justice system)
Dictate where and with whom you live (city ordinances)
Restrict or control sexuality (forbidding sex with animals)
Control clothing and hairstyle (dress codes)
Regulate what and how much you eat and drink (New York city ordinance forbidding 32 ounce sodas)
Deprive you of seven to nine hours of sleep
Exploit you financially (taxes)
Restrict leisure time and activities (government generally doesn’t do this)
Require you to seek permission for major decisions (marriage licenses, drivers licenses, building permits, etc).
The rest of it seems to be pretty standard left-wing stuff and is even codified in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals”.
For me it was an impactful talk for the church as a whole when he said leaders have made mistakes. We all know they have. The Brethren know mistakes have been made, just as every member knows. It felt reassuring to me, and made me think we could all focus on getting better and following Christ. Contrast that with Pres. Oaks declaration that we never apologize. Really?
The Socratic method is “question everything” but by itself that’s useless. Most things in my office won’t answer my questions; and the rare item that might answer a question is useful only if I am listening, and THEN there’s the problem of validating the answer!
I suspect it pertains to the probability that everyone that writes or speaks does so for a reason; even when that reason might not be consciously known to the writer. I’m not really sure why I am writing this right now.
I find most people get out of it what seems to strike them…and so it is a reflection of their own thinking.
I remember hearing the talk and appreciating the acknowledgement that there are valid reasons people struggle and even leave, and we shouldn’t judge them. I can go back through the talk afterwards and see it could be emphasized differently by different angles…but…I remember thinking that was good to hear at Conference. Since then…and after re-reading it…I can agree with many people posting online how it wasn’t so good to hear “doubt your doubts” as the main message.
I would like a new talk to be along the lines of….”Doubt your doubts, while you also doubt your faith. Doubt everything until you are done doubting and realize what you choose to believe in. We can be confident in finding truth by any all means, including a Cartesian doubting approach…doubt your way to faith.”
If you doubt your doubts…then doubt can’t all be bad, right? Be open to whatever truth you can find, and challenge it, in order to strengthen faith in it.
Seems to me, if they believe they have truth…no need to get defensive about it. But…the choir wants to be preached to…so…that’s what they do.
This talk came about a year after I had lost all belief in the LDS Church but I still appreciated the talk. What is crazy is how “out there” the talk seems and how fervently progressive Mormons grabbed ahold of it. Shows just how bad things are.
The thing I loved about President Uchtdorf was that it seemed he was trying to pull us back from leader worship and Church worship and orienting us toward God and Christ. I could share his messages with friends of all religious faiths out in “the world” and we could have warm and friendly conversations. This talk actually helped.a friend of another faith who was starting to give up on God. She had been too wedded to the historicity of the Bible and started studying its origins.
I actually think a talk like this would be easier to give today then ever. This doesn’t mean all is well in Zion as much as talks like this (which used to never happen) are becoming more frequent. Heck two very recent BYU Provo devotionals spoke of helping the LGBT community and one of them spoke specifically of doubters if memory serves. Sure, we still get less than helpful talks (as apparently Pres. Eyeing BYU- I talk was. I haven’t seen or read it, just W&T post) but again, those types of talks used to be the only game in town.
“Doubt you doubts” is an odd saying. I read Israel Finkelstein (Israeli Archaeologist) in his book The Bible Unearthed state that there is no evidence for the exodus and conquest.There were no walls to come tumbling down.
I’m with Cody on this — the talk is not the wave of the LDS future, it is more like the last gasp of compassionate Mormonism, at least in this generation. Pres. Uchtdorf’s tombstone should read, “Well, at least I tried.”
You can judge what’s going on in corporate organizations by who gets promoted versus who gets demoted, transferred to Siberia, or simply fired. Pres. Oaks, a hardliner, got promoted; Pres. Uchtdorf, as close to a progressive as you’ll get in the LDS hierarchy, got demoted. That tells us everything we need to know about the Church under Pres. Nelson. And the next generation will likely give us fifteen years of Pres. Bednar, so don’t think the natural leadership succession is going to solve anything. We have entered the era of permanent retrenchment.
Before I tried doubting my doubts, I tried “faithing” them.
“Let’s use faith as a verb,” a sacrament speaker said years ago. “How you get through a tough trial? You faith it.” He was really chocking up as he finished. (It turns out there are several websites and possibly some books devoted to treating faith as a verb.)
Whatever. The doubt your doubts line is eminently quotable, but it’s mostly meaningless; the real meat is in the rest of the talk. It was a good talk, possibly his best known and most quoted, which is one reason why Uchtdorf’s move out of the first presidency is largely lamented in the bloggernacle.[1]
Some time after that talk, a sacrament speaker in my ward spoke on the subject of doubts. It’s okay to have questions, he implied, but doubts are dangerous. He summoned all the pathos he could muster to tell people to avoid doubt. Later in Priesthood meeting several people commented on what a great talk it was.
I guess my experience with Uchtdorf’s talk is one of apparent rejection by church leaders at both the general and local levels.
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[1] this has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but my phone tried to demonstrate irony by autocorrecting “bloggernacle” to “coffee maker”. I’m not sure what to make of that.
Rockwell, the doubts (bad) versus questions (good) theme was really big for several years. It still creeps back up, like with Oaks in a Face to Face last year.
I agree with Kristine and others that the “doubt your doubts” part was weaponized. The content of the talk was fantastic, though I didn’t appreciate it till later when I became more familiar with the more difficult aspects of Church history. Matt Harris brought up at Sunstone the point that Uchtdorf would’ve been reading through a lot of the gospel topics essays before giving this talk, possibly inspiring the line that leaders had made mistakes. The Race and Priesthood essay came out in December of 2013, for example.
Brother Uchtdorf’s sermon is outstanding. I think the “doubt your doubts” line is quite brilliant. Doubt can be a paralyzing kind of fear. However, it can also be a method of working through questions rationally. After encouraging us to doubt our doubts, Brother Uchtdorf says, “We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” I understand Brother Uchtdorf to be saying that we ought to set aside the paralyzing kind of doubt and instead take up a constructive doubt. This positive, forward-looking type of doubt can be applied to all questions. It can even be applied upon itself, working always as a complement to faith.
He didn’t spell this out in his talk. The concept is unfamiliar enough that many listeners might be not only unwilling but also unable to grasp it without more help. Nonetheless, I think the concept is there, and the sermon is available as a resource to any who might wish to teach this principle.
Elder Uchtdorf’s counsel is not that we should never doubt (which is how many misread the quote) but the we should doubt (ie, skeptically vet) the conflicting information before accepting it. That’s actually very good advice. The key word is ‘before’. Doubt the doubts first. But if the doubt holds up, then doubt the faith (or more specifically, the person, institution, etc in whom the faith was placed).
what about the great talk Elder Uchtdorf gave relating how Germans had decided a group of people were “less than” and ostracized, brutalized, marginalized and murdered them. Then he turned on ourselves and asked us to look at what we are doing.
To me it was a direct charge to the Nov 15 policy of exclusion.
I think the LDS Church has “weaponized” certain words and phrases (whether this has been done intentionally or not – is not the point). “Obedience” is one and certainly “Doubt your Doubts” is another. Generally, when these are used by the Church they are used as tools to shame, demean and “make less than” those who are not doing exactly as they expect. They have even become “trigger words” for me. Hmmmmm….come to think of it “Ministering” is rapidly moving up the charts…to possibly become one of my most hated words!