On my mission, we taught an investigator who was golden. She felt the spirit when she prayed about the Book of Mormon, felt the spirit when she came to Church and felt the spirit during our visits. We were so excited for her to join the Church.
Then she talked to her pastor. The end.
What concerned me the most about this woman is that she had felt the spirit. She had felt the spirit witness as to the truth of the restored gospel, and we all know that if you turn away from a witness of the spirit, it’s even worse than if you’d never felt the spirit at all. She was accountable for turning away from what she knew to be true! Her damnation was going to be more damning than if she’d never talked to us at all!
As missionaries and as Church members, we’re trained to tell people what their feelings mean, and what they need to do to act on their feelings. Did you feel good at Church? That’s the spirit testifying to you that the Church is true and you need to get baptized and obey all the commandments for the rest of your life. Did you feel a burning in your bosom when you prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true? That’s the spirit testifying to you that the Book of Mormon is true and you need to get baptized and obey all the commandments for the rest of your life. Do you feel peace when you go to the temple? That’s the spirit testifying to you that this is the house of the Lord and you need to pay your tithing and follow the Brethren for the rest of your life.
Well. Maybe the reason she felt good when she went to Church is because everyone there was so nice to her. It’s also possible to feel good like that when you join a new club. Maybe the reason you feel peace when you go to the temple is because you’ve been trained to stop thinking about all your worries and just sit quietly in a beautiful building and think about how much God loves you. Meditating in the mountains might bring the same feelings of peace.
The point is that when someone has a good feeling, or a strong feeling, they should be the ones to decide what to do about their feelings. Maybe they want to take action as a result of a feeling. Maybe they just want to experience it and then move on. I’ve written before about how the Church instructs us how to feel. A big part of my post-Church adjustment has been reclaiming my feelings and my right to decide what my feelings mean, or if there’s not a deeper meaning at all. I no longer see my feelings as God’s way of playing “Hot and Cold” [fn 1] with spiritual guidance.
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I had some thoughts about why I’ve written so often about feelings, and the way the Church instructs us to feel. Elisa wrote in her post yesterday that she’s had to work hard to unlearn the Church’s message that you’re never enough and you can always do more. That made me realize which topic I’ve had to deliberately unlearn. I’ve had to work hard to reclaim my feelings, and see them as just my feelings rather than messages from God that I must obey.
Church talks and lessons about feelings aren’t as common as they used to be. We used to hear often about the joy of service, the peace of attending the temple, the blessings of having an attitude of gratitude, how the greatest joys are from family relationships, and how living the Gospel makes us happy. My perspective is that those messages have decreased, and been replaced with messages about obedience and the covenant path. Now it’s less about how you should feel about Church, and more about obeying Church.
I’m going to try and listen to at least one session of General Conference this weekend, and see if any of the talks focus on feelings.
[fn 1] Hot and Cold is a children’s game commonly played during Primary. One child leaves the room. Another child hides an object in the room. When the first child returns, the other children guide him to the hidden object by calling out “hot” when he’s getting closer and “cold” when he’s getting further away.
- What teachings have you had to work hardest to unlearn? What messages sank in so deeply that you took them with you when you left and had to deliberately talk back to the Church leader in your head?
- Have you been able to tell the difference between a spiritual prompting and your own feelings? Is there a difference? Has your opinion changed over the course of your faith journey?
- Do you commonly tell people how to feel? (For example: You shouldn’t feel guilty! Don’t feel bad. Cheer up. You should be ashamed of yourself.) Why do you do that?
- How do your feelings work into your decision-making process? Has the role of your feelings in making decisions changed much over the years?
Wheat & Tares 
For me, I have never equated my emotions with the influence of the Spirit. There is a different experience that I identify as spiritual communication that is different and separate from my regular day to day emotions. It is true that the spiritual feeling drives out some emotions such as fear but not always emotions like sorrow. I don’t often have these spiritual feelings, at least not in a strong way. I try to rely on reason and my own feelings (emotions) for most of my day to day decisions.
I agree with E. I feel the spirit much less frequently than other feelings such as joy, awe, and comfort. I think there is a distinction, but church leaders at all levels often confuse every day feelings with “the spirit”. I also think the role of the spirit is much narrower than many LDS beleive. In 99% of circumstances the Lord either doesn’t care or let’s us learn and grow by making decisions on our own. So I’m always highy skeptical when someone says, “the spirit told me x”, even when it comes from “the prophet”. If it doesn’t make any rational or logical sense and if I don’t receive a spiritual confirmation of my own, I know it is merely a mortal opinion, perhaps a wise and learned opinion, but a human opinion nonetheless.
I loved your post about feelings (being told how you’re supposed to feel and what that means) and it’s an interesting observation that you don’t notice that talked about much. I mean, Nelson and Oaks don’t seem to actually have feelings so I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. And yesterday a commenter on my post recounted that the Utah Area Pres specifically told people NOT to pray about going on a mission – just go!
One thing I had to unlearn regarding feelings specifically is the idea that spiritual promptings come from a source outside ourself (the Holy Ghost) and on terms set forth by Church leaders (you have to be following the rules to be entitled to guidance, the guidance won’t tell you anything contrary to what leaders tell you, oh and you receive access to the guidance mediated by the priesthood and church leaders via your confirmation).
This ultimately teaches us to distrust ourselves. I don’t believe much (anything?) that’s taught about the “Holy Ghost” anymore and I think it’s important that we learn to trust ourselves and not think any good idea we ever had came from a source or being outside of ourselves.
I have learned that we treat “the Spirit” as if it is something in a room that can be “measured” and “universally felt” like the amount of oxygen in a room. The assumption is that “the Spirit” is accessible with measurable results – if you can’t draw from it and access it – it’s on you.
Of course, your ability to draw in “the Spirit” from the room would have nothing to do with any mental health tendencies like depression (which are highly correlated with DNA and/or with pregnancy/post-pregnancy). They would also have nothing to do with who you last argued with (so it wouldn’t matter that Jesus taught to go resolve a fight and then come to worship God). It is unknown how ingesting specific substances actually helps/hinders access to “the Spirit” (which is not always about “getting high” from something).
The reality is much, much subjective – and we don’t teach that.
Yes, it is important that feelings do not equal the Holy Ghost. We might have wonderful feelings in the process of receiving revelations from the Holy Ghost, but those feelings are not the Holy Ghost. We like to quote D&C 9 when God was telling Oliver how to translate the Book of Mormon.
8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
But it is not correct for us to take that scripture and assume that the Holy Ghost always works by giving us a burning in our bosoms. Joseph Smith tells us how to recognize revelations from the Holy Ghost.
“The first Comforter, or Holy Ghost has no other effect than pure intelligence.” TPJS, p. 149.
“No man can receive the Holy Ghost without receiving revelations. The Holy Ghost is a revelator.” TPJS, p. 328.
In a lot of ways it’s just words, different words expressing the same things. For instance if I have a personal concern, I will read about the topic from multiple sources (study). Then my heart is lifted in prayer or thought day and night pondering the issue. I will discuss it with trusted family and friends. Then, usually first thing in the morning when my mind is clear and peaceful, I feel a sense of knowing clearly what action I should take. Sometimes it happens in a flash when I am discussing with someone else and they or I say something that feels really right to me. Is this the Spirit or is this just the way my brain makes decisions? Yes, the answer is yes, those words mean the same things to me.
And the nice thing is I can reconsider when I get more information.
I really enjoyed reading all your honest thoughts about these issues.
As cachemagic noted, 19th century Latter-day Saints promoted “studying it out” and looked for “pure intelligence” or a “burning in the bosom.” There was a paradigm change over time, as today Latter-day Saints identify emotions or an aesthetic response as a marker of revelation. If memory serves, President Oaks actually downplayed the “burning in the bosom” in one conference address. We should note that intelligence and a literal physical sensation are harder to control than an emotional or aesthetic response.
A big teaching I chose to unlearn was the notion that contention is of the devil and that contrarians are evil performers. Of course we are going to feel uncomfortable when we learn or try something new. Working through the uncomfortable feelings in life rather than shoving them down and singing a hymn has led to some of the most incredible aha moments in my post-religious life.
I never got any happy feelings or burning in the bosom, so I never equated it with spiritual promptings. What I got that I identified as inspiration from God was what would be called “pure intelligence” or even a vision. Now that I am a doubter, who knows.
What I had to unlearn after leaving the church was that my worth as a female was much less than any male. I started out in primary where all the stories were about men or boys who became a prophet. Then the boys got to do fun things in scouting and us girls just sat around listening to another stupid lesson about how we were nothing unless we snagged a husband and popped out babies. My family reinforced this, showing preference for my brothers in every imaginable. My needs came last, my feelings didn’t matter, I was nothing except a servant to men, both at home and at church. The church did a better job of generalizing that it wasn’t just me that was worthless, but all women and then drove home that it wasn’t my sexist parents but the way God wanted it. The temple showed me the fact that God loved his sons, but didn’t even realize he had daughters. We were extensions of our husbands, not individuals.
I think there is some generational differences in what people will have to unlearn, depending on what the church was focusing the most attention on when we were young and impressionable. For example, I grew up with my youngest years during the pressure to have lots of babies after so many men were killed during WWII. Yup, I am a baby boomer. We must replace the cannon fodder for the next war. The church took this idea of having lots of babies and ran with it, then hung onto it much longer than the rest of society. Then, my teen years, the women started realizing that the sole purpose of women being to pop out babies was not really making them happy, so the women’s movement started and my mother was an early feminist. But she still favored my brothers in everything and treated me as less than, because she never woke up to her own sexism. And of course the church fought the women’s movement tooth and nail. So, being a feminist was evil. The church really pressured women to not work outside the home, bla bla bla, our greatest joy was raising children and serving our husbands, except that was the biggest lie ever. Being second class does not lead to happiness no matter how much you love your husband and children.
By the 80s the church backed away from fighting women’s rights after the defeat of the ERA. They figured they won, so they didn’t fight so hard. Then there was an emphasis on family and feelings for missionary work and to the members. They moved away from the logic of God needed to restore the church, and started emphasizing feelings as the way to know the truth, because the logic of “the truth” of previous era reasons to join the church started to fail. Love, eternal families, and how good things felt became the big focus.
Now, they have moved toward obedience and covenant path. We have “the truth” because we have the temple ordinances and the priesthood. Instead of do it because it will make you happy of the previous generation, now it is do it because we said. We have the authority and we said. Covenant path as the only way back to God, and they have stopped pretending that being a member makes you happy. It is just your necessary duty.
It is like authoritarian parents that give up on using logic to get their child to obey, then give up on loving their child into obeying, now they just lay down the law and use their authority, because the other two methods are too hard for them, and who cares if the children are happy.
So, what you have to unlearn is going to depend on what the church was pushing at the time.
I’ve observed that the #1 TBM defense against x-TBMs like me is something like this: “I don’t care about Church history or evolving doctrine or contradictions because I have received a witness that the Church is true so none of that matters.” And I think it’s a mistake for those of us who have left the Church to dismiss TBMs simply because they rely to much on their feelings.
The fact is, feelings drive decisions and the Church has taken advantage of that. I never dismiss the “spiritual” experiences of a TBM. I simply try to get them to consider that while they have felt certain things, they have also allowed the Church to interpret those feelings.
I accept the claims of TBMs that they have received a a strong impression while reading the scriptures, attending the temple, bearing their testimony. What I wish they would do is accept the possibility that while those feelings are real, the interpretation of those feelings are certainly debatable. One example I try to use is to remind them that we sometimes feel very powerful emotions while reading a book of fiction or watching a movie. Doesn’t mean those are “true”. Just means that we’ve connected somehow. The same could easily be said for a scripture/temple experience. Doesn’t mean it’s true even if it feels good.
We grow up being taught an interesting thing about feelings in the church. If you feel good about anything church related it’s the Holy Ghost confirming the “truthfulness” of the church. However, if you feel uncomfortable about anything in the church, it’s because you are out of touch or listening to a “evil spirit”.
I do not, and never have, felt good in the temple. I first attended the temple in the 1970s, back when your life was threatened through blood oaths that graphically describe how your life might be taken were you to ever divulge what transpired. I felt serious cognitive dissonance when people spoke of the peace they felt in the temple. I felt no peace with the threat of violent death. Sadly, the word “love” was not and is not found in the temple, not even in the marriage/sealing ceremony. In 1990 the bloody threats of execution disappeared, but still in 2023 the word “love” is absent.
On those rare occasions when I have dared to admit that I do not feel good in the temple, I have been told that I am attending the temple with the wrong attitude.
I have often felt the same uneasiness listening to, or reading the writings of church leaders. Whether it be “The Miracle of Forgiveness”, “Mormon Doctrine”, Brad Wilcox’s racism, sexism, and mocking of other religions, or calls for musket fire, or fights against equal rights for the marginalized, I have felt the the same lack-of-love feeling I felt in the temple. But of course I just have a “bad attitude”; the spirit would never tell me something in the church is wrong.
Josh H. I agree.
But I think it’s more of an situation where it doesn’t matter what “one believes” it does matter “what what one does about it” (except when it does).
My dad got fussed at a bit by his HP group leader when the group leader found out that my dad had made a meal and taken it to one of his ministering brother’s families after the wife was hospitalized. The “thought” of cooking a meal was a laudable act. The fact it was my dad cooking and taking the food without my mom was a problem.
More importantly, I was allowed to “feel cut off from God”, but it got really awkward when I no longer felt like it was no longer worthwhile to attend church (after a year or so of attending anyways).
I still say LDS-style meal prayers when called on to do so. I consider it in the same vein as “thank you for the food” scenes seen so much in anime. I’m still “doing the right thing” and “still trying to be respectful and connection-building”. It still baffles, increases discomfort, and underwhelms my TBM folks though.
I have a great personal example of how we need to be cautious of our feelings. Millions worldwide experienced the same thing.
When I first read Dumbledore’s death in Book 6, I felt a jolt. After finishing HBP, I felt a sense of loss for several days. I realized I was feeling grief. How irrational! I felt grief and mourning over a fictional character. How crazy is that? Yet, there were numerous news articles about millions of Potterheads aroung the world going through the same thing. I feel it again as I write this, and I know it’s irrational.
Sales and marketing are all about making emotional connections and getting people to buy in when the emotion is strongest. This isn’t necessarily wrong, but it can be abused.
So perhaps joining a church or other high demand organization needs a “cool down period” like some states have with some large ticket items. After the emotional high of baptism, the new member has 30 days to ask for an annulment of their membership .
JLM, Maybe te Lord already provided for a cool-down or an understanding period — see D&C 20:68. I do not know why, but we in the church today seem to ignore this verse. Maybe your “30 days” and D&C 20:68’s ” sufficient time” are synonymous?
I cry easy. I get it from my mom. My dad would joke that mom would cry watching a commercial if they chose the wrong soap. Is it the spirit talking to me when I tear up at the end of a Star Wars movie???
Well @bishop hill, as Han Solo says in Episode 7:
“It’s true. All of it.”
So, there’s your answer.
Interesting experiences and thoughts everyone!
It’s so educational to read about normal peoples’ experiences. I couldn’t tell the difference between the Spirit and my emotions. I dealt with mood swings and unusually intense emotions for decades before getting a diagnosis and treatment. Unfortunately, I thought I was spiritual instead of troubled. It turns out that the “pure intelligence” and strong promptings and prophetic dreams was related to mental illness and emotional dysfunction. I still think some of my experiences qualify as spiritual experiences, but I also have to admit that I haven’t had anything nearly as strong as those spiritual experiences since getting good mental health help. My experiences were much more than just a “burning in the bosom.” And of course, whenever I bore my testimony about a spiritual experience, people were impressed. I even had a guy tell me he couldn’t date me because he couldn’t live on the same level of inspiredness that I lived on. I kinda want to go find him and tell him that I’m no longer inspired now that I’ve been thru therapy. Like, no one tells you this, but sometimes some types of mental illness feel really, really good. Euphoria. Inspiration. Energy bursts. Flashes of insight into the nature of God. Sometimes … sometimes I’m pretty sure I know what prophets feel like, the charismatic ones who have visions and revelations and people get sucked into their emotional vortex just listening to them. If I was a man, and therefore had some real priesthood authority and leadership positions, I could have done some real damage.
The comments about what people had to unlearn are really interesting. There’s so much more to life and development. Chadwick, I hadn’t identified that one, but you’re right – like learning to disagree, and accepting that new concepts make you uncomfortable because they’re new, not because the spirit is cautioning you to not be deceived.
Anna – yeah, equality is not a religious principle, is it? Leaving church was necessary for me to reclaim my self-worth as a woman too. The perspective about the different emphases the Church has taught over the generations is right on.
josh h – that’s a kind way to approach the conversation with a TBM.
Janey, this is such an important topic to talk about. Thanks for such well written and thought provoking words.
Generally I have always been uncomfortable with emotional feelings being associated with the spirit. When I was young, meaning an adolescent, where I grew up, evoking an emotional response was used to end conversations or to signal we didn’t need to ask questions or talk about certain subjects any further–the spirit had spoken. If you pressed past this it was almost like you were displaying a lack of faith and relying on reason which meant your faith was weak. I didn’t like this because I responded better to honest conversations and liked more Q&A when learning about the church and the gospel. In my religious life, when my mind was satisfied, the contentment I felt made me feel more at peace with God.
What did I have to unlearn? I’ll share one example but first some context. I was lucky. I had a good mission experience for the most part. I had good companions and we worked hard. We also knew how to have fun everyday, and we weren’t uptight and didn’t get into a twist about minor things. We were pragmatic, and highly successful. I had great relationships with members. I was located in a metro area and members were diverse and some were even cosmopolitan. My mission president was steady, a listener and also pragmatic. He was compassionate and encouraged us to do our best. I never felt shamed or guilted by him. Over time I learned I was lucky. Some have horrible mission experiences. But…my mission started out horrifically in the Provo MTC.
I guess it’s been well over 30 years now. I spent two months in the Provo MTC and each day for a couple of hours it was an all out psychological assault. I’ve never been so torn down and shamed in my life. The adult leaders there–including our branch president–tried to get inside our heads to convince us that despite what we thought of ourselves, we were terrible sinners. We were all unclean. That despite clearing bishop and stake president interviews, we still had many, many sins tucked away, dirty secrets that need to be purged through confession or literally we and the people we were to teach in our mission would be condemned. We were told that if we weren’t clean, the spirit would not be with us, and if the spirit wasn’t with us, we would not find those who needed us to teach and baptize them. We would fail them. And after we had finished casting ourselves before our branch president, we would have to be perfectly obedient or we would skate right by those who had prayed their entire lives for God’s messengers to find them. Being perfectly obedient meant living all of the temple recommend questions perfectly, and living the white handbook perfectly, every page and letter of it. We missionaries, called to be the angels to attend to the souls in our mission, would instead fail them, and God if we weren’t perfectly obedient. At the time I really struggled to believe this–it contradicted other principles of the gospel and LDS doctrine. Lots of stories and Mormon myths were told to us to manipulate us into believing the narrative. It made me dizzy and frustrated. I dreaded Sundays because our branch meetings were one assault after another about our sins, being cast into darkness, how the spirit wouldn’t attend to us unless we finished confessing. I tried to stay focused on my language and went into survival mode, escaping through reading in every spare moment. I’ve never been through a more difficult time in my life, and never suffered from more acute cognitive dissonance.
It’s the first time I had been thrown on the treadmill of “you will never be good enough, and you will need to keep trying harder despite your unworthiness,” and worse if I didn’t, people wouldn’t come into the fold and be saved. Somehow I held up and made it through the MTC.
Looking back, I’m angry those methods were used. Manipulative, deceptive and immoral. Fortunately, I am not given to scrupulosity, and was able to curb kick the rhetoric. But if my mission president would have continue on with those themes, it may have screwed me up.
I taught my children to be wary of anyone saying these kinds of things to them, and by the time my oldest neared turning twelve, I had processed my experiences well enough to take a stand against worthiness interviews and set firm expectations and boundaries with my bishop prior to my kids going in for their annual interviews. But it took a decade for me to deconstruct those experiences, segment and label them as things the church does that hurt members, that came close to harming me.
I haven’t thought about the presence of “feelings” as a topic in church teachings and lessons, and if those messages have faded over time. It certainly seems like the topic and drumbeat of obedience has drowned out many other gospel principles. As one data point, y youngest child disliked seminary. His biggest complaint (couple of years ago) was that the teacher couldn’t answer any of his questions and he said to me on several occasions, “Dad, my teacher just tells these stories that make everyone cry. I usually don’t respond to stories like that. I’m fine with inspirational stories that make people become emotional, but do we have to do this every single day?” The emotive model of indoctrination seems to live with at least some seminary teachers. Thanks for the prompt. I’ll listen to conference with this topic in mind as well.
“She felt the spirit when she prayed about the Book of Mormon, felt the spirit when she came to Church and felt the spirit during our visits.”
I sympathize with the investigator here. You have no evidence that she felt the spirit. The best you have is that she claimed to feel the spirit testifying of the truthfulness of the LDS church’s truth claims. Then she changed her perspective about things and made a different decision. My believing family members have on several occasions held me to the fact that I used to bear testimony, claim to feel the spirit, and claim to “know” the church was true. Yes. But my perspective simply changed. And its only human for perspectives to change. Most importantly I changed my perspective on the idea that external spiritual forces can reveal truth in one’s mind. I simply don’t believe I’ve ever experienced that.
My experience with feelings in this area: About 15 years ago, some missionaries asked me to try the Moroni promise.
So I read some parts of the BoM and earnestly prayed. I received confirmation that Yes, it was true.
Then, to be fair, I tried the same thing with Buddhism. I received the same confirmation that Yes, it was true.
So I decided I’m probably highly suggestible and could probably get the same confirmation about a lot of things.
I see things differently which has left me feeling lonely in the church most of my adult life, but I occasionally find a kindred spirit by being as honest about my experience as I feel able to risk.
I see all the feelings stuff as interference. It’s feelings. My experience of the Holy Spirit is of pure intelligence which is beyond my own. I often have to struggle with my personal tendencies in order to take it in and act on it, but it is a very different experience than acting on my feelings. It is often in defiance of my personal feelings and demands integrity that I frequently have to struggle with.
Great post, Janey! I think you’re spot on about the Church’s attempting to seize control of the interpretation of our feelings to direct them to the Church’s ends. I’m old enough to have used the old purple Missionary Guide and the discussions that went with it, and one of the big points in it was “help others feel and recognize the Spirit.” And of course the “recognize” part was supplying the interpretation: Because you feel good about XYZ, it means God wants you to be baptized (or whatever).
I also really like this point that M. Lars makes about bad feelings: “However, if you feel uncomfortable about anything in the church, it’s because you are out of touch or listening to a “evil spirit”.” I think this is such a big issue with Mormons getting sucked in by conspiracy theories and Trumpism and the like. Because M. Lars’s point isn’t only true about church-related things; it’s true about all kinds of things. There’s clearly a common belief that if a thing makes you feel uncomfortable or bad, then it must be false. Did you hear that Joseph Smith pressured teen girls to marry him? Did it make you feel bad? Must be false! And then again, along similar lines, did you hear that your Lord and Savior Donald Trump actually lost the 2020 election? Did that make you feel awful, to think that God would allow a Democrat to hold the highest office in the US? Must be false! All the nutty conspiracy theories about the stolen election must be true if they’re soothing to you!
It probably goes without saying, but this is a bonkers way of determining truth. If your doctor tells you that you have cancer, do you search your feelings to decide if it’s true? Do you dismiss them if the idea that you have cancer makes you feel sick with worry? I sure as hell hope not!
“The point is that when someone has a good feeling, or a strong feeling, they should be the ones to decide what to do about their feelings”
In Acts 2:37, the audience was “pricked in their hearts” (having heard the apostles preaching), and they asked the apostles: “men and brethren, what shall we do?”
Surely if the apostles had just bailed at that point, reasoning, “well, it’s up to you what you do from here”, then it wouldn’t have been the miraculous event that it was.
Whilst the appeal of “Church … because everyone there was so nice to her” is legitimate, I have personally found a significant difference between the impressions of the spirit and just “feeling good”. It can be hard to differentiate between them at times, which is why as a missionary we always stressed reading and praying, and getting a witness for yourself.
Do some people misunderstand their ‘feelings’ when meeting with missionaries? Yes, it can happen.
Is it in fact sometimes not the spirit that they feel? Yes, probably.
But does that mean that it isn’t the spirit? Or that they shouldn’t be encouraged to be baptised etc? No.