Navigating a “Faith/Trust Crisis”: Empathy, Communication, and Finding Your Pace
We dive deep into the complexities of faith journeys, exploring how to better communicate with loved ones and how to navigate church activity on your own terms. What advice do you have in a faith/trust crisis conversation?
Reframing the “Faith Crisis”
Drawing from Jeff Strong’s new book, Torn, I think we should reframe the common “faith crisis” as a “trust crisis.” Why do members leave the Church? While Jana Riess’s statistically reliable research indicates that most people leave simply because they lose interest or marry a non-member, Strong’s study suggests that church history is actually the primary driver for those who intentionally disaffect. Regardless of the reasons, this wave of disaffiliation—which Elder Marlin K. Jensen once likened to the highest period of apostasy since Kirtland—requires navigating complex mixed-faith dynamics.
Strategies for Conflict Resolution
To help families and couples navigate a trust crisis, here are some powerful conflict resolution techniques designed to foster empathy and minimize defensiveness:
- Share emotions over intellect: Fostering true empathy requires sharing specific emotions and physical sensations (e.g., “I feel pressure in my chest”) rather than over-intellectualizing, which often leads to disconnection.
- True empathy does not require agreement: You can fully understand how someone arrived at their feelings based on their unique background without agreeing with their position.
- Use “and” instead of “but”: Using the word “but” can be invalidating to the other person, whereas “and” leaves room for both perspectives.
- The “One Partner, One Complaint, One Day” Rule: To prevent blame-shifting, only one person gets to bring up an issue per day. The talking partner must use non-critical language, and the listening partner is only allowed to use phrases like, “I hear you. I understand. And I’m listening.”
- Take an immediate timeout: After the complaint is made, the listening partner should take a timeout (up to 24 hours) to calm their nervous system and avoid a defensive trauma response.
- The Empathy Flip: When formulating a response, write it down and ask: Is it kind? Is it loving? Is it respectful? Imagine how you would feel receiving that exact response, and revise it if it sounds triggering.
Ultimately, the goal is to consistently fight to understand your partner rather than fighting to be understood. Even if a loved one ultimately chooses to step away from the Church, it is important to trust the Atonement and recognize that they will remember your ability to keep loving them.
Returning to Church on Your Own Terms
A question from a 49-year-old listener with autism, “I Love Christ,” said he wants to return to Church but finds the two-hour block completely draining. What advice would you give?
I offered advice for anyone feeling overwhelmed by church activity:
- Take breaks and ease into it: If church is stressing you out, it’s perfectly fine to step out or make your own personal study out of the time.
- Do what you enjoy: Bring a book to read during class, or hang out in the hallway to socialize about something else if that makes the experience more enjoyable.
- Don’t take everything literally: When faced with difficult scriptural or historical narratives, remember that not everything needs to be viewed through a strictly literal lens.
- Give and expect grace: It can be frustrating to sit through lessons that feel overly simplistic or lack nuance, but it is vital to offer grace to those at different levels of spiritual maturity, and to help teach them to give you grace in return.
Is faith crisis still a problem? What advice do you have?
Wheat & Tares 
What I wish I knew then was that “gospel truth aka [literal] gospel truth” to an Autistic is the “[aspirational] gospel truth” in class and in the community (even if the community and/or leadership is more blatantly black & white about it terms of thinking).
I think the faith crisis is something that happens within your mind as a first step towards changing directions on church activity and in your own personal beliefs about it. You need to have lots of conversations with yourself at first. Try to arrive at a position or set of positions that you feel confident in. For me, I eventually arrived at a position that god and gods as described in most religions don’t exist. At most God is synonymous with nature and to be at one with God is to be at one with nature and the people around you. This could be in a variety of ways.
Next, understand that much as the journey away from belief in the church’s traditional propositions was probably stressful and mentally painful for you individually, it will be the same for others who are still believing. To try to spring information on them could lead them to strong aversions to what you say and create a rift and an avoidance of you. The information is always there if they do desire to see, and they may someday arrive at where you are on their own, or they may continue on in their traditional ways and beliefs for life. After all, there is comfort and order in clinging to tradition. It is harder to live in a world of uncertainty that rejects the idea that hope-inspiring miracles actually exist and occur. Deriving hope from raw reality is trickier.
Lastly, seek to understand what the church teaches about individual freedom, divorce, and a number of other topics. Seek to find commonality between tradition and your new way of understanding. In here you can explain your position to the believing loved one if needed in a way that they are more likely to accept. If you can convince the believer not that Joseph Smith was a fraud, but that the church is voluntary and shouldn’t be forced on others or that the foundations of marriage shouldn’t be broken simply because of a difference in religious belief, that is what you aim for. And use the church’s teachings to help convince the family member of this. Here you are much more likely to find common ground and their acceptance of you as someone who changed in belief.
A full believer will never go to you and ask, “what about Joseph Smith, polygamy, Book of Mormon historicity, etc.” They don’t ask anything. They won’t ask anything. Why? Because they know that that conversation won’t go over well. It will be awkward and uncomfortable. And they have their minds made up anyway. They don’t want to experience any cognitive dissonance that such a conversation may give rise to. Anyone who does ask, “what about Joseph Smith, etc.” is likely experiencing a faith crisis and are looking for a way out. If asked, express empathy that you were there once and that a raw and hard reality of fakery simply became clearer and clearer over time.
I once saw the question of how to talk to believers about your faith crisis summed up pretty well in two rules.
#1. Do not talk to believers about your doubts.
#2. If you must talk to believers about your faith crisis, see rule #1.
All the discussion I have ever seen about it assume that your loved one who still believes is going to fight fair. For example, everything suggested in the opening post suggests that your loved one respects you and loves you enough to have a productive conversation about the church. It even more unrealistically suggests that your loved one knows the rules of fair discussions and will stick to them under stress. Well, I used to attempt to teach “rules of fair fighting and how to make your abusive spouse stick to them.” I attempted it only because my agency told me to. My real advice, which really I have no right to tell my clients what to do, would have been “leave now.” But most battered spouses are not ready to just up and leave, so we gave them what mostly turned out to be false hope. I could teach rules all I wanted and even if my client knew the rules, they could not DO that under stress. And to get their loved one to stick to the script, no way.
Example, I have been modeling and suggesting all these good communication idea to my spouse for at least 50 years now. Our first fight when we were just engaged was over the church and STILL, after 55 years married to each other, the best way of dealing has just been to refuse to discuss the issue.
So, my suggestions are to be the best most loving person you can, while setting boundaries about what you will and will not do. For example, I will still have good morals and will not start bed hopping or become a staggering drunk just because I have doubts about the church. Remember that your loved one’s biggest fear is probably losing you. Ask them about what they are afraid of and then make assurances, or promises about those things. Maybe they do not care what you believe, but are afraid of having to attend church alone, or drag the kids to church by themselves. You might do well with PIMO. Or, one friend had a spouse whose parents were alcoholic. That spouse’s biggest fear was that they would start drinking. This person had zero interest in ever drinking, so to them, they couldn’t imagine what their spouse was panicking about. Once they had that discussion, and a promise never to touch the stuff, their spouse was fine with them not attending. The trick is getting the discussion honest. Often these fears are illogical assumptions of what will happen if you are not a member in good standing.
The emotions surrounding your lack of belief probably do need discussing. For example, many parents are afraid they were not good parents and the proof is you disagreeing with them about their most deeply held religious beliefs. So, instead of trying to get them to understand why you not longer believe, try assuring them that you appreciate the values they taught. “Mom, I am so glad you taught us to work hard.” Find the good in the church and your upbringing and express that. “I learned valuable leadership skills from and public speaking from growing up in the church.” Or, “I learned so much about caring for other’s from your example.” You most likely learned the very things that are making you second guess the church *from* the church. For example, one of my raised in the church kiddos rejected the church’s fiscal dishonesty with the fines the government levied against the church. Where did he learn about honesty?
People don’t care about your change in belief near as much as they care what the change means. So, discuss that, not the specifics about the beliefs.
The answer is a simple one.
Don’t talk. Listen.
Empathize. Seek to understand. If you can’t do that, just fake it and keep your mouth shut.
If someone has chosen to trust you enough to confide in you about such a painful and raw subject, the last thing they need is a sermon or a debate. Resist any urge to judge. Just hear them out. Anything you say will make the problem worse.
Once you’ve established that you’re deserving of their trust, you allow the conversation time to continue. And time is the only way to resolve a faith crisis.
And faith crises ultimately get resolved, and sometimes they lead to a stronger faith. But of course, they can also lead in the other direction and away from the Church.
Unless you’re willing to have enough kindness and respect to accept wherever their faith journey takes them, you’re not going to be in any way helpful, and you’re liable to lose a friend in the process.
My experience has been that active members will avoid talking about your faith crisis at all costs once you have made a decision to step away. They won’t pressure you to prove to them anything especially after the shock of the decision is over. I imagined having to explain and justify why we left or why I lost my faith, but all those internal debates never happened in real life.
In the middle of the indecision that preceded my leaving the church I had long discussions with my stake president over email and in person that I expected to continue or evolve after we left, but even he immediately dropped the whole thing. Once and a while he sends me a conference talk that he said made him think of me. That is the most Mormon way of saying you care ever.
I’ve found that those who go through a “faith” crisis are the ones who are exercising their faith. The people who then stop talking to them are limiting their faith because they are afraid to reach out, learn something new, or have to change themselves.
I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it.
President Oaks could heal thousands of families in one go by giving one conference talk on respecting the religious beliefs of those who leave.
There’s ample doctrinal support for it—the 11th article of faith, many statements of Joseph Smith, the church’s modern rhetoric on religious liberty, and even the Uchtdorf quote that once got him kicked out of the First Presidency:
“In this Church that honors personal agency so strongly, that was restored by a young man who asked questions and sought answers, we respect those who honestly search for truth. It may break our hearts when their journey takes them away from the Church we love and the truth we have found, but we honor their right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience, just as we claim that privilege for ourselves.”
If President Oaks could find it within himself to endorse this idea and apply it specifically to spouses, imagine the amount of suffering that could be alleviated among the members.