Dan Ellsworth: Surviving a Faith Crisis and Learning About Redemption

Dan Ellsworth says his faith crisis made him feel like “a bomb went off.” In this episode, Dan’s shares the personal details and painful realities that accompanied his own crisis of faith. He then describes how he eventually found personal redemption that helped him not only survive the crisis but emerge from it a stronger, more spiritually settled person. Dan also offers seasoned advice that will help both those experiencing a faith crisis and those who have loved ones struggling with deep doubts.

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Faith Is Not Blind: I’m in the DC Area with Dan Ellsworth. Dan is someone that we’ve been wanting to talk to for a few months–since we started the podcast actually–because he’s somewhat of an expert in what we sometimes call the faith crisis community in the church. He actually is part of a group called Uplift and he’s done wonderful work there. They have a Facebook group and they have other resources for people who are trying to find help and advice for faith tension and faith crises and Dan has a lot of good principle-based advice. Today, though, we’re going to ask him about his personal story. I was thinking about the good work that Dan has done and I thought about a quote from Neil Postman. He’s a great artist and storyteller and he said that “without are ourselves die and without a story ourselves die.”  Dan has done other podcast interviews where shares principles and I would encourage you to listen to those. But today we’re going to talk about his story–his personal story.  So thank you for being here, for being willing to share part of yourself with us. If you can just introduce yourself a little bit, just your profession and then also what your background is in the church.

Dan: I work with organizations on technology consulting and management consulting, helping them think through and implement challenging solutions to problems that they have that they need to fix, things they need to improve.  And I enjoy that. It gives me a lot of exposure to varieties of things that people do.

Faith Is Not Blind: I think in an interesting way it sounds like it corresponds with your work in the Faith Community.

Dan: Yes, it does. I grew up in the church in Southern California, served a mission in Brazil and loved it. And then after my mission while I was at BYU, I got some exposure to what we call “the complexity,” and some exposure to some of the more challenging issues in church history. But even before that I would say on my mission I had several experiences where–you know how when we grow up and we go through primary and Seminary we build these very simple mental models of how concepts in our faith are supposed to work and we cherish these mental models? These mental models are emotionally cemented within us by the primary songs that we sang and and in our youth conferences and things like that. Then as you mature and you can you go through things, some of these models you realize need to be reworked.

Faith Is Not Blind: Let’s talk about your faith before your mission, before you had had any complexity or much complexity anyway. How did you view faith? What did it feel like? Because I want to contrast it so that people can feel what that sort of expectation failure felt like.

Dan: I had experiences before my mission that at a minimum let me know that God is involved in the work of the church. I mean, undoubtedly I had a testimony of Christ. I had a testimony of the Book of Mormon.

Faith Is Not Blind: Could you share a specific one that you felt like started your testimony?

Dan: My testimony started with Christ. I was just kind of a difficult kid to raise. I was always pushing boundaries. I just kind of a rebellious kid, and there came a point where I was unhappy, almost like when Enos is out hunting and he just gets to thinking and wondering if these things that he’s been taught about Jesus Christ–are they real? And that’s what happened to me. I had an experience one day where I just asked the question, one day where I just honestly asked the question in my mind. And right then and there I received an answer. Sometimes I’m hesitant to share that because I know that for some people it doesn’t happen that way. But it did happen to me and it was a very powerful experience. I am very much into music and art and I love music that is emotive–not sentimental but with an emotive melody and that kind of thing, so I know I’m able to differentiate between emotions and something that is a genuinely spiritual experience. And the experience I had was unlike anything I had ever felt before or experienced before. And so that was my first what I would call a spiritual experience.

Faith Is Not Blind: After you had that experience did it come into play with some of the complexity later?

Dan: Maybe. It’s hard to say. After that experience I had a couple of experiences like that and then I served my mission. On my mission I actually saw some of what we call complexity in some experience.

Faith Is Not Blind: Can you share one of them?

Dan: Okay. I got to be very very close friends with a family down in Brazil and they were people of African descent. And we would sit down to lunch with this family and their kids loved me and my companion. We just loved these kids–talking and playing with them. And the mom, one day at lunch she looked at me and she said, “Elder Ellsworth, do you think that I was unfaithful in the pre-existence?” I had no clue what she was even hinting at when she asked me. I said, “No. Why?” She said, “Because some people do think that I was unfaithful in the pre-existence and that’s why my skin is darker than yours.” I thought that can’t be what people think and I went back that night and I lived with my Zone Leaders and I asked my Zone Leader, “What do you make of this?” And he said, “Oh yeah. Yeah, I believe that some people were fence sitters and that’s why they’re born on earth with darker skin.” And that just didn’t sit right with me. It just didn’t taste right. So when we went back and talked with them again I told her, “I know that other people believe that, but I don’t believe that about you and I don’t have an answer for you on this particular question but I know that I don’t believe that.”  It didn’t taste right to me.

Faith Is Not Blind: I think some people might have said, “Well if the Zone Leader or anything with the word ‘leader’ after it if they said that, it must be true.” How were you able to say “I need to parse this out myself if it doesn’t taste right to me?”  Because that’s pretty young to be able to that.

Dan: I had an independent streak, though, about who thought certain ways and felt certain ways. So when my Zone Leader said that I was comfortable saying no.

Faith Is Not Blind: You said that after your mission you had some experiences with complexity. Will you share with us what that felt like to go through that complexity? We tend to throw around the words “faith crisis” a lot and I know people define it differently, but I want you to talk about what that felt like to you.

Dan: It felt like I just had kind of been building up this mental model. Like when we learn that prophets have a worldview and a culture that they operate within. That the leadership of the church–they actually do research as they seek revelation. A lot of people find that out and that’s shocking. We think that they just go in and pray and the answer comes and that’s it. No. They study, they research,  they use data, they use professional consultants to evaluate issues. That is shocking for some people.

Faith Is Not Blind: Did you feel like you were in shock not at that point or did it just gradually build up over time?

Dan: It was years and years of more and more of those things adding up and then there came a point where I came across some issues in biblical studies and it was like that metaphor of the shelf breaking. I didn’t know how in the world to process what I’m studying and what I’m learning and what I’m reading. Not only that, but in light of what I’m learning, I don’t know how to process what I thought I had known and in the past. And things I’ve experienced. I didn’t know how to process anything at that point. And when you get to that point where the shelf breaks. And I mean the feeling is hard to describe. It just feels like a bomb has gone off in your soul and everything is leveled and you don’t know which way is up. It was very hard. And when you get to that point there are forks in the road and you have decisions to make. You have emotional decisions to make. And there are certain patterns of thinking and patterns of feeling that you can decide to embrace and there are others that you can decide not to embrace. And there are courses of action that you can take. The first thing that I did was I decided to tell my wife that I didn’t know if I could ever be a believing member of the church again. And that was a hard thing to say. But then I said, “I’m going to start fasting every week for a period of time.” It was going to be months of fasting every weekend and I said, “At the end of the year I’m going to just take inventory of where I’m at and see if I’ve had any breakthroughs or anything.” And I did that and it was fantastic. It’s hard to describe the value of that particular decision I made.

Faith Is Not Blind: Most people wouldn’t think that fasting during the week is fantastic. What was fantastic about it?

Dan: It’s probably one of our most underappreciated mechanisms for spirituality. I had done it a few years earlier. I had taken a job in a war zone in Baghdad and I knew that during the year that I was there I was going to be around a lot of wild people–crazy characters–and would there be a lot of temptations and things like that. And I decided to fast every week that year and it helped me get through that year spiritually. So I thought I’d  just try it again. And with faith crises there’s such a strong emotional component. There’s a temptation to gravitate towards anger and accusation and resentment and blaming and all of those things. Fasting is powerful because it really kind of does something to you so you’re able to kind of step back from your instincts and sort of slow down.

Faith Is Not Blind: I noticed earlier you talked about how you had emotional issues that you recognized and intellectual issues and it seems like you kind of compartmentalised them. Did that help to fast because those issues are so difficult. How do you feel like you could acknowledge the emotions without letting them take over both compartments?

Dan: Fasting king of schools your emotional state. During that time I also said, “Okay while I’m fasting, I’m going to do all of the Sunday School answers–like scripture reading, serving, etc.” I decided to do scripture reading even while my conceptualization of scripture was changing–very much changing. I was trying to figure it out. I was in complexity, but it was more than complexity. It was almost like just a severe doubting complexity and I I did not know if it was possible to ever engage with scripture with a chosen simplicity, where I can just sit down and read and benefit from it. But  I decided, “I’m just going to do it anyway, Let’s see what happens. What harm could there be in fasting every week, serving, going to church, reading my scriptures, and just maintaining a good relationship with my community? What harm could there be?”

Faith Is Not Blind: What did you do when the gnawing feelings came?  I know sometimes when people are in the middle of it and they’re trying to read the scriptures or pray that there are still these feelings. What did you do?

Dan: The gnawing feelings were there, but I had just a few little insights and breakthroughs and little things happened during that time. Around that time a friend of mine who was out of the church and I almost never talk–we will go for years without talking– during that time he sent me a message and just said, “Hey for some reason I felt like I needed to check on you and see how you’re doing.”  I just kind of knew, Okay that is how God used to talk to me.”

Faith Is Not Blind: Right. This is the language that He used to use.

Dan:  I remember–and I tell this story fairly frequently–there was a lady in my ward who got up and told her conversion story in a testimony meeting and it was so powerful. She talked about her life growing up overseas, joining the church, and talking about her experiences with her family and challenges with her family and about doing temple work in a difficult family situation. And I watched her tell her story in sacrament meeting and I said, “That is the religion that I want. What she is telling from the pulpit right now–that’s the religion that I want.”

Faith Is Not Blind: What was it about it?

Dan: I’ve always gravitated towards redemption stories. And this was just real, raw, authentic. You know, a powerful story of the redemption of a family. I’m not a lawyer, but I like to think in terms of law. You know when we talked about “witnesses” and “testimony?” I said ,”Here’s a witness and do I believe her testimony or no?t I have a choice right now.” Again we have forks in the road. I can choose whether or not to believe this, but I chose to believe.

Faith Is Not Blind: Did that help you to acknowledge that you had the agency to choose? Just like you had as a missionary?

Dan: I’m just thinking again in legal terms. Is there anything in her testimony that would discredit her as a witness? Nothing. I mean, it was just a sober-minded intelligent human being speaking the truth. A very,very credible witness. So again, you know there are forks in the road. Do I believe witnesses or not? That is a major fork in the road for somebody.

Faith Is Not Blind: You talked earlier about the experience that you had as an adolescent that was so powerful when you recognized the Spirit. How was this experience different? If we held the two up and compared them, how would they compare?

Dan: This experience was different because I didn’t choose how to feel. In some of my previous spiritual experiences they just happened. Nothing about me chose to have this overwhelming feeling or to feel a certain way. I could choose how I responded to this. There were other experiences. I had taken a leap of faith to go out with the missionaries and teach a discussion, and I go out with the missionaries and I’m thinking, “I have nothing to offer. I don’t know why I’m doing this other than I appreciated it when people did it when I was a missionary.”  And we went and we had an appointment. We went and talked to a young man and he had questions in that visit that were exactly the kinds of things that I had been stuck on about the nature of scripture.” And the missionaries were so grateful that I was with them because they didn’t know how to answer those questions. And I walked out of the house and I just said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I never had anybody ask me those kinds of questions anywhere. Just taking this leap of faith things happened and those things added up for a while. And after several years there came a point where I just said, “Okay but I’m no longer in faith crisis. I’m a fully believing, committed member of the church.” And that’s one of the first things I talk about when somebody comes to us in faith crisis. I say, “You have all the time in the world to work through this.”

Faith Is Not Blind: No rush.

Dan: No rush. I know it hurts and  I know you’re going to church and feeling like you can’t relate to anybody around you. I know that that hurts. I’ve been there are a lot of very painful feel things that you feel in the situation–the isolation, the loneliness, all of that. It’s very real. But if you can just internalize the fact that you have so much time to work through these questions. You have all the time in the world to think through these things.

Faith Is Not Blind: Even an eternity of time.

Dan: Then you can go back to church and say, “Yeah, I’m uncomfortable, but I’m working at something that’s going to take a long time right now and I can I can be okay again, but it’s not going to be quick. “Again that’s something that we really try to help people understand. You have plenty of time to work through these issues and and get your bearings again.

Faith Is Not Blind: I appreciate that you said you love stories of redemption. Another Storyteller, the American Storyteller Flannery O’Connor said, “The reader of today wants either mock damnation or mock redemption. They don’t understand the price of redemption.” And what I love about your story is there’s nothing “mock” about it. It’s completely real and you went through those feelings of damned, but you also have the feelings of being redeemed.

Dan: I love Flannery O’Connor. I mean, she has these quotes that are just so profound and so powerful. There’s no easy way through this kind of a situation. You have time to work through it, but it’s going to be hard. That’s another thing that I try to convey. One of the things that we probably are not taught as much as we should be taught growing up is that faith is really hard. it’s going to push you to your emotional and intellectual limits further than you think you can go. That it is normal. If you ever feel that then congratulations– you’re in company with Abraham Jeremiah and the Savior himself. Iit doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you if you’re struggling in your faith. It doesn’t mean you have some kind of a disease or something. Struggling and striving to work through these things is normal. So that’s another thing. We have got to take away the shame of faith struggles. These are normal. It’s very normal to wrestle through things even for years. So you’re in good company.

Faith Is Not Blind: I think you’re one of those people that gives company to those who need it.  I appreciate your example and you being willing to share your story with us. Thank you so much.

Dan: You’re welcome.