I have always viewed life and understanding truth as a bit like a puzzle. We don't have all of the pieces. With the few pieces we do have, we then extrapolate a worldview that makes sense with the evidences (puzzle pieces) that we do have.

Early in my life I used my puzzle pieces to help me believe that the mormon church was true. Then I found more and contradictory puzzle pieces. I ultimately had to come to the conclusion that the church is not true in the way that it teaches that it is true.

I was recently thinking about this analogy and imaged a table with puzzle pieces and then two box tops with different pictures of a potential completed puzzle. One is a mountain and a blue sky (the church is true). The other picture is of an island and a blue ocean (the church is not true).

What I have found is that many believing mormons will only consider one possibility with their puzzle pieces. The church must be true. The other potential picture is not even a possibility. So when they find puzzle pieces that don't fit they either discard them for later (a shelf) or they throw them away (denial) or they try to make modifications to the pieces themselves. Cutting a corner off. Reshaping an edge. Forcing them to fit together (apologetics).

But ultimately they just can't wrap their minds around the fact that there is a simple and straight forward solution. Put the puzzle pieces together into the picture of the island and the blue ocean (the church is not true).

I am willing to accept either solution. I only want to know the truth.

My believing mormon friends tie themselves into knots trying to get their puzzle pieces to fit their preconceived notion that there is only one potential picture. This leads them to frustration (cognitive dissonance) and a high degree of magical thinking.

Why can't they see this?

I guess it is because we just choose to see what we want to see.

I definitely used to be one of them.

I am so much more at peace just letting the pieces of the puzzle naturally fit together without me trying to force the answer.

The church just isn't true in the way it teaches that it is true.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2013 01:19AM by 8thgeneration.

Thanks for posting this. I really like the analogy. Actually, my first thought was that this would be similar to a pro-LDS puzzle analogy I heard some time ago, but I'm glad it turned out to be refreshingly thoughtful!
This applies really well to a black/white "The church is true/not true" (and that is really what it comes down to!). I can see that some TBM's may not even consider this possibility (especially when they think they have so much evidence that the result will be a "mountain with a blue sky") because of the huge jump from one result to the other (although made with the same pieces, frustratingly).
So when explaining this to a TBM like this, I may tweak it and take out the two box tops. Now you don't know what the picture is! One is free to visualize and theorize on what the picture (the truth of this life, perhaps) may be, but we ultimately cannot know until we have all the pieces in place, which perhaps can only happen once we die and "see" it ourselves.
Once again, thanks for the well-thought-out post. This is one for my archives for sure :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2013 02:19AM by msp.

Great analogy!

Furthermore, the The Church is True puzzle is just a bunch of pieces from various puzzles tossed in the same box.

I see myself putting my puzzle together, "Holy @#$% it's an island!"

With enough squinting and self-delusion, an island surrounded by water can look like a mountain with blue sky.

Therein lies the problem: they don't realize they've been squinting their whole life.