From One Faith to Another

Have just finished reading, Leaving the saints: How I lost the Mormons and found my faith by Martha Beck (2005). It's a well written book and tells a fascinating story of a couple who left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). (A Mormon critique can be found at here .) In Martha's case, she left the Mormons and finds a new faith.

Beck alleges that she was sexually abused by her scholarly father, an apologist extraordinaire for the LDS, from the age of five although none of her siblings support her accusations.

What I found fascinating about her journey from one faith to another was the character of the new faith. Just a day after reading her book, I was researching Emmet Fox's teachings and suddenly noticed the correspondences and resonances between the two. Of course, behind the two is the New Thought movement to which Oprah Winfrey also belongs.

Martha Beck describes movingly her experience of trying to connect with God with the words: please, please, please, please . . . . (p. 54). In a hospital for surgery she is encountered with 'The Light' (ch. 16) which is a love-experience (p. 112) and importantly is given five things to remember:

1. I am here. Always, I am always right here.

2. The way we are now, this being together, being one, is not the way you are supposed to feel after you die. It is the way you are meant to experience life.

3. The one place you can find me is the one place you have been afraid to go: to your own heart.

4. It will not be easy for you to go there.

5. I will be here. Always. I will always be right here (p. 113). 

Much of the rest of the book shows how hard it is for Beck 'to go there [to her own heart]'.

As an evangelical Christian I cannot agree with Beck's path to God although all Christians will find this book a challenge to the formalism and conformism that can dog all Christian circles of whatever persuasion.

Nothing can replace a living faith. However, one can have a living faith that is not directed towards the Truth of Jesus Christ as the only begotten, unique Son of God.

I think that Martha Beck became sick of the formalism of the LDS and rightly sought to find God. One can only pray that she will be led to find the Jesus Christ of the scriptures.