A phrase I see a lot in discussions about faith, politics, social cohesion and more these days is ‘mental gymnastics’. I’ve used it myself more than once. It seems that whatever ‘side’ of an issue you’re on, the ‘other side’ must engage in mental gymnastics in order to justify their conclusions. It suggests that there is an obvious, plain explanation of the issue – an Occam’s Razor if you like – and that your position is precisely that one. Everyone else, on the other hand, is having to come up with convoluted, irrational arguments just justify their own position.

On the one hand, scriptures confirm that truth is something that should make sense and be, to some degree, rational. ‘Let us reason together,’ the Lord says in both Isaiah and the Doctrine and Covenants (see Isaiah 1:18, D&C 50:10-11).

Indeed, in ancient Hebrew thought, the heart and mind were spoken of as a single unit. The Hebrew word lev, or levav, refers to the entire inner world of a person – his or her emotions, mind, thoughts, judgments, and more. So the charge in Deuteronomy to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5), is exactly the same as Jesus’ admonition to, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ (Mark 12:30). In the Gospel of Mark, we have heart and mind listed separately because the translation comes from Greek, not Hebrew.

In essence, we have faith because it is rational to us – it appeals to both our hearts and our minds. It’s strange to me that in my Latter-day Saint culture, we sometimes lose this idea of rationality when it comes to faith, relying exclusively on feelings, because our very own scriptures teach us that the Holy Ghost will come upon both our hearts and our minds (see D&C 8:2). But I digress …

All that said, rationality doesn’t always seem to be a neat fit with our faith. The most ‘rational’ explanation of the absence of Jesus’ body from His tomb, was that His disciples had somehow got access to the tomb and stolen His body, just as the Jewish leaders claimed (see Matthew 28:12-13). But our faith testifies otherwise. Similarly, it’s not ‘rational’ to believe that a resurrected Christ will return to earth one day, but we believe it will be so.

All of this to say, that while I believe that the Holy Ghost does speak to both our hearts and minds, that we are to use our mental faculties in study and pondering the word of God, and that my beliefs and my faith is largely based on a rational understanding of scripture (along with the heart), there may still be some areas where I will likely engage in my own mental gymnastics. I believe Christ rose from the dead, that He lives today at the right hand of God, and that He will one day return. When rational thought doesn’t align with that, I therefore must find reasons to disagree with that rationality, thus maintaining my faith.

We all do this mental gymnastics at times, no matter our beliefs. We all have our own so-called sacred cows – beliefs we will maintain no matter how much contrary evidence there is. And that’s okay. A key purpose in our lives is to study things out, look to God’s word, and then make choices to the very best of our ability. As Christians, we seek the Holy Spirit to guide our choices; but it’s very obvious with the vast array of different Christian denominations and belief systems, that using that formula has resulted in a multitude of different – sometimes opposing – beliefs.

So how do we know what is right? Finding something to be rational may be right in many instances, but not always for a host of reasons. On the other hand, maybe mental gymnastics are sometimes required, but probably not usually. How do we know when one approach is the one we should take?

I’m going to use a couple of examples from LDS practice that can have opposing viewpoints¹. But I need to make it clear that I’m not saying that one viewpoint is correct and the other is wrong. I believe it’s perfectly reasonable for either position to be genuinely held by an honest seeker. Remember, mental gymnastics may be appropriate at times. I just believe that we should be open and honest about that.

Example 1: LDS Temples and Temple Ordinances

The rational approach is to state that ordinances (especially the endowment) comes directly from Freemasonry. That the blood oaths (explicit prior to 1990 and implicit since) are secret oaths expressly forbidden in scripture, particularly the Book of Mormon. That whether these were introduced by Brigham Young or Joseph Smith², they were used as a form of control upon church members in Utah and have been used as such since then, including the later additions of requiring obedience to such things as the Word of Wisdom, Tithing (which could be seen as a form of ‘selling salvation’), and strict obedience to Church authorities.

This is the most straight-forward and rational approach. Please note, my ‘faithful’ LDS readers, that as I’ve explained, this doesn’t necessarily make it the correct or ‘true’ explanation, but it is in my mind the Occam’s Razor explanation.

The mental gymnastics version is that when Joseph encountered Freemasonry, he saw in it ancient truths that had been lost and corrupted over the millennia and was inspired of God to ‘correct’ these and carefully begin teaching it to select individuals. The intention was always to make these available to all worthy members of the church as a way to bring people closer to God and he charged Brigham Young with this responsibility. Often, when the scriptures refer to the ‘mysteries of God’, this refers to secret temple teachings. The LDS endowment is thus taught throughout the scriptures for those with eyes to see.

Example 2: The LDS Church is a Cult

The rational approach is that when you consider many characteristics of dangerous cults, including the popular BITE model, the LDS church ticks every box. From controlling Behaviour (e.g. Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Tithing), to Information (e.g. only getting information about the Church from approved sources; many historical documents are in Church vaults and no-one is allowed to see them), to Thoughts (e.g. when you’re told something that is opposite to what the church says it is automatically labelled ‘anti-mormon lies’; when someone leaves the Church you shouldn’t speak to them about doctrine or history), to Emotions (e.g. your family can only be saved if you are all faithful to all temple covenants; many members and even family might cut you off if you become an ‘apostate’). Ergo, the church is a dangerous cult.

Again, this is the most straight-forward explanation for the many rules, practices and peculiar beliefs in the LDS church – i.e. that it’s no different to the many, many other dangerous cults that have and do exist around the world. It doesn’t necessarily make it the correct explanation, but it is the simplest.

The mental gymnastics version is that God requires a peculiar people. He sends prophets today just as He did anciently and we must follow their words if we are to receive God’s blessings. Many of our practices can be found in ancient scripture, and those that can’t be found there were lost due to corruption and apostasy. The world will largely ignore God’s commandments, so we can’t listen to anything the world says about right and wrong, focusing instead on God’s anointed, whom we must trust. Ergo, the church is not a dangerous cult, but rather is the only way to salvation.

From the above example, I hope that I’ve accurately portrayed the perspectives of both those who don’t believe the LDS church as well as those who are faithful members. Of course, my summary is pretty superficial and either ‘side’ or this could present much more evidence to support their point of view. The point here isn’t to convince you one way or the other. My intention isn’t to guide anyone into or out of any religion – it’s to allow us each to be open to the search for the truth. We must get rid of those ‘Iron Gates’ Elder Uchtdorf referred to (see my post, Our Iron Gates, here).

Whichever side of these perspectives you fall on, if we want to find the truth, we must be willing to explore the alternative (because it isn’t a true choice we’re making if we don’t know what the alternative is), and we must be willing to be wrong.

I’ve spoken already about using the scriptures as our guide in discerning between truth and error in previous posts. Here I want to touch briefly on humility, or our teachableness.

I think this humility is a crucial element of what the Lord means when He tells us that we should become as children. ‘… Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matthew 18:3-4, ESV; see also Mosiah 3:19)

Most of us are probably Christian today because we were raised in that tradition. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because that is what my parents taught me from my childhood. I have lived the religion. I have served in the religion. I have prayed to God and studied the scriptures, and found that there is a lot of truth there.

As a child, I believed every word my parents told me and agreed with their every opinion. But as an adult, my own believes have diverged from those of my parents in some ways, just as my adult children’s beliefs now diverge from mine in some ways. That’s appropriate. As we grow, we put off childish things (see 1 Corinthians 13:11) and think for ourselves.

At the same time, however, many of our views about life, society and spirituality become hardened – and that is detrimental to our spiritual development. That’s why we get repeated calls in the scriptures to soften our hearts. While we seek truth by study as well as faith in an adult way, we must simultaneously have childlike, humble, teachable hearts, being willing to be shown to be wrong about pretty much anything. It is only when we put everything on our own altars of sacrifice, that God can reveal to us certain truths.

The debate between Peter and Paul in the New Testament is probably the clearest example of this in scripture. In the years immediately following Christ’s death and resurrection, Christianity was considered no more nor less than a branch of Judaism. All the the earliest members were Jews. Jesus was a practising Jew and taught Torah. All the Apostles were Jews. Even Paul, the so-called Apostle to the Gentiles, still considered himself a Pharisee after his conversion to Christianity (see Acts 23:6).

It took revelation and many arguments, study, discussion and no doubt much prayer to come to the decision that some aspects of Jewish life weren’t necessary to be a faithful disciple of Christ. Peter and others of the early church were hard to convince. It was incredibly difficult for these spiritual giants to overcome their life-time of indoctrination about what righteousness looks like, to accept the truth. Ultimately, they exercised enormous humility to accept that things they had believed were 100% fundamental to true religion weren’t, in fact, necessary. If you step back into the world they lived in and think about how they were taught Torah from childhood, studied it daily throughout their lives, and saw themselves as a people, even then we probably can’t appreciate just how huge a step this was for them. I doubt that we, in our day and age, can truly understand the paradigm shattering decision they took.

Can you and I do the same? Do you and I believe we’re more humble than Peter, James and John? Or that we don’t need to be because we already have ‘the truth’?

Without this humility, without this teachableness, truths will forever be withheld from us. We’ll carry on in our erroneous ways, thinking ‘All is well in Zion’ (see Nephi 28:21), all while we’re headed for a precipice.

According to Isaiah, a precipice is exactly where the majority of God’s last days covenant people are headed. In Isaiah 6, we learn that only a tenth of the population will survive (see Isaiah 6:13). With Christ teaching us in the Book of Mormon that Isaiah’s words apply to us today as well as to the Jews of Isaiah’s time (see 3 Nephi 23:3), that should give us pause for thought.

Will you and I be part of that small remnant? Our humility and teachableness might just play an important part in determining that.

© Copyright Jeffrey Collyer, 2026

1. I use LDS examples because it is my faith tradition and so I’m more familiar with it. Other religions will have their own examples that could be equally scrutinised.
2. There is evidence that an endowment of sorts was introduced by Joseph Smith, but many doubt the provenance of that evidence. There is evidence against the endowment coming from Joseph including: a) the plans for the Nauvoo temple had no interior layout that would accommodate the distinct rooms required for the endowment introduced by Brigham Young, b) the fact that no other of the splinter religions that came from the church established by Joseph had anything remotely similar to the endowment, and c) elements of the endowment and other temple practice that expressly contradicted things Joseph publicly taught. On this last point for example, temple marriage being performed inside temples that non-faithful members couldn’t attend directly contradicted Joseph’s clear teaching (as found in the Doctrine and Covenants published in his lifetime) that all marriages were to be performed in public. Regardless, things such as violent retribution against those who took Joseph’s life and teachings about the Adam-God doctrine were clearly additions made by Brigham, whatever the provenance of the rest of the endowment.