Faith and Reason Are Not Enemies. This Scholar Spent His Life Proving It. (with Casey Griffiths)

An eight-year-old boy knelt beside his bed and asked God a simple question. Was the Church true? He waited in the dark, and nothing came. He was the same boy after the prayer as before it. So he tried again the next night, and the night after that, and every night for ten years. He was eighteen, packing to leave home for the university, when he knelt one more time expecting the same silence. That was the night the answer finally came.

The boy was Joseph F. Merrill. He would grow up to become a physics professor, one of the first native Utahns to earn a doctorate, and eventually an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More than a century later, a historian named Casey Griffiths would spend fourteen years inside Merrill's personal papers and come away feeling he had been mentored by a man who died in 1952.

Casey Griffiths is a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University and the co-host of the Church History Matters podcast. On a recent episode of the Why We Believe podcast, host Nathan Gwilliam sat down with him to trace the faith behind a lifetime of study, and to ask the question the show is built around. Why do you believe?

Roots in a Small Town

Casey grew up in Delta, Utah, a small farming community out in the west desert. He served a mission in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and then stacked up degrees at Brigham Young University, a bachelor's in history, a master's in religious education, and a doctorate in educational leadership. For eleven years he taught seminary before joining the BYU faculty. Somewhere in all of that, the faith he had been handed as a child stopped being borrowed and became his own. He did not get there by avoiding the hard parts of the story. He got there by walking straight into them.

Mentored by a Man Who Died in 1952

The figure who shaped Casey most was a man he never met. Joseph F. Merrill spent his career as a physics professor, deep in the world of rational thought, and he stayed a believer to the end of his life. Casey says Merrill held faith and reason as two sides of the same coin, two ways of reaching for the same truth. That idea became an anchor when Casey reached graduate school, where the whole point of the training is to make you skeptical and slow to accept anything. He says he never went through what he would call a faith crisis, but he understands why so many do. Merrill's voice, reaching across the decades, kept reminding him that a person can be deeply educated and still be a person of faith, and that the two were never meant to be enemies.

The Danger Is Knowing Too Little

The question Casey gets more than any other goes something like this. If I study the history of the Church, will I lose my testimony? His answer is to dive in. He likes a line from the historian Rick Turley, who said the Church is not afraid of people knowing too much about its history. The worry is that they know too little. The people who stumble, Casey says, are often the ones who picked up a few shocking facts online with no context, the flat version of history with no layers. The deeper problem is what he calls the cardboard caricature, the idea that Joseph Smith was perfect, that Brigham Young never made a mistake, that Emma Smith always said the right thing. Believing a prophet was flawless, he says, does as much harm as believing he was a con man. Real people had real flaws. Casey found that when he stopped needing the Saints to be perfect, he could actually relate to them. On his mission he loved the Savior, but he felt drawn to Peter, the disciple who was always a little too eager and kept getting it wrong. Imperfect people, he learned, can become stepping stones on the path toward Christ, as long as we do not idolize them along the way.

The Convert Who Saved an Apostle

One of Casey's favorite overlooked stories begins with grief. Parley P. Pratt, one of Joseph Smith's dearest friends, lost his wife and nearly lost his faith with her. He stood up in public, called Joseph a false prophet, and was ready to leave the Church for good. Then a man he had baptized six months earlier found him. You told me he was a true prophet, the convert said. If he was true then, he is true now, and you are the one who is wrong. The convert's name was John Taylor, and he would one day lead the Church as its President. Casey tells this story because it captures something he loves about the early Saints. They held each other up. A friendship saved an Apostle, and the two men went on to serve as leaders together. The history is messier than the cardboard version, and to Casey that is exactly what makes it worth keeping.

Why He Believes

When Nathan finally asked the question, Casey did not reach for the witnesses of the Book of Mormon or the years of evidence he has gathered. He remembered the historian Richard Bushman being asked the same thing and answering that the gospel made him a better man. As a young man Casey thought that was a weak answer. Now it is the first one he gives. His life has not always been easy, he says, but living the gospel of Jesus Christ makes him a better person, and that comes first. The study has strengthened his testimony, yet it rests on something simpler. He believes because he has seen the fruits of the gospel in his own life. It has made him happier, given him a good family, and handed him a reason to get out of bed and a little hope that the world can get better with the help of Jesus Christ.

Key Takeaways

A few ideas stay with you after this conversation. God answers in His own timing, and a ten-year wait can anchor a lifetime of faith. A disciple can hold faith and reason together without conflict between them. Knowing too little church history is what harms a testimony, while embracing the whole of it builds one up. The weaknesses of prophets and Saints are meant to point us toward Christ rather than away from Him. And in the end, the gospel of Jesus Christ proves itself in its fruits.

Casey Griffiths walked straight into the hardest questions of the Restoration and came out holding tighter to Christ. May his story help you meet your own questions with the same kind of faith.

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Follow Casey Griffiths: Website: Casey Griffiths at BYU