PAPER #3: THE FAITH
Keeping Covenants and Promises & Managing Ambiguity with Faith
The third thing that we asked the students to do was to look at the issue through the lens of Keeping Covenants and Promises & Managing Ambiguity. In it, we asked the students to discuss how to deal with life's faith paradoxes with even greater faith.
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Looking at these issues as something that we need to (and are expected to) endure. Not merely to survive through, but thrive in as we learn to accept and deal with the trials we've been given using a mixture of our agency and God's gifts.
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PAPER INSTRUCTIONS
The third thing that we would like you to do as you work on the issue that your team has been given this semester is to look at it through the lens of Keeping Covenants and Promises and Managing Ambiguity with Faith (i.e. see "But if Not." a conference talk on how to deal with life's faith paradoxes with more faith.)
Write a paper (approx. 2 pages in length) that will show people who come across your website the issue as it relates to keeping covenants and promises. How might a person who has made covenants continue to keep them even when they are facing the issue that you were assigned?
For example:
A member of the church who is a returned missionary struggles with same sex attraction. How does he/she continue to keep covenants in a world that justifies breaking them? What if the pressure to break them comes from family and friends who are members of the church and should be supporting him/her in faith?
Why should a person keep promises?
What about keeping promises makes us like God?
You also need to look at this topic from the perspective of managing ambiguity with faith.
So, some examples:
I had a sweet friend that died in a car accident when she was 18 years old. At her funeral, her father struggled with the promises made about her future in her patriarchal blessing.
Here's another - a married woman may have been promised through revelation that she would physically have children in this life, but so far, is infertile.
A man has been promised healing from a mental illness in many blessings, but hasn't received it yet.
What are some guiding questions for your topic that could help your research?
This one may be the hardest to write because we need to encourage and yet, our writing should not sound preachy, sarcastic, "holier-than-thou", or contentious. Remember, that you are writing about real experiences that many people have. For you, this topic that your team has been assigned may not be an issue, but for someone else, it may be a real trial! Something that is breaking them and their faith. For another, it may be a Gethsemane "Not my will but thine, be done" Luke 22:42 type of suffering that could go on for days, months, or years.
This paper is to be written in terms that show the reader that there is understanding of the way that they think, but there are Eternal Truths that also need to be taken into consideration.
Through the power of the Holy Ghost, there are new ways to understand the problems of life ... truths, that if understood (like the power of redemption and restoration through the Savior's Atonement), that could open up channels of communication to God for the person who may come across your team's website.
Instructions
Write a well researched paper
Give arguments about the paper that support the lens of keeping Covenants and Promises and Managing Ambiguity with Faith .
2-3 pages in length (approx. 500 words)
Use 4-5 credible sources (these should be gospel related - scriptures and prophetic words)
Each person on the team will write their own and turn it into this assignment space. Then (next week) you will review each other's work.
I look forward to seeing what you come up with!