Confidence in Confidence Alone

I’ve had some epiphanies recently about the inner voice I’ve cultivated through years of religious and scriptural study. Although the scriptures themselves are open to personal interpretation, the way they are taught can carry generations of culture and religious shaming of self.

I believe there is a misconception that, because we are imperfect beings, God is necessary in every facet of our lives, in every decision, in every thought. Without Her or Him, we will inevitably descend to morally skewed humans with selfish intentions. Weekly at church, I was reminded that I was imperfect, that God will fill the gap and help me be a good person. Psychologically, let’s consider what effect that could have on the subconscious of a developing mind. I won’t pretend to be an expert on such topics (I’m only comfortable in the arts; science doesn’t become me). But, if someone is being told repeatedly, for years, that they are imperfect and flawed and need saving, what will they believe? Who will they trust? Certainly not themselves. They will look to the very people telling them they are imperfect and beg for guidance. It is not harmful to ask for advice, but those men and women should also be instilling in their audience a sense of self assuredness, a sense of trusting in one’s own intuition. In my experience, that was not usually the case.

In my religious upbringing, it was explained that the “still small voice” or Holy Ghost would whisper the right choice to me. If I was faithful and good and kind, the Holy Ghost would help me make choices and use my agency (free will) properly. However, if I was breaking rules or being mean spirited, I was told that same ghost would leave me.

My brain is literally just an ongoing narration of my life and random words that sound weird. So, I never heard any voices aside from my own. I never had the “burning in the bosom” (D&C 9:8) experience I heard people talk about with regard to feeling the Holy Ghost. I simply just heard myself, in my head, trying to figure out what to do. As a teen, I decided that the Holy Ghost was that voice. If I felt good about a choice: Holy Ghost says yes. If I felt bad about a choice: Holy Ghost says no. It sounds very simple and it did help me many times. But the caveat of this notion is I was not trusting those decisions because *I* made them, I was trusting them because *he/she/they* made them. I had been taught that, as an imperfect person, I could not be trusted to make the right choice by myself. Even if the voice I heard was my own, my religion had commandeered it to make me believe it wasn’t mine. That something that good couldn’t and wouldn't come from me.

The last year, I have found the most calming and confident sense of self. I trust the voice in my head completely. Why? Because I’m no longer trying to figure out if the voice is from the Holy Ghost or Satan (Yes, really. It does sound insane, I know).  I’m confident that the voice is mine and mine alone. That I am smart enough to think logically, that I am strong enough to do the hard thing, that I am kind enough to choose the things that will protect and serve others.

It’s not that I don’t believe in some form of spiritual inspiration. I just find frustration with the implication that humans are inherently flawed and will make the wrong choices without God to manage us. If God truly sent humans to the earth to have agency, why would She expect me to ask them about any and every decision in my life? At what point does it stop being a choice of my own?

One of my favorite songs in the Sound of Music is I Have Confidence. It has been the mantra I repeated to myself this last year: 

“With each step I am more certain

Everything will turn out fine
I have confidence
The world can all be mine
They'll have to agree
I have confidence in me
I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides, which you see
I have confidence in me”

I’m pulling a Maria, proudly and loudly. I have confidence in me. Just me.