Why Would Anyone Want to Become a Mormon? (And Why I Did)

*Note: Though I'm leaving the term "Mormon" in the title for SEO purposes, you should probably know that Mormons actually prefer to be called 'members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' or just 'Latter-day Saints' for short.

In the past 15 years, I've met many people who are, like me, converts to my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints.)

Some of them were visiting different churches and searching for the truth for years; some of them ran into Latter-day Saint missionaries and immediately knew this was right for them.

I was neither of those people.

When I was in high school, a family with a son about my age moved in next door. We didn't really talk but I was vaguely aware of his existence. I remember once seeing him out of my window and idly wondering, "What if we dated?" Of course, as a teenage girl I thought that about every boy I saw, so maybe it didn't mean much.

But, funnily enough, I did end up dating that boy.

Maybe a year or so later, I was on a train bound for Washington, D.C. with the other members of our band for our end-of-the-year trip. When I noticed an empty seat next to that cute neighbor boy, I promptly inserted myself into it. I came away from that conversation wondering, "Why is this Phillip guy so good? I have to find out why he's so good."

We started dating, and when summer rolled around Phillip invited me to a big church youth conference. Spanning a Friday and a Saturday there would be spiritual speakers, a service project, classes, activities, and a dance.

I grew up Lutheran, but as a teenager I'd drifted into an agnostic period of my life and that was A-OK with me. But whatever, I guess I could go.

My friend Cassandra and I had great fun joking about it. "Have fun at Super Mormon Weekend!" she snickered as she waved me off.

When we arrived at the youth conference, we were all meeting together, hundreds of high-school aged kids in a big church. We sat on a pew and took out a hymnbook for the opening song, "True to the Faith." Phillip leaned over nervously, warning me that it was "kind of a weird song... we say 'no' and 'yes' and stuff."

It wasn't really that weird. I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it, but to this day I still smile when the first few chords of "True to the Faith" are played.

The first day was uneventful, but the second day was rough. We attended a series of classes on different spiritual topics, and honestly I cried my way through them all.

Phillip, being by nature a quiet person, hadn't previously volunteered many details about his faith. And being a very loud person who wasn't interested in the particulars of his religion anyway, I'd managed to date him for several months without knowing much about what made him tick. (Did I mention how totally sophisticated and mature our teenage relationship was?)

Naturally, I ended up learning a lot. Namely that I'd been making his life very difficult for the past several months. I'd admired his goodness — his lack of swearing and gossiping, his sobriety, his disinterest in dishy movies, his commitment to wait until marriage — but at the same time I'd thought it was sort of a drag and I'd been pestering him to loosen up.

I felt, in a word, terrible. Terrible because I felt I was only just beginning to understand him, and terrible because the morals and values I was hearing about sounded right to me — but I was not going to attach myself to a church that expected so much of you. I didn't want to. I couldn't possibly! There was absolutely no way that a person like me was going to become a Latter-day Saint.

So I did what I do best and decided to ignore this whole thing until it simply went away.

Still, the things I'd heard at that youth conference stuck with me. Okay, I eventually conceded to myself. There's something more to life. Probably.

So I started with what I knew and went back to the Lutheran church I grew up in.

I felt like I was on the right track but what I was looking for wasn't there. So I started going to church with Phillip.

Inside me, something had changed, but I was as stubborn as ever on the outside.

I remember having a conversation with Phillip about how everyone at his church was so nice, and he asked if I'd ever considered that it might be because the Holy Spirit was there. Was it just a coincidence? "Yes." I said flatly. "It's a complete coincidence that has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit."

Let me tell you, I was a real pleasure to have intelligent spiritual discussions with.

But I kept going to Phillip's church for another year and a half. I tried to apply the Sunday School lessons to my own life. I became a lot nicer. I stopped swearing. I gave away my booty shorts.

I met with the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints many, many times. They kept inviting Phillip to our discussions, thinking I might like to have him there, and I would call him and tell him not to come. This was my search now, I didn't want him there making it complicated. (When you're 16 and a boy's around, everything is complicated.)

I read a ton. Everything I could find on the Internet. Nothing was a surprise when I joined the church, I'd heard it all before.

Things were just sliding into place. The more I learned, the more sense it made. I don't remember feeling shock at learning there was a prophet on the earth today; I hadn't thought about it before, but now that you mention it, why shouldn't there be?

I started reading the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I spent a lot of time in prayer but didn't feel like I'd received very much in the way of answers. If I was going to get baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I needed confirmation from God Himself that it was the right thing to do.

Despairingly, I wondered if I was somehow caught in a parallel universe: I believed very much that God existed, but maybe He just didn't exist for me. Maybe He didn't want to talk to me. Maybe I was destined to believe others who said they knew the church was true, but never really know for myself.

Latter-day Saints are big on talking to God for yourself and asking Him questions. But I didn't know how to do that. It wasn't like calling somebody up on the phone.

Some people say they've had prayers answered in an undeniably strong way or even with an audible voice, but I never have. It's always been more subtle for me.

Hearing the voice of God requires me to really pay attention. But even though I was earnestly asking "Is this true?" I don't think I was really paying attention for an answer. I was frustrated and hoping for a miraculous answer like the burning bush, but not necessarily paying attention to the fire already burning inside of me.

It wasn't until one day reading the Book of Mormon that I came across Mosiah 18: 8-10:

... as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light;

Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life —

Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

As I read this, I finally realized: I'd been getting an answer to my prayers all along. All those things were the desire of my heart. 

I knew The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was true because not only did the things I learned about the gospel make sense in my mind, I also felt good every time I applied them to my life.

So I called up the missionaries and told them I wanted to get baptized. I'm sure they almost passed out from the shock of it, having certainly given up on me by now, but they recovered well and we set a date.

I'm not actually a time traveler visiting from the future. Someone just got a little zero-happy recording the date.

And as much as I'd like to say that the rest is history, it's really just beginning. I've come a long way since then, but there are still so many (too many) moments when I realize just how spiritually immature I am.

The first reason I took notice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was moral. I thought it taught a good way to live. But the more I learned, the more I saw that the way you live is just an extension of why you think you're living at all.

I love my savior Jesus Christ. I love knowing that I'm a child of God. I love how intensely personal the gospel is, how empowering and yet how humbling it can be at the same time. I'm just beginning to appreciate the power of Christ's atonement and how my life can be transformed through God's grace.

All in all, I guess it's a good thing I sat next to the cute kid on the band trip.


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On Religion, Science, and Bumper Stickers

I can't say exactly why, but I love a good bumper sticker.

There's just something satisfying about a poignant truth or funny joke that gets its point across using nothing more than a 3"x11" rectangle.

That's why I love to read bumper stickers. I'm probably the crazy lady tailgating you on the highway so I can read yours.

But I guess I don't love all of them. Or agree with them.

After a visit to Children's Hospital, I read a bumper sticker on a car in the parking garage that said, "Science flies people to the moon. Religion flies people into buildings."

...Okay.

I thought about that bumper sticker as I buckled up the baby, crammed the stroller in the trunk, and drove home. 

It bothered me, and not just because the small lettering would probably cause accidents later as people like me tried to get close enough to read it on the road.

True, people do heinous things. Sometimes they use religion as a cloak to do it. But for every act of religious terrorism, I know religion inspires hundreds of thousands more acts of kindess and goodness. For every holy war, there are millions of acts of service done quietly in the name of God.

I'm not just talking about Ghandi and Mother Theresa, although they certainly do count. I'm talking about regular people. I'm talking about myself.

I wasn't always Mormon. I grew up Lutheran and spent my tween years in an agnostic period where I just wasn't interested in religion.

If I hadn't had a change of heart in my teens, I probably wouldn't have become an axe murderer, but I also wouldn't have grown as much as I have in the last 15 years.

My family members will at least tell you that a side effect of my conversion to Mormonism is that I'm nicer to be around.

Spending time in prayer and contemplation forces me to be honest with myself. My faith makes a lot of difference in how I raise my kids and what I think is important to teach them about life.

Because of my faith, I've answered calls to bring meals to new moms, spent time praying for other people's needs, and volunteered for countless hours of church service that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

Knowing that I'm accountable to a higher authority than myself makes me a more intentional mother, wife, friend, and neighbor. I think God wants me to make the most of myself and be a force for good in my family and in the world.

Some people use their religious beliefs to justify hurting others, and that's too bad. Because churches are a good thing, not just for individuals, but for society.

Churches give lots of time, money, and manpower in charitable aid. I've been asked by a few friends who aren't religious to invite them to any service-related activities at my church; they say they want to volunteer more but they have a hard time connecting with service opportunities without a church.

Religion is linked to more stable families and better health. Also less violent crime and substance abuse. It's obvious that religious beliefs are tied to your moral values. At church we're taught to be honest, kind, and forgiving — even when no one is watching.

Christianity in specific teaches us to love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22: 37-40,) and that those two great commandments are inseparably linked. The more active I am in my faith, the more I internalize it.

So in summary, the bumper sticker in the garage and I are going to have to agree to disagree. I think religion has more to offer society than acts of terrorism.

But my main frustration was still something else, a question: Is there some kind of contest between science and religion? Why does it have to be either/or?

When you ladle soup out of the pot, it's still soup, no matter what half of the pot you got it from. To me, truth is just truth. Scientific knowledge and religious knowledge aren't opposites, just different halves of the same pot of soup: science answers the "how" and religion answers the "why."

Science tells me how the universe was formed, religion tells me why God formed it.

Science tells me about the biological makeup of my body, and religion tells me why I'm here on earth at all.

Learning about the physical universe elevates my reverence and awe for God, and it also deepens my appreciation for science. Even at my basic level of understanding, the one strengthens and reinforces my love for the other.

Albert Einstein said that "every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."

When I learn about the physics of light — how it behaves, how it moves, how it exists in relation to time — it sheds a whole new dimension on the boatload of light/dark analogies in the Bible and the Doctrine & Covenants (a Mormon book of scripture.)

The more I learn, the deeper I want to dig into both science and religion.

In college, one of Phillip's materials science professors explained how he started keeping a journal of all his spiritual thoughts in his 20s. He did this diligently for decades.

As the years went by and he got further into his career, mathematical equations started popping up in his "spiritual" journal. He was making connections between his spiritual knowledge and his secular knowledge, which really aren't totally independent of each other, after all.

No matter where it comes from, truth is truth.

Hey, maybe I could get that on a bumper sticker.

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A Gospel of Joy

Usually we listen to people give talks in church, but today was the Primary Program.

Primary is the kids' organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and during the Primary Program they go up front to sing and tell us about what they learned at church this year.

I always like the Primary Program, and not just for the funny moments like when a teacher started to help one of the 4-year-olds with his line and the mic picked him up telling her in no uncertain terms, "I can do it myself!"

What I enjoyed was that the kids wrote their own parts ahead of time on a certain gospel topic (e.g: "Jesus Christ" or "families") and it was so honest and from their hearts. 

My favorite part of this year's Primary Program was when one child came to the front and said, "Heavenly Father wants us to be safe and have fun!"

I love that, because I believe in a gospel of joy.

Everything about God's plan for us is designed to bring us joy. In fact, we call it "the plan of happiness." In the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2: 25 tells us "men are, that they might have joy."

Think about it: God made more beautiful places on earth than any of us could visit in a lifetime. The vastness of the universe and the variety on the earth testifies to God's creativity and His desire for us to be surrounded by beauty. He wants us to enjoy it.

When we come to earth, we're born into families. And when we grow up we have the opportunity to go and create families of our own. I think all people, religious or not, agree that family is one of the greatest joys of life. On their deathbed, no one ever wishes they'd spent more time at the office.

The angel who announced Christ's birth to a group of shepherds said "I bring you good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2: 10.) God sent His Son to make our joy full. Through Christ we have hope. Jesus' Atonement covers every sin we've committed and every wrong that's been done to us, erasing despair and hurt and replacing it (eventually) with joy.

I also believe that the Holy Spirit communicates truth to us through joy. When I first learned about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a teenager, I studied it for about a year and a half before getting baptized. How did I decide to join the church?

I knew the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was true because it agreed with the scriptures, it made logical sense to me, and most of all, following its teachings brought me joy. Never once has it brought me sadness or regret.

Joy is more than just happiness or entertainment. Joy is a lasting sense of well-being and fulfillment, and it comes through knowing and living the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

To those who are struggling with a perception of a harsh, angry God: please open your heart to the possibility that God is actually your Father in heaven who loves you and wants you to have joy.

For what it's worth, I believe He's constantly offering us the gift of joy and anxiously waiting for us to accept it. And that includes you.

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