All About Mormons

I don’t typically post things on this site that don’t harmonize with my own personal experience with Mormonism, but I’m going to deviate from that policy today. The Mormon Church has profoundly transformed my life for the better. My faith is derived from my daily experience and interactions with God. History, intellect, policy, culture, and theology all play into that, but God is the ultimate, direct source. My experience with the Church has been overwhelmingly positive, and it’s difficult for me to imagine how anyone could ever become disillusioned.

I’ve studied Mormon history in depth and find it to be overwhelmingly faith promoting. I never thought church leaders were perfect, so it didn’t surprise me to learn that they’ve made occasional mistakes. After all, though God is at the head of this church, He places much of its day-to-day management in the hands of fallible human beings. Most of the preeminent scholars of Mormon history are likewise practicing members of the Church; they likewise have no trouble reconciling their scholarship with their faith.

Similarly, the whole science vs. religion debate has always seemed contrived to me. I have a PhD in Biomedical Sciences, and I have no difficulty reconciling my faith and science. I likewise do not find fault with Church policies, culture, or theology. Leaders of course make occasional mistakes, but that is to be expected from any human being.

However, some people do become disillusioned. I don’t pretend to understand it, but it happens. Consequently, I’ve decided to post an edited version of John Dehlin’s talk entitled, “How to Stay in the LDS Church After a Major Trial of Faith.” I don’t entirely agree with everything John says, but his words might be helpful for those who have suffered a crisis of faith. God bless you, brothers and sisters!

Note: John’s original talk was published under the Creative Commons license. My permissible derivative work is likewise published under that license. If you prefer, you can also listen to an edited version of John’s talk.

My name is John Dehlin. I am from Logan, Utah. I actually spent seven years here in Seattle when I worked for Microsoft, so it’s fun to be back. My mom tells me I’m 5th generation Mormon. I was raised in Katie, Texas, which is a suburb outside of Houston. I started my crisis, oh, let’s say, seven years ago. I have a 12-year-old and three other young kids. My claim to fame is that I went to high school with Renée Zellweger. We actually went out a little bit. She was a good girl. She called me when I was a senior at BYU to tell me she was going to be an actress, and I laughed, not in a mean way, but, you know, it was sweet old Renée, right? I couldn’t fathom Renée as this Hollywood actress. She sure showed me.

I definitely had a very conservative theological and doctrinal education within the church. My parents were divorced at quite a young age after being married in the temple for 27 years. I was the youngest of four, and I clung to the church as my lifeline. The church was everything to me. I would get myself up for seminary, and that was at five o’clock because seminary started at 6:15. I would go to church when my parents weren’t even there. I was regional seminary scripture chase champion and seminary president. You know, the church was everything. I even DJed stake dances, and sometimes the regional dances.

I served a mission in Guatemala. I was married in the Washington, D.C. temple. Morally clean, never tried alcohol or tobacco, or any of that stuff, even though I had lots of chances. I lived my life until I was living here in Seattle, and was called as an early morning seminary teacher back around 2000. The Book of Mormon was the first year. That was the year 9/11 happened, so it was 2001. The second year was Doctrine and Covenants. And, you know, there are multiple issues that in 32 years of church education I personally had never heard of these. Now, I know people who were taught this stuff when they were nine years old, and they tell me, what was wrong with you? There are people that way, but when I learned all this stuff it was like my world fell apart. I felt like I was devastated. So, thankfully, I started reading articles by Eugene England. I started reading stuff from T. Edgar Lyon and Lowell Bennion. I started reading stuff from William Bradshaw and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and others. It gave me a rebirth of the faith and the testimony and the framework.

Now I’m learning as I go. Obviously I don’t have to tell you that I don’t have all the answers, so consider this just a work in progress, just sharing me with you, and at the end you with me, how we might approach things. But don’t look at this as anything other than an exploration. Once I started podcasting and blogging I realized that I wasn’t alone, so I left Microsoft and moved to Logan, went and met Dan, started doing the podcast and the blog, and within a very short amount of time I started getting around three e-mails a week from people all over the world. And now that I’ve been doing this for two or three years, I’ve received, you know, if you do the math, that, plus the people who have come to see me in Logan, several hundred people I’ve counseled with.

This is an example of the type of e-mail I get: “Dear John, for now I want to let you know that I’m active but disillusioned somewhat. I’m currently serving as the bishop of the … very interesting ward… and I’m four years and nine months into that call. It has been very difficult to come to that point while serving as a bishop, but still I maintain my faith in God and Christ and much of what I have come to love from the LDS church.”

This is a bit of an extreme example because he’s serving as a bishop right now. I’ve been able to distill over the past several years what the main causes of people losing their faith are. The church is trying to please a lot of people, and it’s hard to have one program that pleases all types of people at all ages and in all situations.

So I have empathy. I don’t judge the church in any way for that. The last thing I have to say is one of the hardest things about the dilemma of people like this. You would think that these people are the weakest and least righteous and least valiant of all the members because they have become disaffected, but that hasn’t been my experience. My experience is that a lot of these people hit this crisis not because they care too little, but because they care too much. That’s just been my experience. I don’t want to glorify them or us, but it certainly hasn’t been because they had something they wanted to justify or were weak or were feeble. It was more because some of these other reasons.

So, when someone goes through this crisis, there are few options for them. One is just to be the innocent, “Let’s talk about this in Sunday school! Look what I read the other day! You know, come on, did anybody read this? Does anybody have any…” and, you know, you hear the crickets chirping… and sometimes that leads to frustration where you start being the person who wants to shock and traumatize everybody, and that just is all unhappiness and road towards misery.

Some of you have my bishop. I had this crisis here in Issaquah, and I tried to talk to my bishop about it. And I did the same thing when I went to Logan. And a lot of time your bishops just kind of go, “Yeah, I’m sorry I can’t really help you.” They’re not equipped. He was just saying, “I’m not equipped to talk to you.” I can tell you that most bishops are likely in this scenario. They haven’t been trained and there isn’t training. It’s not their fault. It’s just where they are. So, trying to talk to the ward community usually isn’t very successful, unless you’re in a very unique ward. And there are some of those.

Second thing you do is you try to talk to loved ones. And unless your parents and siblings and close people have been through things like this, you’re in much the same boat, but not only that, you risk jeopardizing your relationships. I’ll illustrate with one more story. One more e-mail I got. “Mr. Dehlin, I came across your website by accident but I found something that I have been searching for for a long time. In the last year I started to realize that my testimony, the testimony that I had held so very closely to my soul, was being attacked by what looked and acted like truth. My immediate reaction was one of going to my close friends and family. All that did was make my relationship with them strained to a new height. I realized I was now on an island all by myself with no one to talk to or pull from.”

Some people feel like they can’t talk to anybody, and sometimes they try, and then they can’t. So the third thing that often people do, and sometimes the skip one and two and just go straight to this option, and that’s just to fill completely isolated and depressed, because they have no one they can talk to. And that’s, I think, the saddest and most desperate place of all.

When you get into this mode, sometimes you can have an inflated sense of importance and relevance in what you’re going through. You can even develop in your mind this notion that I’m going to let everyone know about these problems. I’m going to resign. It’s going to send a shockwave through my family and the community, and people will be disturbed, and the ward will be disturbed, and they’ll all come asking me what happened. And we’ll all rally together, and it will be this strong thing where my family comes with me and members of the community come with me and, you know, will be seeking justice. And maybe we’ll march on Temple Square headquarters and will nail our 95 theses onto the wall of the tabernacle, and will go to the prophet and say… You know, you get this inflated sense of wanting to bring a lot of people with you. I mention that because that’s not always how it happens. You want to think that people are going to rally to your side, and that you’re going to change the world. That’s not always how it ends up. And so, you need to be aware of the risks of this approach. It’s devastating. People are losing their spouses, their children, their affiliation with their parents, their community. It’s not a pleasant deal. I don’t mean to make light of it, but it is it doesn’t turn out the way you think.

There are many downsides to this type of public resignation. First of all, you don’t feel it at the time. You feel like your pain is what everybody should be feeling. That’s how I felt. I felt like everybody should be feeling the pain I’m feeling. Everyone in my family, everyone in my ward, everyone in my community. Your pain needs to be my pain now. But that turns out to be a very selfish and egotistical approach. Just because you care about these things doesn’t mean that they do. Busting this out all over the world and all over the Internet, like I wanted to do, isn’t always the right approach.

There’s also a downward spiral of cynicism, bitterness, and anger that comes from being angry with your tradition and then storming out and leaving it. You end up gravitating towards those that do the same. You start circling yourself with people like that. It’s just not very positive. There was once someone asked the Dalai Lama, “I’m not happy with my church. I want to be a Buddhist.” And he said something interesting. He said, “Don’t come to Buddhism with baggage from your faith. Stay in your faith. Make it work, or at least reconcile it until you’re in a place of peace, because if you come to Buddhism with your anger, I guarantee you that within 3 to 5 years you’re going to be disillusioned with your Buddhism, and then you’re just going to move onto the next thing.”

And that’s often what I’ve found. There’s a high risk of alienation from everyone. It can be very disruptive to children of marriages. Important decisions, life decisions, should rarely be made from a place of anger and pure emotion. That’s just a good rule. Would you sell your car or house without having replacement? I doubt you would question, in many instances, the value of the church in your life up until that point. For me, the church was so important. I wasn’t just going to throw it all away.

And if you do do this sort of Crossing the Rubicon, burning the boats, you have very little room to change your mind later, because you force yourself into this public display of disaffection. But then you sort of are going to feel ashamed, like your ego is damaged, if you then go back on what you did so publicly. So, there’s all sorts of reasons why that’s not a good idea.

I’ll show you another story. There’s this couple that e-mailed me a couple of years ago. “I found your podcast. I love it.” And then about a year after that they e-mailed me and said, “I don’t want anything to do with the church anymore. We joined another church, and were done! Sorry, it’s over. We’re not coming back! We’re happy.” And they really thought they were done. Then I get this e-mail just this week. “We continue to attend a local, neighborhood church, which is fine except that at times I miss being a Mormon. Do you know what I mean? I sometimes wonder if I can ever shake it, or if I’m supposed to. It’s in my blood to a certain extent. I think it’s an emotional reaction, but it is real, and I have to work through it. I would love to know how you are hanging in with the church. Is it working? I love so many things about Mormonism. This is my dilemma.”

So, if you think you are leaving it, you may not be. It may just be a matter of years before you’re back, pining for it, and wishing you could come back.

Another point I have to say is that anger is much more damaging, in my opinion, as sort of a lifestyle, then any situation you think that’s being afflicted upon you at church. As hard as those may seem to you, choosing a life filled with anger and rage is much more cancerous, as an alternative. And I’ve seen it destroy people. And so, regardless of whether or not you choose to come back, I strongly encourage people to avoid negative, critical, and intolerant people, not to seek out people who have experienced the disaffection as you have and who have remained in an angry and furious place.

As Bonner Ritchie likes to talk about, the opposite of a small truth is a lie, but the opposite of a large truth is another large truth. Transcendence comes through reconciling paradox. And if you can look at the church, and its imperfection, and also its beauty, and find a way to reconcile those two into something that’s worth embracing, you can achieve a level of enlightenment and transcendence that can be a blessing to yourself and to the people around you.

So that leads me to the question of why stay. Because that case needs to be made. There are lots of practical reasons to stay in the church. It’s a great place to reinforce spirituality in a world where spirituality is easily forgotten. In many cases, it is your identity and your culture, and it’s not easy, you know, for a Jew to un-Jew themselves. And it’s not easy for a Mormon to un-Mormon themselves, no matter how hard they try. In my experience, they almost always keep coming back and, at an absolute minimum, always miss their affiliation with the church at least on some level. It’s a wonderful place to establish community, to raise your family and children if you can have the right approach to it. It’s a great place to encourage clean living, which is good for anybody. There’s undeniable good in the church if you’re open and willing to see that, if you’re objective and look at what’s going on in wards and stakes and missions, humanitarian efforts, it’s undeniable, amazing amounts of good going on there. For many of us, it ends up becoming the best there is. I know lots of people who become Episcopalian or Unitarian, and I don’t disparage that–I know some of you are Unitarian–but I’ve met many people who have ended up becoming just as disaffected and just as disenchanted with whatever faith they run to, as they were. And then they end up hopping and hopping and hopping until they unravel and wish they could come back.

There’s so much of the doctrine that is beautiful. The church is a place to serve and be served. I believe that comes from Eugene England. And, in my opinion, the hymns rock. For me. Some people disagree with that. I love them. And so, do you throw the baby out with the bathwater? It’s a fair analogy. Replacing all these great things that I tried to show here, very difficult.

The analogy that I like to use is the homeschooling analogy. Have you ever met… How many of you are disaffected with or angry with the public education system today? How many of you still send your kids there anyway? How many of you have tried homeschooling? How many of you are still homeschooling? Okay, they grow up. Well, homeschooling can be an amazingly positive, productive thing. And it can really work for people. But I’ve known a lot of people who didn’t realize what they were taking on, and it ends up becoming sometimes very complex and difficult. And much more overwhelming than they ever thought. It turns out that sometimes being educated in how to be a teacher is a helpful thing. And sometimes life gets so busy. So, I would submit that trying to reconstruct all the benefits that you could get from a ward affiliation is a challenging thing that isn’t to be seen as something that can be taken lightly.

What that often requires you to do is to rethink the role of religion. I really like this quote by a man whose name I won’t even try to pronounce… “Religion is a realization, not talk, not doctrine, nor theory, however beautiful these may be. Religion is being and becoming, not hearing and acknowledging. It is not an intellectual assent. In fact, it’s almost in many ways the opposite of an intellectual assent, but the transformation of one’s whole life.”

If you come to church expecting to hear the pure, unadulterated voice of God through His servants, that may be an unrealistic expectation. Sometimes. Sometimes you may get that, but you’re not always going to get that. But if you look at church as, in Eugene England’s case, you know, “Why the Church is as True as the Gospel,” if you look at it as a laboratory. Look at the church as a laboratory to make us saintly, and in many ways because of the people you have to deal with and associating with people that you otherwise would never choose to associate with. How else are you going to develop Christlike love, patience, and tolerance? And so, it’s something worth thinking about, if you are sincerely seeking transcendence and the higher level of being.

You should remain open to little truths taught in the Gospel and in the church. I would encourage you not to minimize the importance of myth and metaphor. So let’s say that you struggle with the historicity of the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham. Or let’s say that you struggle with everything coming out of the mouth of the general authorities as being doctrine all the time. Or, God as an anthropomorphic being. Or an atonement that applies not only to everyone on this world but everyone who’s ever lived, plus all the other worlds. If you struggle with the literalness of some of these teachings, that doesn’t mean that the whole thing is garbage and should be thrown away.

There’s immense value in metaphor and myth. In fact, a smart man once said that myth is what never was but always will be. If you read a John Steinbeck novel, it doesn’t matter whether Tom Joad ever really lived, because there’s truth and goodness and Godlike truth and inspiration in those pages. And you can find the same thing in Scripture, in addition to the possibility of them actually being completely authentic and valid and historical.

So what are some of the truths behind the myths? Even if you’re a 100% nonbeliever, consider the practical value behind messages like: you are a child of divine worth. Think about how the world would be if everybody respected this notion in terms of civil rights and decency. You know, prayer, even if there’s no one listening on the other end, has the value of meditation and reflection and the expression that comes through prayer. Faith is another word for optimism, of doing something with the hope that something good will come about. Baptism represents a commitment. Repentance is change. That’s really what repentance is. That’s something we could all do, positive change. Revelation. Whether or not there is someone sending you this literal message, I believe that if you’re present and listening and paying attention to people and to your environment and to nature that somehow messages are being sent to you that are worth listening to. Whether you want to call that directly from an anthropomorphic God or not, I believe there’s power in being present and receiving revelation that’s extrasensory. Service is love. Priesthood power is tapping into the power of natural law and faith, or can be.

Traditional families. As charged that term is, I would be interested in hearing someone argue that the traditional family should be destroyed, or that isn’t an important component of our society. There is still value in the traditional family that shouldn’t be relegated to unimportance. Genealogy is simply an appreciation for one’s ancestry and history. Personal purity is clean living. Scripture study is about deep thought and meditation. A lay clergy is all about self-governance. Tithing is about sacrifice. Hometeaching is just about love. There are truths behind these myths.

And the one thing that I have to convey most strongly: when you throw all these things away, sometimes you think that you are chopping down the imperfect. Sometimes you think that you are discarding what is flawed, because then when you chop down all those trees in the forest, because you find blemishes on each one, that somehow new trees will spring forth that are perfect. But that’s not always the way it is. When you carelessly chopped down all the trees in the forest, sometimes adversity that you would never expect will come at you, and those trees that would have given you shelter and comfort aren’t there for you in a time of great need. So I just ask you all not to minimize that. Go slowly. Don’t burn bridges. Be careful who you talk to. Don’t try to shock or enlighten people with your new understandings or concerns. I’ve already talked about where are you going to go, and many do regret leaving and come back.

This is a point I get in a lot of trouble with, but I think that part of living a healthy life is learning to accept imperfection, even imperfection from God’s “one and only true church.” You expect that to be the one place where you will achieve perfection, but I don’t even think that God is held to that standard. In fact, if you read the Bible… Michael Medved says that he believes the Bible is true simply because it is so candid in all the grotesque and horrible things that it tells about. And so you can’t really argue that God has set us up with the expectation of perfection even from his prophets and apostles. Judas denying Christ. Peter betraying Christ. David committing adultery and murder. Noah getting drunk. You know, the list is endless of prophets who are fools. And Jonah running away. So, learning to accept imperfections is simply healthy living in some aspects.

Are you perfect? Is your spouse perfect? Is your family perfect? Is your employer perfect? Is your country? Do you resign from all these institutions when they fail to meet your pure, you know, ideas of what things should be? Do you renounce your citizenship as a U.S. citizen because of the war, and you are not feeling good about it? You could argue that they don’t claim to be God’s one true church, but at the same time, you know, this country claims to have divine inspiration and God’s support, especially in this administration. And most importantly the impact they have is unbelievably strong and powerful.

So, you know, it’s healthy to ask yourself when you experience a problem, is this really an LDS or Mormon problem? Or is this a human problem? That manifests itself not only in the ward but elsewhere. I would suggest to you that life becomes more healthy when you learn to accept imperfection. Adjust your expectations for the church and its leadership, members, the ward. Don’t expect more from them than what you are able to offer, and what you are experiencing in your own life that you have the most control over.

It’s important to unplug from caring about what others think of you religiously. Because, being a Mormon who is maybe not a conservative, orthodox Mormon requires you to say things or do things or not do things that would cause other people to raise their eyebrows. I highly suggest you gaining a level of confidence and self-respect and unplugging from the cares and the judgments of your peers in the church. It’s a hard thing to do, but I believe it’s a path towards healthier living, not just in the church but in your life in general. And it’s an essential coping mechanism in dealing with this condition of staying in the church.

I find so many people who are angry at the church, but if you dig into their own lives, they have deep dysfunction and dissatisfaction, whether it’s with themselves or with their employer, with their marriage or with their family. And the church becomes sort of the scapegoat for all the pain and the anguish that they’re experiencing independent. Of course if you leave the church and abandon and runaway, that’s not going to solve all the problems that are independent of the church, and it may even exacerbate them. Look inside yourself and make sure you are in a healthy and sane place before you blame all of that on the church. You may find that some of that is within you, and will follow you wherever you go.

All Mormons are buffet Mormons. You can’t possibly do everything that’s been asked of you, and you can’t believe and have a testimony of every element of the gospel, because I think even the brethren aren’t sure of all the elements of doctrine within the canon. And so everyone falls short. Instead of getting depressed about it, embrace it! This isn’t about advocating slothfulness or disobedience or whatever, but if push comes to shove, if your choice is leaving altogether and abandoning or finding some middle ground, let’s explore that middle ground and the possibilities there. It’s something to think about.

Many people want to maintain and go to the temple, and you could argue that people like us need the temple more than anyone, or least as much as anyone else. But some disqualify themselves from the temple recommend interview because they say, “I can’t commit to an anthropomorphic God. It’s just a little bit too much” or “I can’t commit to the restoration, because Joseph Smith, there’s just some things that really get to me” or “I can’t fully commit to other things.” And so, I would ask you to consider some things. The first is that there is always going to be a disconnect between whoever’s interviewing you and you. You’re never going to have a full agreement and understanding on what the terms mean and what the conditions are and what the doctrine and history entail. And so, you have to understand the setup of what the brethren themselves have offered. They could ask 10,000 questions, ask for your W-2’s, drill down and allow bishops full autonomy to ask additional questions and to make sure that you align perfectly with what those bishops and stake presidents think you should be feeling and thinking.

But in reality, think about how they’ve set up the questions. These questions are intentionally vague. Joseph Smith’s name never comes up in the temple questions. It says, “Do you have a testimony of the restoration?” Just the terms themselves, “Do you have a testimony of…” What does that mean? Does that mean a firm and abiding conviction and knowledge, or does that mean a faith and hope as faith is described in Alma? The simple hope that something is true. The questions are somewhat vague. They prohibit additional questions from being added. They allow you to be the ultimate judge. Nobody is perfect, and I’m sure that all of you know that one bishop may disqualify you when another bishop would’ve let you through, depending on how you answer the questions. Understand that the brethren have set that up that way, and all you need to do is make sure that you’re comfortable, with integrity, answering these questions. And if you feel right before God answering these questions, however you define the terms, I think you shouldn’t necessarily self disqualify yourselves from temple service.

If you don’t believe in an anthropomorphic God, do you believe in a force, or some type of organizing force? If you don’t believe, if you worry about the historicity of Jesus, can you call him a Savior just by the fact that you’ve lived his teachings and they saved you from pain and anguish? If you can’t sign up to everything about Joseph Smith, can you sign up to the fact that he brought truth and goodness that was a step forward from the traditions he came from? If you don’t know that Gordon B. Hinckley is the only man that God speaks to in such a literal way, can you say that he has the power within the church to lead it and is in some way inspired by God? You know, there are other things as well that you have to decide how you’re going to interpret them and what they mean. Again, I never encourage lying and deception, but I would ask you to make sure that you’re not disqualifying yourselves unnecessarily.

Raising children is a very tough one. We’re raising four kids right now. A lot of people are concerned about teaching them doctrine and dogma that might be hard for them to accept. “That’s going to teach them biases and untruths that may poison them later.” Here’s how we approach it. We tell our children, “Mommy and daddy don’t go to this church because we think this church is better than all the other churches. We love this church. It’s the church that we embrace, and it’s our heritage and faith. This is our faith tradition.”

You know, talk to your kids about what they’re being taught. Find out in an engaged way, just like you would do with school or a movie that they watched, “What were you taught? How do you feel about that?” And children get this if you give them a chance. You don’t want to teach them disrespect for church leaders, but you need to teach them to do what they would do anywhere, which is to make sure that what they are receiving feels right within them. “You don’t have to believe the leaders are infallible. Because sometimes they make mistakes. And you don’t have to choose between science and religion.” You can teach your children these things and equip them at an amazingly early age to be able to work through as a mature person, to cope with some of the less than ideal things in the church.

But most importantly, don’t spend your Sunday dinners deconstructing and criticizing everything that they experience at church. We’ve tried that. It leads to just a very negative experience. You may as well not go. So keep positive. If they come home and say, “I was frustrated with the church today,” show love and empathy, but then say, “What did you like about church today? What did you love?” And don’t use church as a means of always thinking and criticizing because there’s just no point.

Remember that it’s all about the people. Don’t get fixated on the doctrine and the history and the theology if that’s bothering you. Fixate on the relationships and getting to know the members of your ward and having edifying relationships, and even one-on-one relationships with people.

A lot of times we judge church membership by the 5% who are most vocal in Sunday school or Relief Society or testimony meeting, but the truth is the average church member is a sensible, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate person. Really, in my experience. But often times the loud mouths that speak up in Sunday school are the ones that we then judge the entire congregation by. And if you would take the time to get to know the membership, you would understand that that’s not representative. Mormons are, by and large, good, honest, sincere people that are worth getting to know, and not to be painted with a broad brush.

Seek out like-minded folk in your ward. It was so freshening for me to find Steve and Chris Jones in my ward here in Issaquah. It was almost like a lifeline for me in many ways. In every ward, even in north Logan, there are people who can empathize and understand and talk to, and so you can find them if you want to look for them.

If you can do the work to move on and get to that place of understanding and empathy and love, if you can do that, then you can become a savior on Mount Zion to people who are in pain and struggling in a way that very few other people would ever have a chance to be. Go to the Bishop and say, “Who has left the church or gone inactive? Can I be there hometeacher?” I’ve done this! I’ve even helped bring people back to the church because I go to them and say, “You know, I’ve been there, brother. And I understand, and you’re not alone, but I need someone there to make church pleasant for me, so will you please come back?”

It’s easy to blame everything on the leadership, but I have people very close to me who are very close to the top leadership of the church. You would be very surprised at how much change they would like to see but don’t know how to steer a 12 or 13 million person organization in a fast way. And sometimes the brethren are preaching very progressive, enlightened messages, but the members aren’t listening. Things like, “Your job and your family come before your calling.” They’re saying that all the time now, but you’ll still get people in the ward who say, “Never turn down a calling.” And that’s not what’s being taught now. They’re teaching simplify, simplify, simplify. Yet there are lots of people who are trying to make it so complex and burdensome. There are lots and lots of examples. Understand and have empathy for the fact that it’s hard to steer such a large ship. With international members in multiple languages and 5 million active members, have empathy for their position.

You know, a lot of us go to church thinking that that’s the place that is going to fill us. The church isn’t always the place that’s going to help us reach the highest level of spirituality. Some of that burden rests on ourselves, and that’s even doctrinal. “Seek ye out of the best books.” And so, don’t look at the church as your sole source of spirituality. Seek out good books. Seek out nature. Seek out family time, meaningful friends, exercise, small groups of people, and supplement your spirituality, because the church is not going to meet all your spiritual needs that way, because it can’t meet everyone’s needs across such a diverse perspective.

Church is a place to serve and not always to be served, though you will get served when you’re struggling. You know, I’ll never forget when I was struggling in the Issaquah award and feeling really isolated. There was a member who empathized with me. He called me up and said, “John, can I take you fishing? Can I take you fly fishing?” And he took me to a fishing store, he bought me a fly rod, and boots, and overalls, and he took me fishing. During that fishing exercise he said, “You know, I’ve been through what you’re going through right now.” That was the last thing I was expecting. And it meant a great deal.

And so look at church as a place to serve. Where else are you going to find out about who has cancer, and who’s pregnant, and who needs sod laid at their house? You can live in a neighborhood for 10 years and never know the people right across the street from you, if you live in a non-Utah area. But in the church, you meet 20 families within four weeks of living there. Learn how to find out how you can meet their needs.

A lot of people who are frustrated with the church loose common courtesy, and they treat members of the church worse than they would ever treat members of another faith. You would never go up to Muslim and say, “You know, that Koran of yours, you know, isn’t all perfect, you know, and that Mohammed guy actually did a couple of really interesting things. You want to talk about it?” You would never do that! You would never go up to a Catholic and say, “Hey, let’s talk about that priest abuse thing that happened in that diocese over there.” You would never do it! Yet, Mormons think that they can go before everyone in Sunday school, when we’re disaffected, and just blather it all out to everybody. Well that’s just not good manners. And it’s not common courtesy. So don’t treat LDS devout people any differently than you would treat anybody else.

Probably the most important thing I can convey is seek to understand. Why are the brethren acting the way they’re acting? Why are the bishops acting the way the acting? Why are Relief Society presidents and priesthood leaders acting the way they’re acting? These people were raised in devout homes. They served missions at an early age. They sincerely believe. But understand that they are managing for the many not for the few. So you have to understand their dilemma and not being able to do everything you would like them to do.

I won’t get into James Fowler’s stages of faith, but know that this thing that we’re going through is something that many people in many faiths have experienced. So, as you begin to pull apart your beliefs, you start taking responsibility. And it can lead to anger and bitterness and resentment, but there’s also this danger of falling a bit too in love with your own position. But there’s this fifth stage that I would encourage all of you to strive for. And that’s realizing that there is deep meaning in the universe beyond rationalism and humanism. You can re-immerse yourselves in finding value in myth and tradition and imperfection and paradox. And that can become, as I mentioned before, some of the most transcendent states to become.

And so I would encourage you to use this situation as a way to become even more developed. And as I’ve met people who typified this, I think of people like ????, or Bonner, or Dan, or Armand Moss or Brill Bradshaw or Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, or Darius Gray. You know people who are active in the church who just seem wise and compassionate and amazingly profound? Rarely in my experience are these the people who got angry and left. But they found a way to deal with it all and to see it and decided to stay. These are the people that I want to hang around with. These are the people who make me want to be a better person. And I would challenge all of you and myself to seek to try to become this type of person.

I guess I’ll just end with my testimony, that I have a strong belief and conviction that there is a God or force or some type of meaning and purpose to this existence, that the teachings of Jesus are inspired and lead you to a more fulfilled and happy life, that the Book of Mormon is a transcending, inspirational document, that it is inspired. Joseph Smith was brilliant and a genius and in many ways incredibly inspirational and taught incredible truths. President Hinckley and the church have much inspiration and good that has benefited my life in amazing ways. And to me these are things that are worth keeping.

I encourage you to keep going to church, even when it’s hard; because it’s hard. Keep praying. Keep reading the Scriptures, as mundane as those things are as the Sunday school answers. Stay open, because changes happen and light comes when you never would’ve expected. I’ve seen it happen with many, many people. Make a difference by staying. Build credit in the church by serving, and then when you build that credit, because you’ve been there at the service activities and helped out Brother Jones and Sister Smith, then spend that credit judiciously in ways that improve people’s lives, not just that shocks them or makes them feel defensive.

It takes lots of work. You really have to love people to want to engage on this path. And fasten your seatbelts, because it’s hard. In my experience so far, it’s been worth it. There are a lot of resources that can help. “Why the Church is as True as the Gospel” is a great essay, “What the Church means to People like Me” by Richard Paul, a book called “For Those who Wonder,” and James Faller’s “Stages of Faith” are all things that I recommend. I just thank you for your time, and I hope you found something today that has been of value. Thank you.