“Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?”
— The Apostle Paul to the Corinthians
Walking back to the car after attending the No Kings Day protest at the Salt Lake Capitol, I mentioned something about tithing to my friends whom I had come with. We are active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A man walking near me overheard and said he believed in the church once, but now he can’t unsee what he has since seen. He could have been referring to the enormous wealth of the church and how it had been handling its investments. Or any number of historical inaccuracies and big mistakes. Or current positions and policies regarding the equality of women and LGBTQ peoople. Or idolizing church leaders, and other thorny issues.
I can empathize with this man. I have dug deep and wide into my church’s history, theology, and its current challenges. There are things to be troubled about.
At the same time, there is so much good that the church has brought into my life and others who I know that I can’t unsee that either. That good, for me at least, far outweighs what is troubling.
It is equally difficult for me to separate my experience in this church from my relationship with Jesus Christ. My understanding, affection, and appreciation for this man-god continue to flourish partly because the church continually asks me to go deeper into him. Some, often rightly so, criticize the church’s curriculum, which is mostly insular, only repetitively quoting its own institutional authorities. However, the theological roots of this restoration church still reach ever outward to encompass all truth wherever it may come. This principle is enshrined in LDS scripture and within the most sacred ordinance of the church. Joseph Smith, the church’s founder, made good use of it in nearly every aspect of the church’s formation.
The following is my too-long account of much of the good I have seen because of the church I belong to.
My birth was unintended, and who my father was, uncertain. So my young mother, already with 2 young children, asked the doctor who delivered me to put me up for adoption. My adopted parents, both converts to the Latter-day Saint faith at different times and places, met at a church service activity in rural Oregon, where I was born. My adopted mother worked for this doctor. Against protocol and the law, he shared the names of my birth parents with her. He said he knew genealogy was important to her faith tradition.
At age sixty, I was able to connect with my siblings and see pictures of my birth parents who had passed, thanks to a family history calling in the church I reluctantly accepted, and my wife, Jane, searching online. Through meeting my blood relatives, I learned how difficult life was for my birth mom and siblings after 3 abusive marriages. Fortunately, her fourth marriage was good.
In contrast, my adopted parents raised me in a home and church that emphasized loving one another based on the teachings of Jesus. And gave me plenty of opportunity to do so through “callings” of service, teaching, and speaking within my family and congregation.
Growing up throughout my teenage years as a member of an odd minority religion in Oregon served me well. It garnered me respect as an outlier by not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs. And the kindness I was shown in my home and church shone through, albeit imperfectly, in how I treated them. They recognized I was different. And they found this difference was good.
Serving a two-year mission for the church helped me in many ways: reducing some of my religious scrupulosity, learning how to better love and appreciate others who are different than me; Learning to appreciate other faith traditions; Learning how to live with peers 24 hours a day—I was an only child; Working through some of my weaknesses that became more apparent in this stressful environment; Working internally through several difficult faith crises’s that gave me a much better understanding of the character of God. Deepened lifelong habits of heartfelt prayer and scripture exploration; Increased appreciation for, and understanding of, the Savior; Plus the usual leadership and confidence building that comes through exercising your faith in uncomfortable and unprecedented circumstances.
I met my wife in a singles ward not long after my mission. She was a college graduate and a young widow. Maybe being dropped by several serious suitors because she was sealed to her deceased husband made her more willing to consider a not yet 22 year old with no college under his belt. My mission faith crises had taught me that the God I believe in would work things out fairly, and I didn’t need to worry about it. My prayer and fasting about the matter led me to continue to date her despite not finding any specific hope in the literature of becoming anything more than a single celestial angel if I behaved myself.
This too is the church—these beliefs, policies, doctrines, and cultural bits that just aren’t right yet. They challenge us, just like Eve and Adam were challenged by a God-given conundrum to decide what is right and good in the context of complexity. I continue to believe that God is more interested in our agentic godly development amid difficulty than merely testing for our blind obedience. Many of us in this church would be even less like Jesus if we hadn’t had to labor under the shadows of the institution. Its imperfections and mine have made me a better Christian.
Two years after marrying Jane, I met what was to become one of my best friends through a church calling. (One of my earliest best friends was found in my little church family in Oregon as a young teen.) Dave expressed confidence in my artistic abilities—something I had grown up being known for, but not believing I could make a living at. With his encouragement and mentoring, I switched majors at the UofU and became a graphic design major. Eventually, we went on to purchase a duplex together and became business partners.
When several factors led to the demise of our business, our co-ownership, and our friendship, it was the simple yet difficult directives of Jesus to love everyone, always, that kept me reaching out to him in reconciliation. Twenty-five years later, we rekindled our deep friendship. My joy in that reunion still brings tears to my eyes. Jesus had miraculously moved us both back into that beautiful relationship.
Beautiful relationships seemed to be foremost in Joseph Smith’s heart and mind. Yet at different times, my children and their wives, and eventually my wife, have left being in relationship with the church. Like the man I wrote about in the beginning, they couldn’t unsee the bad, and what looks to them to be untrue. The weekly reinforcement of Jesus’ teachings in church, along with my personal prayer, scripture, and other faith explorations, has helped me focus on my love and the love of God for them. I understand and honor their choices and feel fortunate that we continue to enjoy affection and appreciation for each other.
The facilitation of and encouragement to maintain such valuable relationships are by far the biggest benefit or “good” that I can’t not see. Through callings in the church, I have grown personally and garnered dear friends. Some of these friendships have come through my role as a home teacher/minister. This has been a wonderful opportunity to share and receive God’s love—often to people I would have otherwise never gravitated to. Some of these friendships have endured for over 40 years, even though they are no longer part of the church. Some of them have never been members. Like the brother of a divorced mom I home taught nearly 20 years ago. When he’s in town to visit his sister, he calls, and we meet and share the deep ideas of our hearts.
Through such a calling, I’ve witnessed my ward congregation wrap their arms around another struggling single mom and help her become sober, assist with housing, and other needs. Some of this help was before she joined the church. Bishops facilitated her getting jobs at DI and then training to be a phlebotomist, and getting hired at Red Cross. Then the ward members held her tight as she grieved the loss of one of her young daughters.
Home Teaching/ministering has enabled me to become friends with folks whom I have visited in jail and in prison, exposing me to even more of Christ’s grace, helping me become less judgmental.
As with meeting Dave, my business partner, other callings have led to large and remarkable shifts in my life. 15 years ago, through a church employment calling, I became friends with a younger couple who were humanitarians and facilitated a secular conversation group called ThinkAgain. They invited me to attend, and I fell in love with the inquiry and the people. A year or so later, I was asked to take it over. About a year after that, I arranged for a highly qualified presenter to help us explore LDS church history and faith crises. I was seeing an alarming number of people leaving the church. This gathering became the genesis of a larger, additional group I began facilitating monthly called FaithAgain. After several years, I combined them in one monthly gathering under the current moniker ThinkAgain-FaithAgain. I have had some of the best scholars, philosophers, humanitarians, and just darn good people the LDS church has to offer. And many exceptional people not of our faith. They generously come without pay when a nobody like me asks them. These conversations continue to deeply enrich my life and the lives of those who attend.
Years ago, Bill and Susan Turnbull attended several of these conversations. Bill and I developed a friendship as he began to formulate how to create what is now the remarkable foundation, Faith Matters. An organization that blesses many thousands as it continues to grow in its rich and beautiful offerings of a more expansive restoration.
Other life-changing friendships and experiences have come by simply attending and being engaged in my congregation. A ten-year stint of doing triathlons with my daughter began because some church friends stopped the two of us in the hall at church and told us about the triathlon they had just done. After Michelle moved 3000 miles away to the Caribbean, I continued to enjoy doing local triathlons every other year. Still do.
My years of trail running came through a church service project interaction in my neighborhood with a new move-in. Peter, ten years my younger, encouraged me to join him in a 50-mile and then a 100-mile race. Then I did others. Peter and I still run together weekly, and we enjoy self-made big adventures with our other weekly running buddy, Steve.
Because of the church, my profession, and ThinkAgain-FaithAgain, I have met former LDS missionaries who have created, at great personal expense and sacrifice, foundations to help those in the countries they once served. And there are many others in the church who see a need and create ways to fill it. My friend and mentor Bob Rees is one of those. At age 90 he continues to help advise and cheerlead the Bountiful Children’s Foundation which he cofounded in 2008. Just three years ago, he cofounded Fast Forward for the Planet and has been working hard to utilize it to save The Great Salt Lake. I could name many more such humanitarians, like Lynn Curtis of Interweave. Or Suzanne Stott, a single mom who is such a force for good for so many on the margins.
These same active members of the church, as well as others, have helped me be more more attentive to those on the margins. Not just the poor, the single mother, the widow, and the imprisoned, but my sisters who have struggled under an unequal patriarchy within the church and without. It was a gay man who I home taught and became friends with in 1982 who began my journey of appreciating LGBTQ people. Other members continue to show me through their courage and Christlike example why they are just as worthy of everything offered to me by God and the church.
I can’t unsee God trying to work through an imperfect church to make my life and others’ significantly better. Did it help that I enjoyed the privilege of being a white guy in a prosperous country of freedom? Definitely. It still does. And yet for nearly 10 years, I have served in a large LDS African Refugee Branch and seen the enormous amount of financial, spiritual, and mentoring assistance the church gives these people of little privilege.
Have I seen great good being done by friends and others not of my faith? I have. Do I believe that God is only guiding and working through my church and that we have all the truth? Or that everyone is best served by being in my church? I don’t.
But I can’t unsee the enormous good that I have personally experienced through The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have seen and felt Jesus lovingly at work through the wide diversity of its members.
