A
Ahimsa
Guest
An interesting essay on the factors that led one person to convert to the LDS Church:
On “Restoration”:
I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of
God—not in the cheap and trimphant manner of a Church
video, but in a hard-won, Old Testament way, where a frustrated
God chooses one who is willing to serve despite person-
ality flaws and limited understanding. I believe in a loving but
absurdly human Joseph Smith who had the courage to risk
everything as God required. I believe that the LDS Church
today is poised to contain the fullness of the gospel of Christ,
whenever we as individual members of it are prepared to accept
his invitation to participate in redeeming the world rather than
merely reveling in our comfortable and unearned status as
chosen people. Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes sums up my
feelings well in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus:
On “Renewal”:
One Relief Society sister asked me what I do
for four days on a silent retreat. As I was opening my mouth to
answer her, I realized that the truth—which is mostly “just
thinking”—would open a whole can of worms, so I told her
another truth, which is that I bring several theology books and
novels, and my computer, so I can read and write. She also
seemed relieved to learn I do a fair bit of hiking while I am
there. I’ve discovered that many lifelong Mormons don’t have a
frame of reference for understanding a contemplative religious
retreat as a valuable thing in and of itself. I would love to see
more room in Mormonism for contemplation, solitude, and
retreat.
On “Responsibility”:
I once sat in a church meeting in which a visiting
member of the stake high council declared quite emphatically
that obedience was the first law of the gospel. I would counter
just as emphatically that agency, not obedience, occupies that
exalted place as the first law of the gospel. According to the
Mormon story, God sacrificed quite a lot so that we could
enjoy freedom and choice, as well as their sisters, responsibility
and accountability. In no other way could we grow.
Through no other method could we become like God—
through our screw-ups, our loving moments and our hateful
ones. The Mormon God is not looking for automatons who
abdicate their own spiritual responsibility to others. In fact, in
Mormonism we have scriptures that specifically recount that
this kind of picture is actually Satan’s plan. God wants us to
grow up.
On “Relationship”:
First let me rave about the ward
experience, which to me is one of the coolest aspects of being
Mormon. In one ward I lived in, where I felt I had very little in
common with the people, I learned that we don’t just pay lip
service to the idea that the ward is a family. A family is composed
of people you didn’t choose to be with, and you have a
whole heck of a lot at stake together. It’s not casual in the way
being Protestant is casual—you don’t get to just up and decide
to go to another ward if you feel you don’t fit in. (I know this
because I tried it, and, thank God, I failed.) A ward is a real
community, not an ad hoc one. We create our communities
where we live rather than seeking out the folks with common
interests who are in our precise socioeconomic bracket. It’s one
of the things I absolutely love about the Mormon experience.
It’s the only way to create a real community.
On “Redemption”:
When I was a Protestant, one of the notions that drove me
crazy was that an individual was either “saved” or not, and that
this single moment of decision was the only thing that mattered
in one’s eternal fate. As long as the individual had accepted
Christ as a personal Savior, emphasis on personal, he or
she would head merrily off to a Disneyesque Elysium at death.
I could never reconcile the idea of God using this one culturally
conditioned moment of conversion as the sole factor in
such a high-stakes game. What about how we treat people?
What about ethics? Considering how much of the Bible is preoccupied
with how human beings behave toward one another,
it seemed to me profoundly unbiblical to then claim that this
one salvific choice overrode everything else. Mormonism
solves this problem nicely by insisting that both things matter
and, in fact, work in concert—accepting Christ’s atonement
and responding to that grace by living the commandments.
On “Restoration”:
I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of
God—not in the cheap and trimphant manner of a Church
video, but in a hard-won, Old Testament way, where a frustrated
God chooses one who is willing to serve despite person-
ality flaws and limited understanding. I believe in a loving but
absurdly human Joseph Smith who had the courage to risk
everything as God required. I believe that the LDS Church
today is poised to contain the fullness of the gospel of Christ,
whenever we as individual members of it are prepared to accept
his invitation to participate in redeeming the world rather than
merely reveling in our comfortable and unearned status as
chosen people. Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes sums up my
feelings well in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus:
If God is the God of all, and not just a tribal deity,
then God has made provision, not necessarily known
to us, for the healing and care of all his creation, and
not simply our little part of it.
then God has made provision, not necessarily known
to us, for the healing and care of all his creation, and
not simply our little part of it.
On “Renewal”:
One Relief Society sister asked me what I do
for four days on a silent retreat. As I was opening my mouth to
answer her, I realized that the truth—which is mostly “just
thinking”—would open a whole can of worms, so I told her
another truth, which is that I bring several theology books and
novels, and my computer, so I can read and write. She also
seemed relieved to learn I do a fair bit of hiking while I am
there. I’ve discovered that many lifelong Mormons don’t have a
frame of reference for understanding a contemplative religious
retreat as a valuable thing in and of itself. I would love to see
more room in Mormonism for contemplation, solitude, and
retreat.
On “Responsibility”:
I once sat in a church meeting in which a visiting
member of the stake high council declared quite emphatically
that obedience was the first law of the gospel. I would counter
just as emphatically that agency, not obedience, occupies that
exalted place as the first law of the gospel. According to the
Mormon story, God sacrificed quite a lot so that we could
enjoy freedom and choice, as well as their sisters, responsibility
and accountability. In no other way could we grow.
Through no other method could we become like God—
through our screw-ups, our loving moments and our hateful
ones. The Mormon God is not looking for automatons who
abdicate their own spiritual responsibility to others. In fact, in
Mormonism we have scriptures that specifically recount that
this kind of picture is actually Satan’s plan. God wants us to
grow up.
On “Relationship”:
First let me rave about the ward
experience, which to me is one of the coolest aspects of being
Mormon. In one ward I lived in, where I felt I had very little in
common with the people, I learned that we don’t just pay lip
service to the idea that the ward is a family. A family is composed
of people you didn’t choose to be with, and you have a
whole heck of a lot at stake together. It’s not casual in the way
being Protestant is casual—you don’t get to just up and decide
to go to another ward if you feel you don’t fit in. (I know this
because I tried it, and, thank God, I failed.) A ward is a real
community, not an ad hoc one. We create our communities
where we live rather than seeking out the folks with common
interests who are in our precise socioeconomic bracket. It’s one
of the things I absolutely love about the Mormon experience.
It’s the only way to create a real community.
On “Redemption”:
When I was a Protestant, one of the notions that drove me
crazy was that an individual was either “saved” or not, and that
this single moment of decision was the only thing that mattered
in one’s eternal fate. As long as the individual had accepted
Christ as a personal Savior, emphasis on personal, he or
she would head merrily off to a Disneyesque Elysium at death.
I could never reconcile the idea of God using this one culturally
conditioned moment of conversion as the sole factor in
such a high-stakes game. What about how we treat people?
What about ethics? Considering how much of the Bible is preoccupied
with how human beings behave toward one another,
it seemed to me profoundly unbiblical to then claim that this
one salvific choice overrode everything else. Mormonism
solves this problem nicely by insisting that both things matter
and, in fact, work in concert—accepting Christ’s atonement
and responding to that grace by living the commandments.
