ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

About a month ago, a commenter named Lola asked a good question on one of my articles on my own interfaith marriage. Lola is a Latter-day Saint who is married to a Baptist and she wanted to know why I am okay with the possibility of my child(ren) becoming Mormon. I can break it down into 3 big reasons.

1. Trust

An old saying goes that where there is no trust, there is no love. I trust my LDS husband with all my heart. I trust him to be fair in raising our daughter (and any other children we may eventually have) and to be fair about teaching her both our religions. I trust him to not skew my religion to make it look bad in an unfair attempt to get her into the LDS camp. And if we raise our daughter well and give her the tools she needs to learn about what each of her parents believes, I trust her to make the right decision in her faith.

The place where I am less trusting is when it comes to the people who make up our church community. Young children are very impressionable and they will believe anything an adult tells them if they like that adult and trust them. Now, I’m pleased with our current church families. No one has said an ill word about Mormons at my church, and Paul’s LDS ward has been good to us as well, but one of the things I do look for in a church is a good attitude towards my interfaith family. Sure, I want my daughter to know Christ as her personal Savior, and I would love to see her choose the evangelical path. But I don’t want it to happen because someone pulls her aside and bad-mouths Mormons.

2. Mormons and Evangelical Soteriology

This is a subject really deserving of a more in-depth post, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I reject the notion that all Latter-day Saints are automatically going to hell. I lived with Latter-day Saints for six years and went to their college for five, and I definitely met Mormons whom I felt had a saving relationship with Christ even if they had some things wrong about God. So, if my daughter does become LDS, I believe it’s possible for her to still be saved.

A lot of evangelicals I know would balk at that. They would say correct theology is absolutely essential to salvation. I say bupkus. Jesus says we must come to Him as children, and children don’t know jack about correct theology. I’m not saying correct theology is completely irrelevant, but the notion that someone can kneel and ask Jesus for salvation and sincerely ask Him to come into their life, but still go to hell if they think He was married and appeared to Joseph Smith is just obtuse to me.

I also know so many people who technically attended evangelical or Protestant churches, but could not tell you anything about what the Trinity is. My mother was one such person. She had a sweet, simple faith, she loved God and she believed in Christ, but she never bothered with serious theological doctrine. Am I supposed to believe she’s in hell now because she could not properly expound on what the Trinity is? And if not, why should I believe all Mormons are automatically going to hell for believing in an incorrect Trinity? As my friend JP Holding once put it (paraphrase), “If a correct understanding of the Trinity is required for heaven, there are going to be, like, 12 people in the New Jerusalem. At least they won’t have to worry about the streets getting dirty.”

LDS theology teaches a lot of things that are false and can lead a man away from the true path to Jesus, but I do believe it’s possible to get past that and be LDS and still be saved. The first thing I care about is making sure that my daughter asks Jesus to come into her life. Making sure that she turns out evangelical is secondary.

3. With children, there are no guarantees

I get it, I really do. The best chance for your child to become an evangelical with a saving faith in Christ is for both parents to be evangelicals with faith in Christ, and the best chance for your child to be Mormon is for both parents to be believing LDS. Yet we all know that even in those cases, there are no guarantees. We’ve all known people who were raised in devout religious families who turned against the religion of their parents when they grew up, and we all know converts to the faith who did not come from religious families at all. You cannot be sure that your children will make the decisions that you want them too; is fear of failing really a good reason to not have them at all?

When I was a young girl living in Alaska, about 9 or so, I had a friend named Mandy who was 11. I always thought Mandy was beautiful. She had the most gorgeous long blond hair, something I was deeply envious of, and she was always nice to me.

One day we got a call from Mandy’s parents saying Mandy had disappeared. She had been walking to her friend’s house and had never arrived. They found her body 10 days later; she had been raped and shot in the head. Her case was later turned into an episode for the showForensic Files.

So I learned at an early age that very bad things can happen to your children. And as I considered marrying my LDS husband, the thought occurred to me: is becoming Mormon the worst thing that could happen to my children? Is becoming Mormon the worst decision my children could make?

I bet Mandy’s parents would give anything to have her back, no matter what religion she chose.

Children bring so much joy and love to a family. They’re worth the risk of letting them make the wrong decision. They’re worth the risk of something bad happening to them. They’re worth it.