Final preparations

My acceptance to BYU made a lot of things so clear to me. I finally understood why God had told me not to apply to any other colleges. If I had, I almost certainly would have given up on BYU after my initial rejection and gone to one of the other colleges. Sometimes you just have to do what God tells you to do, not ask questions and trust that you’ll understand later.

I had plenty of things to do before moving to Provo:

A mission trip to Ensenada, Mexico in June 2000. I had gone on one of these in 1998, before I began studying the LDS church.
Institute. I technically could have stopped attending once I received my BYU acceptance letter and they probably would not have cared, but I had made a promise, and I don’t take my promises lightly.
In the fall my pastor organized a special college/career weekly church meeting for us 18-29 year-olds and asked me to lead the worship for it. I play guitar, I sing kinda sorta okay, so I said sure.

I began attending Institute as soon as I graduated from high school. The teacher’s name was Brian McCoy and I liked him a lot. The first day of class, I wrote down on the new student information sheet that I was not LDS so that he knew my non-member status from the beginning, but I did not feel like telling the rest of the class. I wanted to see how well I could blend in. If anyone asked what ward I was from, I would simply say the Elk Plain Ward. It wasn’t a total lie—I mean, I really was from that ward district. A few weeks went by and no one was wiser.

The first day I came to class, a girl I had known from high school approached me and asked if I had heard from my friend Sarah¹ lately. Sarah had stopped coming to Sumner Presbyterian sometime during our junior year, and since we finished our junior and senior years at different high schools, we had not kept up very well. Sarah, the girl informed me, had recently been baptized LDS.

Hearing that Sarah had converted was like a punch in the gut, and hey, I happen to know what those feel like. What did it mean for me if the person who had made me the Christian I was had become LDS? I made plans to see Sarah at her house later on. When I arrived, Sarah was not home yet and I was able to speak to her mother alone. Her mother told me that Sarah had always had a lot of LDS friends, and that she never quite felt like she fit in with them since she was not LDS. There was also an LDS guy whom she really liked. Her mother believed her conversion had been a social one, not a spiritual one. She said she was glad I had come.

Sarah came home grinning ear to ear and excited to see me. The other students at Institute had, understandably, assumed I was LDS, and she was excited that I, too, had converted. When I broke the truth to her, she was noticeably upset. She hadn’t expected to be confronted by someone from her old religion. I wanted to know if she really believed in it all, but she didn’t seem so sure.

As the summer went on, I became convinced that her mother’s suspicions were correct. Sarah really had feelings for the LDS guy she liked and strongly felt they were meant to be together. There was another LDS girl he had dated in high school though, and there seemed to be plenty of tension between her and Sarah. This culminated in a confrontation between them at the end of the summer, and after that, Sarah left the LDS church.

I bring up this story about Sarah so I can say: ladies, please don’t ever join the LDS church because of a guy. In fact don’t change religions at all because of a guy. I nearly did it myself, so I know exactly what it’s like to go through it, and it never ends well. The only good reason to convert to something is because you know for yourself it’s the truth. I imagine the most sensible Mormons would agree with that.²

I let the Institute class know I was not a member after a few weeks, and most people were surprised. I had been very active in participating in discussions and shown plenty of knowledge of LDS doctrine. I made a lot of friends in the Institute class and really came to respect and admire the teacher, though I was never afraid to challenge what I saw as the weak points in LDS doctrine. At the very least, I imagine class was more interesting with me there.

In the meantime I stayed very active at Sumner Presbyterian Church. I had a great time on the mission to Mexico and I enjoyed leading worship for the college group. My pastor began to soften his attitude about me going to BYU and became more supportive. By the end of December, I knew I was really going to miss them, and was glad God had given me an extra four months to get ready.

December ended and it was time for me to board the plane for BYU. The Institute class asked if they could pray for me on my last day there, and I let them. The people from the college/career group at Sumner Presbyterian laid hands on me and prayed for me before sending me off. I had a lot of love for both groups, even if my spiritual loyalty was with Sumner.

In early January, my mother tearfully dropped me off at the airport, and I was off.

¹ Not her real name. Recall that Sarah was the girl who had first shown me Sumner Presbyterian Church and helped me re-commit my life to Christ. See my testimony for details.

² I do not mean to sound sexist; I don’t think men should switch religions for love, either. However, studies show that women in interfaith relationships are more likely to convert to the man’s religion than the man is to the woman’s religion. I cited some of this data in my paper onLDS interfaith marriages. Either women are more receptive to spiritual change or men are just better evangelists, perhaps some combination of the two. Besides, I am a woman, and I’ve been there before, so my appeal is to women.

Comments

Final preparations — 6 Comments

Whitney on February 4, 2009 at 9:56 PM said:

“I bring up this story about Sarah so I can say…”

You know those times when God just smacks you upside the head and says, “How much clearer do you need me to be?”

Thanks for a perfectly-timed post, Jack. I needed to hear this, even if I’ve been sure of it all along.
Seth R. on February 4, 2009 at 10:28 PM said:

About your footnote #2, I’d say the dynamic changes in the international LDS scene.

In foreign countries that aren’t Canada, the simple truth is that more women convert to Mormonism than men. I imagine the gender breakdown is similar for other Christian proselyting programs, though I don’t really know.

It was true in Japan anyway. Really tough to get an active male for Church (which doubly hurts a religion where the males hold most of the administrative functions) in Japan. So you’d have the missionaries and few solid men shepherding a mostly female flock.

So all my anecdotes are the other way around. Guy joins the Church because it’s important to his highly spiritually-minded fiancee and plays along for a while. Inevitably the men would find out that the LDS faith is much more demanding than they bargained for (we don’t tend to take religion casually) and would come to resent the Church and go inactive, or even worse hostile. I had one poor woman who wasn’t even allowed to go to Church and had to meet Church members in secret because of her husband’s hostility to the LDS Church.

I came home from Japan with a very dim view of marriage-based conversions.
Bridget Jack Meyers on February 4, 2009 at 10:33 PM said:

Wow, Whitney. I’m glad to hear this post came at the right time to help you.

I don’t think I went into enough detail in my post on my almost-divorce, so let me say it here: I almost joined the church when Paul was leaving me. I went so far as to set a baptism date with the bishop. I never believed any of it, I just didn’t want my husband to leave me.

It was actually my mother who talked me out of it, my mother who never in her life expressed an opinion on different Christian theologies and loved Paul like a son. When I told her my plans, she said, “Well, I think it’s the wrong thing to do, but okay.” I couldn’t believe she of all people was objecting. That was enough and I called the whole thing off.

I’m glad I did, because if I hadn’t right now I would either be another bitter ex-Mormon or a very uncomfortable, very disgruntled member. And I happen to like my never-Mo’ status.

I was watching Judge Judy once and in response to yet another woman being dragged into an ugly lawsuit by her scrubby ex-boyfriend, the judge said something like, “Women will do very stupid things to have a warm body next to them at night.” Well, sorry to say, but I think she was right on.

Anyways Whitney, if your LDS guy can’t accept you and love you for who you are (religion and all) and not try to change you, then he’s not the right guy for you. It hurts right now, but this will pass and God will put the right person in your life. Seth said a few comments ago that his Mormonism was so much a part of himself that if someone wants to hate Mormonism they might as well hate him. You should feel the same way about your faith, Whitney. If this guy can’t love your faith, then he might as well not love you.

I’ll be praying for you.
ridget Jack Meyers on February 4, 2009 at 10:41 PM said:

Seth, your anecdotes may be right on. I’ve only ever looked at English-speaking data and it could be different for other cultures. Sounds like we agree on marriage-based conversions though. They suck.
Bridget Jack Meyers on February 5, 2009 at 2:10 AM said:

Hmm, one more thought Seth: the idea occurred to me that your data isn’t so different than mine.

I’m saying that when an LDS man has been a long-time part of the religion and is dating someone, the non-LDS woman is more likely to convert than in the opposite scenario.

Your anecdotes involve converts altogether. The women made a sincere and heartfelt change to accepting Mormonism, while the men made a lukewarm conversion then went back to what they had been doing. They didn’t really convert.

In both of our data, it’s the women who accept new religious ideas and the men who keep doing what they were doing before. Sarah’s conversion may not seem to fit at first, but it did not hold for a lot of reasons. If the guy she liked had reciprocated, and if I hadn’t re-entered her life to challenge her, perhaps she would have lasted longer, I don’t know. However it was her who attempted to join his religion and then fell away. He was a lifetime Mormon who never budged despite her best attempts to convert him before and after her time in the church.

That might also explain why we see so few women in apologetics and hard theology discussions, other than lack of aggression. It’s unabashedly sexist, but I’m beginning to think women are generally more spiritually pliable than men are.
emily on May 2, 2009 at 7:29 PM said:

Thanks for saying that about not converting for love…my FH is from a Catholic family (I’m a Presbyterian), though he is no longer practicing, and his mom recently mentioned a few times a friend of ours who was converting to Catholicism so she could be the same religion as her husband (who i never saw go to church once in the year he and FH were roommates). I didn’t want to say anything in case she was just mentioning it to make conversation, but a little part wanted to say, sorry, don’t believe in transubstantiation or the infallibility of the Pope, so it’s never going to happen. Sorry, long story but I was happy to see you state it!

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