Before I begin my story I want to make it clear I have many family members and several friends who are LDS (Mormon). I love them each dearly. Telling my story is not in any way an attempt to demean them or any member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. LDS members are some of the kindest, generous, and most dedicated people I know. There are many Catholics that could learn from their unwavering devotion to their knowledge and practice of faith. That being said this is my experience. In order to keep this on genre I will not be providing a bibliography of the claims against Mormonism that I will present (however if after you read this and are curious please reach out and I will be happy to provide evidence).
Here goes.....
As a young child I remember loving Church on Sundays. LDS Sunday worship when I was growing up consisted of three one-hour segments. The first is called Sacrament Meeting where (as the name suggests) the priesthood holders bless bread and water and pass it out to the congregation. The members provided the bread, so you were always ecstatic when it was the turn of the women who baked it homemade Sunday morning. After the passing of the sacrament one of two things happen:
1. If it is the first Sunday of the month LDS members have what's called a testimony meeting. During the remainder of the hour anyone is welcome up to the pulpit to bear their testimony (in a later post I will delve into some funny experiences I've had during those meetings)
2. If it is not the first Sunday of the month 2-4 members of the congregation are asked to speak about a certain topic by the bishop. After sacrament meeting there are Sunday school classes. Although there are different classes based on your age and gender I have the fondest memories of primary. I loved learning and singing songs about Jesus, my favorite of which was "There is Sunshine in my Soul Today." As I grew older and life was less and less forgiving I became more and more reliant on my LDS faith. I prayed often for comfort during trials and time and time again our Lord answered my prayers. I often read the Book of Mormon and found wisdom in many of it's pages. I attended seminary (religious classes for high school students) and loved to learn about the deeper tenants of church doctrine.
Although I would've considered myself a firm believer in the LDS faith there were always small things that seemed to itch at my brain. For example in the Book of Mormon there are a multitude of verses where Jesus claims that He is one with the Father. 3 Nephi 11 verse 27 states, "verily I say unto you, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one." I distinctly recall a time in seminary where the teacher was using Christ's baptism as a way to show the Trinity was illogical because if they were "one person" (a fundamental misunderstanding) then they could not be in three different places at once. I raised my hand and asked the teacher how Trinitarians confronted that objection. He told me they claimed it was just a mystery.
Another example of one of these itchings came less from LDS doctrine and more from LDS culture. The average LDS member will often tell you to “ask God and not Google.” While this seems like a perfectly reasonable sentiment on the surface, it has some suspicious undertones. Especially in Sunday School and Seminary LDS members are told not to read what they call “anti-Mormon” literature. It was explained to me that many people hated the LDS church and spread lies about it. Although I listened to the direction of my leaders I was always curious why simple research made so many lose their faith. The first time I was presented with any substantial rejection of my beliefs was in college. The second day of my Ethics and Values course my professor went over the premises of the Problem of Evil. I had never heard of any argument for the existence of God let alone an argument against Him. Fascinated by the prospect of philosophy I began discussing the proposition with my mother. After some back and forth she directed me to an article written by my grandfather, David L. Paulsen, an LDS apologist and prior philosophy professor at BYU. I admire my grandfather immensely and do not claim to be nearly as intelligent as he, but, his refutation of the Problem of Evil shook me deeply. He stated, "{f}rom Joseph Smith’s theological platform, it does not follow that God is the total or even the ultimate explanation of all else." It is hard to recount how I felt reading those words. Devastated, confused, disappointed may be a start. My entire life had been built on the framework that God was above all else, greater and more glorious than anything or anyone. I couldn't reconcile my point of view with the idea that God is just another moving part in the grand scheme of things. During this same period of time I dealt with a lot of personal struggles. Many of my friends had left to other colleges and the ones who didn't left to serve LDS missions. I kept trying to pray - but it felt wrong. I tried to reconcile the teachings with my worldview, but I felt betrayed. Eventually I turned to the world for comfort and I came up empty-handed, lost, and broken.
In May of 2018 after weeks of planning I attempted suicide.
I am only alive today because something woke a friend of mine in the middle of the night halfway across the country. I was hospitalized for over a week and I spent many hours crying. Crying because of the pain. Crying because of the harm I caused my family. Crying because I knew that even after abandoning God, He had refused to abandon me. I knew that, Joseph's theology or not; I could no longer deny the existence of God. Science does not explain miracles. I returned to the LDS church with a whole-hearted determination to give myself completely over to God. I read the scriptures, I prayed, I attended church, I met with my bishop. I began to feel more and more like Sisyphus, endlessly working for something that was met with no results. I believed in God but I did not know how to reconcile my doubts about the doctrine of the LDS church. The only people I had ever known to leave the church had all become atheist or agnostic and I was told my entire life that all other Christian religions were false and corrupt. In hindsight I feel foolish for believing there was nowhere for me to go. Months later I was talking with a coworker who mentioned grabbing a beer with his roommate. I was surprised because I had previously thought he was LDS. Turns out he was Catholic. I was shocked. I had met Protestants, Muslims, atheists, and a Hindu but never a Catholic. I began asking him questions about his faith and he left me with a book titled, "The Case for Jesus." I was floored. I was overwhelmed at the amount of biblical evidence there was for the claim that Christ was just not a god, but the I AM. John illustrated this eternal truth so beautifully at the beginning of his gospel, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God ... and the word became flesh and dwelt among us." I finally felt hope. I decided then to begin looking into Christianity. My research was not linear by any means. It consisted of asking my friend questions, attending Mass, reading the Bible and scholars, and listening to youtube video after youtube video. I decided to start from ground level and give every Christian religion a fair evaluation before committing to anything. This included a more thorough study of LDS doctrine and teaching. I shouldn't have been surprised that even from the most superficial study there were many issues with the tenants of the LDS Church. The first message in their missionary handbook, "Preach my Gospel," is based on the Restoration of the Church. Mormons claim that, "with the death of the Apostles, priesthood keys and the presiding priesthood authority were taken from the earth" and that "When the circumstances were right, Heavenly Father once again reached out to His children in love. He called a young man named Joseph Smith as a prophet. Through him the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth." When I began reading the New Testament and the early Church fathers it became blatantly apparent that there was no evidence for this apostasy, and even less evidence that the LDS church resembles anything close to the Church Christ established during His life.
The one thing that kept me holding onto the LDS church for longer than I should've was the Book of Mormon. It was hard to believe that an uneducated farm boy had written a 500+ page book on his own. Until, I learned he was neither uneducated, nor did he write it on his own. Parallel to the claim of Apostasy there is no evidence that the Book of Mormon is true besides the testimony of a "burning in the bosom" that many people have felt after reading it's pages. The book may be full of titles of Jesus, Hebrew names and epic war stories but it is equally full of plagiarism, anachronisms, and 19th century theories on the Native Americans. In 2 Nephi there is a long quoted section of Isaiah that is not only word for word, but contains many errors of the 16th century KJV bible. Horses, swords, and ancient Greek names are found over and over again in the text of the BoM, however during the time period Joseph claimed the book was written none of those things existed in the Americas. The BoM also suggests that the Native Americans were descendants of Hebrews which was widely accepted in the 19th century, however, modern DNA tests have shown they migrated from Eastern and Northern Eurasia. Joseph Smith's ability to translate ancient texts is also verifiably false. He claimed to translate Egyptian papyri into what is called the "Book of Abraham." The portions he translated however have been shown to be parts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and are completely unrelated to the text of the Book of Abraham. Although the philosophical and theological issues were what first drew me out of the LDS faith I became further and further alienated the more I studied it's history and doctrine. Polygamy, racism, masonic practices, deification, eternal marriage, preexistence, universal law, exceptions for abortion are just some examples of the many falsehoods they propagate. (Although I will not go into all the reasons I believe Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy are false I do have to thank Brandt Pitre, C.S Lewis, Matt Fradd, William Lane Craig, James White, Trent Horn, How to Be Christian, Reason and Theology, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Ascension Presents and many others for the endless hours they've spent creating content about Christ. While I disagree with many of the people who helped me on my journey I am still grateful for their willingness to share their perspective in order to help others grow. )
It is hard to articulate my conversion to the Catholic Faith because there is too much I want to say and not enough words. The first time I walked into a Cathedral I was taken aback by the overwhelming beauty. I was drawn in by the power of the Crucifix, the reverence of the eucharist, the sound of the choir and the smell of incense. I left yearning to go back. The more I learned about Catholicism the more I increased in love for my Savior. He is reflected in every aspect of the Catholic faith. Christ is found in His Immaculate Mother as the new Ark of the Covenant who brought our Lord into the world, "blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:42-43). Christ is found in the lives of the Saints who gave themselves completely over to Him: "I praise You, Father of my Lord Jesus Christ, because by Your Son the fire around me was extinguished. Behold, what I yearned for, I already see; what I hoped for, I already hold in embrace; with Him I am united in heaven whom on earth I loved with all my heart (the last words of St. Agnes of Rome). Christ is found in His Authority given to Peter and passed on to his successors, " And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:18-19).
Most prominent of all, Christ is found in the Eucharist, "So Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you'" (John 6:53). I will never forget the first time I knelt in front of a Crucifix to pray. I was overpowered by the love of my Lord. In my LDS faith I had known the story of Christ's passion but I had never felt the weight of the cross until that moment. It is incomprehensible to me that the Creator of the Universe, the Metaphysical First Cause, the I AM died. For me. A sinner. Worthless. Broken. Saved. Gratitude is not a fitting word for the way I feel towards my Lord.
I was baptized into the Catholic Church on May 30th 2020.
There have been many LDS members who upon hearing about my conversion tell me they are happy I found something that brought me to God. The more I hear this repeated the stranger it sounds. Either the LDS Church is true, or it is false. If the Catholic Church is true then the LDS Church is false. You may find God while wandering but this is not enough. God wants more than a few fluttering moments of “burning in the bosoms.” God wants you to turn your life over to Him, to His church, to the Body of Christ. In the words of St. Peter, “be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead ... And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” I urge you to take a long, uncomfortable, and difficult look at your prophets and teachings; compare them to the prophets of the Old Testament and the teachings in the New. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. This is not the Jesus you are told about in Sunday School. This is the True Christ, the Word of God, the great I AM. I implore you: find Him.
This post originally appeared here. You can follow @KaybutAdvent on Twitter.