Things I thank the LDS church for

Trying to look at things positively and follow the admonitions of Fr. Trubenbach.

Courtesy Chat-GTP

I saw a video from Fr. Paul Truebenbach recently, who mentioned that he doesn’t allow people to be received into the church with enmity towards their previous faith. (This is probably b/c his parish is in SLC, and he likely deals with a lot of ex-Mormons. I know from speaking to a member of his parish that at least 30% of his parish are former LDS.) This perspective of his lines up with a current effort of mine to be more positive overall and to look at the positives rather than the negatives.

On that note, I will write a short article about what I thank the LDS church for. This might be difficult b/c I have a laundry list of things I’m not happy with the LDS church about, but I haven’t put much thought into what I am grateful for. This is going to be challenging. However, I recognize that some of my default assumptions about a church and selecting a better one came from my LDS “programming.”

I’m grateful to the LDS church for:

1. A sense that there is a theologically true church and a belief that it can be found.

2. A belief in and desire to seek after that Truth.

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. - 13th LDS Article of Faith.

In my search for Orthodoxy, I believe that I have followed this LDS article of faith.

3. An understanding that you improve through trials and tribulations. the concept of the “refiner’s fire” is fairly common in LDS thought. Associated with this is the concept of “putting your shoulder to the wheel” - carrying on with strenuous work/activity despite the difficulty of doing so. (I.e. grinding it out.)

4. Strong youth programs that helped and supported my children while they were growing up in way that helped them become good, righteous young men. - In my opinion, LDS youth programs are very strong and generally well run. I still consider them in high esteem.

5. My mission and the missions of my boys. Although I would say this was a bit of a mixed bag for me personally, the experience of going on a mission helped give me a lot of confidence to move out and live on my own after I got home, my mother left my father, and our family fell apart. It also taught me how to communicate and sell abstract concepts to people I don’t know. For my boys, LDS missions were rites of passage that gave them independence, confidence and strong friendships that still exist today. They left boys and came home men (which is an LDS saying about missions and missionaries.)

6. Low tuition at BYU. Both my kids came home, were accepted into BYU and were able to get their undergraduate degrees for extremely reasonable prices. This meant that I could pay for my kid’s college educations directly - allowing them to graduate with no student loan debt. BYU is a good school, not the best, but I believe it is good enough for an undergrad degree. From the outset, I promised my kids that I would cover the bachelor’s degree and they would be responsible for graduate school if that’s what they wanted to do - which my oldest is currently doing - on his own dime / with student loans. Thankfully, he’s not adding student loans on top of student loans. So, for all of my griping about how much tithing I paid to the LDS church, I have gotten a fair amount of value in return for that expense. I don’t 100% know if it was worth the $100K+ I estimate that I spent in tithing over the years, but I’m not going to bemoan it and pretend like I received no value for my money. After all, you don’t get something for nothing. Could that money have been better spent? Maybe. Would it have been? Probably not.

7. An understanding that a church needs to have valid priesthood and that priesthood should be taken seriously and respected.

8. Likewise an understanding that sacraments/ordinances are important components of spiritual life, formation and growth.

9. A belief that church authority and tradition are important, and that Sola Scriptura is a false manmade teaching. (LDS don’t teach this explicitly, but this perspective can be derived from LDS theology, JS history, and the existence of the BOM as a device with which to “triangulate” the “truth.”

10. A belief in the sanctity and enduring nature of marriage, with the expectation that divorce is not a possible solution to marital problems (although sometimes people need to be reminded of this fact.)

11. The idea that I need to do (and can do) something to work out my own salvation. (An implicit rejection of Sola Fide in a way that aligns with the Catholic/Orthodox understanding - a good thing and a saving Grace for Mormons, IMO.)

12. An interest in religion, theology, and history, and a mindset that I need to be continually learning and growing in my faith. And that that won’t happen by itself, and that I cannot ride on the spiritual coattails of someone else.

13. The SMA (Standard Mormon Answers.) Even though I would always roll my eyes when someone mentioned these, they are more important than I initially acknowledged. The SMA includes:

    1. Scripture Study

    2. Prayer

    3. Fasting

    4. These are all things Orthodox people would agree are important.

14. A sense that through hard work, I could accomplish anything as long as my goal was righteous.

15. Knowledge that if I took a risk and made a decision that didn’t work out that the LDS Church would be there as a helpful safeguard. (Which hasn’t ever quite materialized in the way I hoped, but it’s a little bit of peace of mind.)

16. Any place I moved my family, there was an instant community we became a part of with an ability to easily make new friends. This made our many long-distance moves much easier.

17. A strong focus on the family - and an understanding that, in terms of my life priorities, family must always come at the top of that list. (I admit I was not great at this. I put my children at the top, but not my wife - a mistake I’m paying for atm.)

18. An understanding that Christ-like love is best cultivated through acts of service and compassion - even if during my time as a Mormon, I was highly resistant to performing service for others.

19. Many dear friends who have since become family.

20. That the youth programs and church beliefs are oriented towards encouraging and helping young people get married within the faith - pretty much helping to assure that my Boys would find wives without too much trouble and that those girls would be far more likely to be conservative with an expectation of leaning more towards traditional gender roles and having children. I’m still waiting for the grandbabies to arrive, though! (I got to get my 3 generations! Inside Asian Dad joke.)

21. When looking for a new Christian home, I should expect a church with strong programs for youth and families, along with a valid and unbroken priesthood authority.

22. A foundation of morals and ethics.

23. Keeping me away from many sources of addiction. With my brain's dopamine production issues, I see how I could easily have become addicted to drugs, alcohol, and/or coffee. Thankfully, the LDS WOW kept me away from those things and helped me understand the dangers of pornography, keeping me from falling into heavy use of porn. I had never watched porn until my senior year in HS when a friend at our grad party put some on the TV - and even then I knew I shouldn’t be watching it, so I avoided it.

While I sometimes criticize the LDS church for things I don’t agree with, or for theological positions that I don’t think make any sense, it seems that there are many ways in which the LDS church has contributed positively to my life and the life of my family. Was it worth the 6-figures + I’ve paid in tithing? Hard to say, but nothing in life is free, and I’m not that bitter about paying the money; it’s not like anyone came and forced me to pay it. That and I feel like the things I picked up as an LDS person helped funnel me to the Orthodox church. There was no way I was going protestant - no priesthood, no sacraments, no ordinances. No way that could ever be true in my eyes.

This all doesn’t mean that I can’t see the good in Mormonism. I do recognize that Mormonism, on the whole, produces good people. I think that many of those good things helped me find Orthodoxy. I also believe that the Orthodox Church is superior in most ways, but there are some areas where I think the LDS church does do some things better:

• I don’t have enough experience with their Sunday School or youth programs to say how they compare to LDS ones, but I will say that LDS youth programs are superbly run.

• IMO the LDS church does a better job of educating its adult members via a Sunday school set up for lazy adults by making it an extension of the church services on Sunday morning.

  • In Orthodoxy, we only do Sunday school for kids.

  • At my parish, we hold catechumen instruction (for new investigators) separately during the week on Wednesday evenings, but it tends to be attended primarily by catechumens, with few, if any, regular parishioners joining. They could participate, Fr talks about the classes at the end of liturgy, but few make the effort. When this issue is brought up, the typical response is that it’s the members ’ responsibility, which it is. But I think it is important to remember that the goal of the church is to provide a framework that strengthens the members and helps them live the Christian life - participating in shepherding them on their way towards theosis. We account for human weaknesses in other ways; I think this is an area of human weakness that we could/should also account for. IMO, it would be very beneficial to cradle orthodox if that was held after liturgy like we do with the kids. People would likely grumble about missing the food/socializing time of coffee hour, but I think we could still do that after the adult class, kind of like an LDS linger longer.) Or people could grab their food and then head to class. I think there could be multiple benefits:

  • 1. It could encourage Catechumens to attend liturgy (although this isn’t a problem that we have).

  • 2. It would provide an immediate forum for those attending for the first time to ask questions about things they experienced but don’t understand.

  • 3. Adult cradle members who do not put in the effort to learn about their faith would be strengthened, with the downstream effect that their children and relatives would also be strengthened. I’ve seen some instances of cradle orthodox falling prey to protestant nonsensical arguments, and the allure of other religions like Buddhism. Unfortunately, they don’t know enough to fight off the protestants or know that we have a practice in orthodoxy that is very much like Buddhist mindfulness meditation - hesychasm. So there is no need to go outside the faith.

• LDS, because they have a culture of theological novelty seeking - always looking for something “new” that their leaders will proclaim as “revelation,” can pivot quite easily to new ways of doing things (a good thing), new beliefs or new ways of interpreting existing beliefs (not good things.) This means that correcting for deficiencies in church programs, even major structural ecclesiastical issues, is fast and easy for them. For Orthodoxy, on the other hand, being 2000 years old and hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive to theological innovation, we tend to have a culture that is resistant to change - even if those are non-doctrinal/non-theological changes to parish-run programs and not theological changes (which are an absolute no-no). I think this can lead to negative outcomes due to calcification, which makes course correction difficult. So, where there are areas we could improve, the cultural momentum is against us.

I was going to write an article on this, but I think a few words will suffice. I do believe that Mormonism produces good people. Why? And (non-lds readers may ask) how can something so blatantly heretical produce good people? Well, because Mormons put a lot of focus on living a Christlike life of service and are very, very sensitive to following the commandments with a highly legalistic precision. I believe that as a result, the process of sanctification by grace goes to work for them.