If someone let you in, and you had between 30 minutes and an hour, you could do a Discussion (this was 1995). A lesson. There were six, we were supposed to do them in order. I guess it's more flexible now.
There was all the introductions stuff, where are you from, where are we from (Building a Relationship of Trust) and then finding a place to sit. Almost everyone had their TV on, we were to have them turn it off to keep the vibe fresh, to Allow the Spirit. Sometimes they kept it on, sometimes to keep the kids occupied, and we were like, 'but surely this fascinating church lesson will capture their interest as much as the PowerPuff Girls' which again shows how much we knew. Screens were distracting for me, I loved them and missed them so much. I remember one night talking to a guy while his kid watched Space Ghost Coast to Coast, I didn’t get a lot out of that talk.
Elder Me: Can we start with a prayer?
Almost no one said no. At least among Latinx folks, prayer was a General Good, they were generally housebroken Christianity-wise. It didn’t always fit the situation, though. I had comps that would try to wedge it in even if it didn’t. My approach was to try to and make as smooth of transitions as possible, no fuss no muss. Some companions would stomp in and lay down the law of Mormonism wherever they went – do things right, in order, as we say to do them. There's probably merit to this approach – it could prepare them for what they would experience a lot in the church. I leaned towards a smoother ride if possible, to reduce the chances of being let out early, seeking out potential bumps in the road.
Principle 1 - Elder Me: Like most people, we believe in God.
My mission had us memorize the discussions. I was Spanish-speaking, so I did it in Spanish. It was doable. It took time, but was something I have to admit the mission taught me - I could memorize, with time and effort. We were supposed to deliver them word-for-word. They were designed as a logical argument, a spiritual sales presentation, to build people towards a series of commitments.
Elder Me: We’re God’s children. He’s our father in heaven and created us in his image.
Elder Me: He wants us to be like him and has prepared a plan to bring us joy in this life and a way to make it possible to live with him forever. He wants us to be happy. [End of my first part. I turn to my companion.]
Each discussion has principles – about 6, and we would switch between companions. After each principle you testify to the truthfulness of that principle, your companion testifies of the same thing, then starts his. In the mouth of 2-3 witnesses.
Elder Companion: I also know God lives…
There were specific things we were supposed to get people to do along the way, commitments – reading, praying, getting baptized. Here’s the first discussion:
God’s plan [I just did this]
Jesus [Elder C. will do this]
Book of Mormon
Commitment – read the Intro, a chapter, and a few verses near the end
Holy Ghost
Commitment - Pray to see if Joseph Smith was a prophet
Commitment - Maybe someday get baptized
Commitment - Listen to another discussion
In my Spanish copy of the discussions, there is a pasted-in piece of paper saying “WHY THE BAPTISMAL CHALLENGE? It’s the Lord’s Will!!!” This meant, ask them to get baptized in the first discussion. First discussion. Yup. This probably came from a mission conference where they talked about how anyone who didn’t ask people to be baptized during the first discussion was a weak missionary, needed to repent, didn’t have faith that God could perform miracles in these latter days. That our Savior Jesus, were he to be on a mission with us, would be asking people to get baptized in their first discussion, because he was always asking people to make huge commitments, without even using the commitment pattern, because that’s his commitment pattern was like a huge aura that covered blocks in every direction and if we could just be more like him we could get people to be Mormons the first time we met them. What is not figured into that argument is, we were not Jesus. What is figured back in is, yeah but we should and could be, duh.
A theme of my mission was anger about things mission leaders (both the president and kids my age) said were true, that weren't, that were likely youthful enthusiasms pushed onto others because they had power, because they'd been Called of God, that I fought with internally because laughing at them felt like heresy. I wanted them to be true, even if they weren't. I wanted to believe what they believed. I wasn't old enough to see it for what it was, whatever it was. Youthful enthusiasms. My brain didn't call shenanigans when it should've (*1).
TBM Me interjects: Ha! That’s a perfect example of how you actually had the Holy Ghost and they didn’t because you’d been baptized and they hadn’t! [Finds a book and slams it shut.] It’s all true, case closed!
Logic Me: I want to buy windows when someone is in the house selling me windows but when they leave I usually don’t want the windows any more. That’s why salespeople try as much as humanly possible to get the sale when they’re around. The chance of you calling them back later is very low. I don’t think it’s a spiritual thing. I think it’s a ‘people can make you feel things’ thing.
Back to the discussions. In the first discussion, which I did maybe 7-8 times a week on a good week, here was the mood from most investigators [the person we were teaching]:
Joseph Smith – oh, yeah gimme some of this.
Book of Mormon – seriously doubt
Holy Ghost – and we’re back but what was that book thing?
The Spirit (*2) was strongest when we talked about Joseph Smith. What we share is that he was a confused kid about religion who went and prayed and God said, hey, how about you start a church because everyone else has it wrong.
Almost every time, it set the mood. We didn’t talk about his wives or dishonesty. But if we were going to commit people to stuff we should have done it there. We had people at that point.
Sometimes after sharing about Joseph Smith’s story we’d ask people who they thought he was seeing descend down from heaven in a pillar of light, and literally about half the time people would share visions they’d had themselves. I never quite knew what to do with this, and in retrospect wish I’d been kinder. Here we were, leading them into this spiritual crescendo, and they wanted to be a part of it, and I blocked it with a ‘that’s nice you also saw God, anyway, this guy...’ We needed to get through two more principles before the time was up, and how dare they have visions, it’s Joe Smith we’re talking about, he’s the one with the visions. I wish I’d given them a little more time at the mic and validated their experiences. They were thought we were talking spirituality, and we were really just talking Mormonism. I don’t know if they saw God. I don’t know if Joseph Smith did. He could have. They could have. I wasn’t there. I’ve had spiritual experiences and I’ll be damned if someone is going to tell me I didn’t have those (*3). I mean, I’m probably damned anyway. Except there is no hell. Except for the one mentioned over and over in the Book of Mormon (*4).
Anywho. I wish I had been more open about their experiences, is where I was headed.
After Joseph Smith we talked about the Book of Mormon and it was a letdown. Mormons love the Book of Mormon, but everyone else is somewhere on the spectrum of “oh that’s nice for you” to “reason #3 you’re a cult.” Which was frustrating as a missionary. Most people, if they read it, realized it was scripturesque and did, in fact, talk about Jesus. People thought it was a trick to get them to learn more about Joseph Smith. Back then I was like, no, it’s all about Jesus and people getting to know Jesus, because I was literal and it literally is (kind of), but we were using it as a way to get them to buy into the religion in general, and to believe in Joseph Smith, so in the end it *was* a trick. So, now I get the skepticism.
The Book of Mormon was the crux of the sale, though (*5). If they got hooked on The Book of Mormon, got good feelings while reading it on their own, they were much more likely to stick with us and be baptized, and they were more likely to stay in the church because they would have an independent source of spiritual feelings (*6).
Finally we’d talk about the Holy Ghost, as a way to help them understand how they would get answers to the question, “do these 50’s-dressed teenagers both named Elder know anything about anything.” Problematic. The trick with the Holy Ghost is/was answers are vague and amorphous, manifesting differently in different people. (*7) We wanted them to pray and feel fuzzy about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Nothing else. We would worry later about the stuff that might actually come up if they prayed (*8). We wanted them to be better people, eventually – right now we wanted to get them into the kingdom.
People generally understood the Holy Ghost. We were supposed to identify it if we felt it – “hey you feel that good feeling?” “yeah” “that’s the Spirit, man” so they knew what it was like. But that’s also hard to replicate.
TBM Me: How hokey are you going to get? Why do you talk around this stuff? At least be honest with yourself. It’s all true, and you’re trying to explain it away. [looks around for something to slam]
Logic Me: Most of the it isn’t true. Most of the Mormon-est parts of it, anyway, aren't. Sitting around talking about God with people who are by-and-large conditioned through religious upbringing to believe what you’re saying and having that feel good, that seems easy to explain sociologically.
We ended usually with whatever seemed like the right commitment – at the very least to meet again, and unless they totally balked at the Book of Mormon, to accept one from us and read a few parts of it. We try to close with a prayer, put down the next appointment in our little yellow planner, and leave. Usually feeling good, sometimes great if they were really into it, and sometimes bad if they really weren’t listening. But almost any discussion beat knocking doors or street contacting.
Also, as you can see, even out of the church for about 5 years, and 25 years later, I still have the TBM voice in my head yelling at me that I’m a heretic, that all these things are true and that if I would just have enough FAITH, just BELIEVE more because my lack of FAITH is a WEAKNESS and FAULT that keeps me from being HAPPY (*9). It's no fun. That early guilt sticks.
We did a lot more first discussions than anything else. Most people got spooked by one of the many problems they heard, or were just humoring us. But as one companion told me, discussions were the lifeblood of the mission. Without teaching people and connecting in that way I'd have been less motivated than I already was.
In retrospect, am I embarrassed or ashamed about teaching people this stuff? Kind of. Doesn't really matter. It's not a useful idea to sit with. I can't undo it, and if I went back in time and tried to get myself not to do it ("Hey, younger me, it's not true! Go home and go to college out of your hometown!") I'd have thought I was crazy. I had to have my own path out of believing it, and I wouldn't have been ready back then. But looking at it now, I'm more bothered by the idea that we all sin and need to repent. I think starting there is a good place to change direction.
(*1) I did ask people if they wanted to be baptized in the first discussion a few times, usually with people I knew weren’t interested. May as well push them away more quickly. It was a bet I was going to lose anyway. If there was someone who was actually interested, I would be scared to bring it up, but we had to eventually, it was the 5th principle of the second discussion. So at that point, if they still would have us, we’d ask them. The second or third time that we talked to them, ever, we’d ask them to change their life, with very little understanding or context about what it meant and what would be involved. We were asking them to do this based on basically the feeling they got when we were around. Like asking someone on a date after getting them to laugh, we were creating a spiritual mood in the room. That was the pattern. Create a mood, then when in the mood get them to commit, then when you leave and the mood is gone, hopefully they follow through. Most didn’t. When we left, usually the heat left.
(*2) which I then thought was a spiritual manifestation of God through a non-corporeal member of the Godhead which can be everywhere at once if needed and only could be manifest in Mormons who had received the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and now think is something like a common manifestation of belief in each other’s belief about inspiring events
(*3) Even if Joseph Smith saw God, it doesn’t make up for the shit he did later.
TBM Me interjects: We don’t know he did terrible things, faith-promoting historical sources blah blah blah just trust your FEELINGS unless they tell you he did terrible things.
Logic Me: Really this is a marketing thing. The church could pull back on Joseph Smith and they'd get a lot less heat but they double and triple down on him and have to spend time and money in counter-programming.
(*4)56 times, more than old and new testament combined
(*5) except we gave books away, a major advantage over Jehovah’s Witnesses’ missionary work, who had to literally sell their materials I think, which is like adding insult to injury for those poor missionaries
(*6) I don’t want to get too much into it here, but why does the Book of Mormon generate spiritual feelings? Grant Palmer argues that it’s because it talks about Jesus and being a better person, and that anything that talks about Jesus and changing to be better is going to do that. Which was helpful for me. The book is really problematic in so, so many ways, but Mormons go back to it again and again because it can, in fact, generate spiritual feelings when reading it, if you approach it a certain way.
TBM Me: Aha! That’s just the sort of the baloney someone who has left the faith would tell themselves to get away from the truth. It’s all true! [Finds an open door and slams it shut.] Case closed!
Logic Me: I’m not getting into whether the Book of Mormon was actually written by a series of dudes on gold plates a couple of thousand years ago. I’m talking about effect. Another post another post another post. Lemme alone.
(*7) I'm realizing I put this in without commentary. I'm still fuzzy on the Spirit, Higher Power, all that stuff. Another post for another time I guess because I still believe in getting answers from somewhere, I just don't know if they come from me or somewhere else. They sound a lot like me.
(*8) If you want to replicate this, wake up before everyone else and sit at a clean kitchen table, eyes open, lights on, for 20 minutes with only a piece of paper and pen. No phone, no music. If you wait the whole time things will come up, from wherever, and they probably won't be "Be a Mormon" they'll probably be "get that one thing done and for hell's sake be nicer to your partner." At least that's how it works for me.
(*9) I can then go back and do a logic chain from where my shelf broke and say, look, this isn’t true, therefore that isn’t true, therefore this and that and so on. And then it falls apart again, and I can see that the guilt is not really based on logic but on an emotional reasoning that leans on outcomes that are specifically geared for success only in the direction of the church being true. It’s not even a real logic test. We did this to other people and we did it to ourselves. The "test" looks like this:
Read the Book of Mormon and pray about Joseph Smith.
If you get a Burning in the Bosom (a warm feeling in your chest) then you know it’s true.
a - If not, keep praying. Look for things in your life you need to change to be more in line with God, then try again. And again, and again, until you get the yes answer. If you don’t get the yes answer, there is something wrong with you that you are unwilling to face.
b - If, heaven forbid, you get the no answer that’s the devil trying to deceive you. No joke, that’s the answer. From an outside perspective that must look ridiculous. "Check your floor for pentagrams. God isn’t telling you to be a Mormon. He’s on Our Side."
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