During a recent fast and testimony meeting in my ward, a young woman spoke from her heart of the seven-year rift with her parents and numerous siblings caused by her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are times when the spiritual strength of others in the face of angst can appear directed like a lightning bolt at our own heart – as this young woman’s testimony did with me.
A Little Background
Please indulge me in the sharing of a personal story. As an only child who immigrated with his parents from England more than forty years ago, my connection to extended family has always been cordial, but tenuous due to distance. However, this lack of regular contact with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins intensified the parent-and-child triangle of my direct family unit. I was raised Church of England with a strong testimony of Jesus Christ, but had little formal church attendance.
In 1989, I married a church convert with a six-year-old son who remains our only child. I supported both of them in their active church life, but was not moved to convert. I had taken the lessons prior to our marriage and had spent much time since learning and talking about the Church. As a non-member, I’d held a number of callings – from Cubmaster to co-chair (with my wife) of the ward activities committee -, but my Sunday attendance was sporadic at best.
When our son left on his mission, I began to attend regularly and started reading the Book of Mormon again – this time with purpose and an open heart. These actions, coupled with several pairs of missionaries I believe were sent specifically for me, resulted in my decision to be baptized a year later. The bare bones of this conversion story are far from unique and are important here only to set the stage for what happened next.
Knowing my parents’ negative feelings toward the Church, despite the positive examples of my wife, our son, and numerous friends, I chose not to involve them in my decision or make them aware of my baptism. In retrospect, this was not perhaps the wisest course of action. However, at fifty years old, I believed I had the right to follow my new beliefs even if they did not follow the family line or my past convictions.
The renting, wailing, and gnashing of teeth when I told my parents of my Church membership was cataclysmic – completely out of character and completely out of proportion on any reasonable scale. For the next two years the venom and bile flowed from my parents like an eruption of brimstone. These were people who loved me who were driven to obsessive excess to destroy my marriage, my connection to the Church, and my testimony. Their hearts of stone repelled any attempt at reconciliation, compromise, or Christian forgiveness. These were no longer the parents I knew and revered. Instead, they were individuals possessed by hatred, gathering their ammunition from anti-Mormon web sites and literature.
The culmination of the relationship at this point is disinheritance, estrangement from extended family, and a volatile truce with my parents – who still believe my wife, my son, and I, along with all members of the Church, are servants of the adversary who do not believe in the Christian Christ.
The Wider Picture
What is globally sad about this tale and that of the young woman whose testimony I recently experienced, is that estrangement from family due to conversion is far from a rare occurrence. The joy the Lord takes in our choice to follow our older brother into the waters of baptism is matched only by the fury of the adversary who wants us for his own.
So, how can we deal with this fury without allowing it to destroy our happiness, our family relations, and our testimony? How can we partake of the blessings of baptism when those closest to us attack us emotionally with the voracity of Attila’s hordes? How can we continue to love when we are shown nothing but hatred and ignorance?
Doctrine and Covenant 122:5-7 counsels us, “If thou art called to pass through tribulation… know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” Although we can have the conviction this concept is true, it can still be difficult to find comfort in it while undergoing the tribulation.
Working toward a further understanding of the dynamics behind family persecution, however, can help increase our comfort level. Understanding is the first step toward forgiveness of those who persecute us. And forgiveness is the key to the Christ-like behavior we seek and need to emulate in these situations.
Behind the Venom
It is often hard to think calmly when confronted by family persecution, but it is important to first recognize the adversary’s hand in the attacks on our family relationships.
Obviously, those raised in the Church can experience emotional or physical attacks from outside sources – the history of the Church is full of such incidents. These members can also experience viscous attacks from individual family members who fall away from the Church.
Converts, however, are uniquely challenged by the adversary’s control of immediate and extended family members – using them as blunt weapons to storm the walls of our new testimony. However, if we can recognize these attacks for what they are, our testimonies can be strengthened while withstanding the onslaught.
Under typical circumstances, we are raised to love and honor our parents and relatives. There can be turmoil and estrangement. However, the emotions in these situations, while stark, are most often balanced in their intensity. A conversion, however, can set off a one-sided emotional explosion resembling the overkill of a ton weight used to crush an egg.
It is this over-the-top reaction, with no basis in reasonableness, love, or common sense, which exposes the adversary’s angry manipulations of the situation. Once we recognize our loved ones are reacting under this foul influence, we need to change our responsive anger at their attacks to empathy for their situation. It is not our parents or family attacking us, but the adversary. While still devastating and painful, this understanding can help ease our minds. More importantly, this understanding can allow us to keep our hearts open toward those who have closed their hearts to us.
Remember, the opposition encountered in early Church history made our progress today possible. The Lord’s counsel regarding the whirlwind of persecution and heartache experienced by the Prophet Joseph Smith is recorded in D&C 121: 7-8, “Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment… And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high.”
Fear
Many people reject the gospel out of fear. The adversary fills them with false omens. They are scared by what they believe will be demanded of them. The Church does ask us for our time and talents, which we try to give willingly. But those outside do not see the rewards these sacrifices bring. Their perspective is on themselves, and until that changes there can be no acceptance or recognition of the gifts offered.
When a family member converts, this fear can be magnified. Parents and siblings find themselves confronted with their own shortcomings.
Their response to this perceived chastisement is to strike out pridefully. You, the convert, must be wrong – because if you are not, then they are. And if they are wrong, they would have to admit they are wrong and change.
Perhaps, it is not their time yet to accept the gospel. Perhaps, they will remain blinded by their pride for the foreseeable future. Recognition of their fear, however, can help you comprehend their negative reaction, and keep your new testimony strong.
Other Tools
Converts who are experiencing these familial attacks should quickly turn to the new gifts and the other insights recently given. The comfort and guidance of the Holy Spirit is ours for the asking – or the listening. Cling to the fact the Lord knows each of us as individuals. It is crucial to get on our knees in prayer, not only for strength and guidance, but in heartfelt plea for those struggling with our conversion.
It is a rare incident where prayers for those with stony hearts are immediately answered. Free agency often plays a part in these situations. Exercising faith in the Lord’s larger plan means accepting much of it as vastly beyond our miniscule perspective of the world. Say the prayers, seek the guidance, and go forth trusting in Father.
From the day of his dramatic conversion, Paul of Tarsus experienced onerous trials and personal affliction. He was imprisoned for his faith, beaten, stoned, and targeted by the adversary. Still, Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:19, “Most gladly… will I… glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Providing Future Choice
Refuge can also be found in the knowledge we, as converts, may have the honor of doing temple work for those loved ones who are unable, or refuse, to accept the gospel in this life. Our conversion, continued conviction, and dedication to temple work may provide the only opportunity our relations have in the next life to choose the right. Our obligation is to withstand worldly onslaughts and persevere for those we love.
The loss of worldly inheritance, or the scorn of those closest to us, can cut to the quick. Within these actions, we must recognize the finite experience of our time in this dispensation. Our conversions deal with the infinity of our next existence. Worldly inheritance may appear to be our due. To be deprived of it can leave a festering wound, which can only be lanced and healed by the faith that first brought us to the waters of baptism.
We are Not Alone
Church history consistently shows when tribulation and affliction are at their peak, faith, commitment, and personal growth have the greatest opportunity for advancement. As a people, without opposition, we lose faith and become self-righteous and complacent.
Brigham Young recognized these tendencies, telling us in Journal of Discourses 7:42, “Let any people enjoy peace and quietness, unmolested, undisturbed – never being persecuted for their religion, and they are very likely to neglect their duty, to become cold and indifferent, and lose their faith.” This lesson, which applies to the Church collectively, also applies to individuals.
In Matthew 5: 10-12, the Savior tells us: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”
Those of us who suffer the agony brought by the attacks of those closest to us should recognize we are not alone. There is strength in numbers and solidarity. Persecution of Church members has been a constant since the restoration of the gospel.
Be Thankful
As awful as family persecution can become, comfort can be found in Lehi’s counsel to his son Jacob. He reminded Jacob of the afflictions and sorrows that had come to him because of the rudeness of his brethren, and told him how these afflictions would ultimately result in good stating in 2 Nephi 2:2, “Thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.”
Then Lehi added these classic words from 2 Nephi 2:11, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so… righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.”
In one of my favorite passages from 1 Thessalonians (5:18), Paul writes in all things give thanks. He was not just referring to blessings, but also for our tribulations – for without them we could not learn and progress. As hard as it may seem, we should thank the Lord for the trials we face, and look to them for the lessons and opportunities they present.
Hope
Acknowledgment of the Lord’s ability to soften even the hardest of hearts can bring solace – and more importantly, hope. The young woman whose recent testimony spoke so eloquently to me, further told of returning to her hostile family home after a complete break of several years. The reunion with her parents and large collection of siblings was occasioned by the funeral of a sister who had died from cancer. She experienced a profound change in her family.
In the wake of death, many family members began questioning their own religious convictions. This young woman, however, found her own testimony rock solid, feeling as if she were a pillar of spiritual strength. While no conversions as blinding as Paul’s on the road to Damascus occurred, she saw a softening of hearts and a crack in the stoniness directed toward her. She was filled with hope.
Her hope spilled over to me.
The hearts of my own parents are still as closed and unassailable as a bank vault. But I have a testimony every vault has a combination, and given time – and the Lord’s hand – any heart can be opened to the treasures waiting to be stored inside.
