Car­son, I am not raised in the Church but rather I am a “con­vert”. In decid­ing, through much prayer and read­ing, I decid­ed to be Bap­tized ful­ly aware that I might not have all of my ques­tions answered and not expect­ing the full­ness of the gospel until some­time in the after­life… I, vic­ar­i­ous­ly, know you as your broth­er had dat­ed my daugh­ter, Lind­say Baugh, many years ago. I would hate for her to be led astray when she is so bright (IQ of 145) and can study and han­dle con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion just fine. I have three chil­dren and by the grace of Jesus Christ, all three of them have strong tes­ti­monies. Two of them have con­vert spous­es. I believe they have made the deci­sion, with an adult mind, to be bap­tized. I accept­ed the LDS teach­ings know­ing that much was yet to be revealed. I have admit­ted to my Bishop(s) that I do not usu­al­ly wear my gar­ments with­out fear. It has nev­er been a prob­lem except that it is some­thing that I need to work on. I’ve been to MANY Church­es seek­ing the right one for me. Many were hyp­o­crit­i­cal, or (as the Catholic reli­gion), too sym­bol­ic on an every week basis. Many Church­es had Sun­day mem­bers whose con­gre­ga­tions did not prac­tice what is taught any day but Sunday.

Part of my accep­tance of the LDS Church was the real­iza­tion that I can’t know every­thing in this life and I don’t expect to. The church has evolved and expect that it will con­tin­ue to do so. This will not turn me away. I believe in the core prin­ci­ples and don’t allow the “lit­tle stuff” to both­er me. Being quite bright myself, I would be very irri­tat­ed if some­one tried to hand feed me dis­crep­an­cies and con­tra­dic­tion. I don’t have a hang-up with them myself. I feel very sad for you, Marisa, and your fam­i­lies because you could have just quit going rather than becom­ing an apos­tate and try­ing to take oth­er peo­ple with you.

God Bless you, Marisa, and your fam­i­ly. God loves you all very much. I hope that I haven’t offend­ed you.


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8 responses to “Accept all things in faith”

  1. Kristin Avatar
    Kristin

    Susan,
    I don’t know you or Car­son and this is not a com­ment to either of you on a per­son­al lev­el, only my reac­tion to your words. Despite your mean spir­it­ed post to Car­son you may typ­i­cal­ly be a kind and gra­cious per­son — I don’t know. In gen­er­al, I find it con­de­scend­ing and judg­men­tal when some­one tells some­one else they feel sad for them when that per­son is not expe­ri­enc­ing any­thing that makes them sad. It is disin­gen­u­ous. The per­son receiv­ing that mes­sage is unlike­ly to feel you real­ly care about them. It is not the same as offer­ing empa­thy to some­one who is strug­gling or going thru a dif­fi­cult time. Fur­ther­more, refer­ring to Car­son­’s con­cerns about the church as the “lit­tle stuff” is belit­tling, not lov­ing or respect­ful. I see noth­ing com­pas­sion­ate or Christ­like in your mes­sage to Car­son and his fam­i­ly, only con­dem­na­tion. I am cer­tain the church teach­es us that only God may judge a person.

    Also, per­haps a pub­lic forum was not your best venue if you are con­cerned your daugh­ter dis­cov­ers your behavior.

  2. Beau Avatar
    Beau

    Susan,

    You just admit­ted to believ­ing things that arent taught by the church. Go tell your bish­op that and see how he responds…

  3. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Being raised in the church, serv­ing a mis­sion, hold­ing stake call­ings, and see­ing all the church hand­books have con­firmed my tes­ti­mo­ny. That tes­ti­mo­ny being, the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints is as true as any oth­er church on earth. They are all make believe. Best deci­sion I’ve made in my life…abandon fic­tion­al char­ac­ters and live for today. I’m a bet­ter hus­band and father because of it.

  4. Sampson Avard Avatar
    Sampson Avard

    Lit­tle stuff? Like 38 year old Joe Smith mar­ry­ing a 14 year old girl by promis­ing her and her fam­i­ly eter­nal sal­va­tion? Hebephil­ia and accle­si­as­tic groom­ing are not lit­tle things.

  5. Marisa Calderwood Avatar
    Marisa Calderwood

    Susan, I’m try­ing to pin down why I feel both­ered by your com­ment and I think one rea­son is that you said you “feel very sad” about the way we left the church. It seems like you feel more frus­trat­ed or angry because you’re say­ing we’re doing some­thing bad. We see some of the teach­ings of the church as harm­ful and there­fore can­not have clear con­sciences if we don’t tell oth­ers. Infor­ma­tion was hid­den and much was lied about. Because of this there are many bright, knowl­edge­able mem­bers of the church such as your­self (and myself of 2–3 years ago) who still believe the church is true, not because they are stu­pid or eas­i­ly fooled, but because they have been lied to and that’s not their fault. But it would be my fault if I dis­cov­ered the lie and did­n’t say anything.

    You say you accept the core prin­ci­ples — I still believe in all of those, such as love, com­pas­sion, hon­esty, integri­ty, kind­ness, a search for knowl­edge and truth and char­i­ty toward oth­ers. But I can believe in all of those things with­out believ­ing in the LDS church, or even God. You say you don’t allow lit­tle stuff to both­er you — if by lit­tle stuff you mean the stance against LGBT then say that to a gay teenag­er. They can’t just look past the “lit­tle stuff.” Those of us in a priv­i­leged sit­u­a­tion need to see how psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly harm­ful many of the beliefs and prac­tices of the LDS church are to oth­ers. I have even been sur­prised as I move away from it to dis­cov­er how incred­i­bly harm­ful many of the beliefs I held close were to my men­tal health and happiness.

    Why would you think your incred­i­bly bright daugh­ter could be led astray? She has the capac­i­ty to make a good deci­sion if she has all the infor­ma­tion. We would nev­er try to ply her or any­one else with half-truths and flat­tery. We only want peo­ple to know the true his­to­ry and decide for them­selves. Trust Lind­say and trust yourself.

  6. Carson Calderwood Avatar

    Sis­ter Baugh,

    I’m glad we can have this vir­tu­al online dis­cus­sion as it serves as a great way to clear up some com­mon mis­con­cep­tions that you and oth­ers have about us and some infor­ma­tion you lack about the church. This reply is more hasti­ly writ­ten than I’d like. First off, I remem­ber Lind­say very well. She was such an intel­li­gent, beau­ti­ful and fun per­son. I real­ly want­ed things to work out with her and my broth­er because I want­ed her to be a part of our fam­i­ly so much. Also, I remem­ber very well my broth­er talk­ing so high­ly of you guys after his trip to Wash­ing­ton. So, with those mem­o­ries I am assum­ing you are a kind and won­der­ful per­son that just has­n’t received the cor­rect infor­ma­tion about our sto­ry or the com­mon con­fir­ma­tion bias­es that come up when cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance rears its ugly head have kept you from under­stand­ing ful­ly what we now know. I’ll try to explain those bet­ter here and look for­ward to dis­cussing this fur­ther with you if you so desire.

    You start off by men­tion­ing that you were bap­tized despite not hav­ing all the answers to your ques­tions. I assume, and please cor­rect me if I’m wrong, that you are sug­gest­ing my dis­af­fec­tion from the church came because I did­n’t get cer­tain ques­tions answered. Its actu­al­ly exact­ly the oppo­site, I had some very clear and unde­ni­able answers to ques­tions. Answers that I can’t unknow now and answers that many choose to ignore and not learn. In oth­er words, what keeps many peo­ple in the church is inten­tion­al­ly ignor­ing peo­ple like me or out­right illog­i­cal­ly dis­miss­ing them when we try to explain those answers. I had sev­er­al ques­tions that I could­n’t get answered for decades and that is why I stayed a mem­ber until almost the age of 40 despite ques­tion­ing since an ear­ly teenag­er! For exam­ple, some of the less impor­tant ques­tions I had a hard time with were why was Joseph so wrong about the Book of Abra­ham fac­sim­i­les or why did Joseph lie to Emma when he mar­ried a 14 year old girl after telling her that her fam­i­ly could­n’t get into heav­en unless she did mar­ry him, or the hun­dreds of oth­er ques­tions that nev­er made sense when I learned things grow­ing up (for more see this top list http://​bit​.ly/​7​L​D​S​q​u​e​stions).

    In the end, I was­n’t tricked. I gath­ered all the evi­dence and weighed it with­out a con­fir­ma­tion bias towards the church being true. 100 times over, the eas­i­est, most obvi­ous, sim­plest, more coher­ent answer was that the church was­n’t true. Be that because Joseph was a total fraud or a self deceived good per­son or what­ev­er is irrel­e­vant. It doesn’t mat­ter how Joseph came to say and do the things he did, they are obvi­ous­ly not from God when you learn them all and process that infor­ma­tion with­out a bias.

    In your sec­ond para­graph you fur­ther state that your accep­tance of the church was real­iz­ing that you can’t know every­thing in this life. This is obvi­ous­ly true. What is also true is that you can know much more about the church than I assume you do. Do you know all those doc­u­ment­ed prob­lems I list in the 7 Ques­tions doc­u­ment I list­ed ear­li­er? If not, why would you not try to learn things you CAN know about the church when you believe the gospel is the most impor­tant thing in ETERNITY!?

    Do you think all those items list­ed in the 7 Ques­tions doc­u­ment are “lit­tle stuff.” If so, I’d be afraid to deal with you in busi­ness or be mar­ried to you if you think secret­ly mar­ry­ing young girls and already mar­ried women behind your spous­es back would be a lit­tle thing. Do you think hav­ing the prophet say you should kill your mixed race baby and black wife to atone for the sin of mix­ing races is a lit­tle thing? I choose to see those as ter­ri­ble and BIG things and my moral integri­ty won’t allow me to make excus­es for such ter­ri­ble things. I’ve left all that bad of Mor­monism, kept the good and moved on to a hap­pi­er and more moral place. I invite you to do the same 🙂

    I find it iron­ic that you like many oth­er Mor­mons who put a lot of effort into mis­sion­ary work to pro­claim what you feel is the truth and brings you hap­pi­ness, crit­i­cise me for doing the same thing. Try to do some­thing that might be impos­si­ble for you. Sor­ry to sound smug, but I think we both agree this might be impos­si­ble. Imag­ine the church is not true and Joseph was a fraud (inten­tion fraud or unin­ten­tion­al, doesn’t mat­ter like I said above). Now, if the church isn’t true, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want oth­ers to know so they could avoid some of the bad things that believ­ing it would cause? Any­thing from avoid­ing the unde­ni­able health ben­e­fits of cof­fee to the wast­ing hours and mon­ey on tem­ple work when that could be put into help­ing those that suf­fer here on earth. Remem­ber, if the church isn’t true there is no man­date from God to avoid cof­fee or do Mor­mon ordi­nances to save the souls of those who have died. How could you pub­licly chide me for help­ing oth­ers learn the truth if that is the truth?

    I feel sad for you, but not in the same way. Life is so much hap­pi­er on the out­side. Keep all the good or Mor­monism and drop the bad. Move on to a kinder, hap­pi­er, less men­tal gym­nas­tics of jus­ti­fy­ing why a 36 year old man would lie to his wife and mar­ry a 14 year old girl in a time when 36 year old men didn’t mar­ry 14 year old girls, 18 year old men did. If Mor­monism is real­ly mak­ing you hap­pi­er despite those prob­lem than you could be out­side of it then by all means stay, but please don’t infer that you have all the right answers and mine are wrong, espe­cial­ly when I have log­i­cal evi­dence to counter your claims that you don’t even know or are not will­ing to put the time into learning.

    Don’t wor­ry, you haven’t offend­ed me. I under­stand what its like to be on the inside hav­ing been there for sev­er­al years myself. I under­stand what its like to think you have the ulti­mate truth that would make you feel com­fort­able in mak­ing the judg­ments you have. I now let peo­ple live the life they feel makes them the hap­pi­est, espe­cial­ly when they have the full infor­ma­tion to make that deci­sion. If they don’t, I’ll def­i­nite­ly sug­gest that they take a look, but will leave them the caveat that if they choose to stay, they are free to make that decision.

    If you’d like to learn more about me or what I’ve learned then check out this col­lec­tion of that infor­ma­tion mor​monism​.calder​wood​.org

    1. Susan Baugh
      Susan Baugh

      Car­son, I write you back with love and respect (if Lind­say knew I wrote any­thing, she would have aa fit!). I was not raised in church so was nev­er indoc­tri­nat­ed in any way. By about 16, I just “knew” some­thing else was there that I was miss­ing. I went to Young Life and learned about Christ and God and the Holy Ghost in a very non-spe­cif­ic church way. I want­ed to know more. I say this in a very “hum­ble” way as I knew that I knew very lit­tle and some­one answered the blog assum­ing that I was quite arro­gant and judg­men­tal. I had read your and Marisa’s sto­ry many months ago and just nev­er ful­ly for­got it. I guess I final­ly felt com­pelled to write my sto­ry but that did not seem to have been received well. It seems as I either did not express myself well or gave some peo­ple the wrong impres­sion. In actu­al­i­ty, with­in the con­text of the Church, I kind of believe what “I” believe and I’ve nev­er been spoon fed. Some of what I believe prob­a­bly does not fit in with strict Mor­mon Doc­trine but I have nev­er felt guilty of this. I have to fol­low my beliefs as I feel them. I would most­ly iden­ti­fy myself as Chris­t­ian but with the LDS Church as hav­ing the best pro­grams for fam­i­ly uni­ty and for the chance to be reunit­ed again choose it. I came to this con­clu­sion by attend­ing, maybe, 10 dif­fer­ent church­es over about 6 years. When I say I am sad, it’s not that an indi­vid­ual has made a wrong deci­sion but rather that some­one may feel they have been lied to or led astray. I think peo­ple born in the church and raised with the church as not to be doubt­ed or ques­tioned are more at risk for this. I have, I know, some unique beliefs. God loves all of his chil­dren born on earth over the ages and I do not believe that he would reveal him­self to just a small sliv­er of peo­ple dur­ing a small peri­od of time.I actu­al­ly believe that God reveals Him­self to dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ples or cul­tures in dif­fer­ent ways that they can under­stand such as Hin­du, Bud­dhist, Mus­lims, Jews, or oth­er Chris­t­ian Faiths. God is not selfish.I don’t per­son­al­ly believe we are to know every­thing spir­i­tu­al­ly that there is to know in life — oth­er­wise, why would we need faith? I don’t real­ly share my beliefs with many as they are prob­a­bly unortho­dox but I believe in a lov­ing God, and eter­nal fam­i­lies. Man is far from per­fect (includ­ing myself) and I nev­er meant to appear judg­men­tal — just sad in that I would assume that at a place in time, you were hap­py and then felt jad­ed. I am so hap­py that you and Marisa’s paths has led you to peace­ful and hap­py place again. I, also, am very at peace, spir­i­tu­al­ly, even though there might be some idio­syn­crasies and teach­ings that don’t make total sense to me. On my own search, meet­ing with 4 sets of Mis­sion­ar­ies and allow­ing only Bib­li­cal pas­sages to be used in their teach­ing, I broke from my own fam­i­ly and accept­ed the LDS Faith as the way I would choose to live. I have some errors of omis­sion which I feel com­fort­able tak­ing to my Bish­op about so I do not feel like a hyp­ocrite. I don’t pro­fess to be any­thing that I am not. As a Dietit­ian by pro­fes­sion, I am ful­ly aware of the health ben­e­fits of cof­fee and teach them work (and even men­tion them, if appro­pri­ate in a Church les­son) — but we might not know why we were com­mand­ed not to drink cof­fee. I real­ly don’t think one would be ex-com­mu­ni­cat­ed for drink­ing it. And, just to ease your sense that I may not have empa­thy, my only sis­ter is a les­bian. That has nev­er been a fac­tor in our relationship.Thank you both for you thought­ful emails. I am tru­ly sor­ry if I offend­ed any­one or por­trayed my self or any mem­ber of my fam­i­ly in a neg­a­tive way. (Also, please don’t share our cor­re­spon­dence with Lind­say, although I would guess you would­n’t know how to reach her. Love in Christ, Susan

  7. James Allred Avatar

    Hel­lo Susan.

    I don’t know you or Car­son. I am also just an invis­i­ble per­son on the inter­net that you will nev­er meet in real life, so I would­n’t blame you for stop­ping read­ing this right now. But for some rea­son I feel com­pelled to share my tes­ti­mo­ny with you.

    I would hope that you may some day be able to have a hum­ble heart and see the world through oth­er peo­ples eyes and tru­ly try to under­stand their bur­dens and not just “feel sor­ry” for them for the choic­es they have made.

    Through your com­ments, you indi­rect­ly imply that the issues with the church are “lit­tle stuff” and why would any­one every leave over lit­tle things when there so much good.

    I would ask if you could have a hum­ble heart for just one moment and con­sid­er, that maybe they view these issues as major and direct­ly relat­ed to the church’s truth claims and not just “lit­tle stuff”?

    I am not ask­ing you to agree that they are big deals. But just ask if you have the capac­i­ty of humil­i­ty to acknowl­edge that they might view them as such?

    Do you have this ability?

    As for me I have had many per­son­al spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences with the Book of Mor­mon. So I have a spir­i­tu­al wit­ness of it.

    But I take my faith seri­ous­ly. When the church teach­es that the Book of Mor­mon con­tains the ful­ness of the gospel, I want to know what that means.

    Because of my study, I also have an intel­lec­tu­al tes­ti­mo­ny that the Book of Mor­mon is not true. It teach­es a false plan of sal­va­tion and hence can­not be true and the cur­rent mor­mon doc­trine true as well.

    Does that sound like “lit­tle stuff”?

    It is not lit­tle stuff to me. It is core and direct to the truth claims of the gospel.

    I chal­lenge you to study the plan of sal­va­tion as taught by the gospel.

    If you don’t have the ener­gy to read it all, just study Alma’s con­ver­sa­tion with his son Corianton. All of the key pieces of the plan of sal­va­tion are there, which are repeat­ed by oth­er prophets over a 1000 year peri­od of time in the Book of Mormon.

    Hope­ful­ly you may be hum­ble enough to take the chal­lenge and be hon­est in your search. If you are, I promise you, that your eyes will be opened.

    But only if you tru­ly want to know.

    If you just want to believe. The go ahead and believe.

    But if you can’t acknowl­edge that some­one else may see the world dif­fer­ent­ly, then you may want to con­sid­er who you should be sor­ry for. And it prob­a­bly isn’t Carson.

    All the best on the jour­ney. Life is an adventure.

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