I have lived in Utah my whole life but my family has never been "Utah" Mormon. We aren't very cultural. My sister is 20 with three little girls under the age of 5 and unmarried. My brother is almost 24 and serving a mission after serving in the Navy for two years and going to the Naval Academy's prep school and Annapolis. My mother was physically abusive and yet attended the temple. My father often didn't go to church but always told me that "the Church is true, the people aren't". He always had a very strong testimony. I don't scrapbook, read Twilight and I KNOW that every word that drops from a GA's mouth is not Heavenly Father's own personal opinion. Many Church members are cultural Mormons who are there because they don't want to disappoint their families. However, the more I have lived and the more I have studied the Church, as well as other denominations, the stronger my testimony has become.
My husband is from California, but he was raised very "Utah". My MIL's only hobbies are watching the food channel, working at the temple, and doing family history. She has boxes of scrapbooking materials she will "get to some day". My husband's family is full of despicable, church-going people who lie, cheat, steal, and molest other family members and no one does anything because they want to be "Christlike" and "not cause contention". He was raised to think that everyone in the Church is good, everyone out of the Church is bad, and that if a General Authority. bishop or stake president says it, it's doctrine. It was difficult for him to understand that even though things aren't as black and white as he was raised to believe, that the doctrines are still true.
For him, the turning point was when he realized that the flaws in members and the flaws in the leadership come down to agency. We have a loving Heavenly Father who does not force us to do or say the perfect thing every time. How else would we learn. Stop and think about what the world would be like if we all our decisions were made for us. I don't think I can post links, but my husband found fairlds.org very helpful. It is a Mormon apologetics (defense) site. They have answers to everything you can think of to ask and things you never thought to ask. It is run by devout members who take the arguments and criticisms from anti- and ex- Mormons and research them out.
I do know that this is God's true church restored to the Earth. Despite being offended, made fun of and having my house vandalized by the "upstanding" miscreants in my ward growing up (and at BYU), I know this is God's plan for us. The fact that such wide disparities in behavior and knowledge of right and wrong exist is a testimony to me of a loving Heavenly Father who allows us to fail and learn on our own terms and will never force us to follow Him. My husband's mother and my mother both tried to use force to get our siblings to go to Church. It just drove them further away. Force is not God's plan.
If you ever need a laugh about Mormon culture, visit seriouslysoblessed.com. It's a fake Mormon mommy blog. The satire is so spot on it's hilarious! (It's even funnier when people think it's real.)Sometimes when I feel fed up with living with my sanctimonious MIL and being trapped in Utah, I read it for a good laugh.
