What Now?

If you prayed something like the prayer I left at the end of the last chapter — or even if you didn’t, but something in it wouldn’t let go of you — you may be sitting with a very practical question. All right. Now what?

I want to answer it plainly, the way a friend would, without turning your whole life upside down before breakfast. There’s no program here, no checklist to be worthy of. Just the next few honest steps, and one hard thing I owe you before I close.

Start with John

Don’t start with me, and don’t start by reading against your old faith. Start with Jesus, in his own story.

Read the Gospel of John — one chapter a day. There are twenty-one of them; give it three weeks. Any Bible will do. The King James in the back of your Quad is fine — it’s the same John. If you’d like a companion alongside it, pick up a modern translation, the ESV or the NIV, and read each chapter twice, once in each. Back in chapter 3 we walked through why you can trust that the text has come down to us intact, so you can open a modern translation without any fear that someone has smuggled something in along the way. It’s the same Gospel in plainer English, and some mornings the plainer English is the whole gift.

Read it slowly. You’re not studying for a test or hunting for proof. You’re getting to know a person. Ask him, before you begin, to show you who he is. John tells you near the end that he wrote the whole book for exactly that reason — John 20:31 — so read it as the invitation it is.

Finding a church

At some point — not tomorrow, but at some point — you’ll want to be among people who worship this way. Here’s what to look for, and I’ll keep it simple.

Look for a church that teaches you are saved by grace through faith, and means it — that the cross is the floor you stand on, not the capstone you set on top of a wall you had to build yourself. That was the whole of chapter 8. Look for a church that worships the one unchangeable God we found together in chapter 7 — Father, Son, and Spirit, one God, not a man who became one and not a council of many. And look for a church that simply opens the Bible and teaches it, verse after verse, so you can see for yourself where every claim comes from — the same do-it-with-the-text-open posture this whole letter has tried to keep with you.

And one thing to be wary of. Be careful of any group that tells you it alone holds the exclusive authority — the one true priesthood, the one true keys, the single organization God will speak through. The pattern should be familiar by now; it’s the very claim we spent this letter examining. The gospel of grace doesn’t come with a franchise. A biblical church knows it is a hospital for sinners, not a headquarters.

The thing I’ve been dreading to write

Now I have to be honest with you, because a letter that has asked you to be honest at every step can’t go soft at the end.

This could cost you.

I won’t pretend otherwise, and I’d be betraying you if I did. For many Latter-day Saints the faith isn’t one compartment of life — it is life. It’s your marriage, sealed for eternity. It’s Sunday and Monday night and half the friendships you have. It’s your parents’ hope for your family and the ward that brought dinner when your kids were born. To step toward the Jesus of the Bible can mean a spouse who feels the ground move under a marriage you both believed was forever. It can mean parents who grieve as if they’re losing you. It can mean an entire social world — the one that has held you your whole life — cooling toward you at the exact moment you most need it. I’m not going to wave any of that away with a verse. It is real, and it is heavy, and if you feel the weight of it right now, you’re seeing clearly.

So hear me carefully. You don’t have to announce anything today. Nothing here asks you to burn down your life this week, or make a speech at Sunday dinner, or hand back your recommend by Friday. Faith isn’t a press release. It’s between you and God first, and it can stay there a good long while as it grows. Keep reading. Keep praying — to the God of the Bible, in Jesus’ name. Let what’s true settle into you before you ever say a word out loud. Patience here isn’t cowardice; it’s love, for the people you’d never want to hurt carelessly.

What Jesus said it would cost

I’m not the first to tell you this could be hard. Jesus told his own followers the same thing, and he was blunter about it than I would dare to be. He said, Matthew 10:37 — that whoever loves father or mother, son or daughter, more than him is not worthy of him.

I’ve read that verse sitting across from people it applied to, and I won’t soften it. He really does ask to come first — ahead of the people you love most. That is a staggering thing to ask, and he knew it. But read it beside what he said in nearly the same breath about what it buys, because he did not leave the cost hanging in the air alone. Mark 10:29-30

Look at what he promises the one who loses family for his sake: not a smaller family — a hundredfold one, “now in this time,” brothers and sisters and mothers and children, and eternal life besides. He is not blind to what you’d be risking. He is telling you he has already counted it, and that the God who asks you to open your hands is the same God who fills them again — often, in my experience, through people you haven’t met yet. Which is the last practical thing I want to hand you.

People who have already walked this

You are not the first to make this walk, and you do not have to make it alone. There are people — many of them former Latter-day Saints themselves — who know this exact road, the doctrine and the heartache both, and who spend their lives coming alongside people right where you are standing. If you want that kind of company, here are two places to start:

Faith After Mormonism (faithaftermormonism.org) — a community built for precisely this transition, gentle about the emotional and family cost, and clear that your Latter-day Saint loved ones are not the enemy.
Mormonism Research Ministry (mrm.org) — a long-running resource for thinking carefully through the doctrine, if you want to keep studying with the texts open.

And you don’t need a website at all for the best of it. Somewhere near you there is very likely a small, ordinary, Bible-teaching church with a few people in it who would be honored to sit with you, answer your questions, and simply be your friends while you sort this out. Ask God to lead you to them. He is good at that.

That’s everything I know to give you. I’ve handed you your own scriptures, my best honesty, and now the next few steps. The rest is between you and the God who has been drawing you the whole time — the real one, unchanging, full of grace, and nearer than you think.

Keep reading. Keep praying. He is not hard to find.

Your friend, Brock