I was raised in the Episcopal Church. My father is an Episcopal priest. But he was also very ecumenical and I was taught to find good in other faith traditions.
In my twenties, after an unsuccessful attempt in the U. S. Army and an unsuccessful attempt at an expensive college, I came back to the only town that I have ever called home. I was depressed at the time and looking for comfort and for real answers. I worked as little as possible and lived a threadbare life. I spent time doing drugs and practicing magic, but I also dug into the religious texts of the world. I read the Bhagavad Gita. I was fascinated by the virtue of detachment, which harmonized with the notion that I should do what is right regardless of the consequences. I began to treat work as holy when its focus is on God. While I wasn’t actually doing much work, the seed had been planted. I read The Analects of Confucius and a lot of zen poetry. Eastern thought intrigued me.
And then I picked up the Quran. It was a big book, so I decided I would read one surah at a time, alternating with a chapter of the Tao Te Ching. This balanced the Quran’s assertion of inerrancy with the Tao Te Ching’s mystical view that mere human language cannot express eternal things adequately. This exercise had a profound effect on me. I had been losing my confidence that the Bible was the final and inerrant Word of God—and this sealed it, because the Quran also presented itself as final and inerrant. Those two claims could not both be true, and I thus felt that neither was likely to be true. But I had fallen in love with the Quran and started to consider converting to Islam despite these reservations. For several years I flirted with the Islamic community online, but my sense that any God worth worshiping would be a living, revealing one kept me from committing.
I was riding on a bus and reading a magazine when I was approached by a pair of Latter-day Saint missionaries who asked me if I liked to read, and then asked if I would like to read the Book of Mormon with them. I was still struggling to find comfort and answers so I agreed, even though I didn’t think one more book would change my mind.
At the time there were six missionary discussions. They taught me about faith in Jesus Christ, the particular witness of Joseph Smith, and the extraordinary claim that prophecy had been restored to the earth. I prayed and received the personal revelation that God had sealed prophecy with the Quran and opened it again with the Book of Mormon. I had the first taste of the living, revealing God I had been looking to find for such a long time.
Then they taught me the fourth missionary lesson. I would have to give up drinking and smoking and doing drugs and sleeping with my girlfriend. I would need to start paying ten percent of my income to the LDS church. I was not ready and I was no longer interested. I showed them the door and told them not to come back.
But I continued to study on my own. I stopped flirting with Islam (and Hinduism) at that point. I stopped attending the Episcopal church. I broke up with one girlfriend and got another pregnant. I scaled back the marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco. I went through another breakup when I lost my temper at the new girlfriend’s teenage son. I started to take stock of my life because, despite the fact that we were broken up, we were going to have a child together. And then I got a phone call from another pair of missionaries. They offered me the discussions again and I accepted. My heart was softer, and I had become more convinced than ever that both the Quran and the Book of Mormon are the Word of God. With my peculiar testimony I agree to be baptized.
Over the summer, I fell in love again, and the mother of my son decided that she wanted me back. Much to my surprise, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had long since renounced polygamy. That was an uncomfortable interview with the bishop. I briefly regretted the decision to be a Mormon, not a Muslim—but both girlfriends wanted me to choose between them. I married the new girlfriend in the Episcopal Church with my dad as the priest. She later converted to the LDS Church and we now have three children. I stayed in town so I could stay close to my oldest son. I remained faithful to my new wife, despite the temptation of making them share me.
I have spent the past twenty-five years in the Church at various levels of unworthiness. Alcohol is a hard fight for me. Tithing is a hard fight for me. Polygamy is in the back of my head most of the time because four is the magic number of wives in the Quran. My wife left the Church and no one else in my family ever became an active member.
I am still attached to the conclusion that Muhammad was the seal of the prophets and that the seal was reopened by Joseph Smith.
And I am as convinced as I am of anything that “The Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”
Mark F. Crist lives with his wife Stephanie in South Central Wisconsin. He has four adult sons, two of whom are disabled and continue to live in the family home. Mark can also be found on the internet under the handle “markezuma.”
