A question that came up this past week was, “My friend sees the bad examples of some church members and doesn’t want to learn more about the church because he is living a better life than many church members. What should I do to help him want to learn more?”
This is an important question, and if you are asking this question it shows that you care a lot about your friend. The problem of people’s bad actions causing others not to believe has been around for a long time. In fact it is mentioned in the Bible (see Genesis 34:30) and in the Book of Mormon (see Alma 39:11).
Ultimately a person cannot judge a church by its members because people make mistakes and are not perfect. The question isn’t really, “Are members of the church good people?” (some are, some aren’t). The question is, “Is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints what it claims to be?” (the only true and living church). Did Joseph Smith see Heavenly Father and Jesus or didn’t he? Is the Book of Mormon the word of God or isn’t it? If this is the true church, then even if your friend is living a good life now, his life could be better. The question is not, “Am I more righteous than the LDS kids I know?” but, “Could my life be improved if I were a part of God’s true church?” (the answer is yes!)
We understand that it’s hard for people to want to learn the answers to those questions if they see church members behaving poorly. That’s why Alma told Corianton “When they saw your conduct they would not believe my words” (Alma 39:11). In the most recent General Conference Elder Quentin L. Cook said, “When members don’t live the teachings, it can be a stumbling block to those who do not belong to the Church.”
We’re afraid that this hasn’t fully answered the question, but unfortunately there is no simple answer. Bad examples of members can keep people from wanting to learn more about the truth. Three things we can do are: 1. Be good examples, 2. Encourage others to be good examples, 3. Invite our friends to look beyond what people are doing and find out if the doctrines (not the members) of the church are true.
We hope this helps a little and invite others to share their thoughts in the comments below.
A few years ago we had a young man join the church. He said that when he was in high school he had been impressed by the Mormons that he knew and how they lived their lives. I wonder what his reaction would have been had the young men and young women he came in contact with acted poorly.
A couple years ago one of our suppliers and I were talking and I told him about all the farms the church has including the welfare farms. He was from the UK and was surprised that the Mormon church had large farms considering they only rode horses and buggies!!!! Somewhere along the line he got the impression that Mormons were Amish. I had the opportunity to correct the misconception but he still seemed dubious until I pointed out that my brother and I and a couple other guys we worked with that he knew were all Mormons. I asked him why he hadn’t noticed the BYU diploma on my brother’s office wall or all the other “Mormon” stuff like temple pictures in my office. He just never made the connection. But I believe he has a good opinion of our faith now and a more accurate picture of the people based on how we live our lives.
It definitely is something to keep in mind in our daily lives. Could what we do today cause someone to have a poor opinion of the church and not join? We can’t control what others do and other than try to pursuade them to act better and remind them that others see their behavior and judge the church based on it there is little we can do. But we can each choose for ourselves to do good and hope that the Spirit touches them.
Several years back when I was in school I was being teased and bullied excessively but it was also the members of the church who participated in this and the problem was there when I came to church on sunday so as a result I became inactive in the church.
A couple of years ago I was driving down the same stretch of road I travelled down every day when outside of a church(not sure who’s) I saw a sign that said something along the lines of ‘don’t let people put you off knowing jesus.’
I then found out that 90% of the members who participated in bullying me had made wrong decisions in their life, and weren’t active when I became active in the church again.
This is just to show that we need to be mindful of our actions all the time and not just in the world.