Jesus and his followers lived the truth Jonah missed

(Melanie first shared this thought-provoking Insight in 2018.)

I went to college at Weber State University in Utah, at the foot of the Wasatch Mountain Range and the gateway to great skiing. I wasn’t supposed to be doing any skiing, since my volleyball coach was sure we would all break our legs and have to sit out a year. But how can you live in Utah and not enjoy the wonderful powder beckoning you to hit the slopes? It’s part of what makes Utah so special.

Another unique thing in Utah is the high percentage of people who practice the Mormon religion. I grew up in a Christian home in southern California, so I wasn’t very familiar with the Latter-Day Saints before moving to Utah. To say that my immersion into that culture was a little shock would be an understatement. Every player on my team was Mormon. At first, they were friendly and put up with my questions about what they believed, but as weeks turned to months and they realized I wasn’t looking to convert, the reception was a little less warm.

One weekend when we were on the road for a tournament and found ourselves in a hotel on Sunday morning, the team decided to hold their own church service. As the sole non-Mormon I wasn’t invited. It hurt, and as I sat alone in my hotel room I had to reflect on my own attitude. Had my questions to them seemed judgmental? Were they divisive?

It didn’t feel good to be left out simply because I didn’t share their religion. The more I had studied the Mormon faith the more I had discovered that there were many things we didn’t agree on, but there was some common ground we shared. This came home clearly to me on another road trip a few weeks later.

I was assigned to room with a teammate whose father was battling stage four lung cancer. The prognosis wasn’t good, and she had just received a call from her mother letting her know that he had been rejected for yet another trial. I watched her sit on the edge of her bed and break down in tears. As I wrapped my arms around her and cried with her, I realized that we had even more in common. We all grieve at the suffering of our loved ones and yearn to make sense of it. We all cry out to God for help and comfort in time of need.

I asked if I could pray for her and we spent the next thirty minutes in prayer with tears running down our cheeks. That night turned into a pivotal moment with my teammates. Slowly but surely, we started to break down the religious walls between us. The next season when we found ourselves on the road on a Sunday everyone was invited to join in “hotel church.” I found myself in more and more conversations about what I believed as a Christian, and listened as they explained what they believed with the understanding that no one was looking to convert. Those relationships and conversations strengthened and grew my own faith, and I am so grateful for each one.

They taught me something else. Staying in my own faith bubble community where everyone agrees with me never taught me nearly as much about my own faith as having to explain it to someone who doesn’t agree with me. My years in Utah expanded my world view and made my faith richer for it.