The Warm Salt Bath
On leaving a religion that is good to you, and on what the liberty in Christ actually is.
Thomas Abshier | 21 September 2026
Two encounters
For a year and a half now, I have hosted a small Sunday-morning discussion group over Zoom — five or six of us, mostly people who work on my projects. We read an essay that one of the other members or I write before the meeting, and we get together and discuss it. We talk about whatever it stirs up. We call it the Christos Fellowship, and there is nothing to it beyond that: a few people, a text, and an open floor. Through it, I have been exposed to Mormon theology, as some of the members are active Mormons, Mormon splinter groups, and some are ex-Mormons.
One of our members was raised as a 4th-generation LDS and left after 50 years to follow a splinter movement that follows a living prophet who reports regular, in-person meetings with Jesus and relays what Jesus most recently said. He is zealous for goodness and has a Mormon story illustration for every moral principle.
My experience with older Mormon women is that they are kind, accepting, and motherly. I have seen this enough to suspect that something about Mormon teaching nurtures this way of being.
I mentioned this to a friend who was born and raised in the LDS church and left between 15 and 23 years of age, who agreed with my impression. She attributed it to having handbooks with all the answers. The following is a conversation with her story. This essay is what I learned from her, from the two encounters, and from a year of trying to answer a question the encounters forced on me.
The question good people force on you
The question is this. When a person is kind, moral, devoted to family, generous, sober, and at peace — when there is, as far as you can see, nothing wrong with his life, but (to my judgment) he is captured by a cult, what kind of conversational witness is effective in freeing the captive? Or should he not be freed?
My friend who left the LDS church said this is why so many Christians in the intermountain West are stumped by their Mormon neighbors. They are really nice people, and it’s hard to see why converting to historical Christianity would benefit them. She knows atheists with a stronger moral code than many people in the pews. But niceness and a well-ordered life are not a certain indicator of the true church.
I’ve spent the last year trying to understand Mormonism to see if there is a flaw in it. I asked my friend why he was not trying to convert me if this is the true religion. (My friend who left supplied the reason: they don’t need to convert you now. They will baptize you after you are dead. There is a backup plan.) I asked people to show me where the Book of Mormon commands one thing, and the Bible commands the opposite. So far I haven’t seen it, but for full disclosure, I haven’t read the Book of Mormon, so everything I know is secondhand.
My ex-LDS friend told me why the search was going nowhere. Members are not permitted to describe what happens in the temple. The endowment ceremony, the sealing of marriages, the baptisms performed on behalf of the dead, the secret names, the covenants and oaths — all of it is off limits, historically under penalty of death, and though the most graphic of the penalty oaths were removed from the ceremony in 1990, the silence remains. A missionary at your door gives you the surface: this is the best thing that will ever happen to you; families are forever. The rest you find out about later: there is polygamy in the celestial kingdom, that the highest exaltation requires a temple marriage, that an exalted man will govern his own world. You learn all this after you are in, and after your first, unrepeatable experience of commitment has already imprinted itself on you.
So you cannot find the contradiction by comparing the books, because the doctrines that matter are not in the books. The temple ordinances that form the center of Latter-day Saint life — eternal marriage, baptism for the dead — appear neither in the Bible nor in the Book of Mormon. The biblical temple was for sacrifice, which is why Jesus makes sense as its fulfillment and why the temple has no further use once He has come. Turning it into a wedding chapel is not a restoration; it is an invention.
The one-sentence answer
My single-sentence criticism of Mormonism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other world religions and cults is that they do not have the liberty in Christ. Mormonism is a near duplicate of historic Christianity, and Islam is largely an Old Testament religion, with a major rewrite of the New Testament and a very significant rewrite of the New Testament. The moral code of all religions is roughly the same. The doctrine of unearned grace by acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord, with the subsequent transformed heart and indwelling of God’s Spirit, is unique to Christianity. Mormon doctrine arguably duplicates historic Christianity with minor textual changes and a great deal of additional historical information about another people Jesus came to, which is unverifiable by archaeology or manuscript provenance.
Everything else I have to say is commentary on the sentence, “They do not have the liberty in Christ.”
Start with the Bible itself. It is the strangest book in the world: some forty authors across fifteen centuries, in three languages, from cultures that had nothing in common — shepherds, kings, fishermen, a tax collector, a physician, a rabbi — and they all say the same thing. I categorize it as a multivocal book, and its many voices as a kind of noise cancellation. Every writer has his own accent, his own preoccupations, his own century’s blind spots. Put them all together, and the accents cancel, and what remains is the message.
The Book of Mormon is a univocal book. It is the account of everything that happened across the span of recorded history, plus much that was never recorded, delivered through one man—by an angel, seer stones, gold plates, brass plates, or other method dictated in one voice. The same is true of the splinter movement’s living prophet: one man, reporting what he saw and heard.
When there is only one voice, you cannot separate the voice from the message. Whatever color the man carried into the room filters and imprints the message. And that color is a filter God never placed over life. Every filter reduces degrees of freedom. That is what I mean when I say they lack liberty in Christ: they follow Christ through a man, and the man’s outline is laid over everything they can see of Christ.
The church’s own answer is that Joseph Smith had witnesses, that many people concurred and agreed. But a crowd of witnesses to one man’s story is still one man’s story. The witnesses did not see the history; they heard him tell it. My ex-LDS friend added that this argument against the church will convince no one inside.
My impression of Mormon theology is that they have put the Book of Mormon on the altar and the Bible on the bookshelf. It should be reversed. Read the Book of Mormon if you like; put it on the shelf with the other books; you may find some good stories. But my ex-LDS friend corrected even that. The good stories and the good phrases, she said, are all the Bible’s. The original part is the fantastical part. It is Jesus plus Joseph Smith, and in practice, Joseph Smith is on top.
In this conversation, I learned a new fact about the origin of Mormonism: Joseph Smith’s age. He was fourteen years old when he says an angel first came to him in upstate New York, in the middle of a genuine religious revival, asking which church was true. It is entirely possible that he was on the right path when he asked. What answered him was another matter. My ex-LDS friend, who was raised and spent a couple of decades in this religion, still does not know whether Joseph Smith made up the story or whether it actually came to him. I lean toward the latter. I believe it was a deceiving spirit, a messenger from the dark side disguised as an angel of light, whose purpose was to pull as many people as possible a few degrees off the center that God intended from the message of the Bible, all in the name of a more perfect/restored Bible. I believe this was the “angel of light delivering another gospel” that was warned about in the Bible. It is a very close replica, and it takes those completely dedicated to truth away from it by just a tiny amount. The result is that the best and most spiritually inclined/dedicated/sincere among us for living the Lord are saved, but their witness and energy shift toward a slight diversion from the Biblical multivocal record. Two hundred years later, the diversion holds.
How belief is installed
No argument works from the outside because:
Belief of this kind is not acquired by reasoning. It can’t. No knowledge of the infinite source can be reasoned or determined by thinking. Such knowledge can only come from revelation, and that revelation will inherently only be partial. Many revelations have been delivered by many revelators, and we have no way of knowing for certain whether they are true in every aspect and to their depth. But we do have widely used methods, including apologetics, logic, hermeneutics, archaeological comparisons, and our own sense of truth. We use all of these to varying degrees; most of them aren’t used in detail when we hear the missionaries’ stories at the door. At some point, the prospect may have his sense-of-truth criterion satisfied, and he is willing to put on this new filter of reality. At that point, the feeling and change of the conversion experience of letting Jesus into his heart and committing to a new life in Christ has significant confirmatory evidence that this religion is true.
This is the moment when the imprint of the truth of the revelation is made. This is not unusual; we all experience it, whether through loss, injury, or great fortune. A common psychological illustration is the story of a duckling hatching and seeing a toy truck first; the duckling will follow it as its mother. That is the program built into the duckling’s genetics and nervous system: to attach itself to the first thing it sees. People attach in the same way. The first experience of love is unrepeatable. The same is true for the person who converts, experiences changes in his life, has a strong social support network, and sees that people who leave lose that network and are shunned. The teachings report the purity and inerrant nature of the revelation and the corruption of Historical Christianity. The comparison is made between a religion that was copied and passed orally for 2-4 millennia and this religion, which is modern and was recorded firsthand from an angel. Joseph Smith said that an angel told him none of the churches were the correct church, and then gave him the restored teachings, which he translated over a number of years.
So the question is: why are Mormon converts so adamant? One reason is that new converts experience a change when they sincerely and deeply accept Jesus as Lord. As a result of a real spiritual experience under the church’s guidance, they sincerely embrace this new life, call it the most wonderful thing that has happened to them, and want to share it with others. Going on mission for 2 years, knocking on doors, being rejected, repeating the same message multiple times per day, puts the teachings deep in the heart and desensitizes them to rejection. And the seeker, who genuinely wants to see God, know God, and please God, says, “I have come to the right place.” As the convert immerses himself in the teaching and the community, and feels the change in his spirit, he gradually lets go of all resistance and fully believes it. The LDS/Mormon/Splinter doctrine/story/culture/revelation becomes the filter through which all other knowledge passes.
The difference between Mormonism and Historic Christianity is not in salvation or the renewed heart. That is why Mormons are such nice people; they are sincere, they are nice and good (Christlike), and so they let the light of Christ shine. The problem with Mormonism is the filter. The Joseph Smith revelation is put on top of the Biblical revelation, and as a result, life is seen through Joseph Smith’s filter. I don’t know if Christ suffered more in the Garden than he did on the Cross, but I do know that the Bible does not say that. At the very least, Mormons are taking the revelation of Joseph Smith above the revelation that was handed down in the multivocal voice of the Bible that God orchestrated.
The spirit of Mormonism colors the convert’s perception of life and how he relates to revelation and authority. Mormonism has no solid canon; it can change at any time by the declaration of a self-professed revelator or an institution-designated prophet. Joseph Smith received Mormon doctrine from an angel, and 1500 years of Biblical canon was instantly overwritten. It was justified as necessary and good because it came from an angel, and the angel said Biblical revelation was corrupted; therefore, the angel’s spirit and Joseph Smith’s spirit are imprinted on the Bible’s message. I suspect that almost everything in Mormonism is correct, maybe everything in the BOM is correct; but there was one addition to Mormonism that is not present in Historical Christianity: the doctrine of Mormonism was filtered through a single man. This precedent and pattern of listening to new revelation allows men to channel it whenever needed. My Mormon Splinter group friend openly acknowledges this and defends it as one of the most important principles.
That is why exposing falsehoods doesn’t work. My Ex-LDS friend told me she spent years believing that if she could just show people what was false — that the Book of Abraham is a translation of an ordinary Egyptian funerary papyrus, that the story evolved, that the doctrines contradict each other — they would see. They do not see. They already know most of it. They have a reason for everything. She has since come to the opposite conclusion: people must experience the truth before they can see the falsehoods. She pointed me to a podcast of former Latter-day Saints telling how they came to Christ, and in nearly every story the order is the same. First they tasted the freedom and the grace. Then, from inside that, the rest became visible.
Her story
She was born into it. When she was fifteen, her father gave her a transcript of the temple ceremony — the thing members are forbidden to describe; she read it and thought: this does not seem right. That single crack was enough. She left mentally at fifteen and physically at eighteen, when she moved out. At twenty-three she became a Christian.
And then it took her decades to leave.
Not to leave the building; that was done. To leave the shape it had pressed into her. Even after she had rejected the doctrine, she said there were things about it she craved. The biggest was the feeling of knowing, absolutely and for certain, that she was on the right path. In that state she didn’t have to do the thinking. She could just be a follower.
She told me a story from Sunday school when she was fourteen. She asked her teacher how there could have been Mormon Nazis. The teacher told her they were doing what their leaders told them to do, so the sin wasn’t on their heads; it would fall on the leaders. You get a pass. You do what you are told, and you do not have to think about it.
She noted that the mentality Mormonism creates is extraordinarily dangerous. And she noted that it is extraordinarily comforting, if you feel that you are doing the right thing. You stay a child your whole life. You live in a warm salt bath. It sounds nice sometimes, but she has outgrown it now and does not have that desire anymore, not at all. But it took a very long time to lose it. For years after she became a Christian, she was searching for the perfect church, the one that would give her that certainty back without the Book of Mormon attached. There is no such church. That, she said, is a problem, and I think it is the problem of the whole Western church.
The same craving inside Christianity
This essay is not about Mormons being peculiar. The craving my Ex-LDS friend described — certainty, an authority who does the thinking, a pass on responsibility — is native to the human frame. It is what every cult sells, and it is what a great deal of ordinary Christianity sells too, only with less coherence.
I saw it in my thirty years of counseling. An example of this strategy of coping with the pain of life is the women who has been taught what a Christian wife does; she sets aside what she feels and does what she is told a wife does. Happiness and marital harmony can conflict; the balance isn’t in meeting every whim and demand of the husband to make him happy. After feeling years of the supression, she is temptated to be free and do what pleases her. The problem is that the solution isn’t found in either of the polarities: neither the Stepford Wives nor Women’s Liberation satisfies the hunger inside. There is a way which is perfect, but it is a narrow path, and it is the Lord’s way. It can’t be found by following a man, book, or religion, although all can give hints. The solution is found in the balance of the poles in the Great Commandment, loving God, others, self, and loving as Christ loved us.
We are all trying to solve the problem of balancing between 1) self as an island, 2) self as an extension of another person’s will, and 3) self as an extension of God’s will as seen in books, teachers, and conscience. The problem is that all polarities have their place and time. There are no easy solutions, no slogans we can remember and play them all theme, except “Love one another as I have loved you.” This is again, “What would Jesus do?” ***
I find it helpful to look at my neighbor as God experiencing life through them. What would serve them most at each moment? Do they need to be appreciated, assisted, or corrected? Almost anything is possible, and it will probably change over time. The problem with cults (a group that acts under the revelation or direction of a guru) is that it is easy to submit one’s will and judgement to the leader. but e can pretty much say that a constant ing caught by a cult and following a man, and the ut it isn’t meeting every whim and demand of the husband to make him happy. There iThis is a complex solution , and who were regarded as nearly heretical for admitting that they felt anything at all. You can find verses for it. It is the path of the renunciant, not the life in Christ. Life in Christ has emotion at the very top, because without emotion life is data—facts with no significance. A doctrine that tells a person to amputate that faculty is not offering the abundant life; it is offering a warm salt bath with a cross on the wall.
The liberty in Christ is not permission to do as you please. It is the removal of every filter between you and Him — every prophet, every handbook, every ordinance, every man who stands between and says, “through me.” It is a direct relationship, in which you are responsible for your own thinking and your own obedience, and no one else’s head carries your sin. That is more frightening than the salt bath, and it is the only thing that will make a person grow up.
What church is, then
If the liberty in Christ is the answer, the follow-up is unavoidable: what is church? Because most of what we call church is also a structure someone made up. Paul never said, “Open your hymnals to number 233.” The pulpit, the sermon, the building everyone drives to — the first Christians had none of it. My friend pointed out that they could not even have gathered in crowds: a Jew was not permitted to walk more than a short distance on the Sabbath, so the ordinary gathering must have looked like a neighborhood synagogue — a handful of households, near each other, reading and singing the Psalms. Large assemblies were for the holy days. The house church was the church.
That matches my own experience over the last eighteen months. I grew up with Sunday school and a service, and I got something from it, but nothing comparable to what has happened in a small group where the text is open, everybody speaks, every perspective is on the table, and the thing being studied is immediately applied to somebody’s actual life, like the Bereans, searching the Scriptures to see whether these things are so. It is fellowship. It is edification and challenge and comfort and the sharing of victories and transformations, and I have grown immensely from the fellowship and consideration of idea.
My friend has not been inside a conventional church in a decade. She has been part of small home groups — never more than five families, very relaxed — and, more recently, her church has been phone conversations with other believers who, like her, no longer fit the institution. Conversations exactly like the one that produced this essay. She added one caution from experience: such groups fail when they are assigned. “You all live near each other; meet and be close” does not work. The organic ones — people who were already doing something together and found they had Christ in common — are the ones that last.
That is my dream for the Christos Fellowship: not to grow it, but to duplicate it, so that everyone has his own small group like it, organically formed, with the text open and the floor free. If there is a restoration to be had, that is what it looks like. Not a new prophet, just nurturing a direct relationship with Jesus.
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Of one heart to make Christ King – 1 Chronicles 12:38