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Interview with Sister Roberts and Sister CluffMissionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Ann Arbor, Michigan, January 12, 2001
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I
was in Washington, D. C. for a day, with the afternoon to kill, and I
asked myself: "What have I always wanted to do in
Washington?" The answer came to me immediately: "Visit the
Mormon temple." Every time I had come to Washington, I had
seen its spires from the Beltway, but had never had the opportunity to
investigate more closely. Years ago, a friend had given me a
booklet on the Mormon temples, with beautiful color illustrations of
some of the most historic and grandiose. The ambition,
wealth, and creativity that had been poured into these buildings had
impressed me, and I had been even more struck by the individuality of
their design and the sumptuousness of their interiors.
I drove up Connecticut Avenue
until I crossed the highway, and at the next right turn, a sign
indicating the road to the temple was posted. The road
meandered through a park, the temple came into view, and the road then
turned sharply left up a steep hill. I parked my car in
front of the Visitor's Center, and after finding the temple locked,
decided to visit the Center. As I entered, a tall, elderly
man with a gentle and courteous manner greeted me.
"My name is Elder Bigler," he introduced himself.
"Please excuse my appearance," I apologized, after giving him my
name. I was unshaven and dressed for the road, in blue jeans
and a leather jacket.
Would you like to sit down
and talk?" he asked me, apparently unconcerned with my scruffiness.
"Thank you, I would," I replied.
He conducted me to a
comfortable sitting room and closed the door, giving us complete
privacy. I immediately regretted that I had left my tape
recorder in the car. I told him about my admiration for the
Mormon temples. "All your temples are so unique," I
enthused. "Most Christian churches are built more or less on
the same model."
"Well, we're the only Christian church that builds temples," he replied.
"What the difference between a church and a temple?" I inquired further.
"Temples are used for sacred ordinances of an eternal
nature. For instance, we believe that marriage is
eternal. When a marriage takes place in a temple, we say
that you are sealed in time and in all eternity."
 I
was taken aback by how quickly we had gotten into such a complex
subject. The idea of eternal marriage was totally new to
me. I didn't want to jump into the topic too quickly, so I
steered around it. "And this is not true of a marriage that
takes place in a church?" I asked.
"Not in our
opinion. In a church ceremony, they say: "'Til death do you
part." In such a case, the marriage is only one of
convenience, in this lifetime. It's not a marriage for
eternity. If everything we do is directed toward this life,
then we haven't much faith in the life hereafter."
I thought about this, and it made sense. I could see that
from the Mormon point of view, the normal Christian approach to
marriage would seem debased, materialistic, and even
sacrilegious. "And you believe that you have the power,
within these temples, to seal a marriage for all eternity?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied. "We believe that this power, or
authority, was given to Joseph Smith, and is carried by the prophets
who are his successors."
"Do you believe that there was this power in the early Christian
church, as well?" I wanted to know.
"Yes, of course," he replied. "But we believe that this was
taken away quite early in the history of the Church, with the passing
of the apostles. After that, God's plan was distorted, and
God withdrew His authority. With Joseph Smith, this
authority was restored again."
"So you believe that there was an apostasy?"
"Absolutely," he replied. "The very fact that there are so
many forms of Christianity is evidence that there was an
apostasy. We believe that God's plan is for man to return to
Him. We believe that though Christ's intervention, we will
regain our body throughout eternity."
"So you believe than in the
next world, we will have a body similar to the one we now have?"
"Yes. We believe that the afterlife is a world of
materiality, but glorified materiality."
"You believe that in the next life, we would be able to sit down and
have a conversation, just as we are doing now."
"Yes."
This struck me as radically different from most forms of
Christianity. "How does this compare with the conception
that other Christian groups have of the afterlife?" I wanted to know.
"It varies, because there are
so many Christian churches. But most Christians have much
vaguer notions of the afterlife. They believe that we are
reunited with God, but they don't say much more than that."
I was very intrigued by what
Elder Bigler was telling me, and cursed my lack of a tape
recorder. Forced to scribble down his words in a haphazard
manner, I felt like apologizing again. "I'd like to follow
up on this conversation when I get back home," I told him.
"If you write down your phone
number, I could have someone from our church call you when you get
where you're going," he offered.
"That's very kind of you," I
replied. After giving him the information, I got up, shook
his hand again, and departed with many questions in my mind.
It was only a few days later,
after I had gotten back home, that I got a call from a very young woman
who introduced herself as Sister Roberts. She offered to
meet with me and answer any more questions I might have. It
took a couple more telephone exchanges with Sister Roberts and her
companion, an equally young woman named Sister Cluff, before we
succeeded in setting up an early evening appointment at a community
center connected with the Church. When I arrived, Sister
Roberts first greeted me. She was a college-age girl with a
shy grin, dark hair pulled back tight over her head, and sparkling
eyes. Sister Cluff was the same age, but a little more
authoritative in her manner, with a round, attractive face, and auburn
hair that spilled down to her shoulders. We sat down in a
large, private room, and this time I pulled out my little tape
recorder, telling them how much I had missed it during the previous
interview.
"Do you mind if we start out with a prayer?" Sister Cluff asked.
 "Not
at all," I replied. I closed my eyes, as a normally do in
contemplation, while Sister Cluff said some words of appreciation in a
soft voice. As I did so, I felt the tingle up my spine and
on my shoulders that signified to me the loving touch of Spirit, a
presence that I was used to feeling whenever my attention was receptive
to it.
"Did you feel it, too?" I asked the two girls, once the prayer was over.
"Uh, huh," Sister Cluff
nodded her head energetically in the
affirmative.
"That interests me very
much," I told them. "We're not of the same faith," but we
are both feeling the presence of Spirit in each other's
company. Did it feel the same to you as it did to me?"
"Probably," she
replied. "Those are feelings of the Holy
Ghost. We feel peace, joy, happiness, calm."
"You feel something entering your heart?"
"Yes. A lot of
people feel a touch of emotion. It's different for everyone,
I think. It's our Heavenly Father letting us know that He is
there, and He is hearing our prayers, and answering our
prayers. It's a great way to bring Spirit into any
situation."
I fumbled around with my
notes, not sure where to go from this point. I filled them
in on my talk with Elder Bigler in Washington, and came back to the
subject of what he called ordinances that are sealed for
eternity. I asked Sister Cluff what that meant, in her
opinion.
"Personally, I think it makes
sense," she replied. "We come down here, and our Heavenly
Father knows that we're going to come down here, and we're going to
love our families. People would give their lives for their
children. And I think I would give up my life for my
parents. I love them very dearly. They mean very
much to me. And to have that just end at death doesn't seem
very merciful. To me, it makes sense that our Heavenly
Father would allow our very sacred and wonderful relationships last
forever, and not just while we're here."
"What about someone who has
been married, but is not a Mormon, and who has not had his or her
marriage sealed for eternity? What happens to someone like
that in the afterlife?" I asked.
"That's a very good
question," Sister Roberts replied. "I think that, in the
end, it will all work out for everyone. Among the things we
also do in the temples are baptisms for the dead."
"And these would be for people in your family who had already passed over?"
"Well, that's where genealogy
comes in," Sister Roberts explained. "People can look up
their family members. That's where the names come
from. And people from the church then do these ordinances
for them."
"We basically do it in their names," Sister Cluff chimed
in. "They have the opportunity to accept the baptism or not
accept it. And that's why there's a lot of emphasis in our
church on doing temple work, so that everybody has that opportunity."
"I'm still trying to imagine
what happens to people that don't have that opportunity in this
lifetime," I said. "If they were never married, for
instance, is their afterlife spent in seeking for a partner that they
didn't have in this life?"
"We also believe that after
we die, we go to the Spirit world and continue to learn about the plan
of our Heavenly Father," Sister Roberts explained. "That's
where there are other missionaries, people like us, who teach people
the Gospel."
"So you believe that a person
who had his or her marriage sealed for eternity in this life would have
the same marriage partner in the next, but someone did not have that
opportunity in this life would still be working on that in the next
life. And the next life is one in which we're still working
to understand God's plan, just as were doing in this
life. Is that correct?"
"Yes," Sister Roberts agreed.
"To me, spirituality has a
lot to do with a concern with the afterlife," I
continued. "Of course, it also has a lot to do with how you
live your life here and now, but I think that if you have some idea or
expectation of the afterlife, that it will change how you deal with the
here and now. If, after we pass from this life, we go to a
world in which we're still working to learn God's plan, then there must
be prophets and teachers that are helping to give people God's word and
an understanding of God's plan in that world, as well."
"I think our spirits will be
the same, and therefore the prophets and teachers we have had on earth
will also be the same," Sister Roberts declared. "When we
die, our bodies go to the grave, and our spirits go to the Spirit
world. So we're the same person, the same spirit, and
whatever we learn here, we'll bring with us."
 "The
knowledge that we've gained in this life, that we've taken the time to
learn for ourselves, we'll be able to take with us in the next," Sister
Cluff supported her.
"And if the next life is
still a place of learning, then there have to be teachers in that life,
as well," I offered.
"Yes. I think so," they both agreed.
"We believe that we have
lived before we were born," Sister Roberts said. "That was
in the pre-mortal life. We don't remember anything about it,
because if we did, we would have no reason to be here."
"And do you believe that
where we lived before we were born is the place that we're going to
live after we pass on, or is it a different place?" I
inquired. "In other words, is salvation a matter of
returning to where we came from?"
"It's a returning back to the
presence of our Father in Heaven," Sister Cluff replied. So
I would imagine that in some ways it's the same."
"When you say that we've
lived before," I persisted in my questioning, "is the life that we had
before conceived of as a life of having been a life of greater wisdom
and greater freedom than we have now, or lesser wisdom and lesser
freedom than we have now?"
Sister Roberts and Sister
Cluff were smiling and shaking their heads and my barrage of
questions. "That's a good question," they replied, laughing
simultaneously.
"To be honest, I don't think I've ever been asked that," Sister Cluff admitted.
"I'm a strange one," I
started to apologize. "It comes from living in a college
town. But I'm not expecting that you're going to have all
the answers." I appreciated their directness and
honesty. The fact that they admitted they didn't know the
answers to all my questions was a very positive quality, in my
view. They didn't try to pretend to be anyone other than who
they were.
"Elder Bigler told me to ask
about the Plan of Salvation," I said, as I picked up the thread of my
thoughts.
"The main thing about the
Plan of Salvation," Sister Roberts responded, "is that there are so
many things that we can do to attain salvation. We have our
faith in Jesus Christ, and that's the most important
thing. But we can also return to our Father in Heaven by
repenting for anything that we have done wrong. That's the
neat thing about the plan of our Heavenly Father, that he has made a
way for us to return to Him."
"What do you think is the
most crucial determinant for achieving salvation?" I
asked.
"Definitely our Savior Jesus Christ," they both replied. "We
have to accept Him as our savior. Without Him there would be
no way to repent," Sister Cluff added.
"At the very beginning of our
conversation, we were talking about feeling the presence of Spirit, or
the Holy Ghost. How does that experience compare to your
relationship with Jesus?" I wanted to know.
"One of the missions of the
Holy Ghost," Sister Cluff replied, "is to testify to the mission of
Jesus Christ. So I think they work hand in hand."
"When we did the prayer
together, and felt the presence of Spirit, is that closeness to Spirit,
for you, the evidence of your relationship with Jesus Christ?"
"Yes, they answered.
I wanted to ask them a few
more personal questions. "I assume you're both from Mormon
backgrounds. Is that right?" I queried.
"Yes," Sister Cluff
replied. "I know that a lot of people think that we've been
brainwashed, because we've been raised in it."
"Most everybody is raised in
some religion," I commented. "And by and large, most people
stick with the religion in which they've been raised. It's
not always the case. Some people do change
religions. But a high percentage of people stay in their own
religion."
 "I
think each person has to have their own conversion story, in way,"
Sister Cluff commented. "There comes a time in your life
when you can no longer depend on what your parents have always said or
what you've been taught in church."
"So even for someone who has
grown up in the religion, at some point in life everyone has to be
converted."
"Exactly. Everyone's a convert."
"Can you tell me about your own conversion?"
"It came as a gradual
process, I think," Sister Roberts volunteered. "We have what
we call a testimony. That's where people testify to how
they're feeling and what they believe in. And just from
doing that continually, you learn so much more from other people and
from doing it yourself. Your knowledge grows even stronger
and your testimony grows as you tell each other how you
feel. And my testimony grew very gradually. I had
to learn each step and know for myself what was true and what was not."
I was very impressed with
their responses. "Everything that you've said seems very
reasonable to me," I told them. But even if there were
something you said that didn't seem reasonable, it wouldn't matter to
me, because I feel that Presence, regardless."
"What do you think that
means?" Sister Cluff asked me. "That's a question I have for
you."
"I think it means that Spirit
is much greater than any of us, and greater than any particular
religion. It is with us at any moment, wherever we are, and
regardless of who we encounter."
I asked if we could do
another prayer together, to wind up the interview. This
time, Sister Roberts led the prayer. As she was speaking, I
felt Spirit sweeping over me with a gentle power that brought tears to
my eyes. I emerged from the interlude smiling, dabbing the
corners or my eyes with my knuckles, slightly embarrassed about my
display of emotion. I thanked them for the interview, bid
them good evening, and walked out into the winter evening feeling
refreshed, invigorated, and grateful for having made their acquaintance. |
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Date Submitted:
7/17/01 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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