I served my mission in Chile, a very Catholic country. We did a lot of door knocking, and actually got in to give one or two lessons several times a week. We would teach the family about the First Vision. We would continue through the lessons, and it went well until we got to baptism. They would say they were already baptized, and didn’t need another one. We would try to tell them that theirs was not valid because it was not done with the proper authority. That seldom went over well. We would try several times, but in the end they would not want to get baptized, even though they said they agreed with what we tought them up to that point.

This was happening all over the mission , so the Mission Pres came up with a time saving idea. During the first lesson, we would ask them, that if after teaching them they came to the knowlage that what we were teaching them was true, would they get baptized. A few people would say yes, of course. But way more often than not, they would say no, that even if they know it was true they would not leave the Catholic Church. That was all they knew, it was their family, their culture, and their life.

As an immature 19 year old, I thought this was the craziest thing I had ever heard. They would refuse to get baptized even if they knew it was true!

Now 40 years later, I realize that this was not crazy, but is just human nature. If I went up to a very TBM, and asked them if I could prove the LDS church was not true, would they leave? The answer would be similar to what my Catholic friends in Chile said all those years ago: It is all they know, it is their family, their culture, and their life. They could never leave the LDS faith.

When I was bishop over a decade ago, a member of my ward gave me a copy of Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling. A few weeks after I finished reading it, I asked my Stake President during my monthly PPI if he had read the book. He said his wife gave him a copy and he started reading it, but stopped because he didn’t want to know those things about Joseph Smith. So literally and figuratively he “put it on the self”.

Sometimes the truth is unsettling. Not all truth is useful. Can you handle the truth?