I could add to this list. One of our favorite activities at family dinners is to rehearse our annoyances. I know that other Mormons have their own annoyances to add. But in the end the things that irritate me or sometimes even make me angry are irrelevant.
I'm not a Mormon because I like Mormon culture. I take part in Mormon culture, indeed I have come to inhabit it in a particular way, because I am a Mormon. I have faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ as it has been revealed through the prophet Joseph Smith and his successors.
I don't deny that Mormon culture is sometimes unnecessarily strange or off-putting to others. It is equally true that some of what I do and believe is annoying or off-putting to others, Mormon and non. And it isn't always easy for me to know which parts of what I do are merely my conventions and which parts are dictated by my faith.
In the same way, neither is it easy for those of us whose culture is Mormon to know what is merely conventional and what is not. The problem is knotty, requiring patience and love. Yet my trust in the Restoration commits me to continuing participation and engagement in my congregation and the larger community of the Church as a whole.
The consequence is that I love even what annoys me. Like families, church communities require that, even if what I love also needs to be changed. Mormons can drive me crazy. But I wouldn't give up their fellowship because it is through my very human relationships with other Mormons that I best have the relationship with God that my faith requires.
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