A Mother’s Public Statement: Please Pay Attention to My Son

I need to correct something first because I am a records keeper, and getting the record right matters to me.

My son Tyler was not baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he was eight years old.

He was 25 years old.

He was an adult.

He made that decision himself while he was in Arizona, staying with his grandfather Echo during a period when our family was trying to help one another through an extraordinarily difficult time.

I respect that Tyler had the agency to make that choice.

That is precisely why I have questions now.

Tyler Chose a Covenant

At 25, nobody needed his mother’s permission to baptize him.

Tyler could choose his own religion.

He could choose baptism.

He could choose to make a covenant with our Eternal Father in the name of Jesus Christ.

I believe deeply in that agency.

But an adult baptism also means that Tyler was supposed to understand what he was choosing.

So my question isn’t:

“Why did you baptize my child without my permission?”

That would be the wrong question.

My question is:

What did my adult son understand when you baptized him?

What was Tyler taught?

What questions did he ask?

What did he believe Jesus Christ meant?

What did he understand about Heavenly Father?

What did he understand about prophets?

What did he understand about revelation?

What did he understand about taking upon himself the name of Christ?

And what did the people teaching him understand Tyler to be saying back to them?

Because I Never Taught Tyler That He Was Jesus Christ

I need this distinction on the public record.

I don’t teach my children about our Eternal Father.

I don’t teach them about Jesus Christ.

I lead by the example to be LIKE Jesus as our Eternal Brother (a love I see most like my Eternal Father, John Kirton), the one whose example I seek to follow and whose name matters profoundly to my faith.

But I did teach Tyler that Tyler was free to believe as he chooses.

There is an enormous difference between:

“I want to become like Jesus Christ.”

and

“I am Jesus Christ.”

There is a difference between receiving inspiration and believing oneself to possess a unique divine identity.

There is a difference between following a prophet and declaring oneself a prophet, priest or king.

And when I look at what my son is publishing today, those boundaries concern me.

Where Is the Book of Mormon in All of This?

This question keeps bringing me back to the beginning.

Tyler joined a church whose foundational scripture includes the Book of Mormon.

So where is Tyler’s comprehension of that book?

Has he actually sat with Nephi?

Has he understood King Benjamin?

Alma?

Christ’s ministry among the people in 3 Nephi?

Mormon?

Moroni?

Has he learned what those witnesses were trying to communicate about Jesus Christ, rather than simply collecting religious words and fitting them around his own identity?

Because I don’t want Tyler merely carrying the vocabulary of my faith.

I want him to comprehend what he chose.

And if someone baptized my 25-year-old son after teaching him the restored gospel, I believe it is fair for his mother to ask:

What did you teach him, and what did he demonstrate that he understood?

This Is Also a Mental-Health Question

I am not asking bishops to practice psychiatry.

I am not asking psychiatrists to settle theology.

Those are different responsibilities.

I am asking everyone involved with Tyler to recognize when those worlds begin colliding inside one human being.

When someone begins making extraordinary claims about being Jesus Christ, possessing unique divine identities or holding extraordinary spiritual authority, there is a question that needs to be asked:

Is this theology, metaphor, personal expression—or is this person experiencing something that requires professional mental-health attention?

That question cannot be answered by mocking him.

It cannot be answered by automatically validating everything he says because he puts God’s name around it.

And it cannot be answered by declaring every spiritual thought a psychiatric symptom.

Someone has to actually listen.

I Want a Timeline

I have spent years keeping records because records allow us to stop arguing from memory.

So let’s establish the record.

Who was Tyler before his conversion?

What was happening in his life when he encountered the missionaries?

What was he taught?

When was he baptized?

What did he believe immediately afterward?

When did Stephanie enter the story?

When did his language about Jesus Christ change?

When did prophet, priest, king, Satan, Elohim and other religious identities begin appearing in his writings?

What did Tyler’s website say then?

What does it say now?

Those questions are answerable.

There are websites.

There are archived pages.

There are screenshots.

There are dates.

There are people who knew him.

There are records.

Look at them together.

To the Leadership of the Church

I am not asking the Presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to diagnose my son.

I am asking the institution Tyler voluntarily joined to take seriously what happened to one of the people it baptized, confirmed and gifted the Power of the Holy Ghost to.

Your missionaries taught him.

Someone “Bishop Webb” interviewed him.

Someone baptized him.

Someone confirmed him.

A membership record was created.

A ward received him.

So help me understand the religious part of this history.

What was Tyler supposed to have understood before baptism?

What responsibility does a covenant community have afterward?

And when a member begins publicly using the identity and authority of Jesus Christ in ways that may be radically different from what the Church actually teaches, who sits down with that person and asks:

“Tyler, what do you believe this means?”

To His Doctors and Authorities

Please don’t debate his theology.

Please investigate the person.

Look at Tyler across time.

Talk to people who knew him before these beliefs appeared.

Read what he wrote before.

Read what he writes now.

Determine which beliefs are longstanding religious convictions and which represent changes in identity, thought, behavior or functioning.

And please communicate with one another where Tyler permits it or where the law otherwise allows it.

A website alone cannot diagnose a human being.

A mother alone cannot diagnose him either.

But dramatic changes deserve attention.

And to Tyler

Ty, I am not asking anybody to take your agency away because you believe differently than I do.

You were 25.

You chose your baptism.

That was yours to choose.

Your conscience remains yours.

But because I respect your choice, I also want you to understand the choice you made.

Read the Book of Mormon.

Challenge it if you need to.

Question it.

Question me.

Question missionaries.

Question bishops.

Question your doctors.

But also question yourself.

That’s part of agency too.

You do not have to become me.

You don’t have to practice my faith exactly as I practice it.

You don’t have to accept somebody else’s interpretation simply because they carry authority.

But please learn to distinguish between wanting to follow Jesus Christ and believing that you are Jesus Christ.

Those are not the same claim.

My Demand Is Actually Very Simple

I want everyone to stop examining isolated pieces of Tyler.

I want his spiritual history examined alongside his mental-health history.

I want his old writings compared with his new writings.

I want facts separated from interpretations.

I want his agency respected without every extraordinary claim automatically being affirmed as reality.

I want religious leaders to handle religion.

I want qualified clinicians to handle mental health.

I want authorities to handle the responsibilities that belong to them.

And I want all of them to remember the same thing:

His name is Tyler.

Before he became somebody’s convert, patient, case, website, diagnosis, theological argument or problem to solve, he was—and remains—a human being.

He is my son.

I cannot choose his covenant for him.

I cannot choose his beliefs for him.

I cannot choose recovery for him.

But I can keep the record.

I can ask questions.

I can insist that facts matter.

And I can continue asking the people who have exercised authority in his life to do something very basic:

Please pay attention to the whole person.

That is what I am asking for my son.