I'm interested in truth & what it means for individuals & humanity. This re-vamped blog is dedicated to truth and honest questions about faith in Jesus Christ. It is an effort to engage in authentic dialogue among Christians, Atheists and all points in between. Posts that do not honor legitimate discussion may be removed at my discretion. That doesn't mean that you can't disagree, but it DOES mean that you can't be a jerk. Welcome to the discussion.
I've changed the order of my response to put the most important thing I've discovered first, and what is more confrontational second. -CL
The most important thing I've learned: As Christians we have to show Mormons and their missionaries love. They will never listen to reason or the truth if they think we don't like them. Humans love to argue and prove each other wrong. If war (of words or anything else) is the first avenue we take with Mormons or Muslims, we will never "win" and most likely just make them think Christians are butt-heads. Which we are at times, unfortunately.
But we also have to remember that most Mormons themselves are not inherently evil or bad people. The ones I have known are great people who genuinely want to know God. Most of them are not deceitful and they think they have found truth and life and want to share that, just as Christians want to share. Their commitment to missions is impressive and puts most Christian efforts to shame. (That should also serve as a wake up call for us).
Mormons are as good a people as you can find, but they have been deceived. Our job is to not accept the lies they've been told, but also to reach out to them in LOVE, to dialog with them and pray for them and not retreat into moral, logical or theological "high-ground" where we just talk at or past each other.
So my best advise is: Hold unswervingly to the truth, but do not condescend or insult those who are Mormons (or anybody else for that matter). At first, I'd stay away from reasons to reject it, like the ones I list below, at least until the relationship is good enough to handle a disagreement.
If you don't have the time or energy to get into a discussion on the issue, just politely decline it on the grounds that you value their friendship and don't want to get into sensitive subjects just yet.
Ok, now for the more confrontational components. I have come to a few of discoveries:
1) The Mormon/Latter Day Saints religion is not Christian. They teach polytheism and that we can be just like God. The whole Bible has only and ever taught one God. Furthermore, Satan's lie to Adam and Eve was that they could "be like God." That really gets my attention about the nefarious roots of Mormonism. It's a deception that is designed by hell to mislead people.
2) Mormons/LDS religion teaches salvation by works. You can allegedly only get to the third (best) heaven if you strictly adhere to a scripted list of do's and don'ts. This again shows how blinded Mormons are to the real message of Jesus. The people that Jesus had no patience or compassion for were the Pharisees. And what did Pharisees' teach? Strict adherence to rules as the path to salvation. Hmmmm...
3) Joseph Smith "prophesied" that before his death, he would build a great Mormon temple in Missouri (north of Joplin). That temple was never built and now he's dead. Deuteronomy 18:22 says: "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him."
I actually brought this up with a Mormon, and you know what she told me? "Well that prophesy is 100% accurate because Joseph Smith isn't dead, but a god, and he will return in the future to initiate the new heaven on earth and build that temple." So now it's not Jesus that returns, but Joseph Smith!? Be afraid.
4) There are places in the Bible that speak of false teachers and prophets. The text speaks of demons masquerading as angels of light. And what did Joseph Smith reportedly see (and Muhammed too for that matter)? An angel of light. Hmmmm...
In other places, the Bible says that false prophets will report signs and wonders and lead many astray, they will preach a different gospel and "secretly introduce destructive heresies."
Mormonism fits these passages very well, especially because the most effective lies are the ones that most closely resemble the truth. Real Christians stand to be the biggest losers with Mormonism, because they are the ones most easily taken in by the deceit. Again, this clearly steers my attention to the fact that LDS religion/ Mormonism is especially designed by our enemy to deceive Christians.
What is most frustrating to me about Mormons is that they don't seem to want to ask real questions of their religion and when they do, they settle for superficial and terrible answers. They seem to be taught early on that if they have real faith, they will just accept what they are told and not "be deceived by the craftiness of men." How about the craftiness of Satan?
But anyway, it's a brilliant strategy, but it's not from God and historically has always led to abuses no matter what religion uses it, including Christianity.
One of the best rebuffs I've heard is on the Book of Mormon's subtitle: "Another Testimony of Jesus Christ" My friend Ray P. asked the question: "Why do I need ANOTHER testimony of Jesus? The Jesus of the Bible is more than enough for all of me." In light of the fact that all of our scriptural texts are VERY accurate, we can be confident that God has communicated exactly what he intended to and that any "new revelations" that contradict what the Bible says are bogus, creative productions of humans (or worse).
The following two quotations are verses whose implications I am still trying grasp. How do you think they should impact our understanding of people's involvement and pursuit of non-Christian religions?
-CL
Luke 11:9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. (NRSV)
Acts 17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. (NRSV)
This is a cut and paste from an earlier document I created titles: Why I am not a Mormon / Latter Day Saint (LDS)
Mormonism is a modern religion that is built on a mistruth. While I know some great Mormon people and respect their morals and lifestyle, I feel that I must stand for the truth about the stories they’ve been told by the LDS religion. I will not advocate the mistreatment of anyone ever, but I must also say why I do not believe in Mormonism or the LDS faith because I think it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. Below is a sampling of secular and religious reasons why I find Mormonism uncompelling. If you are a Mormon and you are still reading, I thank you for your patience. I invite you to seriously consider these facts and to dialogue with me. I ask that you pray for the real God to help us both find the truth between us in peace. If we risk nothing, nothing will be gained.
1) The Book of Mormon says that ancient Hebrews were the first to inhabit North America and that the people groups we now refer to as “Native Americans” are the descendants of these Hebrews. This assertion is patently false. DNA has proved that Native Americans are of Asian-Mongoloid descent, not Hebrew. The entire Book of Mormon is built on a mistake.
2) No real archaeologist has found any evidence to support the Book of Mormon’s claims. No ancient Hebrew writings, tools or other artifacts have ever been found on this half of the planet. For contrast, even archaeologists hostile to Christianity acknowledge that ancient Christian and Hebrew artifacts exist in the Middle East.
3) The author of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, has been proven to be a liar. He allegedly “translated” the Mormon’s “Book of Abraham” from papyrus found with mummies from ancient Egypt, but once real Egyptologists were able to examine the same documents in 1967, they discovered that the “Book of Abraham” was really an ancient Egyptian death rites passage dedicated to the pagan gods Anubis & Osiris.
4) The Book of Mormon has been altered over 3,000 times since Smith originally wrote it. According to Smith, the Book of Mormon was “the most perfect book ever written” & that when he was “translating” it, the word would not change until Smith had copied it perfectly. If that was true, then it would not need to be edited. The truth is that because Smith was poorly educated & Mormon theology has changed over time, their group has decided to edit out his “mistakes.”
5) Mormonism teaches that people are saved by what they do (works). This is not Christianity. Jesus himself confronted the religious leaders of his day who taught salvation by obedience to the Law. The Christian Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s gift of grace, not by our earning God’s acceptance (which is impossible on our own). See Acts 15:10-11 & Romans 3:20-26.
6) Mormonism teaches that there are many gods. This is not Christianity. The Bible teaches that there is only one God and that he is unique and above everything else that has ever existed or ever will exist. Even Jesus did not consider himself equal to the Father (Philippians 2:5-6).
7) Upper level Mormonism teaches that people can become like God. This is not Christianity; it is the same lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:4-5).
8) Joseph Smith made predictions that never came true & now are impossible because the people to be involved are now dead. The Bible says that a measure of a true prophet is that what he/she predicts will come true (Deut. 18:21-22). Therefore, Joseph Smith is a false prophet. Reference 1 Peter 2:1-3 & Matthew 24:23-25 for a biblical insight into false prophets.
9) Mormons teach that the Bible is unreliable & has been corrupted. This is also patently false. The Bible is one of the most trustworthy ancient documents known to humanity. There is more evidence for the Bible’s accuracy & consitency than the ancient works of Homer’s Illiad & his Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, Herodotus’ Histories and Tacitus’ Annals. Few, if anyone, questions those works' authenticity. Additionally, unlike the Book of Mormon, written by one man, the Bible was written by many authors over several thousand years and it is consistent throughout. Interestingly, Joseph Smith is the one who has corrupted the Bible by rewriting a Mormon version in which he added sections to give greater credibility to Mormonism and deleted passages that disagreed with it.
I invite you to seek for yourself the truth about Mormonism. Don’t just take my word for it.
Elsewhere, my interlocutor, Eric, has posted the following regarding my selection of Christianity over alternative religious system of Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). The original thread is found at:
If your religion is the 'true' or 'correct' one and Mormonism is one of many false ones, there ought to be some key characteristic of your religion which sets it objectively apart, shouldn't there? And I'm not talking about some unverifiable claim of questionable relevance like "Well, Jesus did/did not actually walk around and perform miracles in Israel but did/did not actually walk around in Central America and perform miracles," or "Jesus is better because he was the son of Yahweh" or "Mohammed is better because he ascended directly to heaven," but rather I'm talking about you being able to say something quantitatively superior for your whole paradigm and cosmological view that someone from another religion doesn't have a ready alternative for. When you start in with the "Once we are in heaven, there will be no more opportunities for us to love our neighbors..." that's something a Mormon could easily say, and a Bhuddist could articulate the same general principle by substituting out a couple of words here and there ("kharma" or "reincarnation" for "heaven", or whatever.)
So... the bar I would like to set, (again assuming that you accept the premise, as do I, that Mormonism is a false belief based on the ravings of a half-mad con artist and the subsequent gullibility of millions of people,) is that even if we somehow get past the question of whether there is or is not one or more deities who created us and take an ongoing interest in our existence, but in addition, for your religion to be accepted as true, you have to have at least one major verifiable claim to which Mormonism does not have a ready answer or alternative. Can you name any?
Let us assume for the purposes of argument that I agree that there is one or more supernatural deities out there, and I am desperately trying to figure out which explanation of that diety/dieties is correct. My Mormon neighbor has proposed some pretty good explanations that I'm leaning toward accepting. What is it that you would say to convince me otherwise? What was it, really, that was your "aha!" moment in your studies of Mormonism and other faiths, that made you say "Those other faiths are incorrect and Protestant Christianity is better!"?
Please keep in mind that comments which do not honor the spirit of legitimate dialogue may be removed at any time and without notification. You are free to disagree passionately, but not inappropriately. -CL
I've changed the order of my response to put the most important thing I've discovered first, and what is more confrontational second.
ReplyDelete-CL
The most important thing I've learned:
As Christians we have to show Mormons and their missionaries love. They will never listen to reason or the truth if they think we don't like them. Humans love to argue and prove each other wrong. If war (of words or anything else) is the first avenue we take with Mormons or Muslims, we will never "win" and most likely just make them think Christians are butt-heads. Which we are at times, unfortunately.
But we also have to remember that most Mormons themselves are not inherently evil or bad people. The ones I have known are great people who genuinely want to know God. Most of them are not deceitful and they think they have found truth and life and want to share that, just as Christians want to share. Their commitment to missions is impressive and puts most Christian efforts to shame. (That should also serve as a wake up call for us).
Mormons are as good a people as you can find, but they have been deceived. Our job is to not accept the lies they've been told, but also to reach out to them in LOVE, to dialog with them and pray for them and not retreat into moral, logical or theological "high-ground" where we just talk at or past each other.
So my best advise is: Hold unswervingly to the truth, but do not condescend or insult those who are Mormons (or anybody else for that matter). At first, I'd stay away from reasons to reject it, like the ones I list below, at least until the relationship is good enough to handle a disagreement.
If you don't have the time or energy to get into a discussion on the issue, just politely decline it on the grounds that you value their friendship and don't want to get into sensitive subjects just yet.
Ok, now for the more confrontational components. I have come to a few of discoveries:
1) The Mormon/Latter Day Saints religion is not Christian. They teach polytheism and that we can be just like God. The whole Bible has only and ever taught one God. Furthermore, Satan's lie to Adam and Eve was that they could "be like God." That really gets my attention about the nefarious roots of Mormonism. It's a deception that is designed by hell to mislead people.
2) Mormons/LDS religion teaches salvation by works. You can allegedly only get to the third (best) heaven if you strictly adhere to a scripted list of do's and don'ts. This again shows how blinded Mormons are to the real message of Jesus. The people that Jesus had no patience or compassion for were the Pharisees. And what did Pharisees' teach? Strict adherence to rules as the path to salvation. Hmmmm...
3) Joseph Smith "prophesied" that before his death, he would build a great Mormon temple in Missouri (north of Joplin). That temple was never built and now he's dead. Deuteronomy 18:22 says: "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him."
I actually brought this up with a Mormon, and you know what she told me? "Well that prophesy is 100% accurate because Joseph Smith isn't dead, but a god, and he will return in the future to initiate the new heaven on earth and build that temple." So now it's not Jesus that returns, but Joseph Smith!? Be afraid.
4) There are places in the Bible that speak of false teachers and prophets. The text speaks of demons masquerading as angels of light. And what did Joseph Smith reportedly see (and Muhammed too for that matter)? An angel of light. Hmmmm...
In other places, the Bible says that false prophets will report signs and wonders and lead many astray, they will preach a different gospel and "secretly introduce destructive heresies."
Mormonism fits these passages very well, especially because the most effective lies are the ones that most closely resemble the truth. Real Christians stand to be the biggest losers with Mormonism, because they are the ones most easily taken in by the deceit. Again, this clearly steers my attention to the fact that LDS religion/ Mormonism is especially designed by our enemy to deceive Christians.
What is most frustrating to me about Mormons is that they don't seem to want to ask real questions of their religion and when they do, they settle for superficial and terrible answers. They seem to be taught early on that if they have real faith, they will just accept what they are told and not "be deceived by the craftiness of men." How about the craftiness of Satan?
But anyway, it's a brilliant strategy, but it's not from God and historically has always led to abuses no matter what religion uses it, including Christianity.
One of the best rebuffs I've heard is on the Book of Mormon's subtitle: "Another Testimony of Jesus Christ" My friend Ray P. asked the question: "Why do I need ANOTHER testimony of Jesus? The Jesus of the Bible is more than enough for all of me."
In light of the fact that all of our scriptural texts are VERY accurate, we can be confident that God has communicated exactly what he intended to and that any "new revelations" that contradict what the Bible says are bogus, creative productions of humans (or worse).
The following two quotations are verses whose implications I am still trying grasp. How do you think they should impact our understanding of people's involvement and pursuit of non-Christian religions?
ReplyDelete-CL
Luke 11:9 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. (NRSV)
Acts 17:26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. (NRSV)
This is a cut and paste from an earlier document I created titles:
ReplyDeleteWhy I am not a Mormon / Latter Day Saint (LDS)
Mormonism is a modern religion that is built on a mistruth. While I know some great Mormon people and respect their morals and lifestyle, I feel that I must stand for the truth about the stories they’ve been told by the LDS religion. I will not advocate the mistreatment of anyone ever, but I must also say why I do not believe in Mormonism or the LDS faith because I think it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. Below is a sampling of secular and religious reasons why I find Mormonism uncompelling. If you are a Mormon and you are still reading, I thank you for your patience. I invite you to seriously consider these facts and to dialogue with me. I ask that you pray for the real God to help us both find the truth between us in peace. If we risk nothing, nothing will be gained.
1) The Book of Mormon says that ancient Hebrews were the first to inhabit North America and that the people groups we now refer to as “Native Americans” are the descendants of these Hebrews. This assertion is patently false. DNA has proved that Native Americans are of Asian-Mongoloid descent, not Hebrew. The entire Book of Mormon is built on a mistake.
2) No real archaeologist has found any evidence to support the Book of Mormon’s claims. No ancient Hebrew writings, tools or other artifacts have ever been found on this half of the planet. For contrast, even archaeologists hostile to Christianity acknowledge that ancient Christian and Hebrew artifacts exist in the Middle East.
3) The author of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, has been proven to be a liar. He allegedly “translated” the Mormon’s “Book of Abraham” from papyrus found with mummies from ancient Egypt, but once real Egyptologists were able to examine the same documents in 1967, they discovered that the “Book of Abraham” was really an ancient Egyptian death rites passage dedicated to the pagan gods Anubis & Osiris.
4) The Book of Mormon has been altered over 3,000 times since Smith originally wrote it.
According to Smith, the Book of Mormon was “the most perfect book ever written” & that when he was “translating” it, the word would not change until Smith had copied it perfectly. If that was true, then it would not need to be edited. The truth is that because Smith was poorly educated & Mormon theology has changed over time, their group has decided to edit out his “mistakes.”
5) Mormonism teaches that people are saved by what they do (works). This is not Christianity. Jesus himself confronted the religious leaders of his day who taught salvation by obedience to the Law. The Christian Bible teaches that we are saved by God’s gift of grace, not by our earning God’s acceptance (which is impossible on our own). See Acts 15:10-11 & Romans 3:20-26.
6) Mormonism teaches that there are many gods. This is not Christianity. The Bible teaches that there is only one God and that he is unique and above everything else that has ever existed or ever will exist. Even Jesus did not consider himself equal to the Father (Philippians 2:5-6).
7) Upper level Mormonism teaches that people can become like God. This is not Christianity; it is the same lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:4-5).
8) Joseph Smith made predictions that never came true & now are impossible because the people to be involved are now dead. The Bible says that a measure of a true prophet is that what he/she predicts will come true (Deut. 18:21-22). Therefore, Joseph Smith is a false prophet. Reference 1 Peter 2:1-3 & Matthew 24:23-25 for a biblical insight into false prophets.
9) Mormons teach that the Bible is unreliable & has been corrupted. This is also patently false. The Bible is one of the most trustworthy ancient documents known to humanity. There is more evidence for the Bible’s accuracy & consitency than the ancient works of Homer’s Illiad & his Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, Herodotus’ Histories and Tacitus’ Annals. Few, if anyone, questions those works' authenticity. Additionally, unlike the Book of Mormon, written by one man, the Bible was written by many authors over several thousand years and it is consistent throughout. Interestingly, Joseph Smith is the one who has corrupted the Bible by rewriting a Mormon version in which he added sections to give greater credibility to Mormonism and deleted passages that disagreed with it.
I invite you to seek for yourself the truth about Mormonism. Don’t just take my word for it.
Helpful Web-Sites:
http://www.exmormon.org/
http://www.mission2mormons.org/
Elsewhere, my interlocutor, Eric, has posted the following regarding my selection of Christianity over alternative religious system of Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
ReplyDeleteThe original thread is found at:
http://thepeakcommunity.blogspot.com/2009/01/christian-motivation-responding-to.html?showComment=1242863742201#c7744103212116424765
If your religion is the 'true' or 'correct' one and Mormonism is one of many false ones, there ought to be some key characteristic of your religion which sets it objectively apart, shouldn't there? And I'm not talking about some unverifiable claim of questionable relevance like "Well, Jesus did/did not actually walk around and perform miracles in Israel but did/did not actually walk around in Central America and perform miracles," or "Jesus is better because he was the son of Yahweh" or "Mohammed is better because he ascended directly to heaven," but rather I'm talking about you being able to say something quantitatively superior for your whole paradigm and cosmological view that someone from another religion doesn't have a ready alternative for. When you start in with the "Once we are in heaven, there will be no more opportunities for us to love our neighbors..." that's something a Mormon could easily say, and a Bhuddist could articulate the same general principle by substituting out a couple of words here and there ("kharma" or "reincarnation" for "heaven", or whatever.)
ReplyDeleteSo... the bar I would like to set, (again assuming that you accept the premise, as do I, that Mormonism is a false belief based on the ravings of a half-mad con artist and the subsequent gullibility of millions of people,) is that even if we somehow get past the question of whether there is or is not one or more deities who created us and take an ongoing interest in our existence, but in addition, for your religion to be accepted as true, you have to have at least one major verifiable claim to which Mormonism does not have a ready answer or alternative. Can you name any?
Let us assume for the purposes of argument that I agree that there is one or more supernatural deities out there, and I am desperately trying to figure out which explanation of that diety/dieties is correct. My Mormon neighbor has proposed some pretty good explanations that I'm leaning toward accepting. What is it that you would say to convince me otherwise? What was it, really, that was your "aha!" moment in your studies of Mormonism and other faiths, that made you say "Those other faiths are incorrect and Protestant Christianity is better!"?