re: Mormons & Evangelicals Together - Convicted Civility

[NeuroTypical]

I am going to be honest. I have a huge disdain for so called evangelical Christians.

I'm a big fan of honesty. And to be honest myself, I went a period of time when I didn't really know any, besides the ones who were telling me I was going to hell.

Then I met a few in contexts that didn't focus on religion. The in-laws of some friends were quite nice and respectful. The mom even went so far as to read the BoM. We also did a few semesters of a homeschool co-op with a bunch of Nazarenes. They were excellent people, and truly Christlike for the most part. One or two thought they needed to bring up mormonism, but the other dozen or so were perfectly content just to let us participate in their co-op. We spent one Thanksgiving and Christmas in the home of one lady and her kids, keeping them company while hubby was deployed to Iraq. I wish my kids knew Christ as much as her kids!

I've discovered that not every evangelical believes evangelism means telling people they're wrong.

LM

[Islander]

I am going to be honest. I have a huge disdain for so called evangelical Christians. In my opinion they are neither. Unfortunately, our church tells me that I shouldn't feel this way and while I know it's wrong, I am still working on it.

Through the Church, I have learned to be more accepting and loving towards our Muslim brothers, our Buddhist brothers, our Catholic brothers, but I am just not in a stage in my development where I can be accepting and loving towards by Evangelical br...sorry I can't even call them that.

Anyways, it's good to hear that bridges are being developed and dialogue is ensuing.

You DO love PC, right?

[Maxel]

Okay, so I FINALLY got around to watching it (thanks again for linking it, PC!).

I laughed when Robert Millet talked about his father telling Millet that 'we don't believe in being saved by Grace... because the Baptists do'. I didn't laugh because of the supposed ignorance of Millet's father, but because said ignorance mirrored my own until I actually began to honestly look at Mormon-Evangelical relationships. That was a clear example of attributing erroneous beliefs on the other faith and misunderstanding terms and theological concepts.

I like Johnson's citing of John Stackhouse: "Winning an argument is not as important as winning a friendship." I think that's true.

I really enjoyed watching this- thank you, PC! I like looking at examples like this, pairings of Evangelical/Mormon friendships among learned, faithful members of both religions that strive to find common ground with one another. Like Robinson/Blomberg, I'm hoping Millet and Johnson write some sort of book about Mormon/Evangelical relationships- either on social or theological grounds.

[Rico]

I'm a big fan of honesty. And to be honest myself, I went a period of time when I didn't really know any, besides the ones who were telling me I was going to hell.

Then I met a few in contexts that didn't focus on religion. The in-laws of some friends were quite nice and respectful. The mom even went so far as to read the BoM. We also did a few semesters of a homeschool co-op with a bunch of Nazarenes. They were excellent people, and truly Christlike for the most part. One or two thought they needed to bring up mormonism, but the other dozen or so were perfectly content just to let us participate in their co-op. We spent one Thanksgiving and Christmas in the home of one lady and her kids, keeping them company while hubby was deployed to Iraq. I wish my kids knew Christ as much as her kids!

I've discovered that not every evangelical believes evangelism means telling people they're wrong.

LM[/quote

Therein lies the problem. My family started off as methodist but they did know damage. I can hardly remember it, but I do remember getting water sprinkled on my head at like 5 years old or so. A year or two later my family joined the Adventist church and I can just remember the nice things in Sabbath School for the kids, but not much else. By the time I was 12 or 13, we stopped going to church. We would go back and forth a few times so I definitely related to them and considered myself Adventist.

When I went to college, we had a worker in our university that was a part-time AOG minister. He tried to reach out the kids. He sat down with me and proceeded to tell me all about salvation. It sounded great and I was searching for something. He then asked me about my sins and that I needed to confess them. I sat there thinking about my sins. I was a straight and narrow young man, even by LDS missionary standards. He asked me about pre-marital sex,never. Drugs?never. Drinking? Never Smoking? Never. He kept trying to get me to admit some kind of big sin that was wearing me down. I thought and then said, well sometimes I don't obey my parents that well. That was all that I could think about. I had little sins but I was generally a good kid. What did he tell me? Well, when you are ready to come to the Lord with you sins and confess them, then you can be saved, but right now you can't be. I was shocked and hurt, but I was young and naive and figured that I could earn my salvation by doing bad.

For 15 years I bounced around to different churches. They were all evangelical, protestant churches and the message was always the same. Tell everything bad you did and you can get salvation. At least that's what it seemed to me. I did my fair share of bad things that truly made me a wretched person. Drugs, sex, drinking, sex, you name it, I did it. As warped as it was, I wanted salvation. I was a confused young man who was looking for the direction.

Later, I tried to figure out things myself and read the bible and tried to come to my own conclusions. Unfortunately, I had a lot of questions that no one could answer me. You know what happens in an Evangelical Church when you have questions? They tell you to shut up or worse they tell you not to come again to their church. I realize now why they were like that; many of the questions I had where easily answered by passages in the D&C, Pearl of Great Price and the Book of Mormon. I also heard them make plenty of riled up sermons against that cult called the Mormons.

I made the decision to join the church in 2005. I was looking for some kind of guidance because I really needed it in my life. Let me tell you something, joining the Church is the hardest thing to do. If people had it as difficult as I did then very few would join the church.

Now as I near a year since Baptism and confirmation, I have learned so much about Church. I have learned that we are given rules and it doesn't matter how big or small of a sinner we were before, it only matters that we have repented and are doing our best to follow Heavenly Father. It's a simplistic Gospel. I no longer have all of my unresolved questions about the Bible. When I have a new question about something, instead of being met with anger, people are there to help me guide myself to an answer.

I wish I would have come to the Church when I was 18. I wish that I wouldn't have had 15 years of my life wasted by going to churches that made me feel so wretched inside. My anger and disdain for Evangelicals is only partly because I feel lied to and abused. They were riling against the Church so obviously they knew the truth that the Church offered and they purposely kept it from me and fed me false doctrine. This is what really upsets me. They are perpetuating lies and doing everything they can to keep people from joining the church and trying to get existing members to leave. In my limited view, these evangelicals are doing the work of Satan.

I am asked by some members how I feel when I come across anti-Mormon propaganda on the net. I simply tell them that they need to understand just who is putting out that information and the intended goal. Once you understand that, it's easy to ignore what they have to say. In reality, I feel anger when I come across it. Anger over the lies that people are perpetuating.

I am working on this anger and hopefully it will go away eventually. I know that it is wrong to have these opinions, but I am not perfect. I know that there are more learned people in the Church doing their part and my job is to get my heart right and get rid of the anger.

(And maybe I am bit over the top in calling it anger, I haven't become violently or verbally angry over this yet!)

[AngelLynn]

That sounds horrible Rico. I am so sorry that you went through so much. I've been born into the church and so I cannot fathom all that. I talked to my mom last night, she is a convert. She told me that when she was a girl, the church she went to didn't believe that children were innocent. So all the while when she was a young girl they would tell her she was going to Hell and that she was a sinner. She was a sinner for pulling on her sister's hair, she was a sinner for this... and for that. She had to cut out black hearts because they told her she had a black heart. Needless to say she felt so burdened and worried about all that. But one night she felt something, something that told her that she wasn't a bad person and that she would be okay and a feeling of peace settled around her as a young girl. This was of course before she even knew about the church at all. But I do recognize that some churches can make you feel terrible.