Why I Believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is True, Part One

Dear Readers,

I’m a proud life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, also known as “the LDS Church” or “the Mormon Church.” Now and then I encounter people who think I’m being deceived, or who think that I’m mentally or spiritually mixed up. I’d like to explain myself a little bit. I’d like to counter a few criticisms of the LDS church.

Criticism from Protestants

This section isn’t exhaustive, of course. Protestants’ complaints against the Mormons are infinite. Nevertheless, here's a good start:

On my mission in West Virginia from 2002 - 2004, the criticism of my faith came mostly from Protestants. Except in rare circumstances, I wasn’t offended with their criticism. I was inviting it. I was showing up at their doorstep with a backpack full of LDS pamphlets and a Book of Mormon in my hand.

I would stand on their porches and quote the Bible. The Protestants would object to the Book of Mormon by saying that the last few verses in the Bible say that there shouldn’t be any more scripture. We would counter by referencing Deuteronomy 4:2.

If that didn’t work – and it never worked - we would say that Bible scholars have confirmed that The Revelation of St. John the Divine was recorded prior to many of the other books in the New Testament, so that proves that John was referring to only the Book of Revelation in Revelation 22:18, and not the entire Bible.

If that argument didn’t work – and it never worked - we would add that John couldn’t possibly have been talking about the whole Bible because there was no “whole Bible” in John’s day. The last book in our modern Bible was a letter addressed to “seven churches,” to contemporary Christians, who probably wouldn’t even grasp the concept of a “whole Bible”. So John wouldn’t tell his contemporary Christians not to add to or take away from the “whole Bible”. It wouldn’t make any sense.

But then the Protestants could argue that maybe John would tell the former-day saints about the “whole Bible” because he was looking into the future, and maybe he was simultaneously prophesying about his day and the last days, kind of like the Olivet Discourse refers the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and the destruction of the world in the last days. Or the Protestants could deny that the Bible ever went through a rocky phase where uninspired men declared certain texts to be canonical or apocryphal. They could deny the timeline of the writing and the assembling of the Bible as accepted by current Biblical scholars. I heard Jerry Falwell preach that the Bible as we have it today is exactly the same as it was when God revealed it to ancient prophets. Sure, Falwell conceded, the Bible may have been translated from Hebrew to English, but Falwell assured his congregants that God had his hand on the translation process, and He has ensured that it survived the centuries intact and infallible.

The Protestants might quote the verse that says something like “God is a Spirit, and those that worship him must worship him in Spirit.” This verse would seem to contradict Joseph Smith’s assertion that God has a body of flesh and bones. We LDS missionaries would respond by quoting Exodus 33:11, which seems to say that God does indeed have a body. Or we would use the Bible to show that Jesus was resurrected, and that Doubting Thomas felt the nail prints in Christ’s hands and feet. How could Thomas have seen and felt the Lord’s resurrected body, if Christ was merely a Spirit? Maybe the Protestants could respond to Exodus 33:11 by saying that God normally doesn’t have a body, but if he wants to do a miracle for his own mysterious reasons, he can have a body for a little while. Or they could respond to Exodus 33:11 by quoting Exodus 33:20, which says that no man can see God and live. And then we LDS missionaries could say, “Yeah, the Bible contradicts itself sometimes. That’s why we have modern scripture and modern prophets.”

The Protestants would also say that all you have to do to go to heaven is be saved, by letting Jesus come into your heart, and really the only Bible verse you need to know is John 3:16. But then we LDS missionaries would say, if all you have to do is believe in Christ, then why was Christ baptized? And why does it say that if a man is not “born of water” (i.e. baptized), he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven? And if all you have to do is accept Jesus into your heart, why is it that Christ organized a church with priesthood power? And what’s with all the temple ceremonies and animal sacrifice in the Old Testament? Wouldn’t it seem inconsistent that all those who lived before Jesus’ time had to follow the complicated and extremely strict Law of Moses to receive salvation, and all those who lived after Jesus’ time just had to say, once in their lifetime, “Jesus, I’m a sinner. Come into my heart and save me! Save me by your blood!”

After having many of these Bible-bashing types of conversations with Protestants for two years on my mission, I identified with Joseph Smith, who wrote of his spiritual searching that led to the First Vision: “the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.”

Yes, in my experience, rarely was a religious question settled by appealing to the Bible. But you know, sometimes these Bible-bashing sessions “worked,” depending on what your definition of “worked” is.

But what “worked” more on my mission, what led to more conversions, was the Spirit touching people. What worked more was people taking Moroni’s challenge in Moroni chapter 10, in the Book of Mormon. The people had to humble themselves before God, read the Book of Mormon and pray and ask to know if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true. Then people were really converted. It’s strange the way that works.

Criticism from Secular Humanists

These days, I find myself wanting to counter criticism about the Church that come from secular humanists. And with the term “secular humanists”, I want to include agnostics, lukewarm Christians or the lackluster children of casual Christians. You know, the folks who wear crosses but flaunt their un-Christian lifestyle, like Snooki. I want to respond to the criticisms coming from the enlightened ones of the modern age, the folks who consider themselves “cultural Christians” but not “religious Christians.”

I’m going off on a tangent here, but Christianity has taken a few jabs in the news recently, because Anders Breivik, a so-called Christian right-wing extremist, killed 85 people in Norway.

Did you hear about that? Did you remember that? The news comes and goes so quickly it’s hard to keep track of it all.

I don’t think Breivik’s horrific actions caused any Christians to question their faith, but still, it’s comforting for Christians to know that Breivik did not consider himself a “religious Christian.” The following is copied and pasted from this great article.

Breivik writes in his manifesto that he is not religious, has doubts about God's existence, does not pray, but does assert the primacy of Europe's "Christian culture" as well as his own pagan Nordic culture. ... [He also] affirms: "As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. ... Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I'm not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe."

"As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus," he writes. "Being a Christian can mean many things; That you believe in and want to protect Europe's Christian cultural heritage. ... It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. ... It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation [sic] but rather a Christian 'culturalist' military order."

Over and over again, Breivik goes out of his way to make clear to readers of his manifesto that he is not motivated by Christian faith. "I'm not going to pretend I'm a very religious person, as that would be a lie," he says. "I've always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment.

I hope that people who have followed the recent Oslo massacre story understand that Breivik was not really Christian. The term "Christian" shouldn't merely apply to those belonging to a culture whose dominant religious force has traditionally been Christianity. Being Christian should mean that one believes that Jesus was divine, and that one strives to be like Jesus Christ. My favorite definition of Christian is "a follower of Jesus Christ."

I love that dialogue in the movie Walk the Line when Johnny Cash is trying to sell his Folsom Prison concert idea to a tubby record producer. The producer says, "You're fans are Christian folks. They don't want to see you singing to a bunch of murderers and rapists, trying to cheer them up." Then Johnny Cash says, "Well they aint Christians then." Johnny Cash understood that being Christian meant holding certain beliefs and attitudes. Being Christian was not really a matter of being born into a Christian culture. Johnny Cash understood that Christ visited those in prison, and He dined with publicans and sinners.

OK, end of tangent. It’s people like Breivik (minus the homicidal tendencies) that I want to respond to. I want to explain why the LDS Church is true and and why the LDS Church is good. I want to go after the whole quasi-religious crowd, the agnostic crowd. I want to go after those who deny miracles, who explain away scripture as merely a product of its time and culture, who explain away dreams and visions through psychology, who reduce everything to scientific explanations. I want to go after the folks who just aren't interested. I want to go after the anthropologists.

But… that will have to wait until another day. It’s past my bedtime, and I want to post this, or else it will sit as another ignored Word document in my folder labeled “blog material” for months and months and never get published.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa