Yesterday at the gym I saw something kind of disturbing, and no…it wasn’t a mirror. I was in the cardio area where they have several televisions. One of them had Fox News on and it was in closed captioning mode so you could read what the commentator was saying. They were talking about Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney and his religious beliefs (Romney is a Mormon). I was a little shocked to see the words come across the screen, “… they believe in the Bible and the Book of Mormon which is the other testament of Jesus Christ. Christians believe this is the inerrant word of God.” What??? Did I just read that right???
Like I said, the volume wasn’t on so I didn’t actually hear what was said. Maybe the person typing the close captioning just made a mistake…but then again, maybe it was no mistake. If you ask a person of the Mormon faith, they will gladly tell you that they are Christians. They sound like Christians. They believe Jesus is the son of God and he is the savior of mankind. They look like Christians. Actually, most of them look and live more like Christians, than most Christians. Heck, if you put me in a police line-up with 5 Mormons, and someone had to pick which one of us is not Christian, I’d be in some serious trouble. My prison sentence of course would have to be two years going door to door in a shirt and tie.
There are a LOT of misconceptions and falsehoods believed about the Mormon religion. Hopefully, I can clear some of it up right here. First, the religion was started by a fraud. In 1826, Joseph Smith was charged with being an impostor and brought to trial in New York. He supposedly found some golden plates with a seerstone, which was thought to be a magical device used to help find lost objects. This seerstone was also used by the Smith family on treasure-hunting trips they took. Joseph Smith couldn’t take the golden tablets, which were engraved in “Reformed Egyptian,” but he did copy the characters off of it. This was shown to scholars at Rutgers and Columbia, but those idiots couldn’t make any sense of it. Mormons don’t practice polygamy. They did for almost 50 years, until in 1890 they finally realized, why in the heck would anyone want more than one wife. In his defense, Joseph Smith didn’t want to announce the covenant of plural marriage but he was told by God that he would be punished if he didn’t go public with it. The Mormons got that right a lot quicker than the race issue. For almost 150 years, Blacks were thought to be cursed so the “blessings of the priesthood” were withheld from them. Hmmm…maybe that would be a good curse.
One of the big reasons why Mormons cannot be considered Christians is their beliefs differ from the core beliefs of Christianity. Christians believe in one God. Mormons believe they can become gods. What’s scary is they distort scripture to support this. Where the Bible says “Man is made in the image and likeness of God,” the Mormons take it a step further. Their scripture says “It is possible for man to become like God, to become deified, to become God by grace.” No wonder their religion is growing so rapidly (estimated to reach 285 Million within the next 70 years or so), who wouldn’t want to become a god? In fact, I’ll go on record right now, calling dibs that I get to be the God of Blogs (no tap tap, no black magic- even if you have a seerstone, and no erasies on that one).
Part of the confusion might stem from the Trinity. Christians believe that their are basically three parts of God: God the Father, Jesus, and The Holy Spirit. Although their might be three parts, it is still one God. Mormons believe in the Godhead, that they are three different Gods. I blame Christians for the confusion. We’ve always used the three leafed clover to illustrate the trinity. Their might be three leafs, but it is still only one clover. This might work for the Irish, but how many Irish Mormons do you know? So I’ve taken it on myself, as future God of the Blogs, to explain it so even the non-Irish can understand.
Think of Bill Cosby, Dr. Huxtable, and Fat Albert (yeah…that’s right, Fat Albert of “Hey, hey, heyyyy, it’s Fatttt Albert” fame). Bill Cosby was Fat Albert, but he was still Bill Cosby. He was also Dr. Huxtable, but even then he was still Bill Cosby. Fat Albert was fully a comic character (I’m not even going to dignify that 2004 movie attempt at making him human). Jesus was fully human, yet was still fully God. When Jesus left the earth, he left us the Holy Spirit. When Fat Albert left TV, he was later replaced by Dr. Huxtable. Even as I’m sure the reruns of Dr. Huxtable will be TV Land tonight, Fat Albert, Dr. Huxtable, and Bill Cosby are all one being. Ummm…before I upset just about everyone, I think I better move on.
There is one more interesting thing about the Mormon religion (they prefer to be called Latter Day Saints or LDS by the way) that needs to be explained before I get back to Mitt Romney. Christianity figures the closer you can get to the source, the more accurate it is. Take the Bible for example, their are over 1000 original manuscripts remaining today. Let’s say someone found a “Bible” today that says Jesus used to fly around wearing a cape and wore pajamas with a big S on the middle of his chest. Well, we could look at the manuscript evidence and quickly say, “Uhhh….I don’t think so!” Not so with the Mormon religion. The Mormons believe that because of the “apostasy” of the early church, you cannot rely on the original source. So Mormons are actually opposite of Christians in this regard. They believe the further you get from the original source, the more authentic it is. It doesn’t matter what a written record by someone a lifetime after Jesus says, it matters what the current president of the Mormon Church says. For he is “the living prophet, seer, and revelator to the Church.” If he says Jesus wore the PJ’s with the big S, he wore them.
That is why Mitt Romney is making the news today. What if the “living prophet” has a revelation concerning how Romney should use his power? This isn’t a political blog so you can make up your own mind as to how much you need to be concerned about this. Romney won’t be the last Mormon to run for president and he isn’t the first. Joseph Smith was actually the first Mormon to run for president. He actually announced that he was running for president only about 1.5 years after being arrested for being an accomplice to the attack on the life of the governor of Missouri. And we thought today’s candidates were bad!
Anyway, if this isn’t a political blog, what’s the point of this long-winded post? The point is opportunity…and lots of it! As Romney makes the news, it is going to generate discussion. We are going to have the opportunity to discuss why we don’t feel Mormons are Christians, why we feel that the BIBLE is the word of God, and most importantly we are going to have an open door to talk about the hope we have in Jesus Christ. As we get these opportunities to discuss our faith, we need to remember to do it in love. Throwing spiritual rocks doesn’t help us win anyone to the kingdom of God. Take some time and educate yourself on their beliefs. Better yet, take some time and take a course on Christianity. It might not help you earn a degree, but at least it will give you less time to waste reading blogs that use Fat Albert to explain the Trinity…hey, hey, HEYYYY!
You’re silly.
I’m a Mormon, and damn proud of it.
And amazingly I’m not really offended.
That’s impressive.
Not saying that you were looking to offend me, or any of us for that matter. Maybe you were, maybe you do think we’re crazy. But this was one of the better “trying to prove Mormons are a bunch of crazies” post.
Good on ya’.
And about Mitt Romney answering to the prophet and not to the country, our twelfth article of faith says
“We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”
So there you go.