Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Dear Sally - Where Do I Start...! (5 of 7)

 I have been corresponding with a Florida inmate who happens be a Mormon. I starting posting excerpts from my letters with "Dear Sally (Pt. 1)" and it has turned into a temporary obsession of sorts. If you need a bit of an education on Mormon belief, you might find these posts helpful.


Dear Sally:  
     I kept your remarks on the Mormonism article to follow up on. If we both were on the same page about what is the final authority - the Bible or the Book or Mormon - it would be easier to have a conversation. But we aren’t. I simply cannot accept that the BofM is more reliable than the Bible.  If the BofM it has any ring of truth to it, it is only because of what has been directly borrowed from the Bible. 

     There is no virtue in criticizing someone’s belief just for the sake of an argument. If you were raised in a Mormon family, it is only natural that you would have been brought up to believe in the teachings of Joseph Smith.  They are, to Mormons at least, “true doctrine.” I also see that a doctrinal debate between two persons of opposing viewpoints is usually pretty futile. That’s because although our “lingo” is very similar (Mormons even call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS), Christian and Mormon doctrines don’t agree AT ALL on who God is and consequently who Jesus Christ is, for that matter. I do acknowledge, however, that there are many Mormons who sincerely love Jesus Christ. It is tragic to me how badly Joseph Smith has muddied the waters for his followers who truly want to serve the Lord.


     I am doing some reading on LDS.org and Mormon.org and the more I read the more incredulous I become. Joseph Smith claims to have restored the true faith. Yet even a limited examination of his teaching when compared to the Bible reveals not a restored faith, but an entirely new belief system based on a heavy amount of proof-texting from the Bible and his own very fertile imagination.  


    His “plan of salvation” begins with a belief in a pre-mortal existence, that “Heavenly Father” (referred to by me as Mormon-God) had spirit-children with a god-mother, and that everyone’s life began in heaven with God. Mormon-God, that is. Then Mormon-God thinks to himself, “Hmmm...these spirit-kids of mine are not making any spiritual progress up here at all in heaven with me. What they need is some experience. I know! I’ll give ‘em all bodies, starting with Adam and Eve, and I’ll even erase the memories of their pre-mortal lives.  By the time they get through living an earthly life, they’ll have had enough experience with sin, suffering, heartache, and death to really improve a lot!” The following actually appears at Mormon.org:


“If they hadn’t eaten the forbidden fruit, they would have lived like that forever and never had children. Mankind never would have been born or the world populated.”


Apparently, Eve’s good looks and God’s instruction to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:27-28) wasn’t nearly enough. Succumbing to temptation and sin was also a requirement, according to Joseph Smith.  Mormon.org goes on about Adam and Eve:
 

  
“They became mortal—just as we are—subject to sin, disease, all types of suffering, and ultimately death. But it wasn’t all bad because they could now feel great joy. ‘Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.’ (2 Nephi 2:25)”


Wow. What a plan - Adam and Eve fell so I could have joy! Zippity doo DAH! There is so much wrong here, I don't know where to start.


To be continued...

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