Senate Mormonism

I apologize for asking all of those questions at once. This is simply a current subject for me, as I have been talking to Mormons the past few weeks, as well as reading about Mormonism...and reading the book of Mormon. Since the Mormon missionaries have not come back again, I figured that I could ask some questions on here.

I'm willing to be patient and let you answer all of this when you have time. I don't expect you to address all of my questions all at once.

I tried reading the thread from the beginning, but I stopped around page 20 or so. It was just too much to read. If I feel like reading more of the thread, I'll pick up where I left off...it was just too much to read all at once.

I promise you that I'm not going to copy from "anti-mormon" websites.

I apologize if what I said was too antagonistic. I just have a lot of questions for how Mormons understand their doctrine, and how it might fit in with what the Bible teaches. I'm just saying that to me, it seems to contradict the Bible...but I would be curious to see how a Mormon might respond to some of the things I brought up.

I'm prepared to agree to disagree with you....but I also would like to hear your opinion on the stuff I asked.

I intend no disrespect towards you or any other Mormon. I also do not mean to be a troll. I apologize if I have offended you with my questions....I suppose I tend to shoot bullets at people without meaning to. These are genuine questions that I have about Mormons and your beliefs. If my questions are not appropriate for this thread, then I apologize. I can be quiet.

 

Second tangent:

Congrats!

 

You didn't offend with your questions. That was more of a pre-emptive post. If you read through the entire thread, you'll see that there have been many times that people have popped into this thread to "just ask a few questions", and then went on to demonstrate the sort of attitude that I was just warning against.

Quite frankly, many of us have wasted quite a bit of time in this thread with people who posted here in bad faith. I just wanted to reiterate some of the expectations in this thread up front in order to avoid any possible problems down the road.

Kimball Kinnison

 

My wife and kids and I all went to a carols by candlelight the other night. Interestingly, it was held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Sydney Temple which is just around the corner from my house. It was a good night, the kids loved all of the lights and the candles and the nativity scene which the LDS church assembles every year.

One question: there were heaps of young, clean cut American kids who were all on some kind of a 'mission'. Does everyone have to do this and do you get to decide where to go?

 

If you think that one's impressive, you should see what they do at the DC temple each year. I understand the lights at Temple Square (in Salt Lake) are also quite impressive.

It is requested that every young man serve a mission, but it is not required. Young women are also allowed to serve missions (although they are not asked to). I was the first person in my immediate family to serve (my father joined the Church when he was engaged to my mother, and my brother chose not to serve at the time).

Men can serve a 2-year mission at any time between turning 19 and turning 25 (IIRC). Women can serve an 18-month mission starting when they turn 21, and there is no upper age limit for them.

You don't get to pick where you go, nor what language you will speak. You submit paperwork to Salt Lake (including medical information, language background, and a variety of other factors), and then go through a series of worthiness interviews with your Bishop and Stake President. Then, you sit back and wait, and generally receive your mission call about 6-8 weeks later. I served in the Nevada Las Vegas West mission. My wife served in the Orlando Florida mission. I know Espaldapalabras served somewhere in the Dominican Republic (but I'm not sure which of the three missions there he was in).

Personally, I literally went through hell on my mission. It was one of the two hardest times in my life. (The other being my divorce.) At the same time, it is also one of the happiest times of my life. I had the opportunity to make a difference in quite a few lives, and I witnessed miracles happen. The experiences I had have had a profound and lasting influence on my life.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I was in the west, which is mostly desert and has a grand total of one resort. The north and east have hundreds.

Mine was very hard at times, but I grew a lot and was lucky to go to a place where the people were so nice and friendly (and lapsed Catholics). Sure the constant brownouts and lack of running water for days made life a little difficult, but it was worth it. My dad went to Chile, my mom to California, my brother to New Mexico, my cousin just got back from South Africa, and his brothers went to Japan and Croatia. My friend even was in Melbourne I believe. I even have an ancestor that went to India in 1853 and was with the first group of missionaries to circle the globe.

 

I served in So Cal on my mission. It was certainly tough but overall I have very fond memories of those two years.

 

So what do you do for food, money and accomodations whilst you are on mission? Do get any vacation time?

 

Basically you save up money growing up, have help from your family, and in some circumstances when that's not enough, you get help from the church to pay for it all. Many LDS members contribute money to the missionary fund in addition to whatever else they contribue to the tithing fund and that helps pay for missionaries that come from poorer circumstances.

As for accomodations, at least in my case, we rented places to live in.

With vacations, you basically get one day off per week to do things like laundrey, shopping, or whatever else you want as long as it's within mission rules. Other than that, nope. Serving a mission is basically putting your life on hold for a couple years and dedicating everything to the Lord. Since serving a mission is completely voluntary (although highly encouraged), it's rare to hear any complaints about the work load and schedule.

 

Also they are a bunch of 19-22 year old guys, and you and the person you are assigned with are out on your own most of the time, so there are guidelines and rules but in the end it is primarily your self motivation that determines your work load. I'm just glad I didn't have to really knock on doors all day, we just walked down the street and talked to whoever was outside. Of course it helped they didn't have power half the time or air conditioning, so everyone sits just outside their house or the corner store all day.

 

I knocked on a lot of doors on my mission. The funny thing is the Jehova Witnesses would knock on doors in the same areas in which I served and it caused issues on more than one occasion.

I remember on one particular day my missionary companion and I parked our car on a street and were getting ready to start knocking on doors when we saw some Jehova Witnesses finish knocking on the last door down the street and move on to the next neighborhood. Yeah, after having two doors slammed in our faces along with some ranting about how we had already beem there just a few minutes ago, we decided to pack it up and move to another street across town.

 

Isn't knocking on doors dangerous? What is the protocol if you are invited in? I had some Mormon door knockers years ago and I invited them in for a glass of water and a chat. They were nice kids, very polite and direct about their beliefs. After they had gone, I wondered about their security.

 

I have never heard of anything happening to anyone inside someone's house. Security in your own apartment pr in the dark streets was a much bigger concern. I knew of 4 missionaries who lived in the same ghetto as I did who had a group of theives break steel lock at night and force them into the bathroom while they took everything. And the only time I felt in any real danger was during the street riots because of power outages, one of my apartments overlooked the central meeting point of the rioters, and they burned a car down right in front of us. And in those cases they left us alone, but you had to make sure you didn't get stuck in the crossfire of stones and rubber bullets. We didn't really follow the rule so much, but you weren't supposed to go into houses unless there was a member of the same sex there. But there the danger is false accusations more than any danger to your physical security. Usually they report it in the Utah news if something happens to a missionary, and the only murder I can think of was where the kid was killed in the street by some gang member.

Of course each place is different, the other day I was talking to somebody who went to Alabama and they'd get guns pulled on them and dogs.

 

I'm re-posting this from the thread in the JCC because I am very interested in the answer as well.

 

The very simple answer is that we believe that we are all children of God and, like all children, have the potential to grow up and become like our parents.

You can find references to this potential throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. For example:

However, probably my favorite scripture on this subject is also the clearest:

This can also be found in Christ's command in the Sermon on the Mount when he commanded, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (see Matthew 5:48).

We take these scriptures (and several others) quite literally. God is the father of our spirits, and we have a divine potential. In fact, one of our most common terms for God is "Heavenly Father". To use, that's not just a metaphorical title, but a very literal and real relationship with God.

Can we ever equal God? No, because everything that we do adds to God's glory, and so we can never match Him. However, we can become like Him, and we believe that He has prepared a plan for us so that we can do that.

I really don't see how it's all that radical of a concept. It's right there in the scriptures in a fairly plain manner.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Eastern Orthodox Christianity has a somewhat similar view, I believe they call it Theosis? That's close to how I understood when I read through the related sections on their wikipedia article a few months ago, anyways.

As one Pope described the differences, the Catholic Church is like the right lung and the Orthodox Church like the left lung, one may be more scholastic with greater emphasis on Faith/Reason while the other is more mystical with greater emphasis on Intuition/Experience, but you need both "lungs" to have a healthy Christianity. (not sure how Protestantism, Anglicanism, and the rest fit into that, but it's an interesting way to look at it, I think).

Is Mormonism closer to Orthodox Christianity than Protestantism, then? Do you know a lot about the Orthodox views?

 

I am more familiar with the Catholic Church than any of the Orthodox ones, largely because when I was younger we had the daughter of a family friend living with us for a couple of years while she attended college, and we had a lot of good discussions comparing Mormon and Catholic beliefs.

My understanding of the Orthodox churches is more historical in nature than doctrinal, so I really couldn't say how much closer their doctrine might be. If there's anyone around who could help compare and contrast, I would appreciate it.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Theosis... hmmm, that sounds like a great idea for a Dan Brown novel.

Oh...wait...!

 

Good old Dan Brown. He should inspire hope in all mediocre would be authors with no original ideas for a story.

It is puzzling why other christian denominations claim that the LDS Church is not a branch of christianity. You seem to follow the core teachings of Christ even if you may depart from other doctrines concerning the nature of Jesus, ie, the whole Trinitarian concept. I don't really see how that matters. To the extent that you believe that Jesus is the son of God, died for the sins of humanity,was resurrected and you achieve redemption through Christ, then you are a Christian. To paraphrase the great Elizabeth I "We both believe in Almight God. The rest is a dispute about trifles".

 

Question I've been wondering... I know that LDS views include that the Bible is considered to be true only insomuch as it's been translated correctly, but is there an official stance on which things are or are not translated correctly or is that left up to individuals to decide, or is that simply treated as not entirely knowable?

 

The same reason lots of Protestants say things like, "I'm not Catholic; I'm Christian." It's an ass move attempting to claim ownership of the title.

Yes, there's a certain amount of logic to it, considering that nearly every Christian sect believes itself to be the only one that really gets it right and thus the only one that's "really" Christian, but of course everyday discourse is only confused by that, because "Christian" is the only apt umbrella term we have for this group of faiths. It's similar to how people conflate religious "Jewish" with racial "Jewish" and falsely label criticisms of religious Judaism "anti-Semitic".

More than that, though, it's just bigotry. Catholicism is too old, Mormonism is too new. It's kind of like a TNG fanboy who dismisses TOS and hates the new movie because it's not the stuff he grew up with.

 

Short answer: What contradicts true doctrine isn't translated correctly. There are the Joseph Smith translations where he re-wrote specific passages and a few chapters, but it wasn't completed, and wasn't even used until more recently because it had been held by the RLDS (I think) and there was some doubt about the authenticity. But there isn't any definitive completely properly translated Bible, so in the end it is a combination of the passages Joseph received revelation to correct, and the rest you have to rely on the Spirit, we don't know everything that was taken out, and I'm sure other church leaders have discussed certain passages. At least that is how I see it, KK could as usual probably give a better answer.

 

The most danger I ever found myself in was from people's dogs. Typically people who invited us in didn't have any motive other than curiosity about what we were teaching or they wanted to have a debate. Violence never entered the equation in my experience. Of course that was over a decade ago and these days it might be a different story in places like San Fransico or Laguna Beach.

 

I only met one dog in the entire Dominican Republic that I had reason to be scared of. Every other one had been abused so much there was no danger, there was just one dog that lived down the street from our Zone Leaders that was a huge furry dog that would bark nonstop as white missionaries would pass by, and I think may have bitten some. The rest were closer to giant rats that would roam the streets in packs eating trash, who would regularly be missing limbs and almost all had almost all the hair eaten by parasites. You wouldn't want to pet them with a 10 foot poll.

I actually think the humane thing to do would be to go around and just shoot them all to put them out of their misery.

 

Most of it is left up to personal revelation to direct the individual.

An example of this can be found in D&C 91. When Joseph Smith was preparing what is now known as the "Joseph Smith Translation" he reached the writings known as the Apocrypha and inquired about whether he should translate those writings as well. Section 91 was the answer he received:

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you concerning the Apocrypha?There are many things contained therein that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly;
2 There are many things contained therein that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.
3 Verily, I say unto you, that it is not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.
4 Therefore, whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth;
5 And whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom;
6 And whoso receiveth not by the Spirit, cannot be benefited. Therefore it is not needful that it should be translated. Amen.

For consistency's sake, the Church uses an official translation of the Bible for Church publications and so forth, but it doesn't prohibit the use of other editions by members. (For example, the Church uses the King James Version in English, and the Reina Valera version in Spanish, but I have sat in classes in Sunday School that drew upon everything from the NIV to the German Luther Bible. I personally own three or four different translations of the Bible.)

Ultimately, it is the Spirit that teaches us, not the actual book or translation that we read. You can be taught by the Spirit no matter which translation you are using.

Kimball Kinnison