It’s a Mystery

I encourage you to check out this post by my friend Matt on the theological trump card known as “mystery“.

Where does the “mystery card” get played in Mormonism?

A Response from John Dehlin

Since I personally named John Dehlin in a previous post, I thought it only appropriate to direct people to his response. I wrote earlier that I had reservations about some of the expressions of unbelief that are now starting to shape and define Mormonism (or more precisely LDSism).

In this episode of Mormon Stories, John explains the past, present and future of his project. No one should assume John recorded this episode in response to my post, but he speaks to my concerns nonetheless.

Listen here or go to Mormon Stories to listen.

John expresses his desire to not have an agenda for anyone as he moves forward. I don’t know that he can successfully escape it. He still has an agenda, it’s just different now. Instead of informing people about the peculiarities of Mormon history, his agenda is to expand the definition of “Mormonism” and make it more inclusive.

Salvation & Rewards According to Evangelicals

This is a crude diagram that I made in Microsoft Paint which shows how I view evangelical soteriology, especially features which I believe will be of interest to Latter-day Saints:

(Trogdor the Burninator comes from www.HomeStarRunner.com; drawing retrieved here. All the crappy stuff was drawn by me.)

Any questions?

I don’t claim to be an expert on theology, even my own theology. I’m just now enrolled in my first ever theology class which is set to cover Christ, Humankind, Sin and Salvation, but we haven’t gotten to talking about the “salvation” part yet.

Listed below are some of the scriptures from my personal study which have influenced this interpretation. I welcome correction from the other evangelicals.

What happens after we die?

This question is generally a fundamental question for believers and non-believers alike, often both groups are pretty certain about what its going to be like.  I am both unsure of a good answer to this question and very skeptical about those who have sure answers both Mormon and Evangelical.

Instead of going through all of the “orthodox” or “official” ideas on the subject, I think it would be profitable to understand what the readers of this blog believe on the subject and why.  I am primarily interested in the basis for the beliefs and the details behind it.

I think there is actually solid scientific evidence for life after death or the life of a spirit outside the body.

I also have solid belief and spiritual experience evidencing God in my life based on numerous experiences as a fully practicing LDS.

However, despite all this, I am very unclear of what is going to happen when we die.  As far as I can see, all we seem to have is a brief and uncertain view of the afterlife, and there are many interpretations.  I base my own concepts on two primary ideas.

1. God loves us with a love that that is at least similar to what we can understand, e.g. good parental love.
2. God is just according to a concept of justice similar to what we understand.

Frankly, these two concepts cause me to disbelieve a lot of what is said about the afterlife so I would also be interested to know who believes these principles and  how everybody squares their belief in the afterlife with them.

I am also interested in how primal your belief regarding the afterlife is in the foundation of your faith.  Some become Christians out of fear of hell, others become Christians because Jesus is good and touches them and they never develop any fear of hell. Some are strong LDS because they want to go to the Celestial Kingdom- i.e. the best place, and some want to go to the Celestial Kingdom simply as a by-product of their LDS experiences.

For me this could be a helpful exercise for LDS and Evangelicals, and anybody else, to examine their own personal feelings about this issue while getting new perspectives on this very important area of faith.  Or it could just be a good way to kill some time during the day.

I know I am not offering a lot of my own feelings but I am really at a loss to offer any confident opinions.  I appreciate your thoughts in advance, Thanks for sharing!

Eternal Rewards

Eric, a Mormon, poses this question:

When I browsed through the well-known evangelical book The Purpose-Driven Life by the Rev. Rick Warren, I was struck by the following passage near the beginning of the book:

From the Bible we can surmise that God will ask us two crucial questions [before we enter eternity]: First, “What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?” … Second, “What did you do with your life?” What did you do with all that God gave you — all your gifts, talents, opportunities, energy, relationships, and resources? Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them to fulfill God’s purposes for your life? The first question will determine where you spend eternity — with God or separated from God. The second question will determine what you do in eternity — your responsibilities and rewards in heaven.

(Emphasis has been added. You can download without charge the section of the book that includes this passage here.)

My first question for evangelicals is this: Does Warren accurately convey evangelical belief, that there are blessings in heaven based on our earthly works? (Or is my summary misinterpreting his teaching?)

Then I have two follow-up questions:

2. If Warren in wrong, if there are no blessings in heaven based on our works, is what Warren teaching heretical?

3. If Warren is correct, what will be the heavenly “responsibilities and rewards” for what we do on Earth?

On Your Own Terms

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

I’ve listened to a couple of podcast interviews with non-conventional Mormons that have left me uneasy. There’s plenty of debate in the Bloggernacle about the fruit and benefits of the New-Order Mormonism movement and specifically about John Dehlin’s StayLDS site. I’ve largely stayed out of those conversations but I feel like I have something new to add to the conversation.

It’s no mystery that I have serious problems with the teachings of Mormonism. I’d like to see its heretical teachings eroded. I heard someone suggest that termites quietly eating away a building from the inside will bring about destruction much more quickly than locust slamming into the walls from the outside. So in that regard I would assume for myself that I would be quietly cheering on this new movement of liberal and unorthodox Mormons.

But when I hear the dreams and visions of these “Mormons” for the LDS church I find that I don’t really like hearing them call themselves Mormons. Often they’re really humanist or agnostics desperately clinging to keep a Mormon identity all-the-while hating Mormon origins and rejecting virtually everything the LDS church distinctively teaches. There are often things they like about Mormonism, but they are typically things they have adopted into Mormonism not necessarily things unique to Mormonism. They’ve made Mormonism into their own image. They fight tooth and nail to hold on to the Mormonism they’ve made, though it looks nothing like the Mormonism of Thomas Monson.

The thing about being a Mormon on your own terms is that it doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not salty. I could be a Mormon on my own terms. Everyone in the world is a Mormon on their own terms; they just aren’t calling themselves Mormon. The same goes for Christianity, Buddhism and Paganism. The goal of every religion is to fashion its followers’ worldviews into conformity with its teachings. The point is not to transform your religion into your own image.  If you’re not being transformed into the image of your religion, you’re not really “in” it, you’re merely “of” it. You have the wrong kind of taste.

Joanna Brooks of AskMormonGirl.com offers her services for unorthodox Mormon answers. But if she knows her answers are unorthodox, does she have any place in calling them “Mormon”? Can you give answers that don’t conform to your religion’s teachings and still claim those answers belong to your religion? By acknowledging that her answers are unorthodox she does damage to Mormonism by replacing its teachings with a substitute and she does damage to her readers by misleading them about the nature of Mormonism. If she and others like her cannot find another religion it would make much more sense to me if they started a new religion and make an honest claim about representing that religion.

Follow the path of Joseph Smith. If none of the religions represent Heavenly Father, don’t join any of them. Call it “Reformed Mormonism”.  Call it “United Mormonism”. Call it “The Community of Christ”. Just don’t call it Mormonism. There doesn’t seem to be much to lose other than the habit and anguish of banging your head against a wall and the constant rejection of those you say you love.

I am not suggesting that the LDS church should start a purge of such individuals.  There are good theological reasons for the LDS church not to do this.  There are good humanitarian reasons for the LDS church not to do this.  But the example of Zell Miller just doesn’t look comfortable or healthy to me. While I pray for my own reforms within Mormonism I’m not holding my breath.

Why and how does God use believers to save people?

This came up in anther discussion and I thought it deserved separate attention.

Mormons definitely believe that people are an integral part of God’s plan to bring salvation to he world.  He uses us to send the message.

Here is an example of some thinking on this subject from Feast Upon the Word Blog

Evangelicals seem to believe something similar, that faith comes by hearing the word, and that people are there to evangelize.

Romans 10:17- “So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. “

In principal I don’t see any fundamental difference in how we view God’s use of humans in this capacity- people are the vehicles God most often uses to spread the word, with some exceptions.

Of course Mormons believe that people will have a lot longer to spread the word to their brothers and sisters and that everyone will ultimately have the opportunity to hear and accept the gospel. I am not as clear on all the Evangelical Answers to the issues surrounding this.  Although I have listened to this:  from parchment and pen: Fate of the Un-Evangelized

Do we have very similar or radically differing thoughts about how or why God uses people to work salvation? What does this say about our respective God-views?

How Can We Feed You Today?

A look at the modern consumer driven church

Millet and Johnson video

Here’s a video of Robert Millet and Greg Johnson discussing their respective faiths.

A Typical Mormon Sunday

As most Evangelicals don’t get the opportunity to attend Mormon sacrament meetings, Eric suggested I post this in an effort to help non-Mormons gain an insight into a typical Sunday morning service at a Mormon ward house.  I’ve posted plenty of sermons from my own church so I thought it only fair to give this talk some air play.

For those who don’t know, Mormons use lay ministry to perform all of their ministry work at the local level.  On Sunday mornings they perform a Sacrament meeting, where the entire ward meets together to participate in the Lord’s Supper.  In addition, the Bishop invites several members to give a brief talk on a subject that he assigns to them.

This is a video and subject Eric was asked to speak on.

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One of the most well-known sayings of Jesus is from the gospel of Matthew and comes from early in his ministry. Come to me, he told told his disciples, all of you are are labor and are heavy-laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

His message holds true today:

My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

But how many of us really believe that? Or are we like the Pharisees Jesus spoke against, who led a burdensome life always attempting to find salvation in following their strict understanding of the law?

For many of us, it doesn’t seem that the yoke of Jesus is easy, or that the burden is light. It often seems like we always fall short. Whether it’s reading the scriptures or feeding the poor, being kind to our family or merely carrying out the assignments we have been given, it always seems that there is more to do. Instead of checking things off our to-do list, we add to it. Jesus told us to be perfect, and we’re far from it.

But Jesus said:

My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus also said that we should follow him. What does that have to do with a light burden?

To quote Lawrence Corbridge of the Seventy:

We might think we can’t really follow Him because the standard of His life is so astonishingly high as to seem unreachable. We might think it is too hard, too high, too much, beyond our capacity, at least for now.

Probably all of us have felt like that.

So if what we’re supposed to attain seems unreachable, where is the light burden? Elder Corbridge gave us the answer:

In life we learn that the highest achievements in any human endeavor are always the most difficult and, therefore, achievable only by a select few who are most able. The higher the standard, the fewer can reach it.

But that is not the case here because, unlike every other experience in this life, this is not a human endeavor. It is, rather, the work of God. …

No institution, plan, program, or system ever conceived by men has access to the redeeming and transforming power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, while the Lord’s invitation to follow Him is the highest of all, it is also achievable by everyone, not because we are able, but because He is, and because He can make us able too.

The problem that we face is that we are constantly tempted to take up on ourselves the burdens of life by ourselves, trying to find salvation, making it into a human endeavor, depending on our own good works rather than the work that Jesus Christ accomplished for us in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross.

Such efforts are bound to fail. No matter how hard any of us try, we cannot save ourselves. We need everything that God offers us through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Jesus never promised us that our burdens would go away, at least not in this lifetime. But he did promise to lighten them. One way is by giving us strength: As President Henry Eyring recently said:

Increased spiritual strength is a gift from God which He can give when we push in His service to our limits. Through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, our natures can be changed. Then our power to carry burdens can be increased more than enough to compensate for the increased service we will be asked to give.

Similar thoughts were expressed by a former Relief Society president, Chieko Okazaki:

All of us face different family circumstances and home situations. All of us need strength in dealing with them. This strength comes from faith in the Savior’s love and in the power of his atonement. If we trustingly put our hand in the Savior’s, we can claim the promise of the sacramental prayer to always have his Spirit with us. All problems are manageable with that strength, and all other problems are secondary in urgency to maintaining a strong spiritual life.

There’s a good scriptural word for this gift of strength, and that is “grace.” It’s related to mercy, to kindness, to the true love of Christ. Grace is what allowed our Savior to give the gift of the Atonement.

If we look at the scriptural teachings about grace, we can can see that it isn’t up to us to save ourselves, but up to God. God’s grace comes first, and God’s grace does for us what we can’t do for ourselves.

Is a response to grace called for on our part? Definitely. The great prophet Jacob in the Book of Mormon called us to be reconciled to the will of God — because it is only in and through the grace of God that we are saved, and he said that takes place through the power of the Atonement.

The great prophet Nephi also called us to be reconciled to God. After everything we can do, he said, it is by grace we are saved. After everything we can do, we cannot save ourselves, and it is foolish to take upon ourselves that burden. After everything we can do, it is still grace that saves us.

Similar thoughts were echoed by the great apostle Paul some years later. For by grace are you saved through faith, he wrote, not of yourselves, it is a gift of God. Again, we alone don’t have the burden of salvation, of becoming perfect, complete, mature as our Father in heaven is. That burden has been taken over for us through grace, a gift of God.

Unfortunately, there are many followers of Christ in our world who quit quoting Paul at that point. But what did Paul go on to say? He said that the reason we receive grace is because we are God’s workmanship, created to do good works. We receive grace, Paul wrote, so we can do the good works he has given us to do.

As we put our faith in Christ, he works in us to change our will, to change our desires. In the words of Elder Joseph P. Wirthlin:

When we love the Lord, obedience ceases to be a burden. Obedience becomes a delight. When we love the Lord, we seek less for things that benefit us and turn our hearts toward things that will bless and uplift others.

This truth was stated another way recently by President Dieter Uchtdorf:

When we hear the transcendent truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, hope and faith begin to blossom inside of us. The more we fill our hearts and minds with the message of the risen Christ, the greater our desire is to follow Him and live His teachings. This, in turn, causes our faith to grow and allows the light of Christ to illuminate our hearts. As it does, we recognize the imperfections in our lives, and we desire to be cleansed of the depressing burdens of sin.

This is how grace works.

The words of Jesus and the words of the prophets have made clear: As we put our faith in Christ, as we trust him to fulfill the promise of the Atonement, He will give us the strength, will and desire to ease the burdens of life, to be free from the guilt of sin, and to fully love others as He loved us. We’re not promised that life will be easy, but we are promised grace that gives us the strength to deal with what life brings us.

I speak in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, Amen.

There’s No Reforming a Protestant Church

This last week I was talking with a friend who now attends my non-denominational church.  We have a lot in common because we are both pastor’s kids from the same denomination.  He “out-lived” my denominational experience by attending one of its’ private universities and was a youth pastor for a couple of years.  He recently finished seminary and has plans on becoming a pastor again someday.  I asked him if he still considered himself a part of that denomination.

He said “no” and told me a little bit about his reasons.  He went on to say that for awhile he thought of staying on the inside and trying to reform it, but ultimately decided that reform would be too difficult to achieve.

Our conversation moved on to other things, but it occurred to me that reformation rarely happens in Protestant churches.  It doesn’t happen because there are so many other choices. When someone becomes disaffected they just leave and find something that suits them better.  Even leaving and forming an entirely new organization is much easier than reformation.

As I teased out the idea it occurred to me that Christian churches as a whole are rarely reformed.  Ironically most of Luther’s reforms for the Catholic church were achieved.  But only after he and many others left and set up sizable competition.   I haven’t done any research on it, but other than that and the Worldwide Church of God, I can not think of a denomination that was changed by reformers.  There are plenty of examples of denominations moving from point A to point B, but this is usually the work of a long slide rather than a sudden reformation force. Those changes typically occur over a lifetime rather than a decade (or less).

I’m not even sure that reformation has very much success in any religion much less Protestantism. So to all you reformers out there. . . give up.

Ravi Zacharias at the Mormon Tabernacle

In 2004 Ravi Zacharias was allowed to speak in the Mormon Tabernacle. This video includes the entire program from that event including Richard Mouw’s controversial comments.

Probably my favorite line from the sermon was “Once you get to heaven and see Jesus Christ, you won’t care to have any other roommate.”  That so expresses my impression of the banality and baseness I find in the Mormon promise of eternal marriage.

Hellenized Christianity

A charge that some Mormons make against Classic Christianity is that it was Hellenized by Christians either in an effort to make it more acceptable or on accident as a result of doctrinal negligence. The end result was the Council of Nicea which codified and enforced non-Biblical doctrines.

For individuals with that perspective, I’d like to recommend “When Athens Met Jerusalem” by John Mark Reynolds. At first blush this book may appear to reinforce that idea. Instead, I think this book may illuminate how there are Greek influences on Christianity but they only extend to “how we think”, not “what we think.”

You can listen to a brief review of the book here

You can read that same review here.

It’s True

When I was a kid I heard rumors of video of an entire tribe in Papua New Guinea accepting the Gospel message all at the same time and then breaking into a massive celebration that lasted several hours.  I saw a portion of the video several years later.  For some reason it just occurred to me that the video would now be on YouTube and I found it tonight.

This will give you a good idea of an evangelism technique used by New Tribes Missions.  They exclusively seek out tribes which have never heard the message of the Bible.

The Shack

There’s a book sweeping the Evangelical landscape called “The Shack“. I finally got a chance to read the book this Christmas. The book is about a man who encounters all three persons of the Trinity while on a weekend visit to a shack in the woods. Going into my reading of the book I was aware of some controversy surrounding the book which somewhat colored my reading. I had listened to a review of the book which I think did a great job of hearing out the books supporters and detractors.

I heard someone once say that it’s okay to like bad music, it’s just not okay to think it’s good. That’s the way I felt about this book. The author breaks some fundamental rules of fiction and the level of editing the book received highlights how unexpected its’ success was. It’s not a “great” book but I really enjoyed reading it. After I accepted the book’s shortcomings I enjoyed the beautiful way God chooses to interact with the main character and help him walk through pain.

For a Mormon audience I think the book does a great job of showing how Evangelicals think about the ways in which the Trinity acts with one another, what the personalities of each member is like, what Heaven is like and our solution for the problem of pain and suffering. There was nothing in the book that I that I hadn’t heard before, but in a fictional setting the truths come alive in a much more vibrant manner.

After reading the book I think the theological controversies surrounding the book are pathetic. The author presents the story as nothing but fictional. It is not a text book on Systematic Theology.  The author makes sure that God explains why he is representing himself in a human form and why he is limiting himself in one way or the other and all of those reasons play to the story. I don’t think you could seriously walk away from the book convinced that God the Father is a black woman named Eloise.

What Has Changed?

Christianity Today recently asked the question “What was the most significant change in Christianity over the past decade?”

I thought the answers were interesting and insightful. If they had asked me I would have said that the diminishing importance of denominations has been a significant change over the last 10 years. My wife and I arrived in New Orleans 5 days after Hurricane Katrina had done its’ damage. We were blown away by the unity among Christians in that situation. Naturally a crisis is going to cause people to act differently than they normally would, but that was a pinnacle experience for the changing attitudes I’ve seen toward Christian diversity.

What changes have you seen in Christianity? Did any of the responses in the article stick out to you?

Faith & Community

When I appeared in Provo, Utah on January 4, 2001, I did not know a single person in the city.

There were a few girls from my high school somewhere on campus, but they had arrived at BYU at the start of the preceding Fall Semester, had already spent four months laughing it up and flirting with RMs, plus they were living in Heritage Halls, the on-campus apartment-style dormitories. I had been assigned to lowly Deseret Towers, 405 U Hall—and telling people that you live in “U-Haul” is about as pathetic as it sounds. The world my friends had shared with me in high school less than a year ago lay far behind us now and looking me up to welcome me wasn’t really on their agenda. I don’t blame them.

A friend from Salt Lake City whom I had met through LDSChat.com picked me up from the airport. I’d had plenty of offers from Internet acquaintances to help move me in, including a fundamentalist Mormon who had offered to drive up from Manti, but I had gone with Annelise because she seemed like the least creepy option. In hindsight, I probably should have aimed for some Y chromosomes. I had carefully packed as many of my belongings as possible into a set of four overstuffed, candy-apple red suitcases, and they were heavy.

Muslim Followers of Christ?

I just read this article from Christianity Today on Christians who wish to maintain a Muslim identity; “Muslim Followers of Christ?”

The article discusses where the dividing lines seem to fall for those followers of Christ who wish to maintain a Muslim identity and a Muslim practice and those who see Christianity as something separate from Islam.

I hope you get the opportunity to check it out.

Two Ex-Catholics

I have been catching up on some old podcast and I just listened to this interview. Greg Koukl speaks with Chris Castaldo about his recent book “Holy Ground“. The two men are former Catholics and they talk about the recent trend of Evangelicals converting to Catholicism and the much larger trend of Catholics converting to Evangelicalism.

I surprisingly learned quite a bit about Mormonism while listening to this interview. Christian ex-Mormons are often attracted to the Catholic church. Hearing the things that Catholics like about the Catholic church clarified some of the reasons Mormons might like the Catholic church as well.

At the end of the interview Koukl spends some time explaining his concerns about Catholic Inclusivism.

Direct Link for download

An Open Question about Inter-Faith Dialogue

This is a question I had for my friend Aquinas, but I would love other people’s insight as well. How we go about engaging in inter-faith dialogue seems to be as much as an issue as the particulars of our individual beliefs.

In as much as inter-faith dialogue and international diplomacy are related, what are your thoughts on President Reagan insisting that Gorbachev “tear down this wall” and President Obama’s expression of “deep concerns” regarding the Iranian election? Do you think these statements were diplomatically wise? Is there room in inter-faith dialogue for similar confrontations or expressions of deep concern. Do these statements have any value in diplomacy and could they have similar value in inter-faith dialogue.

[please note: this is a question about inter-faith dialogue not politics. I don't moderate heavily but let's please not debate the war in Iraq. Mention it sparingly and in context of inter-faith dialogue if at all. Also, I am not raising this question in an attempt to compare Mormonism to Communism or the current Iranian regime so please don't accuse me of such.]