In response to my last post an ex-Mormon, Evangelical teenager, Richard, come pretty strong and hard in expressing his reasoning from scripture that Mormons hate God and don’t understand him. He argued specifically that I was blind to the “Real” truth, qouting this scripture:
1 Corinthians 2:14 : But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
Kullervo (in his typical understated manner) responded to Richard and suggested that Richard’s approach was evidence that, according to Christianity, it didn’t seem that his religion was really inspired by The Spirit:
Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance”
Now at this point in my spiritual quest it would be hard to classify me as either a Mormon or a traditional Christian by my partly because of my “lifestyle” and partly because of my eccentric theology but I think the idea that we can find out what is good by examining the fruit. Love, joy, peace, gentleness are things I that I can sink my teeth into. It’s experience rather than abstraction. Something that even atheists may understand. Real proof . . .
QUESTIONS REMAIN
Of course the question is, is this an appropriate way of going about discerning what is of God from either the Mormon or Evangelical (or any other) perspective?
Does lack of these fruits demonstrate a failure to be “fully” Christian?
Do fruits of the Spirit demonstrate a closeness to the Spirit regardless of theology?
If I feel the Spirit and experience its fruits outside of either Mormonism or Evangelical Christianity, maybe even to a greater degree than I have experienced it in those contexts what conclusions can i draw?
LDS & Evangelical Conversations 