365 Reasons
Reason # 193: “Doctrines That Are Going Away”
I am a “lurker” on an Internet message board where LDS historians and others speak about “doctrines that are going away” (their words, not mine.)
Q: How can a DOCTRINE go away? A practice, yes. But a definition of God shouldn’t “go away,” right?
Here’s another quote (which I assume is tongue in cheek, but telling):
“Mormons, we used to be peculiar, but ever since 1995 we have been just as normal as you!”
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
Reason #192: Romney’s Candidacy Highlights the Role of LDS Secrecy
”That aspects of the religion of a devout president of the United States should be concealed from all but 2 percent of us may be a legitimate question that merits pondering.” Quote from a provocative article in The New York Times: Everyone is asking this question.
Reason #191: What would a Christian Church have to Change to Become Mormon?
A VERY big unspoken assumption Mormons operate on is that all blessings (except the most general ones of having life itself and “rain on the just and the unjust” and Romans 1:18-20 type things) are only available through the LDS Church organization and priesthood as gatekeepers. I can’t emphasize enough how tied together the idea of eventual reward in heaven, is to membership in the LDS church.
A very insightful question was asked by another ex-Mormon to a Mormon once: “What would my congregation have to change in order to be a Mormon congregation?” The answer is, almost everything they believe about salvation, the identity of God, and what practices are necessary, both in corporate worship and individual lives. LDS believers would demand those kinds of changes.
Of course, leading a moral life would be a commonality, but what most Mormons can’t get through their heads — I couldn’t — is that a moral lifestyle isn’t the point — nor the means — of approval from God. It’s waaaaay down the food chain, because it’s a result, an end of the process.
Want to read a compelling account of how people live Mormonism? See Latter-day Cipher, a novel that gives an insider’s view to the struggles of remaining Mormon.
For more documentation on LDS doctrines, history, and practices, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
Reason #189: A Breakthrough about the Eternal God
It’s been 38 years since I left Mormonism.
For the first time, today, I thanked God for being eternal, infinite and unmeasurable, by time or any other means. For the first time, I am emotionally grateful that God is not the god of Mormonism.
Goodbye, little god.
Reason #189: More about the Eternal God
A Christian friend of mine has an ongoing cyber-discussion with a Mormon. The Mormon recently sent him a chart he’d devised that supposedly contrasted Mormonism to Christianity. I was disheartened, because the Mormon wasn’t honest. He wanted agreement, not definition. Here’s something I wrote to my Christian friend about the correspondence with the Mormon, whom we’ll call George:
I just did an interview yesterday with a Detroit radio station on the Salem network. I talked of the “unbridgeable gap” between LDS and Christian doctrine: that of the identity of God.
(Pardon me if I’m repeating something I told you before, but here goes.) I am always struck by what happened to the Israelites while Moses was on the mountain. They took their jewelry and made a golden calf — and not only worshiped the creation of their own hands and imaginations, but assigned the history of God to this statue. “These are the gods that led us out of Egypt,” they said.
God took this very personally. He did not want His mighty deeds assigned to a fiction. He did not want to be known as a cow.
Or as a former human.
The real crux of difference between Mormonism and the Bible is not practices or soteriologies. It is in the identity of God, and George is not being honest with you about LDS beliefs on this matter. Rather than go through the whole chart, I’ll just give you some insights on what he said.
First of all, did you know that in the LDS mind, the word “eternal” doesn’t refer just to the infinity that is outside time? In Moses 7:35 (Pearl of Great Price), it says that Eternal is one of God’s names, and in the LDS mind, saying that God is eternal doesn’t necessarily mean just that He existed outside of time. In fact, since all of LDS god-ology takes place in some sort of time (sequential history), the LDS god never actually existed (except, perhaps, as pure intelligence) in a non-sequential state that the Bible identifies. (“Before Abraham was, I am.”)
So, George says to you, we agree that God the Father is eternal, and he’s being accurate to what he believes but he doesn’t believe what you believe. And he knows that. And that makes me angry, to be honest.
Secondly, the Bible teaches that God the Father has always been God. LDS doctrine would affirm that He is “eternal” but — the part George skipped over — not always eternal (if that makes any sense at all), because not always God.
What would you add to the conversation?
