Every so often, I run into people who are desperate to save me from my poor misunderstanding of scripture. I appreciate their concern, if they are respectful of me…and I dismiss those who just like to ridicule what sounds silly to them.

Take for example the discussion I got into this afternoon. This guy comes to me and expresses his “concern” and asks if he can discuss what he sees as contradictions between mormon theology and the bible. I silently chuckle at this. I gained my testimony by intense study of the gospel interpretations of various churches compared to the writings contained within the bible. And I was given all the anti mormon material they could get their hands on.

It got old pretty fast, but it did force me to really study and learn. So it was all good. Anyway, I came to the conclusion, thanks to all this, that the mormon understanding of the bible was the most comprehensive. One of the many reasons I stayed mormon.

What I found amusing, was the assumption of this particular person that as a mormon, I wasn’t reading the bible, or familiar with it. Unfortunately, many mormons aren’t as familiar with the bible as we could be. Which is probably why this person had this particular additude. Suffice it to say, we soon got into discussing things.

I found it telling that they kept referring to some “article” that apparently discussed seeming “contradictions”, obviously to make a Mormon doubt their theology. They brought up all the typical scriptures that to people in mainstream christianity seem like it should just rock our little theology apart. This person got miffed that I could walk around what seemed like iron clad hits against my faith, with a viable alternate interpretation for the scriptures given. Even if they didn’t agree with the conclusion, they at least realized that as my understanding went, what looked like a contradiction, wasn’t.

And it always comes down to the same thing. Our theology is really about personal responsiblity. To us, the term “God” is a description of a level of responsibility. A description of our relationship with our Heavenly Parents and Jesus Christ. Glory, is again, another term for responsibility. Knowledge of things comes with responsiblity to that knoweldge. And everything we are asked to do, is preparing us for the responsibilities that we will take on in the eternities.

It sometimes makes me sad when people have a problem with that approach to God. They seem to like the master/slave idea or thinking of ourselves as some lowly science experiment. Then they jump all over me for ideas that they haven’t bothered to study or think through. I really don’t have a problem with people disagreeing with our faith. We each have to follow the dictates of our own conscience. But at least disagree with the correct idea. Not some made up thing, some jerk wrote to cause trouble because they don’t like the church.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 31st, 2005 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Church, Life, Stupid Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.