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I have Mormon friends here in the South who use to be Evangelicals and they say almost the very same thing about the Evangelical denominations.

BTW, I am really looking for a serious discussion. I use to like to Bible bash, but one day, after I had demolished a father in front of his family and had them all laughing at him, that night, when I knelt to pray, I “heard” a little voice inside my head say “Hey, was it My will that you embarrassed this father in front of his family and then made light of it? Hey, do you think that I gave you scriptures to be used as weapons to destroy the faith of others in Me?”

Ever since then, and that was almost 40 years ago, I have honestly tried to not use God’s word as a weapon to destroy the faith of another in God, even if I thought that faith was wrong.

A good evangelical friend of mine, told me some time ago, and I absolutely agree with what she said, “why is it when Christ asks us to be fishers of men, we rush so quickly to grab a trident instead of the net.”

What I want to do is to find out what others believe, mainstream Christian, Taoist, Muslim, whatever, and why they believe it. It’s not my job to point out the problems I see with their faith, that is God’s job. It’s my job to help them see outside the box they are in.

I have a friend in England, who is a Methodist minister, and she wrote something about three years ago that completely changed my paradigm of Christ and the early Christian church.

I have “non-Mormon internet friends” who are degreed in several languages, and they know the scriptures backward and forwards and they could easily destroy any argument that I could come up with, not because my argument was wrong, but because they knew a 1000 times more than I ever will and they’re 20 years younger than me. It was one of them who told me that it wasn’t his job to destroy the faith I had in Christ, he was simply a tool in God’s hand to show me that I just might be wrong. He has never told me I was wrong. He at least admits that I’m a Christian, well, a heretical Christian anyway.

The article I quoted earlier about the “Gates of Hell,” while I don’t complete agree with me taught me something that I hadn’t considered. That’s awesome.

I even have and read the book “The New Mormon Challenge” by Francis J. Beckwith, Carl Mosser, and Paul Owen. This is a book that the authors wrote to show why they don’t believe what Mormons believe. The reason why I enjoyed reading this book was because they took the emotions out of “attacking the Church” and tried to explain from an academic approach of the errors withing the Mormon church.

Two of them even produced a paper some time ago, that many Evangelical said was a product of Satan, that talked about the problems Evangelicals are having, dealing with the Mormon church and that if the the Evangelical groups that print material about the Mormon church don’t change their tactics, they’re going to lose the battle. Here is a link to the paper - http://www.cephasministry.com/mormon_apologetics_losing_battle.html (Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?)

The article is about what is wrong with Evangelicals or what they believe, the authors are Evangelicals, rather it’s about how Evangelicals need to update their methods of discussing what they see as errors in the Mormon Church. They, more or less, say “It’s not a matter of just fighting the battle, it’s why you want to fight the battle and how you are going to win the battle. If what you are doing is wrong and it’s not helping, then you need to change what you are doing.”

This is what they said in their introduction:

Spiritual warfare is a reality. Battle in the spiritual realm is not fought with guns and tanks in the manner of the world. This is the war of ideas that vie for men’s minds. The Apostle Paul tells us that the weapons we fight with have divine power to demolish such intellectual strongholds. Of Christians he says that, “we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (II Cor. 10:5). However, to tear down arguments entails that one must first know what the arguments are. This paper seeks to describe the scholarly and apologetic arguments of one group which we, as evangelicals, believe inhibit true knowledge of God. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormonism, has, in recent years, produced a substantial body of literature defending their beliefs. This paper does not discuss the full range of defensive and offensive scholarship by Latter-day Saints. Instead, we will focus our discussion upon those disciplines that fall under the broad categories of biblical studies and church history. We choose these two categories because of the importance they play in understanding Christian origins and the nature of early Christianity. Both Mormonism and evangelicalism claim to be the Church which Christ founded. Both claim to be the heirs of New Testament Christianity. Both cannot be correct. It is then appropriate to focus on these disciplines because knowing what the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christians were and whether or not the Church which Christ founded apostatized is the central issue of contention. We realize that what we say will not be welcomed by all, especially by some in the counter-cult movement. Some may criticize us for giving the Mormons too much credit and for being too harsh on our fellow evangelicals. However, much like testifying against a loved one in court, we cannot hide the facts of the matter. In this battle the Mormons are fighting valiantly. And the evangelicals? It appears that we may be losing the battle and not knowing it. But this is a battle we cannot afford to lose. It is our deep hope that this paper will, in some small way, serve to awaken members of the evangelical comnmunity to the important task at hand.

I have been trying to do something similar, I’ve been trying to raise the bar of discussion. Too often I have heard the argument “I’m right and you’re wrong.” “How do you know you’re right?” “Because the Bible tells me so.” And then a bunch of scriptures get thrown up on the screen and a lot of quotes are produced. This isn’t thinking outside of the box in the slightest. It’s usually just parroting back what one has been taught and it happens on both sides.

I want to others to discuss with me what we believe and discuss on a higher plane the differences. Show me why you are right and not why I am wrong.

I apologize once again for a long and very lengthy post. Due to my ADHD, I usually can’t begin to read a post this long unless there are lots of stories in it.

I don’t want to show you that I’m wrong, I want show you that I’m right and I honestly hope for others to have that same attitude.

Sometimes it may seem that I’m asking leading questions, hoping to trap somebody, but like I said in an earlier post, I’m an engineer on a huge project, I’m helping design the new launch system for NASA, if Pres. O doesn’t kill it, and whenever we bring a new person or group onto the project, we go over terminology to make sure that when we say X, we mean to say X and the other person understand completely what we mean when we say X.

Years ago, we, we as in NASA’ sent a vehicle to Mars that was suppose to land on it and get all sorts of data. When the vehicle got a certain distance from Mars, the rockets were suppose to kick in and slow the vehicle down so the it could safely land on Mars. The rockets didn’t and, I can’t remember right now, the vehicle either crashed into Mars because they fired too early or it flew right past Mars because they fired too late.

What was the problem? The Europeans, in their measurements, used meters and the American used feet. The communication was open and on going. Everybody thought they completely understood the other side, but 1000 meters don’t mean 1000 feet, not even close.

We not only need to understand the words that each other is using, but how the other is using it, and screaming and yelling at each other sure don’t help none.

It’s like my mum said when I belittled the unfortunate child next door who was my age but 6 inches shorter than me “Son, you have to be little to belittle.” One day, after a rather vicious day of teasing the kid, my mum had me wear my little brothers clothes, including the way to small underwear. She said that since I was acting so little, I needed to go all the way and not just act the part, dress the part also. She kept the clothes out for two weeks and said that if I ever teased him again from being short, I would have to wear the clothes to school for one day. Some people in the south call that a “come to Jesus day.”

Once again, I apologize for such a long post and hope that maybe somebody read enough to see this apology.