Would you listen to how that sounds?
Let me provide a parallel situation for you...
Say there's a long-time con artist who works the doorbells of your community daily. You know it...most of your neighbors know it...but your female neighbor down the street doesn't.
The con artist winds up taking 10% of her ongoing income -- not just a one-time "hit job" -- but 10% for the rest of her life; he also takes up a LOT of her time...getting her to do a LOT for dead people...feeding her lies, perversions...
And then you see one of your neighbors on your street repeatedly talking to this poor lady...encouraging her to stop "doing business" with the con artist because she's getting burned financially, emotionally, spiritually, etc.
Your response, Cherry (& by extension, ccmay & vanders9), to that?
Well, instead of joining in the warning you actually berate your neighbor who's doing what the Bible says to do -- to warn and engage in admonitions -- while you "look the other way" over the $, emotional & spiritual "rip-offs" that's taking place of your neighbor.
Do you want to tell us exactly how that's being "neighborly" to your victim-neighbor???
And then, the second part of your "sage" advice?
perhaps what is needed is a sense of common goals and values, not attacking each other... [cherry]
And so you three "neighborly" types (cherry, cc, vanders) all march down the street to your ripped-off neighbor and the person who's warning her about the con artist and you, Cherry suggest: "Perhaps what is needed is a sense of common goals and values. Maybe, the con artist could join our 'Better Business Bureau' where we all rally around common goals and values, and then we won't ever have to utter a negative word about him."
(And then I suppose, Cherry, you'll excuse yourself from that get-together since you have dandelions to go pick)
There's a 5-volume work from the Lds church's 10th "prophet," Joseph Fielding Smith...called Answers to Gospel Questions...published by the Lds-church owned Deseret Book Company.
In that work, JF Smith twice outlined the key mandates of an Lds missionary. In both volumes 1 and 4, Joseph Fielding Smith cited the same Mormon "scripture" Doctrine & Covenants passage: 88:81-82:
"Behold, I sent you out to testify and
WARN the people, and it becometh every man who hath been
WARNED to WARN his neighbor.
Therefore, they are left without excuse, and their sins are upon their own heads."
Joseph Fielding Smith then, after citing these verses in volumes 1 and 4, mentioned the following:
"This commission to go forth which was given in the beginning is still in force and binding on every missionary who goes forth today to declare the gospel of salvation in the world." (Answers to Gospel Questions, vol. I, p. 134, 1957/1979)
And:
"...there are certain commandments missionaries should remember...they are sent not only to preach and bear testimony and bring people to repentance...but to WARN ALL men..." (Vol. 4, p. 55 1963/1979)
You know what I took away from reading Joseph Fielding Smith is that I'm glad to live in a country where Lds missionaries are free to "warn" others as they see fit.
Well, guess what that means, Cherry, CC, Vanders? Has it dawned on you yet, that there was a second sentence to that comment that mutually applies?
I'm also glad to be a member of my church and worship as I see fit -- and that includes the freedom to engage in an exchange of mutual warning with my neighbors, the Mormons.
You wouldn't begrudge me the same freedom you extend to Lds missionaries, would you Cherry, CC, Vanders? Joseph Fielding Smith said the very essence -- the commission and commandments -- of an Lds missionary is to warn all men. Right?
Yet somehow when Lds missionaries go around and bug/warn people re: the so-called complete universal "apostasy" -- that ALL Catholics, ALL Protestants, ALL Orthodox are apostates -- & that they "need" the Mormon gospel...that's all "a-OK" eh???
I have no problems with anyone engaging in the expression of free speech. I DO have a problem with someone whose revelling in being "saved" seems to be largely augmented by looking down their noses at the poor rubes who are not part of their heavenly club. I dont care whether they are mormons, catholics, evangelicals or reformed toadstool worshippers. Triumphalism, i.e. the arrogant belief that your preferred set of ordering worship is superior to that of the church down the road, has no place in Christian thought. The only thing, and I mean the only thing, that Christians have going for them is that we have a savior. Everything else is window dressing.
I applaud you talking to the poor lady in your example. But I would stop you if you did it by beating her around the head with your bible.