Posted on 04/15/2012 3:02:11 PM PDT by Colofornian
Well, if your church has this same anti-witnessing, anti-evangelism, anti-care, and anti-missionary attitude as you do, then allow me to state this quite clearly: I have more respect for the zeal of Mormons (albeit a falsely-based zeal), than I do for your church. [I would hope you're not "representative" of your church; elsewise, you might as well place a call to your outreach workers and tell them, "C'mon home...It's none of your business what the natives...or the locals believe."]
I have known some LDS folks, and found them on the whole to be charming, and with an eye to self-sufficiency.
I am a descendent of a Mormon leader. I have lots of Lds relatives. I appreciate them relationally. As far as it goes, we get along fine enough. I certainly appreciate them -- especially the care of a relative they took over re: oversight of...
But you need to know something about motivation. And here I make a distinction between temple Mormons -- perhaps 15-20% of the Lds population -- and non-temple Mormons. For temple Mormons, they expect they will be "gods" one day.
So...when you're auditioning for godhood, of course you're going to be outwardly "charming." Likewise -- with the legalists of His day -- Jesus complimented the Pharisees' outward behavior...He told people in His Sermon on the Mount that unless their righteousness exceeded that of the Pharisees, they would in no wise inherit His kingdom. But inwardly, Jesus compared the Pharisees to rotting flesh...called them "whitewashed tombstones" who cleaned the outside of the dish, but left the inside festering... (see Matthew 23)
As far as "self-sufficient," that's one of those "cuts both ways" traits. Self-sufficiency as to taking on the responsibilities of life is great; self-sufficiency as far as working your way toward living with Heavenly Father forever -- and pulling yourselves up by your own bootstraps -- that is works-righteousness absolutely condemned in the Bible.
One of Lds "prophet" Spencer W. Kimball's fave phrases to guide Mormons spiritually was "pulling yourselves up by your bootstraps." [I'll follow this up later with a post of his quotes along these lines]
My Church uses the power of attraction, not promotion. Sorry about yours.
Attracting who -- if you don't even know, let alone care, what they believe?
How can you even have a decent dialogue if you don't care about what people believe re: spirituality?
Such a parochial view -- as if your views were the only ones worth caring about -- doesn't sound very personal.
I am not looking for the diaglogue. Hence, what someone else believes is just none of my business. I leave the judging to Him. I receive the Eucharist several times a month. It does not get any more personal than that.
We know that the Orthodox way works. We have no opinion on others. We focus on our own spiritual experience, and help others who are interested.
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