Mixing With Mormons

I had a visit today from some friendly Mormon missionaries. One of them was surprisingly cute! But I digress. I had requested a visit on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (whew, what a mouthful) website, and a missionary contacted me to set up an appointment.

I made it very clear to the boys that I was not interested in converting to Mormonism, and I gave them the background story on my mission. I told them that I was interested in knowing what their religion was truly about, because all I had heard was negative stuff in the media (polygamy, cult-like sects, etc). I think they took that as a challenge.

They started off by explaining what exactly prophets are, and the cyclical nature involved. God chooses a prophet and shares His word with him (all the prophets seem to be male), the prophet shares God's words with the people, and once the people accept the prophet's teachings, God blesses the people. People eventually start ignoring the teachings, and then reject the prophet, creating a state of apostasy, and people lose knowledge of the gospel. When the time is right, God chooses another prophet and the cycle continues.

They then told me the Mormon view of Jesus Christ. He lived a sinless life, performed miracles, and established a church. He appointed twelve apostles to spread his teachings. When he died, this kicked off the Great Apostasy (partially coinciding with the Dark Ages). People such as Martin Luther and John Calvin attempted to reform the church, however, they were not chosen by God, and therefore failed. It wasn't until 1820 when another prophet was chosen.

This prophet was Joseph Smith. He translated the Book of Mormon from an ancient record written on golden plates. The Book of Mormon is a record of God's dealings with the early inhabitants of the Americas. As the missionaries pointed out, it seems unlikely that God would only talk to people in and around Jerusalem. They gave me my very own copy of the Book of Mormon, which now sits in a pile of religious literature that I will eventually read, and told me to pray on it (and taught me how to properly pray).

Even though I insisted that I had no interest in becoming a Mormon, they told me repeatedly that if I read the Book of Mormon and prayed on it, I would see that it was right, just as they did. They said a prayer asking God to show me the way, to show me that Mormonism is the right religion. I was then invited to join them at their church whenever I have a spare Sunday.

I was surprised that the missionaries appeared to recite a script... I understand that they want to convey a unified message, however, it's hard to believe what someone is saying when they come across as bad actors with monotone voices. I was much more receptive to what they told me when we were just chatting. I'm more interested in knowing how they live their lives and how their religion affects their day to day life; the scripture stuff bores me. Hopefully they'll get more into that in their follow-up visit next month.



Click here to watch the South Park episode on Mormons... even the missionaries agreed that it was a funny episode!