The Mormonizing of America by Stephen Mansfield

The catchphrase on the back of this book reads, ‘What the Mormonizing of America means for the nation, the world, and for you.’ So when I’d got two thirds of the way through it and hadn’t found out yet, I was wondering when I would.

The author explains over nine chapters what the Mormon religion consists of, how it came about, and what the typical Mormon’s life looks like. Each chapter begins with a real-life story before a different aspect of Mormonism is investigated.

Mansfield is a gifted author. He tells stories well, and less you through the text without making you think too hard or feeling patronised. He clearly doesn’t believe what Mormons believe but doesn’t actually beat them up for it.

I’ve not read much about the Mormons before but this is easily the best book on it I’ve seen; it hours through its history, looks at the key doctrines, and has great accompanying tables and appendices.

That said, my issue with this book is that it doesn’t do what it says on the tin. I’m sure that most people who read this book will finish it thinking that Mormons are nice people who believe in spite of the evidence, but that doesn’t actually tell us what that means for us!

So, the timely question ‘should people vote for Mitt Romney?’ for me isn’t answered. If it’s a question of not supporting someone who believes contrary to you then as a Christian perhaps I shouldn’t vote for a Mormon, but perhaps I shouldn’t vote for a Muslim or an atheist either.

In summary, a great book for finding out information about Mormonism, but not a lot more than that.

I got this book for free from Worthy Publishing. I’m not required to give a positive review.

How long does it take to prepare for leadership?

English: The healing of the paralytic : wall painting in the baptistry of the domus ecclesiae in Dura Europos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A brief answer to a question that’s often blown out of proportion.

Jesus created the entire universe. Close to 1AD he entered history as a human. In anyone’s book he was pretty well qualified to tell us all how the whole thing works.

But he spent thirty years growing and preparing for just three years of ministry. That’s a lot of preparation, and not much hands-on leadership. A bit of a difference from today’s world, where one year is considered sufficient to prepare people for decades of leadership.

Today’s post was sponsored by the word: patience.

Getting it half right

Jews praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur. (1878 painting by Maurycy Gottlieb) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jesus said some pretty direct stuff. Right at the beginning of his most famous sermon he said something that came as a bit of a punch in the face to his listeners.

He’d got pretty famous by this stage in his ministry; he’d travelled around teaching and healing, and was being followed by big crowds, most of whom were Jews. Now the Jewish leaders were a bit anxious about all of this, as you can expect. They believed in the God of Israel and didn’t want their people being led astray by some guy who happened to be a good public speaker.

So Jesus clarified things:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets.

Oh, phew! This Jesus guy is on our side after all – maybe I ought to invite him to the next Jewish speakers’ conference.

I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.

Hang on, wait. Before today I could just tell people that you were a cult leader because I thought you disagreed with me. Then a moment ago I thought you were on my side, and now you’re saying that everything I believe is only right providing it’s all about you?

That made things pretty difficult for Jews in the first century, because Jesus was suddenly claiming to be the leader of the only true Jews.

A little thought. Maybe the best way to talk to people of other faiths that ultimately started in Israel (e.g. Judaism, Islam, Mormonism) is to clarify what we agree with before we bring the kidney punch that the only way to understand it all properly is in Jesus?

Do you believe in free will?

English: Worship being conducted at the International Church of God’s Grace, in Sao Paulo Português: Culto sendo ministrado na sede da Igreja Internacional da Graça de Deus, em São Paulo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most people, if they’ve heard the good news of Jesus properly, will question it by asking something along the lines of:

Wait one cotton pickin’ minute, does that mean I can keep on committing sin and God will still forgive me no matter what?

The answer given by most Christians would be something like:

Well yes that’s right, but if you’ve really understood God’s grace in forgiving you and giving you eternal life, then your actions should reflect your gratitude, so in practise you probably won’t keep on sinning.

It’s interesting, therefore, that the Bible answers this question a different way. Check it out:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2)

Paul, who wrote this, chooses some interesting words. ‘By no means!’ On other occasions he asks himself a question and responds ‘Certainly not!’ but here he exclaims that it would be impossible for someone to continue in sin after having believed in God’s grace, and the following sentence explains it: Christians have died to sin.

That means that a Christian’s actions shouldn’t simply ‘reflect their gratitude’, but they should do good all the time as their immediate, instinctive and only actions. As Paul goes on to say, we used to be slaves to sin, but are now slaves to righteousness.

Here’s the challenge. It’s a biggy. If you were to give Paul’s answer in a conversation with a non-Christian, would they say ‘That sounds great!’ and immediately become a Christian, or ‘Well, your actions clearly show that isn’t true’?

The meaning of an atheist’s life

The single biggest problem atheists are presented with is that they have faith in something that they know isn’t true. Here’s how it looked in a recent conversation I had:

Atheist: You believe in an invisible god, that’s just the same as believing in an invisible unicorn – you can’t disprove its existence, therefore it must exist.

Me: No, I’ve met God, therefore I know He exists.

Atheist: That’s silly.

True story. But the analysis isn’t so easy. If I have met God Christianity is definitely true and atheism is definitely false (and so is belief in the invisible unicorn). If I haven’t met God, both Christianity and atheism may be true, because not having met someone doesn’t make them cease to exist.

So the question for atheists is really: without evidence of a supreme supernatural Being(s), is the logical conclusion to attempt to meet the Being(s), or to believe that there is none?

Atheists like Richard Dawkins violently believe that there is none, but they’ve encountered a pr0blem: what about morality? If we are nothing more than mutated animals who have an ability to communicate about imaginary things then morality is not objective; it is no more ‘right’ to stay faithful to one partner than it is ‘right’ to tell the truth or to laugh at someone’s misfortune.

Without objective morality it’s impossible to discern whether the Holocaust was good or bad. That’s a problem, because people just know that the Holocaust was bad.

Don’t worry, though. Some atheists have settled down to work to figure out how we can have objective morality and a meaning to life without the existence of God, and they’ve come up with an answer. Ready? To get meaning from your life, pick from one or more of the following:

• take drugs to improve your mood
• get lots of money
• buy lots of stuff
• watch lots of telly

Having done at least one of the above I think it’s fair to say that they all suck, so giving Christianity a go is easily the best idea an atheist will have all day.

HT

What I actually believe

Map of the distribution of Christians of the world (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve been reading a non-Christian book, or been in a conversation with a non-Christian, and they’ve convincingly disproved Christianity by dismantling claims that Christians don’t even make.

Maybe that statement’s a bit too abstract. A couple of examples.

Example 1: Someone found an obvious contradiction in the Bible for me by showing that Jesus is clearly separate from the Father while at the same time claiming to be God. Foolish Christians for not reading the Bible! My response (explaining that Christians believe in one God, three Persons: the Trinity) was dismissed as me making up doctrine on the spot because I’d not seen that before. Oh dear.

Example 2: Someone told me that the Bible was edited by Augustus (I think he meant Augustine) when he removed the book of Deuteronomy which appears in the Torah but not in the Bible. (Deuteronomy is in the Bible, in case you were wondering.)

Example 3: Someone told me that Calvinists differentiate themselves from Christians by claiming that God only gives some people the chance of ‘going to heaven’ (his words, not mine) and that they’re required to pray facing Jerusalem. I genuinely don’t know what he was on about there.

Example 4: Someone told me that the Bible says not to pay taxes. He obviously hasn’t read the same Bible I have.

I could go on. Here’s the deal: I’m not sure I’ve had a proper conversation about Christianity with a non-Christian without having to provide them with information about what Christians believe at some point. Even as I write that it seems like a massive generalisation but I’m struggling to think of a time when I haven’t.

The easiest example of this is around good works – pretty much everyone thinks that Christianity’s the same as every other faith in that you basically ‘work your way into heaven’, so no wonder it’s easy for them to dismiss Christianity! If my eternal destiny relied on me getting into God’s good books I’d be very stuck, and so would you; how is it plausible that God would allow anything perfect into his presence?

Christianity’s clear: our eternal destiny is secure in Christ. Faith in him is all that’s required.

So, next time I’m in a conversation with a non-Christian I’m going to make sure that they explain what it is that they disagree with, because that makes the whole thing a lot easier.

Odd socks in the dark

Rainbow striped toe socks worn with thong sandals (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of all the things I’m world-famous for, I’m pretty certain that wearing matching socks isn’t up there in the top ten. My morning sock choosing strategy is based entirely on which are closest to the top of the drawer and not at all on whether the designs are even vaguely similar.

This is normally not an issue; the visible parts of most of my socks are plain black, so I can get away with it. But the other morning was a different story.

I had an important meeting that day, so wanted to wear matching, plain black socks. I carefully compared the socks in the drawer and found a smart pair, and left for work feeling confident in my sock choice.

Of course, when I got on the train and looked down I realised that my initial confidence was founded in a lie; I was wearing one black sock, and one blue sock! D’oh! The room I’d chosen the socks in was too dark to properly compare the socks, so despite my efforts I ended up doing exactly what I’d tried to avoid.

It’s not really about the socks.

How often do we make important choices based on incomplete or inaccurate information without realising it’s wrong? I would have bet money that morning that my socks were matching and black, but they weren’t, despite me having checked and double-checked – I was making the decision in the dark.

But Jesus is the light of the world. With him, important decisions are not made on poor information, they are made with perfect information. He tells us what’s right and wrong, but more importantly he gives us access to the Father and, by the Holy Spirit, the ability to choose right from wrong.

Being a Christian is phenomenal.

How do you define ‘progress’?

Saltaire New Mill, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in West Yorkshire, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A couple of weeks ago Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony painted the stark contrast between the calm loveliness of England before Brunel drew the great towers out of the ground, turning the greens to greys and the cricket whites to factory blacks. And it was very moving and powerful, and part of me felt incredibly proud to be British.

And lots of people talked about the way that while on the surface the industrial revolution looked like a great dirty evil, it was great and dirty but it was certainly progress.

But I wonder…what is progress (i.e. how can you measure it) unless you know what the destination is?

In everyday life, if I need to go to the shop I can measure my progress; as the distance to the shop decreases, progress gets better. It doesn’t matter how fast my car is going, or how much noise it’s making, if I’m heading in the opposite direction – that’s not progress, it’s a waste of time!

The same’s surely true in technological ‘progress’.  Was the industrial revolution actually progress? And progress to what -a descriptionless better world? Obviously Danny Boyle’s version of pre-industrial revolution England isn’t an accurate reflection of all of life at that time, but it’s difficult to put a finger on exactly what’s objectively better about our nation now in comparison.

The ultimate questions, surely, are:

1. What should our ultimate destination be?
2. Where is current ‘progress’ taking us?
3. If the answers to 1. and 2. aren’t the same, how do we change direction?

For the Christian, the ultimate destination is certain, perfect, and eternal. The way there is guaranteed, and the work required to get there is finished; all we need to do is be pointed in the right direction through faith in Jesus.

You ought not to believe in evolution

Altruism (Photo credit: Peter Nijenhuis)

Ok, here’s a bit of fun on a Wednesday (we all need a bit of fun on a Wednesday).

I’d like to point you towards two articles from the New York Times, both written by authors who as far as I can tell are firm believers in evolution and not at all in religion. But first, allow me to summarise a bit (the original articles are far better but I need to feel like I’ve put some effort in).

Some animals, including every single insect, operate exclusively for the community (they’re altruistic). An ant sacrificing its own life for the sake of the continuation of the colony is simple genetic instincts.

Others operate selfishly and would never sacrifice their own life willingly. As the articles say:

…within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals.

Interesting. Of course, one key question from an evolutionary perspective would be: at what point in history did the first altriustic mutation appear? And how on earth did it survive and become a dominant gene for the entire insect population? Seems unlikely.

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is in the sentence which follows the above quote, and please bear in mind that these are not Christians writing against evolution, they believe in it:

…risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

I don’t want to risk oversimplification, but it’s a good point. Unselfishness is generally considered a virtue, and selfishness sin. Fair enough. But acknowledging this only admits the key way that humans are unique in creation:

…human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children.

It’s fascinating; in the rest of nature animal would appear to be either selfish or altruistic, but humans are simultaneously both in their most extreme versions! And the ultimately depressing thing is that according to evolution, being selfish or altruistic is simply genetics at work:

…the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory.

…which means…

Some might draw the self-contradictory conclusion that we ought to drop the word “ought.”

Indeed. Gotta love it.

And here they are in all their glory: one and two.

I don’t know what I don’t know

The Seven Deadly Sins (ca. 1620) – Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the most frustrating things about being married is simultaneously one of the best. You know what I’m on about: being told my annoying habits.

Here are some of mine: the way I accelerate, the way I laugh, places I choose to park the car, the way I manage my diary, places I choose to shop, the way I brake, the way my face looks when I’m thinking…I could go on. The fact that I leave the tap dripping every so often, the way I run from one end of our flat to the other, the time I leave for work in the morning, the time I get back from work, the location of my office, the nature of my work, the way I tell people about my work…ok, I’ll stop now.

It’s definitely annoying being told, ‘you sound mean when you laugh,’ but it’s also definitely good, because without being told that I’d never know I sound mean when I laugh, so would never be able to correct it.

Now, this is all very nice and a bit of fun but something that’s always slightly worried me is: what if there are sins in my life that I don’t know about so have never addressed? Well, good news for me – someone’s compiled a list of every Bible sin, very specifically, separated into heart, mouth and body sins (i.e. sinful thoughts, words and deeds). I hope he doesn’t mind me pasting it here:

Heart Sins	Mouth Sins	Body Sins
Evil thoughts	Deceit / lying	Sexual immorality
Coveting / Jealousy	Slander	Theft
Wickedness	Quarreling	Murder
Sensuality	Strife	Adultery
Envy / greed	Dissensions	Orgies
Pride / arrogance	Divisions	Drunkenness
Foolishness	Reviling	Sorcery
Impurity	Foolish talk	Fits of anger
Idolatry	Corrupting talk	Swindling
Enmity	Crude joking / obscene talk	Homosexuality
Rivalries	Without self-control	Abusive behaviour
Grudges		Brutality
Bitterness / wrath		Without self-control
Clamour
Malice
Worldly passion
Evil desire
Loving self
Loving money
Not loving good
Loving pleasure, not God
Disobedient to parents
Ungratefulness
Being unappeasable
Heartlessness
Being treacherous
Being reckless
Worship of demons & idols
Being cowardly
Being faithless
Without self-control

By committing this little table to memory and/or keeping it accessible, it should be possible at any given moment to quickly analyse an action and spot if it’s sinful or not. Simples!

This also means that might be things that you, or others, are doing that you’re judging unfairly…maybe we need to repent of that!

And to underline this let’s just remind ourselves that all of our sins, known or unknown, are forgiven in Jesus Christ!

That table, by the way, is taken from Julian Freeman, and the original article’s well worth a read.