A couple of weeks ago, Reed brought home a rather amusing pamphlet he found pinned to a bulletin board outside his office, it was entitled Why Mormons are not Christians. It's printed by the Sherhinah Outreach Ministry in Fairbanks, Alaska. The back of the pamphlet reads “Are you a real Christian? Have you come to God in God’s way as described by the Bible? If you are interested in the Jesus of the Bible, or you’re not sure where you will spend eternity, please give us a call.” Apparently if you have come to God by not following the Bible you are not a real Christian. These folks seem to be very concerned about whether or not people are real Christians.
The first argument they offer is: “Mormonism does not teach that the Bible is the infallible word of God.” Those nasty Mormons say: “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly”. Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Anyone who thinks that the Bible has the exact same meaning it did 2000 years ago is clueless about how language works. The meaning of words change over time and when a translation is made the best approximation of the word is used. There are many examples of this throughout the Bible.
Another argument used to prove Mormons are not Christians is, they say, “Mormonism teaches genealogical research”. The Bible says “neither give heed to fables and endless geneologies”. (1 Tim 1:4) “But avoid foolish questions and genealogies...” (Titus 3:9) Well, this would mean that the thousands of people who research their geneology are not true Christians. The Bible itself is FILLED with endless geneologies — John begat Joseph begat Sam begat... well, you get the idea.
How about this mention to not giving heed to “fables and foolish questions”? This would seem to make the entire pamphlet null and void, after all the Bible is nothing more than a book of fables and “are Mormans real Christians?” seems to be a rather foolish and pointless question to ask in the first place!
Speaking of “fables and foolish questions”, the pamphlet asks “Why do Mormon writings say Enoch lived 430 years, whereas the Bible says 365 years?” The oldest human being on record is 122 year old French woman, Jeanne Calment. Anyone who actually believes that people lived to be over 200 years old is clearly choosing to believe a fable. To argue because one book says a person lived to be 430 and another says 365 is indeed quite silly and they should start taking the advice of their own Bible to avoid fables and foolish questions.
Asking if Mormans are real Christians is like asking if the color blue is better than the color red, it just doesn’t really matter. If these people would use all this energy towards good things, like speading the message of how at our core we are all humans and deserve kindness, we would have a much better world.
Hello. My name is Angela Christine Byers (yes, my mother actually named me “Angel of Christ”), and I am an atheist.
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Angela C. Byers