hephzibah wrote:No motive here other than to try to understand what Mormons believe.
Chai Tea wrote:yeah, add me to that rarely list with hep....when I ask a question, it's just because I want to know.
I appreciate that. I know most people are just curious, or, ideally want to know whether there are answers in Mormonism that they've not found elsewhere. When I said earlier that a great deal of people with very intelligent, very targeted questions are asking them with an egging-on tone, i.e. just to tease me (not knowing I'm not easily teased). My personal discussion board has people everyday pretending to ask legit questions, but if you follow their IP or google their screenname or whatever, you'll instantly find they're antimormon trolls. I was a missionary in Texas, and was very familiar with people calling with questions who were actually shills paid by other churches. One pentecostal church in Bastrop assigned their members to follow us, physically drive behind us, 24/7; and whomever we visited they'd go in right after to "save" those people "from" us. There really are a lot of those people--and undoubtedly we will see one on this board soon... Just watch...
neologist wrote:How many times did Jesus die?
Once. When I said he's appeared to people, I didn't mean that meant he was reborn physically or re-atoned for the sins of men. When I said I believe Jesus and angels have visited places and people around the world, I simply meant that he is resurrected, and can visit whomever and wherever he wants. That's what most Christians believe.
hephzibah wrote:I read that in a book once and you should have seen the looks on the faces of the first two mormons who came to my door that I asked about that.
I'm not the kind of guy who ever gets offended by anything. (I may, however, answer some questions in a Private Message instead of publicly.) Part of that's personality (ENFP), part of that's Bay Area (Marin), part of that's Mormonism. I heard someone once call us the Buddhists of Christianity, meaning we're generally so mellow and classically skeptic about religion--I expect people to think religious people are crazy until God tells them otherwise. That's why we always get frustrated when people confuse our missionaries with some of the others--the Mormons aren't the ones debating or arguing using some amateur historical and literary analysis, we're the ones who hang out encouraging you to pray for yourself and see where God tells you to go.
hephzibah wrote:So, may I ask how long you have been a Mormon?
My dad was a rebellious Mormon from SLC and my mother was a hispanic Catholic. They were married for years before she had ever heard the word 'Mormon.' So early in my life I recall when my father would drink and smoke and have a huge temper. My mother then started going to a church, and pretty coincidentally chose a Mormon one... she was active for years before she was baptized, and years beyond that before my father started going. Now they're both humanitarian missionaries in Albania. But I was baptized when I was 8 and went with my mother for years before that. So I'm kinda' a convert and kinda' born into it, depending on how you count it.
Yes, we could start a permanent thread of people asking questions, or we could rename this thread... I'm up--there'd have to be more than one Mormon here (which there is, they've PMed me over time), and it would have to be reasonably moderated to make sure I'm not just responding to someone's list of Top Ten Ways to Fight Mormons, which is how those discussions always end up. But able2know is always really good at having a lot of moderators.
Helpful hint #1: say what you mean and mean what you say, because you will get called on it. LOLNevertheless, as with most religions of any sort we believe that we are all children of our Heavenly Father. We believe very literally that God has a body, and that families are an organizational structure that exists in the afterlife. People who distort beliefs for gain love to insist that logically we therefore must believe God has sex and women are pregnant and whatever, but those accusations aren't based on any exclusively Mormon ideas.
