05-04-2007, 06:29 AM | #11 |
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I'm not sure if I have more to offer than what folks have said here, but I'll afflict you with my opinion anyway.
Beyond sharing a common sense of purpose to bless the lives of the needy, I'm not sure I am concerned with being included in the community of Christians. We are different, and in a doctrinal sense I'd say we we even want to be different. Where being known as Christians, in addition to Mormons, is helpful is in conveying our values to people who don't know much about us. We want folks to know we believe in Christ "and him crucified" as Paul would say. We want them to know we believe in being "honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men." Outside of the obvious missionary benefits, it disarms people when they feel they share something in common with you. The problem of being persecuted for not being Christian is fortunately growing smaller, in my opinion, and I speak as someone raised in the south. I don't mean to demean others' negative experiences, but I always felt that whatever ridicule I received could be converted into something positive if handled properly. I also find that given our history, Mormons sometimes have a persecution or inferiority complex, and may take offense more easily than is necessary. My 2 cents. |
05-04-2007, 01:47 PM | #12 | |
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I would like LDS to accept that 99% of our doctrine matches up nearly perfectly with Christian mainstream doctrine. I'm sick of dumb comments in Sunday School about how they're glad we believe X when Christian churches believe Y, when actually Christians believe X as much as we do. I'd like the Christian community to see how our doctrine is nearly a mainstream Christian doctrine with the gaps being, IMHO, in a lot of fairly insignificant items. |
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05-04-2007, 02:00 PM | #13 | |
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There's not much more outside of that about the gospel that interests me, and there's not much more that the church teaches definitively with authority these days. There are teachings that are significantly different than Christian doctrine but I see a deemphasis in many of these as we find we never understood them correctly and will be modified more in the future: polygamy, God once was man, man will become like God, other worlds/Gods, some elements of the preexistence, some elements of the three kingdoms. There are items we disagree on that are important and don't fit in the categoy above: BoM, priesthood authority, temple work, living prophet, continued revelation. However the major difference I see here is that the purpose for these is simply to reinforce and confirm the truths that we share from paragraph 1, not to take us in a different direction. |
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05-04-2007, 02:23 PM | #14 | |
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I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. - Epitaph of Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) |
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05-04-2007, 02:30 PM | #15 |
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One of the best talks I heard at church started off, "The Bishop has asked me to talk about personal apostacy.....We are not christians, and we should be proud of it!"
He of course explained, that we are not christians in that we do not subscribe to christianity's false beliefs (nature of salvation, nature of the godhead, etc). I appreciate a man who can come in and forcefully stir up the congregation. He has not been asked to speak since then. |
05-04-2007, 02:35 PM | #16 | |
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05-04-2007, 02:36 PM | #17 |
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Nice. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
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05-04-2007, 02:36 PM | #18 | |
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05-04-2007, 02:44 PM | #19 | |
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I don't think Mormons necessarily want to be considered mainstream Christians, just Christians. |
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05-04-2007, 02:44 PM | #20 |
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