The Missionary Discussions, Part 2
So, let’s break down the reasons why the missionary discussions were not a good experience for me, and what I think both sides can learn from my story.
Wrong Approach
My friend LaDonna1 talked me into taking the missionary discussions by explaining to me that I did not have to take them as an investigator; I could just take them as an outsider who wanted to learn about the church. So I was a little bit stunned when I was treated… like an investigator. I was asked leading questions like, “Why do you think it’s important to have modern-day prophets and apostles?” which just made me snort since I had previously made it clear that I had not accepted the church’s teaching on modern-day prophets and apostles. I often talked about how happy I was with my own religion so that I had no desire to join another church, yet on the third discussion, Brother Pratt pulled me aside and said, “Jack, you need to get baptized.” What kind of a crazy person offers church membership to someone who has repeatedly stated that they don’t want to join? But the third discussion instruction book in use at the time prompted the missionaries to offer baptism to the subject, so that’s what they did. They weren’t actually listening to me, they were rather mindlessly following protocol.
Terminology Confusion
Much has been said about this by other writers, so I won’t say a lot here. It’s been well established that Latter-day Saints and evangelicals often use the same words, but they mean different things. As an example, early on I said to the missionaries, “I don’t need to join your church because I’m already saved.” He replied, “Oh, I agree that you’re saved.” When I said “saved” I meant that I’m getting all God has to offer.2 When he said “saved” he meant I’d be resurrected and get to the telestial kingdom at least. Sometimes these semantics games made me feel like the missionaries were being deliberately obtuse.
Evangelical Doctrine Fail
In an earlier post I talked about how one missionary gave me the standard “you didn’t get baptized, you went swimming” in response to my claim to having already been baptized. That was a poor response to a Protestant sacrament. Just because we don’t believe in a linear priesthood authority does not mean we don’t consider our baptism experiences to be sacred.
They also tried hard to drill into me that us bickering Protestants are lost and confused, eternally fighting each other for converts and never agreeing on doctrine. When I started attending Sumner Presbyterian Church earlier that year (see my testimony for details), I had felt obligated to drop by Puyallup Church of the Nazarene and let the youth pastor know I was going to a new church, even though I had not attended in months. I explained how much I loved the youth group at Sumner Presbyterian and how their love for me had saved my life and led to my re-commitment to Christ. The new youth pastor, Pat, told me that if I had found fellowship that I loved at another church, I could go with his blessing. He was such a kindly man that I almost regretted my decision to switch churches, but I went anyways.
I’m not going to say that interdenominational disagreement never happens, since that’s why denominations exist at all, but I had seen an awful lot of agreement and working together among Protestant churches even at that young age. I really just felt like the missionaries were taking pot shots at a religion they did not understand.
There was also the requisite complaining about Protestant “priestcraft.” I pointed out that the General Authorities get paid, they vehemently denied it, and that was the end of that.
Culture Clash
This it something worthy of its own blog post because it gets to the heart of one of the things Mormons are very bad at: culture assimilation. Mormons are not good at adapting their gospel to different cultures. Wherever they go, they tend to impose their culture of white, American, 19th-century Protestant pietists on the communities in which they proselyte.3
This became a problem in our discussions because Brother Pratt was regularly trying to weed me away from evangelical culture and conform me to LDS culture. He heard me listening to a Christian folk rock artist, Jennifer Knapp, and told me that kind of music “isn’t uplifting to the spirit.” Oh no you don’t. Hating Jennifer Knapp is like hating life, and she was one of the more mild Christian artists I liked. A convert who was into the Supertones and Five Iron Frenzy just wasn’t going to do.
I was also given the standard talk about how I should not wear crosses, “If somebody took a bullet for you, would you wear a bullet around your neck?” Well, actually, yes, I just might, but that’s not the point. It is not LDS doctrine that people can’t wear crosses or listen to the music they like, it’s just LDS practice and culture. It’s one thing to tell a potential convert not to drink coffee, but trying to control what they wear around their neck and what music they should listen to? Why not just adapt and try to see the good in those habits? Consider the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:
“For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”
On another occasion I tried to tell Brother Pratt about C.S. Lewis. He immediately put C.S. Lewis down and said that I should not listen to him because he did not have the answers I needed. I can only assume he initially reacted that way because he saw that the evangelical liked C.S. Lewis and therefore assumed C.S. Lewis = bad. Someone must have talked to him about it and explained to him that Mormons adore C.S. Lewis, because he had nice things to say about him the next time we met, and he eventually gave me a copy of The Restored Gospel According to C.S. Lewis. Terrible book, but it was a good attempt at recovering from his initial fumble.
Book of Mormon, Testimony-Bearing
I already had Neil bothering me to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. The missionaries and the Pratts regularly asked me if I had finished reading it and prayed about it yet. I really had little desire to read it; I had heard that it did not contain very much that was unique to the LDS church, so I could not understand how they thought reading the Book of Mormon was going to educate me on what Mormons believe. It came to a point where every time I would try to ask a question about the church, someone would snap, “Well, have you read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it?” I initially read it out of annoyance with my LDS friends just so that they would stop bothering me about it.
Brother Pratt was also someone who seemed to believe that if he repeated “the church is true” several times every time he saw me, it would do something other than irritate me. Every time I saw him it was an excuse to talk to me about why the church is true and how I needed to accept that. I came over to see the Pratts in distress after a vicious fight with my father, and it turned into yet another push for me to join the church. They couldn’t just see that I needed help and love me; there were always strings attached.4
Me
Up until this point, it probably sounds like I’ve placed a lot of the blame for the sour tone of our discussions on the Pratts and the missionaries. Let me remedy that now. I was a brat. If I were a superhero, my super power would be the ability to annoy any man to tears. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I began reading countercult literature early on, tainting my view of the church with plenty of things that were not true. I asked questions because they were “gotcha” questions, not because I actually cared about the answers. I reached a point in the discussions where I no longer cared about learning about the church, I only cared about showing Brother Pratt and the missionaries that their religion was dumb.
So… we all made mistakes. Here’s a few ways you can try to not make the same mistakes:
Evangelicals: Are you open to the possibility that the LDS church might be true? If not, then you should not take the missionary discussions. If your LDS friends tell you that you can take them just to learn about the church, tell them they don’t understand the purpose and nature of the missionary discussions. Don’t invite Mormon missionaries in just so you can argue with them and confound them. If you want to argue with Mormons, I know a whole line of Mormon apologists who would love to talk to you. And if you want to discuss anything with Mormons, I honestly believe you should read the Book of Mormon on your own just because so many Latter-day Saints will ask you to anyways.
Latter-day Saints: Try not to let your cultural prejudices become a stumbling block to those you wish to share the gospel with. Think about what’s important. Have consideration for what they already believe. There are certainly appropriate times to bear your testimony, but your non-LDS friends aren’t stupid. Once they’ve heard it once, they know what you believe and don’t need it repeated every time you talk to them. If they don’t want to read the Book of Mormon, bothering them about it until they sullenly pick it up and read it just to find problems in it is the wrong way to go about it.
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1 Again, I’ve changed her first name.
2 I have heard of evangelicals who believe in different degrees of rewards in heaven, and I confess that my ignorance of the finer points of evangelical theology leads me to not knowing very much about it.
3 For a bit more discussion on this, see rhinomelon’s posts in this thread at the Mormon Apologetics forum here.
4 The Pratts did many kind things for me which I’ll cover in later posts, and I don’t want to sound unappreciative. But I did honestly always feel like their kindness only came because they hoped I would join the church.
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The Missionary Discussions, Part 2 — 6 Comments
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I showed them Genesis 1, the very first 4 words are: “In the beginning GOD.”
That tells us God started out as God. He always was God and doesn’t change. Yet the missionaries were unfazed and just smiled. Their response it that there are things we don’t yet know because God hasn’t revealed it to them.
And on and on it goes.