Are We Christian

Huh. ‘The fourth Abrahamic religion’, he says. He might be right.

Anyone saying Mormons don’t believe in Jesus Christ is dumb or mean or both.

Anyone saying Mormons aren’t Christian better show their trademark ownership over the term Christian. No ownership? Well, then you don’t get to define the term for everyone.

I mean, if someone wants to say Mormons aren’t “nice”, because we think our church is the only true church and thats rude to denigrate other faiths they can make that claim, but they don’t determine what nice means for everyone. Someone else can say, of course Mormons are nice and list their criteria why.

It’s crazy we have to have these debates with people who are essentially dumb, mean, or both.

They just need to say they disagree with our interpretation or practice of Christianity. But all this focus over the creeds defining Christian is nonsense. Don’t they believe a Jesus of the new testament? That he was born of Mary, lived taught, blessed, healed, performed miracles, atonement for the sins of the world, was crucified on the cross and was resurrected?

That criteria seems more fitting than…. “is Jesus one facet of a triune God declared in the Nicean creed hundreds of years after Christ”? I sure hope the sum total of Jesus’ life and teaching death, resurrection wouldn’t be reduced to a tripartite deity.

Why do religious people get so dumb when insisting that everyone must talk about things the same way they do and agree with them?

Do you follow Jesus as the ideal? Yes? Christian. Can you be wrong in multiple dimensions of how you follow Jesus and what you think about him? Sure.

The dumb mean people need to just figure out how to say, yes Mormons are Christian, but they are very wrong about what they believe about the physical nature and distinctiveness of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I write software for a living, and for a while now I’ve thought about the work of Joseph Smith this way: he rewrote the kernel of Christianity.

A common pattern in software is that of specifying an interface (e.g. a “sandwich” must have meat, cheese, and vegetables between two carbohydrate planes) but allowing implementations of it to meet the standard however they see fit. In my dumb analogy sandwichians have been arguing for centuries over the specific grains allowed in the bread, the sharpness of the cheddar, the ideal species of mesquite tree to be used to smoke the ham, and the allowable heirloom tomato varieties that are to go on the sandwich as defined by Jesus 2000 years ago.

Then Joseph Smith showed up with a delicious taco. It violates just about every single bit of normative orthodoxy defined over the last couple of millennia, and yet it perfectly implements the interface given by Jesus in the gospels.

As Bruce has been pointing out for years now, it all always comes down to metaphysical assumptions, which is precisely the background or framework Owen struggled to name.

Joseph Smith is a prophet because Tacos are True.

I love it, Ben.

There’s a line in an early episode in the first season of The Chosen that struck me with great force; Jesus asks one of the pharisees something to the effect of “Are you saying the canon of scripture is complete? Are you putting limits on God?” Which is exactly the argument I used to have with southerners while serving a mission in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. And, of course, the talk by Hugh B Brown is a classic about what constitutes a prophet. The questions he asks the high court judge about why we need a prophet are so telling.

Rozy, which mission were you in?
That sounds like my mission territory.

@Rozy, Where in the absolutely complete canon of Scripture did Jesus ask one of the pharisees something to the effect of “Are you saying the canon of scripture is complete?” Checkmate, Moroni.

Zen – Florida Tallahassee Mission 1979-80

Brigham Old – I wasn’t quoting scripture; I just thought it was totally interesting that the writers of The Chosen put those very words in Jesus’ mouth, and then claim today that the canon is closed.

That is what I thought it sounded like.
Yes, I served there as well, but a few years later.