6/10/26

This week, Viany and I were invited, last minute, to join the LDS Missionaries we've previously met with at one of their baptisms of a new convert. We happened to be free, so we decided to accept the invitation and attend. Neither of us really knew what to expect, but I had suspicions that it would be very strange and clearly unholy. More troubling than that, I found it to be uncomfortably familiar to modern evangelical baptisms - minus a few distinct things. Above, you can see the bulletin for the event which we followed that evening. We opened with a song, moved into a small devotional, heard a testimony about baptism, witnessed the water baptism, then the alleged Holy Spirit baptism, some closing words, and a final song. If I were to try to estimate it, I would say that at least 85% of the event would pass by an evangelical as familiar - only subtracting the confirmation portion (imparting the Spirit) and the readings from the Book of Mormon. I can't recall who said it first, but they were right when they said, "Discernment is not spotting right from wrong, but rather right from almost right."

Both before and after the baptism, Viany and I were able to have extended conversations with the missionaries about various LDS teachings and traditions. These questions were not particularly pointed or apologetic, but rather questions from curiosity and relationality. They had just switched their partners, so one of the guys was new to us. Because of that, we spent a good amount of time learning about him and his past with the Mormon church. We learned that he grew up in a historically rich LDS family and his dad was a bishop during his youth. I believe it came up somehow in conversation that I also grew up in a similar family situation (minus the LDS part), which has some interesting potential for connection as we hopefully continue meeting. They showed us around their church (the temple is different - we are allowed in the church), describing to us many of the things tey find to be important and distinct. It's interesting to me how both the Jehovah's Witness and Mormons refuse to have te cross associated with them. Perhaps for different reasons, but it seems that there are some overlaps between them. I tried to request a physical copy of their other scriptures (Doctrines and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and Book of Mormon), but they just told me to use the app... Unfortunate. However, in that conversation I was able to learn some more about the LDS timelines and scripture timelines which was interesting to say the least. At that point they were trying to get us to leave their church so they could close shop, but we were set to meet with them a few days later, so we were excited for that. There's much more I could say about this experience and interaction, but I would really encourage you to get into a curious conversation with mormons for yourself! It's honestly such an easy door to sharing your faith in a natural way. You can literally order them online and they will come to your house when you're available. Don't feel like you need to convert them immediately, but just be curious and ask a lot of questions to try to understand what they understand Mormonism to be. It's quite a thrill to learn, and such low pressure because they are the missionaries "with the answers", so you ust need thoughtful questions and Christian hospitality! 

A few days after that event, Viany and I met with them again to continue our first conversation from the park. We showed up at their huge empty church to sit in an empty room with four chairs circled up in the center of the room. Word of advice - don't use this approach when showing hospitality to nonbelievers... We sat down, had some basic conversation, and then settled into religious conversation. We were, again, given another new missionary - now having a fully new set from the first two we had in the park... insane. Another word of advice - have the same people meet with people so that there can be relational and conversational progress made from both sides. Anyway, we start the conversation by discussing the baptism and our thoughts on it. Viany and I didn't really care to talk about the baptism, but were more interested in continuing our original conversation from the park. We entertained the baptism questions for a little bit, but soon found an archway to talk about the legitimacy of Joseph Smith as a true prophet. If I recall correctly, we mentioned the confirmation (imparting the Spirit) being unusual for us and that opened us to the topic of the Spirit which led to talk of the Spirit conforming the truthfulness of something. Boom, and we were back - though it seemed they were a bit uncomfortable with this topic of how we know Mormonism is true. It's kind of an important question, so I didn't really feel bad, but I always feel bad when I have to watch them bend under the painful pressure of very basic questions.

Another challenge to this conversation was that the two missionaries weren't even comfortable with each other and were definitely not on the same page about things. So one missionary would start saying things that are contrary to LDS teachings and then the other would fight for the mic and say something else, and so on. Another unsolicited word of advice - when sent in pairs to do ministry, it's very helpful to have experience and comfortability with your partner so you don't end up fighting each other in a conversation about very basic doctrines. Because of all these changed variables, much of our conversation was a repeat from our park conversation with the other pair, with the main question being how we know Joseph Smith is a true prophet. We talked about the unreliability of subjective feelings as foundations for beliefs and pressed them for something outside of the Book of Mormon to support its legitimacy, but it seemed like all they could do was bear their testimony.

Before they closed out our very brief meeting (a word on this later), they asked Viany and I how we might test a prophet who claims to be from God. Viany did a great job explaining to them why we can't blindly trust our feelings and emotions as she talked about the "super holy Miley Cyrus" giving her chills as a child, and then we also pointed them to specific passages that tell us how to test prophets. They tried to tell us that the Book of Mormon is a miracle and therefore it's from God, but the passages about testing prophets don't even care if they can do miracles, so that was awkward. It was tricky to present an answer to their question without having it come across as a debate, but I did my best and it looks like Viany and I will be meeting with them again to further discuss the dilemma I laid out for them. They asked me to share the passages I'd mentioned with them so they would have time to study them before meeting again, so I'll also share the text I sent to them, breaking down the issue I'm seeing.

A very strange thing I've found meeting with these missionaries lately is that they will only meet with you for 30 minutes at a time. A word of advice - don't do this! A good conversation where everyone feels heard and understood takes time, and 30 minutes isn't long enough for anything too substantial, especially if you keep avoiding questions and reverting to bearing your testimony. When you meet with people, do yourself and them a service by allowing yourself time to breathe and take the conversation at a healthy pace.

Here's the scriptures I sent them along with some questions that help describe the issues I'm seeing with Joseph Smith and Mormon teachings:

Click here for the next step in this type of conversation of discerning LDS prophet legitimacy, or find it in the resource tab.

We also talked a little bit about Islam in this conversation, given that the new missionary told us he was studied in Islam and lived in the middle east for a few years, but this really only landed us in a place where they were accepting non LDS beliefs such as universalism. Tragic. The similarities between Mormonism and Islam are very peculiar and intruiging to me. Hopefully one day I will hear an LDS and Islam debate - I can only wonder what the conversation would be like!