Posted by:
Understandably Pissed!!
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Date: December 08, 2010 07:14PM
I understand the feelings that you must be going through, I went through them after living my whole life in Mormonism and serving a mission myself.
One thing to remember, they probably are genuinely nice people who are just trying to do the right thing. They are being mislead just as much as you are, they may know more but they are in an environment where they aren't even allowed full access to the internet or time to even consider that what they are doing isn't right. Despite that caveat, it isn't right that they should be trying to convince people to join a church they know nothing about. There is a guide called Preach My Gospel which is available online here:
http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,8057-1-4424-1,00.htmlThis is the book missionaries are told to study every day. They aren't allowed to read the newspaper or supposed to look at other books outside the missionary library which only consists of a very few church books. You will probably recognize the lessons that they have had with you in this book. They will find it very difficult to sustain teaching you for too long since they are only supposed to teach from these chapters. So you will probably start to find they will repeat these chapters.
They are supposed to teach you these 3 lessons including the commandments in the 4th lesson and some of those as separate lessons, then they will try to have you baptised by the point they have finished. They don't want a long consideration of what the Church actually is, how its organization functions or its actual history. They want a baptism based on these presentations.
I can understand why it would be particularly crushing since you were willing to admit the flaws of Catholicism and your problems with it. Do not expect them to be willing to make the same admissions of guilt or error in the LDS Church's history since they are probably ignorant of many of them or placing their own issues on the shelf as the Church instructs.
If you want a good idea of how they will respond to your questions and issues turn to Chapter 5 of Preach My Gospel on page 108-109 with the title "Use the Book of Mormon to Respond to Objections" Which can be found here:
http://lds.org/languages/additionalmanuals/preachgospel/PreachMyGospel___12_05_BookOfMormon__36617_eng_012.pdfTheir response to any question that you may have will be that you should pray about the Book of Mormon and ask God if it is true. They will promise if you do that then you will receive an answer from God that it is true. Then they will say this will be an adequate response to your issues since if God has said it is okay, then it must be right. They will then "bear testimony" which will consist of them saying that they "know" it is true, because God has told them that it is true. They view this as a trump card which means that all other information is irrelevant.
Other responses that you are likely to get:
i) They may try to answer your question usually using scriptures to answer.
ii) They could respond by saying that all the facts aren't available on those topics with usually a line like "we just don't know everything about that".
iii) They might try to say that the historical issues are irrelevant since they aren't practised today.
iv) They may say that information from sources other than "official" LDS church sources are incorrect and full of lies. They may use a line similar to "if you want to know about a mercedez you don't ask their competitors, in the same way if you want to know about the mormon church you should ask a mormon not "anti-mormon" material.
v)It is possible they may try to guilt you into committing to the baptism. One apostle of the Church (Jeffrey Holland) suggested in a broadcast that Missionaries should "throw a fit" (his words) if investigators stop fulfilling commitments.
vi) It is very likely, (I'd say almost 100%) that the missionaries and ward members who were your "friends" will not be interested in talking to you any more after making your choice. It is very unlikely your friendship will survive. Their friendship in a lot of cases is based on conditional love on the expectation that you would become a mormon. It's sometimes described as lovebombing by critics.
If I was in your position I would target the issues they know least about themselves and then I would say that based on everything you have learned from them and the other information you have found out about you have reconsidered your decision. That the facts appear to be against the LDS Church being true.
1) The Change from Monotheism to Polytheism - In other words the move away from the trinity. This particularly relates to the First Vision since it changed over time and also the changes Joseph Smith made in the Book of Mormon in changing Jesus from being "the Eternal Father" into "the Son of the Eternal Father"
2) Joseph Smith's Polygamy - The main issues I would raise with them are the 11 women who were married to living husbands which is called polyandry, the young ages (some adopted daughters) and the fact he sent men on missions in order to have access to some of the women (their wives and daughters for instance). Another issue is that it was secret and that Church members were lied to by Joseph Smith about the practice.
3) The Temple Rituals - That elements were copied lifted from Freemasonry. That some of these masonic elements were removed in 1990 in response to a poll of Church members about what they didn't like about the ceremony for example the Death Penalties. The Second Anointing is a big issue - you can ask them if they have ever heard of it and it is likely they haven't. It is a secret ritual that a large number of members don't even know exists. It guarantees a couple that receive it Exaltation (the mormon word for real salvation) in the next life. It is only given to an elite group within mormonism. The Mission President might have received it.
4) Black People and the Priesthood - That Joseph Smith gave black people the priesthood for example a Seventy called Elijah Abel. It was Brigham Young who refused to allow Elijah Abel through the Temple and denied black people the priesthood because of his racism and that racist policy continued until long after the Civil Rights movement. Instead of showing inspiration they proved to be behind the times.
5) The Secrecy and lack of disclosure. Joseph Smith lying about polygamy and the 1890 declaration lying about polygamy finishing are good examples. Then the fact that members aren't told the truth about a number of issues raised above and that if a member asks questions or doesn't agree with their responses they are denigrated for it. Also that investigators aren't told the whole truth.
I would then conclude in honesty about how you feel. About the hurt that you feel and that you trusted them to be honest about the Church with you in the same way that you were honest about the flaws in your Church and that you expected the same level of integrity and honesty from them.
I will go into more detail on each of these issues if I can before you meet them. I hope this helps and sorry for the hurt I imagine this caused. I'm just glad that you managed to find out before your baptism. I wish you the best, and would be interested to hear how it goes. So please post back with the follow up on what happened.