Posted by:
caffiend
(
)
Date: September 13, 2018 12:58PM
My last encounter with the mishies was a year ago. As you'd expect, I took a different tact.
They were tracting a retail area in my highly student neighborhood, right outside a cult-worthy [ :+) ] ice cream parlor. I offered them ice cream, and they happily accepted.
I let them make their pitch, revealing in degrees that I am quite knowledgeable about LDS. As we talked, I snuck in problem issues or history they might not know about, leading up to big ones, like celestial polygamy, saying, "Oh, you didn't know that? Well, now you do, it's in the JoD, check it out..."
With THAT one, one asked if I was ex-LDS, and I told them, "No, ex-Christian Scientist." I then gave them my testimony, explaining how it was studying LDS (charismatic leader, special revelation, belief in one-true-church, etc.) that helped me understand the errors in CS. I then went into a little lecture on common traits among aberrant sects and cults.
To their credit, they stayed and listened. I then told them (condensed paraphrase):
"Statistically, one or both of you will leave Mormonism. When you discover that little in LDS is historically or spiritually true, you may be tempted to reject all belief in God as bunk. It's not. There is truth in the Bible which is not in the BoM, with historicity and archaeology that reinforces it. Nothing's been found to validate the BoM, but there is for the Bible. When you learn these things, you have difficult decisions to make. Leaving LDS will come at a heavy cost of alienating, even losing, friends and family, and much that is important and familiar to you. A major decision, but can you live a lie, especially a spiritual one with eternal consequences? The second hard decision will be to find a church that teaches the Bible accurately and provides the society and fellowship where you're comfortable. Good luck!"