Rough Stone Rolling

One of the popular subjects on Mormon blogs these days is the whole Church-on-the-defense hoohah– jousting questions like, are we Christian, are we racist, does Romney’s faith disqualify him as a viable candidate. Sometimes these sites offer links to editorials written by reasonable news columnists and pundits who say it shouldn’t matter what Romney believes, look at his political and leadership qualifications… but then in the comments after the articles, people actually devote significant chunks of their day quoting Romans and try to out-debate under-equipped Mormons with sneering slam-dunks of half-truths and memorized “anti” crap, and then do verbal chicken dances in the name of Jesus. I can’t look at that stuff anymore. It darkens my mood, riles me, withers the light within me.

Do they really believe the Lord is cheering them on? The viciousness has cranked up fifty-fold lately and the Spirit behind the teachings of Jesus Christ is taking a back seat to making sure the slander sticks. Who cares if it’s only something they read in a cheap manual their pastor gave them? Who cares if they didn’t attempt to sit with an educated Mormon and find out what they really believe & why? They actually take classes on how to argue with a Mormon– where in Romans does it talk about that? And there’s the rub– they are trained to bash; the Saints are not. We read our scriptures, go to our meetings, do our service projects. We’re too concerned with our salvation, our FAMILIES’ salvation. Who has time to learn how to argue religion? It’s not in our curricula.

I went on my mission to the Bible Belt. I loved the people there and cherish the memory. I got to experience firsthand, however, the mindset of the anti-Mormon “Christian.” We met them daily. I sat in the home of a major publisher of anti works and had a reasonable discussion with him about the differences of our faiths. At the end, we cordially agreed to disagree– and yet, he still earned his coin writing corny stuff about “Joe Smith.”

How can people who do this believe their devoting so much time whaling on another’s beliefs is more important than devoting time on self-improvement, loving their neighbor, helping the poor… walking the path Jesus walked? How can they think, “because I’m saved, I can do this.” How can they not recognize the hypocrisy of such behavior? The irony, the farcical poetry.

Well, okay, we were warned the flame would be turned up, that the forces of darkness would rally against us. But really, the harbingering didn’t prepare me for such abandonment of reason.