Self Conscious Religion

It wasn’t until my mission that I discovered how much time and money other Christian religions spend on attacking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I served seven months in Colorado Springs (home of Focus on the Family and dubbed the “Christian capital of the world”) and learned a lot about myself and a lot about religion in general. Even though this picture was created by me (a friend sent me a funny e-mail with something else written on the sign - you can go here to make your own), I can honestly say that I have been in numerous churchs in which the whole of the sermon that Sunday was devoted not to expounding the truths of the New Testament, rather it was devoted to expounding the falsity of the Mormon Church. You see, my companion and I would visit a different church in our area every Sunday. On one occassion the pastor saw us in the congregation and immediately shifted his sermon toward the evils of the Mormons.

Just last Saturday night, I was visiting a member of my ward with the missionaries. This member has just started to come back to church after a long time of inactivity after his conversion when he was in his twenties. While visiting I asked him about his conversion. He told me he has always had questions about God and religion. One day he went to a Christian book store to look around. While there, he discovered that one whole wall of the store was dedicated to books and materials about the evils of the Mormon religion, i.e. anti-mormon literature. He said he then had the distinct question come to his mind: “what are they so affraid of?” After this, he investigated for himself and was converted.

I like that question - what are they so affraid of. I think if any religion has to expend so much energy focused not on how or why it is good, but on how or why other religions are bad, it’s a fairly good sign that religion is extremely self-concious about its lack of substance and foundational truths. I’ve always appreciated the fact that we don’t have hundreds of pamphlets at the back of our chapels attempting to refute Catholicism, New Age Christianity/Non-Denominationalism, Presbyterianism, etc. In other words, I love the fact that my religion isn’t self-concious!