Some Thoughts on a Mormon-Evangelical Dialogue
Recently someone sent me a link to a blog, wherein the blogger had interviewed various Christian leaders on the subject of approaching Mormons. He found the common denominator between each interviewee was the fact they identified their activity as “dialogue.” He then asserted: The great thing about the term “dialogue” is that it implies a two-way interaction. It means that both sides will have an opportunity to communicate their views, and both sides will be expected to listen to each other. The term “evangelism” suggests that one party has the knowledge and will be dispensing it to the other side, who is merely a passive recipient. In dialogue the two parties approach each other as equals, and both have an opportunity to be active participants (http://tinyurl.com/nou49f).
To a certain extent, I can understand the guy’s diplomacy. Angry rants and half-cocked character attacks levied against a person’s own beliefs can certainly make a mess of things. For a Christian, it can be a way of dragging the sacred name of Christ in the mud.
The blogger, however, creates more problems than solutions in asserting that evangelism “suggests that one party has the knowledge and will be dispensing it to the other side.” So the term “evangelism” connotes s type of totalitarian superiority, wherein the messenger is in a very fascist way imposing his own ideas onto the recipient, whereas “dialoged” is a nice, friendly, cuddly, warm, harmless, inoffensive, since it gives the impression of an equal ground to each person in the conversation.
It can also be pointed out that the message of the evangelist is not a passive monologue. Those one who hear and believe receive eternal life.
Mormon apologists Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson are skeptical about the effectiveness of the use of non-threatening “dialogue” with Mormons (http://tinyurl.com/nbj6a8).
Making conversation with Mormons is something to be encouraged, and Christians are to avoid belligerent character attacks on these lost souls. However, for those committed to a Christian worldview wherein absolute truth exists and can be known, there must come a point in any faith conversation where critical questions must be addressed: Did God speak? If so, how did God communicate to us? What did God reveal about Himself to us? Who is Jesus? The answer to these questions from biblical writers differs greatly from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Both cannot be true. One must be right and the other must be wrong. It is, moreover, not totalitarian to accept one answer as true and the other as false.
To a certain extent, I can understand the guy’s diplomacy. Angry rants and half-cocked character attacks levied against a person’s own beliefs can certainly make a mess of things. For a Christian, it can be a way of dragging the sacred name of Christ in the mud.
The blogger, however, creates more problems than solutions in asserting that evangelism “suggests that one party has the knowledge and will be dispensing it to the other side.” So the term “evangelism” connotes s type of totalitarian superiority, wherein the messenger is in a very fascist way imposing his own ideas onto the recipient, whereas “dialoged” is a nice, friendly, cuddly, warm, harmless, inoffensive, since it gives the impression of an equal ground to each person in the conversation.
It can also be pointed out that the message of the evangelist is not a passive monologue. Those one who hear and believe receive eternal life.
Mormon apologists Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson are skeptical about the effectiveness of the use of non-threatening “dialogue” with Mormons (http://tinyurl.com/nbj6a8).
Making conversation with Mormons is something to be encouraged, and Christians are to avoid belligerent character attacks on these lost souls. However, for those committed to a Christian worldview wherein absolute truth exists and can be known, there must come a point in any faith conversation where critical questions must be addressed: Did God speak? If so, how did God communicate to us? What did God reveal about Himself to us? Who is Jesus? The answer to these questions from biblical writers differs greatly from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Both cannot be true. One must be right and the other must be wrong. It is, moreover, not totalitarian to accept one answer as true and the other as false.
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