Are Mormons Christians?

I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church). I studied and practiced that faith for nearly forty years. I'm not active in that church anymore. In fact, I don't believe in the doctrines of the church anymore, though I did for most of my life.

I was thinking about the claim that some people make that Mormons aren't Christians, and I thought I might tackle that today. Because of my background, I have some knowledge on the subject. And because I no longer believe in the church's teachings, I hope I may be seen as unbiased.

Background

For as long as I can remember, I have heard people claim that Mormons are not Christians. As far as I can tell, the logic typically goes like this: Mormon doctrines and teachings are in direct opposition to the Bible, the Nicene creed, or something similar. Mormons therefore worship a Jesus who is not the Jesus of the Bible. Therefore, Mormons are not Christians.

An alternative argument says that Mormons worship something or someone other than Jesus. Some claim that Mormonism was founded by the devil, so Mormons worship the devil. Others say that Mormons worship Joseph Smith (the church's founder) and/or their current leaders. Any worship other than the worship of Jesus disqualifies them from being Christians.

These are two parallel chains of logic. Let's look at each one a little more closely.

Teachings in Opposition to the Bible, the Nicene creed, etc.

Some of the doctrines and teachings I have heard people use as justification for saying Mormons aren't Christians include the following:

1. Mormons deny salvation by grace alone
• Mormons tend to emphasize works more than many Protestant Christians
• Note that this accusation could be made against the Catholic church too
2. Mormons deny the inerrancy of the Bible
• If they deny the Bible is the perfect word of God, they are not true Christians
3. Mormons teach that they can become gods
• This denies the supremacy of God, Jesus Christ, etc
• There is nothing in the Bible that corroborates this teaching
• There are various other doctrinal differences that people may use to justify their claim, but this is one of the most powerful and compelling

Mormons Worship the Devil, Joseph Smith, etc.

Some of the attacks on Mormons in the last 40 years or so claim that the miraculous events associated with the early Mormon church were facilitated by the power of the devil. Thus, the Mormons follow and/or worship the devil.

The Mormon Church often emphasizes the priesthood authority held by its leaders. Hymns such as "Praise to the Man", a stirring song written in praise of Joseph Smith, seem to support the idea that Mormons worship their founder. If you watch General Conference, you can see that same reverence and respect directed toward the current leader of the Church, whoever he may be at the time. The respect that Mormons have for their leader(s) has often been taken as a sign that Mormons worship those men.

My Take on These Claims

The doctrinal differences can be disturbing for those who don't share the Mormon view on them. We could talk about each of them, but instead of trying to explain the Mormon teachings, I think I'll just point out the danger of the logic that says that a doctrinal difference justifies me in stripping someone else of their claim to be a Christian.

The Nicene creed is an important marker in the development of Christian theology, but is it the standard by which we should measure the Christianity of any person or group? The Bible is a more reasonable standard, but the different doctrines of various denominations (some of which openly conflict with one another) have all been founded on the Bible. These differences, all with biblical justification, have led Christians to persecute and kill each other at different times in history. So using the Bible as the standard by which we judge the Christianity of any movement is a bit dangerous. The Bible is broad enough that different people can find different meanings in the same passages. For every doctrine mentioned above, and many others taught by the Mormon church, I can find Biblical passages that could be construed as supporting it. You can disagree with the interpretation, but it's reasonable for someone who believes the principle to read the support of that principle in those passages. Yes, even the teaching that humans, as God's children, can grow up to be like Him, can be justified by the Bible. See Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34-36. Again, you can disagree with the interpretation, but if you read those with an open mind, I think you'll see my point.

As far as Mormons worshiping something or someone other than Christ, that is certainly possible. Just as possible as it is for any professing Christian to have someone or something in their life that takes precedence over the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Do Mormons worship the devil? Not as far as I can tell. It could be that some people have done so at different times in history. Who knows? But as an organization, the church is anything but satanic. Do Mormons worship their leaders? This is far more likely. There have been times in the church's history when the mission of Joseph Smith and the authority of a living prophet have been emphasized as a way to differentiate the church from other Christian churches. True Christianity may have waxed and waned in the church as a result of this and other doctrinal and cultural trends. But a study of the teachings and people in the church from the founding of the church in 1830 tells me that the major undercurrent of the entire religious movement is, and always has been, faith in Jesus Christ and His redemptive sacrifice. That seems like sufficient justification for claiming the title of Christian.

Christianity in Mormonism

Mormons pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ. They take the sacrament weekly in remembrance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They believe in the Bible, though they have concerns about mis-translations, pedigree of manuscripts, etc. They also believe in other scripture, most notably the Book of Mormon, whose subtitle is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ". They are called Mormons because of the name of this book, but the official name of the church is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", which has been the church's name since 1838. Note how many times I mentioned the name of Jesus Christ in these few, simple statements about the Mormon church's faith and practices.

As a practicing Mormon, the Christianity of the faith was central to my spiritual practice. Though I do not believe in the foundations of the faith anymore, I believe that adherence to the faith has the potential to improve peoples' lives and connect them with God.

The Mormon church isn't flawless. It has its warts like any other organization. But Jesus Christ is central to the church's teachings, and I think it's extremely disrespectful to suggest that the Mormon church is not a legitimate Christian church.

Respect for All Religions

All religions have good in them. All have the potential to improve peoples' lives. While religion can have a dark side, in general, I think it is a force for good in the world. It is the arrogance in religion that makes it unhealthy. The kind of arrogance that makes us confident enough in our understanding of truth to strip someone else's religion of its claim to a faith that is central to its doctrine.

The Mormon Church is a Christian church. And it does a lot of good for its people and, by extension, the world. Let's have respect for other peoples' faith, and allow them the freedom, both politically and morally, to worship as they think best. This kind of acceptance and tolerance will do them, and us, a lot of good.

Spirituality without Religion

A few years ago, I left the church I grew up in. For a while afterward, I sometimes wondered what that would mean for me as far as religion goes. I never had a strong desire to join a new church, but I did sometimes wonder if I should join a community that practiced meditation. I went to a Zen Center nearby a few times, and while it was great in a lot of ways, it didn't really click for me.

I'm not against the idea of joining a group again at some point, but I'm pretty happy with my independent spiritual journey for now.

That probably seems weird to some of you. What does spirituality mean without religion?

Religion is a conduit for spirituality. A spiritual connection to something outside yourself is an individual experience. If many people make a connection in some joint exercise, that can be really cool. But it isn't necessary.

Spirituality without religion is a bit like education without school. It would be ridiculous to suppose that education can't occur outside of school. I don't go to school anymore, but I learn new things all the time. And while I don't associate myself with a religion anymore, I often feel a spiritual connection to something outside myself.

Maybe that's ok. And maybe someday, I'll join a community of like-minded practitioners and see if that can help me progress even more. Or maybe not. We'll see.

The Problematic Ideal

As a practicing Mormon, I sometimes found myself weighed down with heaviness, a symptom of a self-burdening syndrome. Sometimes the syndrome manifests as a form of guilt and self-recrimination. But more often, it's just a feeling of heaviness. A burden we carry by maintaining a set of unrealizable objectives. As an example, I have sometimes tried to add up all the time it would take to do everything that Mormon church leaders tell us we are supposed to be doing. There simply isn't time in the day to do it all.

As I've recently looked at the church from a more neutral perspective, I've come to see the self-burdening syndrome as a natural outgrowth of some of the church's teachings. I'm not trying to slam the LDS Church. I respect it as an organization for what it does for its members and others. But as its teachings hold up an ideal of perfection, we're going to have a lot of people embracing guilt and judgment on some level.

On the other hand, there are many teachings in the church that tend to reduce the effects of the self-burdening syndrome. There are several scriptures I collected years ago that I called the "chill out Gospel". One of my favorites is Matthew 11:30, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I have seen some church leaders who recognized that there is a time and a season for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) and have preached a lighter gospel that sounds something like, “do what you can and enjoy the ride.” Unfortunately, there is also a core set of teachings, and plenty of talks by current church leaders, that feed right into the guilt and judgment.

This syndrome isn't limited to the LDS church. I only talked about that church because it's part of my background; it's what I know best. I think the syndrome is a natural outgrowth of any religion or school of thought that teaches an ideal of perfection, a concept of evil, and a conflict between those two things. In western religion and philosophy, these ideas are deeply entrenched. So deep, I never saw them clearly until I began to step out of them. In the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islaam), there is an ideal good (God/Allah) and an opposing evil (Satan/Shaitan) except, I believe, in Judaism, which doesn't necessarily believe in a devil/tempter. There are numerous scriptures in these religions that speak of a conflict that began before, or at the time of, creation and will last until some promised time of peace. In Mormon/Christian theology, this is the promised millennium of peace following Armageddon.

In western philosophy, I see idealism first cropping up with Plato's forms, a concept of an abstract ideal of which all manifestations are imperfect reflections. Early Christian writers found they had a lot in common with Plato's teachings, and C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite authors, had quite a bit to say about them. As a beautiful example, take a look at Lewis' culmination of the Narnia series, "The Last Battle". The ideal is the spiritual, the unmanifested, the perfect. The manifested will never achieve the ideal, but is only a crude reflection of it. One day, after we die, we will see the ideal in all its glory. This is a Christian idea, not a philosophic one, but, when framed that way, you can probably see why Plato’s philosophy of forms has had great appeal in some Christian circles.

I think the concept of Plato's ideal forms is beautiful in a way, but also problematic. By imagining that the ideal is beyond our reach, those who strive for perfection in this life will never achieve their goals. Perfection and ultimate happiness must be saved for later. An echo of this is the end-time prophecies, which say we must wait for the ideal form of government and human society (the coming millennium I referred to earlier). Our current forms are corrupt and less than ideal. But the ideal will come.

What I find unfortunate about this line of thinking is that we're always waiting for something to be perfect. Perfection is always just outside our reach. Being forced to wait makes some of us give up on the life we're living right now. We begin to see our life on this earth as dirty, unhealthy, suboptimal.

But I don't see life that way. At least, not anymore. I look at the "imperfection" all around me and I think it's perfect. I've never seen a perfect triangle according to the rules of geometry (one example of Plato's forms), but the triangles I do see are each unique ... and beautiful in their own way.

I live in a pretty nice house, but it’s a typical family home. It's often a mess. The "ideal" home would have everything in its proper place. But the "ideal," could it ever be achieved, would be sterile and death-like. Life is messy. And messy can be beautiful.

In my living room, I have some cracks in the walls. They weren't there when we bought the house, but the foundation has shifted a little, and they appeared a few years ago. That kind of thing used to bother me (OCD personality that I am), and I would want to fix it. But now I look at it as a beautiful reflection of a home that has been lived in and loved. Every mark on the walls is a reflection and reminder of memories, many of them chaotic, loud, hyper, sometimes even combative, but always beautiful. We're planning to paint the walls soon because it's nice to have things clean and sparkly (and that will be beautiful too), but while we have the cracks and the marks, I'll enjoy them.

These realities, these messy things that never measure up to anyone's version of "ideal" are, in my mind, perfect. It is the ideal forms, which have never existed in the real world, that are unhealthy. 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
  -- Anthem by Leonard Cohen

The idealistic mode of thinking manifests itself in some form, to some degree, in the conscious or subconscious thoughts of many of us. It causes people to compare themselves, their lives, their habits, their thoughts, or whatever to a perfect ideal that simply does not exist. Perfection is right here, in this life, right now. And happiness is best found when life is embraced and loved, not in spite of its imperfections, but because of them.

Ski Trip

I took my two younger kids on a ski trip this week. They had never been before, and I haven't skied in a LONG time. I think it's been about 17 years. It was really cool to be back on skis again.

My son decided to do snowboarding, so I couldn't really help him because I've never done snowboarding. But this is the same kid who learned to ride a bike by watching a friend for a few minutes. He was about four years old. No instruction. No training wheels. He just jumped on and rode. So I figured it would be ok.

My daughter and I did skis. I helped her learn to stop, control her speed, and control her turns. She did really well. She and I graduated from the bunny hills to the blue squares, and she only fell twice the whole day. She's good enough that she could probably handle a black diamond next time we ski. She could have probably done it that day, but she was a little too nervous to try it.

My son got a little help from a ski patrol guy to get his board on. He might have gotten a few tips from the guy, but mostly, he just took off and started snowboarding. He started on the bunny slope too, but quickly graduated to the blue squares. One of the blue slopes had a short run on the side that ended in a small ramp that joined the main slope. Early afternoon, he was taking that ramp, doing small jumps, and landing them with a few inches of air. In the middle of the afternoon, he and I tackled a black diamond. We skied that slope several times, and he loved it!

In a way, I'm not surprised at how well my kids did. Those two have always been pretty active. Different styles, but both are physically gifted. But even though I knew what to expect, I'm still amazed that my son picked up snowboarding with almost no instruction and was doing black diamonds on his first day!

I did pretty well. It was really cool how fast it came back to me. As soon as I was on the skis, I was suddenly 20 again. I immediately remembered a lot of what I used to know, and it felt really natural to be skiing, almost like I had never stopped. But not quite. I was a bit nervous to take the really steep slopes, and I was not excited about the idea of falling, so I probably took it slower than I needed to.

I gradually got more comfortable as the day went on, and I didn't fall until the very end of the day. On our last run, we were on a slope with a lot of ice and some small moguls. I'm not sure what it was that took me out, but I fell pretty hard. My skis stayed on, one leg twisted a bit, but nothing terrible. But my body sure felt it!

I had a really good time, but I learned that I'm not in my 20s anymore. My body is not as strong or flexible as it used to be.

Overall, awesome trip. It's expensive and a pretty long drive, but we are definitely doing it again.

The Problem of Evil

In Christianity, and any monotheistic religion that worships an all-powerful God, there is a philosophical problem known as The Problem of Evil. It asks the question: if God is benevolent, all-knowing, and all-powerful, how can there be evil in the world? The debate calls into question the existence of such a God.

It's an old question, and I don't have anything new to add, so I'm not going to argue either for or against the existence of an omnipotent God. But I do have a slightly different take on the Problem of Evil as it's typically formulated.

The Problem of Evil

I used to see things almost entirely in terms of good and evil. Everything was colored by that paradigm. Running beneath everything I experienced, felt, or thought, was an ever-present conflict between good and evil. Naturally, I pictured myself on the side of good most of the time. Occasionally, I would recognize that I had done something wrong, feel a bit guilty, and try to get myself back on the good side as quickly as possible. Everything outside the little bubble of what I defined as good was tainted with a twinge of evil. And a few things were just purely evil. Deeply dark and horrific.

Recently, I've discovered a new problem of evil. One that doesn't have anything to do with God. One that simply recognizes that the concept of evil itself is problematic. Not that evil is a problem. The concept that evil exists is a problem.

In recent years, I've begun to see the world through a different lens. One that doesn't require the existence of evil. This probably seems crazy. It did to me for a while. And sometimes, I still think I'm a bit nuts. But I'll try to explain my thinking, and you can decide if it makes any sense.

When I try to imagine the most evil thing possible, I think of acts of hate. Murder, whether on an individual or a massive scale, seems pretty horrific. I can't think of anything darker than that, so let's use that as an example.

Murder

When someone kills someone else, my tendency used to be to judge that person. I would wish for justice and its associated pain so the murderer couldn't be said to have gotten away with it, and so he/she could feel just a bit of what his/her victim(s) and their friends and family must have felt or are still feeling. That seems just.

But now when I think of a murder, I think less of judgment. My tendency is to ask why.

Why did they kill that person?

• It could be rage. There could be a history between the murderer and the victim. That history could be complicated, but rivalries and grudges are rarely one-sided. Perhaps there was some offense given by the victim that would allow us to make some sense of the rage.
• It could be mental illness. The murderer might be psychologically unhinged. How did that happen? Mental illness is complicated, but it likely comes in some measure from some painful experience(s) in the person's past.
• Or maybe the act came about through some twisted philosophy. Some belief system that justified the act in the murderer's mind. How did that philosophy get stuck in their head? Were they the victim of some intellectual abuse or cultural momentum that was itself a product of abuse or pain?

Maybe there are other reasons, but in all of my musing, I fail to find any motivation for murder that I can properly call evil. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I'm inclined to think that the murderer must have suffered in order to bring them to the point where they were willing to take someone else's life. I'm pretty confident that no one is born with the inclination to kill. And if that's true, that the murderer suffered, then the appropriate response is compassion, not judgment.

Of course, it's natural to feel compassion for the victim and their friends and family. That's where the suffering is the most obvious. And perhaps that's why it's easy to judge the murderer. Clearly, that suffering wouldn't exist if the murderer hadn't acted. But perhaps there is hidden suffering in the murderer's past that could evoke some compassion if only we understood it.

Judgment

Feeling compassion for a murderer doesn't mean I condone the act. Society has a right and a duty to hold people accountable for actions that take away the rights and freedoms of others. So I'm not saying there shouldn't be justice or accountability. The proper response is likely to imprison or otherwise punish the crime. If nothing else, this should hopefully deter future crime of a similar nature.

Lady Justice holding the Scales of Justice

Unfortunately, our punitive system of justice doesn't seem to do much good for the criminal. Shutting them out from society and placing them in a prison subculture typically doesn't do much to reform an individual. They often feel justified in further acts of crime as they probably feel that society has cast them out. Maybe there is a better way of dealing with crime, but I don't know what it is. Until we find a better way, I think society must step in to stop and/or punish such acts as best it can.

But as an individual, I don't see any value in judging the criminal. To label someone, or even the action they took, as evil seems unnecessary. There is pain. There is stupidity. There is horror. But I don't think there is such a thing as evil.

Stopping the War

The biggest problem I see with the concept of evil is judgment. For me, judgment naturally follows evil. When I label something as evil, I can't help but judge it. If that evil wasn't here, things would be better. But when I judge anything, a person, a situation, or something inside of me like a thought or a feeling, I quickly become exhausted by the mental conflict that ensues.

Because all judgment implies conflict. When I judge something, I find myself thinking things like: I don't like that. I wish it were different. Why does it have to be that way? And eventually, I find myself in the unhappy position of fighting my reality. And guess who wins that fight ...

In my opinion, the problem of evil isn't that it potentially disproves the existence of an all-powerful God. The problem of evil is that it exists only in our minds. As Hamlet said, "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Allowing the concept of evil to occupy our minds and remain a part of our reality is unhealthy, both for the individual and for the larger society.