Sharing the Good News with Mormons

Summary

All people, whether they recognize it or not, adhere to a worldview by which they make sense of the world they live in. This is also true in the arena of faith. Most people employ at least one of six different approaches as they determine what to believe and why. Recognizing and understanding each of these approaches is the first step toward confident and effective evangelism.

Introduction

Everyone has faith in something. Buddhists believe in the eightfold path. Muslims follow the five pillars of Islam. Atheists assume there is no creator. Mormons hold that “living together forever” in a family unit is possible. And Christians trust that Jesus is the Son of God who died for their sins.

To be effective in reaching people for Christ, it is important to understand why others believe the way they do. According to 1 Corinthians 9:20-23, Paul modeled the importance of knowing our audience. To Jewish people he deliberately communicated as a Jew “in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law…to those outside the law I became as one outside the law” and “to the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak.” In fact, the apostle said, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

This chapter will explore six ways people decide what to believe through what I call the six faith paths.1 As we’ll see, some are more reliable than others. Most of them can be found within the Latter-day Saint community. Once we can identify which ones our friends are using, we’ll be better prepared to point them toward a biblical faith.

The Six Faith Paths

1. Relativistic Faith Path: “Truth is what you make it.”

The first of the six approaches people take to choosing their faith is the relativistic faith path. People with this view choose what to believe by deciding what they want to believe—and then thinking that reality conforms to those beliefs. People who take this approach often say things like, “I’ve got my truth; you’ve got yours—let’s just get along.”

Christians need to be strong advocates of tolerance by supporting people’s right to choose their own beliefs. That doesn’t mean everybody is right. Tolerance and truth are entirely different. I’ll support the rights of groups to say, for example, that Jesus was actually an exalted mushroom (there are some who do teach that), but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. An important aspect of tolerance is the freedom to disagree and debate about spiritual ideas—and not pretend that everyone’s beliefs are equally valid.

Those who attempt to provide evidence for Christianity to relativists will be dismissed as presenting nothing more than “your truth.” But relativism will not work in any other area of life, so why should it be trusted in the spiritual realm? Suggest that they go to Hollywood and try driving on Highway 101 in a relativistic manner by deciding that the sign by the road saying “101” is, for them, the speed limit. If they happen to meet a highway patrolman, they can simply explain, “My truth is that my speed limit is 101, so just let me be.”

How do you think that will work out? Probably not so well. With incredulity, the officer will reply, “Look, when you’re out here on the highway there’s just real truth. And the truth is that the speed limit is 65, so you’re going to pay a hefty fine!”

Relativistic highway driving doesn’t work—nor does relativistic dieting, relativistic investing, or relativistic anything. The truth is that in real life the real truth must be discovered and dealt with. It’s not what we want things to be or think they ought to be. Truth is what really is. Imagining or wishing things were different has no effect on how things really are. That’s the case in the physical world, but also in the spiritual world.

In recent years, many Latter-day Saints have sidled up to this approach more than they might realize. Perhaps this is one reason why many Mormons don’t try very hard to convert their evangelical Christian friends to their faith—because, after all, they think these “other Christians” are “good” and are merely on their own truth path. Those holding this perspective may leave evangelism to the short-term missionaries who may or may not knock on the Christian’s door.

The real question is this: What reasons are there to believe or not believe in any religion, including Mormonism or historic Christianity? Relativism can’t answer that question; it can only lead one to choose a belief and to act as if it is really true. That’s a roll of the dice that I don’t want to take with my life—and one we should try to convince our friends they don’t want to take with their lives either. Instead, we need to urge them to find a more reliable faith path, one that will lead them to a trustworthy faith based on real facts.

2. Traditional Faith Path: “Truth is what you’ve always been taught.”

The second approach is the traditional faith path. This approach accepts beliefs as hand-me-downs. Your friends on this path might not even think about what they believe or why—they simply accept what they were taught growing up. This person says, “My parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were all Mormons, so I’m a Mormon, and I’ll always be one.”

What can we say to someone with this mindset? We can ask how they know their parents were right, because they could have been wrong—mine could have been and yours could have been. So how do we find out whose parents, and whose belief systems, are correct? We cannot discover the truth by blindly clinging to traditions.

You might encourage your friends to think of the last holiday they had with their extended family. Urge them to consider the people around the dinner table and ask themselves: “Which of these relatives do I respect enough to entrust my eternity to?” That’s what they’re doing when they unthinkingly perpetuate hand-me-down beliefs and traditions. I love my relatives and enjoy being around them, but I won’t let a single one of them do my thinking for me or decide on behalf of me and my children what we’re going to believe.

Instead of supporting a blind journey down the traditional faith path, the Bible commands believers to “test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 ESV). And Jesus cautioned His listeners about the dangers of letting tradition stand in the way of obeying what God has said (Mark 7:5-13).

The traditional path is a natural way to begin as children. At some point, however, we need to grow up spiritually and think for ourselves, examine the reasons behind the traditions we’ve been taught, and seek truth with God’s help until we’re confident we are on the right path. This journey can be relationally tumultuous—leading us to explore biblical teachings that other family members might not be open to considering. Jesus promised that if we will ask, seek, and knock, we will find not just truth but the surpassing rewards that come with knowing the God of truth Himself (Luke 11:9-13).

3. Authoritarian Faith Path: “Truth is what you’ve been told to believe.”

Similar to the last approach, the authoritarian faith path is also passive, but this one can come with much more force. The authoritarian teacher exclaims, “You will believe this!”

I saw this once when I took a church group on a trip to an Islamic mosque. The imam (someone who leads prayer at the mosque) had everyone sit down so he could give an overview of the tenets of Islam. While he was at it, he decided to teach a few things about Christianity as well. He adamantly declared that “God is not divided; he does not have a son.” I knew Muslims also deny that Jesus died on the cross and reject claims about His resurrection, so I raised my hand and said,

I’m curious about something. Jesus’s followers walked and talked with Him for several years. They also reported that He repeatedly claimed to be the Son of God, that they watched Him die on the cross, and that three days later they saw and talked and ate with Him after He was resurrected. They wrote down detailed accounts of what they heard and saw. These have been preserved in thousands of manuscript documents. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but what Islam teaches us about Jesus seems to be based on the words of one man, Muhammad, who six hundred years after the time of Christ was sitting in a cave when, he claimed, an angel spoke to him and told him these things weren’t so. What I’m curious about is whether you have any historical or logical reasons for why we should accept that viewpoint over and against the actual historical record?

The imam glared at me and declared, “I choose to believe the prophet!” With this statement, the discussion was over. For him, the authority of his religion was all he needed. If he had deeper reasons backing up his faith, he chose not to share them.

In Mormonism, “official church doctrine” is expounded upon numerous times in biannual General Conference sessions, church manuals, and teachings at local Sunday services. Leaders demand adherence from their followers. Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith set the pace when he said, “God made Aaron to be the mouth piece for the children of Israel, and He will make me be god to you in His stead, and the Elders to be mouth for me; and if you don’t like it, you must lump it.”2 Although they wouldn’t say it exactly as Smith did, many LDS parents, bishops, and stake presidents come across with the same attitude.

How should we respond? First, make it clear that we’re not anti-authority—we all will be influenced and led by authorities in our lives. But, second, we need to submit to the right authorities by measuring them against biblical standards (Acts 17:11). “Watch out for false prophets,” Jesus warned. How? “By their fruit you will recognize them,” He explained (Matthew 7:15-16 NIV).

4. Intuitive Faith Path: “Truth is what you feel in your heart.”

The fourth approach is the intuitive faith path, exhibited in the person who says, “Why do I need evidence when my spirit tells me what’s true?”

In the Star Wars movie A New Hope, Obi-Wan Kenobi teaches Luke Skywalker to use his lightsaber. “Don’t trust your eyes,” he said. “Your eyes will deceive you.” Instead, he puts a hood over Luke’s face so he can’t see anything and says, “Just feel the Force.” This sounds so spiritual. When you talk to your friends who think this way, ask them if they’ve ever tried making financial investments simply by following their hearts or trusting their feelings. They’d quickly go broke.

Or ask them if they’ve attempted to drive to some side-street address in the heart of a major city based on instinct alone, without GPS. Sure, they might have gotten lucky and found their way on occasion, but usually they’ll become frustrated and realize that their senses—and GPS!—were created for a reason.

God will sometimes give us an intuitive sense about things. Yet we need to be careful. The heart, according to the Bible, is deceitfully wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, warned in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”

Intuition is like a flashing yellow light in a dark intersection: it signals to pay attention, but it doesn’t tell you everything you need to know. You still need to look both ways, figure out what the real situation is, and act accordingly. Spiritual intuition is similar to that. It might give some clues, but you still need to search for solid truth and reliable evidence to be confident you’re on the right track.

5. Mystical Faith Path: “Truth is what you think God told you.”

Those who take the mystical faith path choose what they believe based on experiences they consider supernatural. They are therefore supremely confident in what they believe. “Why should I listen to your academic arguments,” they wonder, “when I already know what God has shown me?” I most commonly see this approach in Mormons who testify that they prayed to God, asking Him to show them if the Book of Mormon was true. When they felt a strong sense that it was, it became “case closed”—and they can’t understand why you’re so hesitant to become a Latter-day Saint as well.

What should we say to our friends who are on the mystical faith path? First, we shouldn’t deny that God can and does speak today. He didn’t lose His voice two thousand years ago. Jesus said in John 10:27, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

But caution is in order, however, as the Bible warns in 1 John 4:1, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (NIV). And 1 Thessalonians 5:21 cautions that we should “test everything; hold fast what is good.” The message of Scripture is, first, to be open to hearing God’s voice, but, second, to be careful about what you accept as being from God.

How can we test such things? By applying the pattern in the Bible, which is to test alleged new revelations against what we already know to be from God. For example, Paul warned in Galatians 1:8, “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!” (NIV). In other words, don’t automatically put stock in a message received through a mystical experience unless it passes the test and brings a message consistent with what has already been shown to be true from the Bible.

Mormonism’s message that there are many gods contradicts the clear and consistent monotheistic teachings of both the Old and New Testaments (Isaiah 45:5; John 17:3). If your Mormon friends say God told them it’s true, show them how the Bible says that they need to “test all things” and not to believe every spirit—even if it’s an angel standing right in front of them—when it contradicts what God has already revealed.

6. Evidential Faith Path: “Truth is what logic and evidence point to.”

The sixth approach, the evidential faith path, is the most consistently trustworthy method for determining truth, as it relies primarily on reason and evidence to lead one toward faith.3 We can’t think, evaluate ideas, or make decisions without logic. Some may claim that they don’t trust logic while trying to make their point logically. Or sometimes they’ll say that logic is “Western” and is not accepted by the other half of the world living in the East. As Indian-born apologist Ravi Zacharias says, “Even in India we look both ways before we cross the street. It is either the bus or me, not both of us!’ ”⁴ And need we argue for the importance of evidence that is experienced through the five senses? All scientific research relies on it; it’s the foundational tool of the justice system and is what we use every day to figure out what is true.

Logic and evidence are inescapable, so let’s employ them well. More than that, the Bible—which is itself supported by reason and evidence—tells us to test truth claims. Jesus often pointed to evidence to verify His claims, including fulfilled prophecies, miracles, His divine knowledge and insights, His sinless life, and ultimately His resurrection from the dead. He also warned us, as we saw earlier, to examine the words and fruit of those who claim to be prophets to see whether the evidence substantiates their claims.

Looking back over the other faith paths, we see that this mix of logic and evidence helps us evaluate the relativistic faith path, determining it to be faulty because truth needs to square with what is real. It provides the tools to test our traditions to determine which ones are worth holding on to, and to assess the credentials and messages of the authorities in our lives. It also helps us size up our intuitive instincts and confirm or disconfirm our mystical encounters.

More than that, it provides an ensemble of reasons for accepting the biblical Christian message.5 Studying these reasons will strengthen your own faith while giving you the confidence to effectively communicate that faith to your Mormon friends as we “become all things to all people…for the sake of the gospel.”

Mark Mittelberg (Denver, Colorado) is the Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Evangelism, in partnership with Houston Baptist University. His books include The Case for Christ Devotional: Your Daily Moment of Truth (with Lee Strobel), The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask (With Answers), Confident Faith, and The Reason Why Faith Makes Sense. He is also the primary author of the Becoming a Contagious Christian training course, which has been translated into more than 20 languages.