Friday, June 10, 2011

Rant: Protestant Hypocrisy Regarding Prophets

It bugs me to no end to hear modern Christians ignore some of the teachings of early prophets like Peter and Paul, then turn around and bash Mormons for letting go of some of the early teachings of Joseph and Brigham. The hypocrisy is so thick it is amazing.

On the other side of the coin, there are those who claim Biblical inerrancy - who refuse to consider the possibility that earlier prophets and apostles might not have recorded the universal, literal word of God - and turn around and bash Mormons for “worshiping” Joseph (again, even though we have let go of quite a few of his earliest teachings). Again, the irony makes me gag.

The truest irony is that both of these groups claim we worship Joseph - even though, in practical terms, when these charges have any degree of legitimacy, we simply are treating him like these people treat the prophets of their own heritage - either too harshly or with too much honor.

Damned if you do; damned if you don’t - even though each extreme in Mormonism tends to be less extreme than its counterpart in Protestantism. Physician, heal thyself.

/End of rant. Back to our regularly scheduled program.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah. The idiocy ticks me off too. If they knew anything about Christian History, or even the Bible, I think a lot of them would change their beliefs. I think a lot of LDS need to read history as well. It is quite liberating. The study of early Christian history has increased my testimony by a lot.

Anonymous said...

Hm.Nevertheless I get very uncomfortable when we focus on Joseph Smith's birthday at Christmas.Leaves us open to not a little misunderstanding.

Richard Alger said...

+1 again. (I wish Blogger had a way to subscribe to comments without making a comment.)