Until I started blogging about 1 1/2 years ago I hadn’t heard of a lot of the stuff that’s out there such as “Adam/God Theory” and “Blood Atonement” that many anti-Mormons spread. The accusation of “earning” one’s salvation was something new to me as well that I had never heard of.

Faith is an interesting thing because it makes up so much of what a person does and how he or she views the world. When that faith is openly attacked the natural instinct is to bristle up and throw back some more punches.

Most “anti-Mormon literature” as we like to call it, is in my opinion ridiculous and pulled from obscure quotes by various prophets and not at all what we teach today. It’s the equivalent of taking some quote from one of the Christian crusaders and using it against all Christians.

However, there are many other of our fellow Christians who are well-intended in their approach with Mormons and who sincerely want to help us. Yesterday I read a great post over at Clean Cut that summarized a speech given by Dr Craig Blomberg. (If you don’t remember who Dr Blomberg is, he co-wrote “How Wide the Divide?“, which is a book on Mormon vs. Evangelical doctrine written by a Mormon and an Evangelical). In his speech, Bloomberg speaks to a large body of Christians in a talk entitled “What would Jesus Say to a Mormon?” I’ll have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about reading it because most people point fingers at us and try to tell us why we’re wrong. Dr Bloomberg did, what I think Jesus would have all of us do. He showed a genuine love for the LDS people and acknowledged their Christian beliefs. To view a summary of the 10 points he feels Jesus would say to Mormons you can also visit this blog.

I feel that although Blomberg doesn’t believe everything Mormons do he does exactly what a good Christian should do in my opinion and he sees the good and the common ground and builds on that rather than attacking the differences.  I also feel he did a great job in his top 10 list of pointing out things we as Mormons can definitely learn from, but he also showed other Christians that in many ways Mormons aren’t so far off from what they believe as well. 

What do you think about Blomberg’s approach?

Also, how to you feel about his top 10 list?  Do you feel it’s accurate?

For us as Mormons, how can we learn from this in our discussions with fellow Christians?

5-23-09

I just read another great post related to this topic that was written last fall.  It shares Dr Blomberg’s feelings of how the Mormon/Evangelical divide is from his perspective 11 years after having written the book.  Check out the site here.