Pervangelical Ignorance

I don't really like name calling. In fact, I try not to do it at all. But this past weekend at LDS General Conference there was such a farcical zoo created by the Street Preachers, that I sort of figure I need a new name for these folks who claim to be Evangelical Christians. Simply speaking, they are not. They pervert the doctrines of the Bible for their own self-aggrandizement.

One fellow named James is a particularly choice piece of Biblical perversion. He is deceptive and rude, and then resorts to the Bible to claim such rights. Jesus must weep extra hard. The funny thing is he likes to dress up in costumes and wear a cape, but then he calls Mormon men "effeminate". Seriously. His family looked to me like a bunch of demoralized troops run into the ground by an oblivious commander. He strutted around wearing a Satan outfit and tried to be sarcastic. I spoke with him on Saturday, and he asked me where the book of Hezekiah is in the Bible. Of course, it is not in the Bible, and I said so. He immediately responded "Oh, you've seen my videos online." Well, truthfully, yes, but I did not recognize him, and I knew the answer from my study of the Bible.

This kind of person is unChristian at so many levels. Peter advised us to have "answers" to questions asked of us, but to answer with gentleness and respect. No one is asking him questions, he just stands around and yells at people. I was speaking with his family, and he comes over to tell them not to speak with me, and then starts asking questions of me, and when I said he was rude and this was not a conversation, he said he was not trying to have a conversation, he was preaching. I guess I should know a guy dressed as Satan and being rude is probably congenitally unable to be honest in his communications with others.

He is literally so proud of his Bible study experience, he refuses to entertain there could be more to learn. He was attacking the LDS position on the Godhead, and I told him that John 1:1-2 was pretty compelling evidence that there is more than 1 real divine being or God in Biblical Christianity. He said let's read it, and I quoted it to him in the Greek. He started saying that I asserted we should be reading the original documents, and of course there are none, and so I was a fool.

I never said let's read the original documents, since their abscence is well known to any LDS person or anyone else who has studied Biblical Greek. I said let's read it in the original language. Since all or nearly all of the New Testament was written in Greek, and the King James Bible was translated from Greek documents, it seems obvious to me that only a person with highly perverted concepts of what the Bible teaches would be afraid to try to understand the nuances of the Greek language. For example, if you understand that the words for righteous and justified are from the same root, it creates some texture to more fully understanding the use of the two words. If you understand the grammar of John 1:1 it completely changes the meaning of the English translation. The English translation is only valid IF you know what the Greek was saying, or else you walk away thinking God and the Word are just different manifestations of the same god. But that is not what the verse teaches. It is teaching the Word fully posses all the attributes of God, and yet is not the God, but is with God and is himself perfectly described as being god, just not The God. In other words, it absolutely says that God and the Word, who is Jesus, are two separate but equally divine beings. Very LDS from a doctrinal standpoint.

There is a certain part of me which is glad Jim and the other Pervangelicals show up. I doubt anyone has left the LDS Church as a result of the protestors for the past 6 years. No one with questions concerning their faith would ever stop, and as a result they get the good advice they need from their Bishop.

Jesus never attacked or yelled at people not of his faith. Neither did Paul. Nor did any other New Testament teacher or leader. They did attack hypocrites within their own faith, Jewish Pharisees and Judaizers. They preach for belief in Jesus, not attacking other faiths. Which is the LDS approach.

I understand more and more why people who get more and more education leave non-LDS faiths, and why the more one is educated, the more likely they are to be active participants if they are LDS. It turns out people who don't think the world is flat can grasp that God still speaks through prophets, even if those prophets have human flaws. There was a time when the institutions of religion were the champions of education. The hijacking of the Evangelical and Protestant faiths has rendered such zeal unpopular, even persecuted.