LDS and Me

In every town I have lived in there have always been Mormon missionaries wandering around spreading the word of Jesus. When your a little kid and your mom allows the people in the house and you receive all of the cool little pamphlets, I had little understanding of what these people were trying to do for me. As I have gotten older though and have began searching into my own beliefs, I have a better understanding and respect for the door to door Christian. Since I have been in this class I have received a new found understanding for the Bible and with that understanding comes the desire to argue.

The LDS missionaries came to my roommates and I apartment and we invited them in ready to religious battle. The format and decorum of the conversations were very polite and civil. The interesting thing about the conversation though was that we didn't really argue the points and facts of the Bible, but instead talked about how Jesus made us feel in our lives. Since my roommate and I were on a mission to debunk some myths, this change in direction made for deep philosophical debate. The one question that I did get an answer to dealt with the hardening of Pharaohs heart during Moses exodus through Egypt. The missionary pulled out his Book of Mormon and showed me the side notes, like the ones that are in our Bibles, and pointed out that the Book of Mormon had answered that question saying something like the pharaoh hardened his own heart. Talking with these guys made me realize that the literary content of the Bible is secondary to the individuals understanding and emotional attitude towards the text itself. It seems a class could spend an entire semester on trying to understand faith.