Defining My Faith)

I am in the middle of describing patterns of un-Christlike and ineffective evangelism. These are ways that people show that they are coming to the table in bad faith, more interested in owning their “opponent” than convincing a “brother.”

Today I will be highlighting the practice of defining another person’s beliefs for them. This is a theological strawman argument, where you assert beliefs that another church holds, and show why those beliefs are ridiculous. The only problem, though, is that the people in that faith doesn’t actually hold those beliefs!

Recently I saw this video of Jonathan Pageau expressing this exact experience in critics of his Eastern Orthodox faith, and it was interesting to see that his church is experiencing the same sort of misrepresentation that mine does. This is not a limited experience, rather it seems to be a common technique of spiritual bigotry.

One of the most common ways this is used against my faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is to find an outlandish quote of a long-since past church leader and demanding that we defend the doctrinal views expressed there. It doesn’t matter that neither I, nor any members of my faith actually hold that position, we’re told that we are required to. A requirement that actually goes against our fundamental understanding of authority, as we explicitly claim to not view our leaders as infallible!

Another common critique is our worship of Joseph Smith. Something that we simply never have done and never will! He has only ever been held in the same esteem as any other prophet or leader of God’s people. The same that any other Christian would view Moses or Peter, that is how the Saints have viewed Joseph from 1820 until now. He is extremely important, an essential character in the history of the faith, deserving of our respect and study…but never worshipped. Worship is limited to our God and Jesus and no one else. But you cannot imagine the number of times I have told that to people, only to have them smile, shake their heads, and inform me that that’s not what I really believe.

Speak For Yourself)

One of my favorite experiences while serving as a missionary for my church was when we came across a Pandit of the Hindu faith. We sat down with him for probably about an hour and heard him explain his faith in his own terms. It was beautiful. I really learned a great deal in a short amount of time, saw parallels between our beliefs that I never expected, and left realizing that Hinduism was far less “weird” than I had been led to assume. Did I leave as a Hindu? No. But I left as a better person for having let a person define his own faith to me, rather than trying to force him into the box of my misconceptions.

So it should be in all of these conversations. Unless you have spent extensive time studying the beliefs of a faith from the actual practitioners, you do not understand their faith and cannot debate its merits with accuracy. And obviously, most critics of a faith will have instead only learned about it from its detractors, and there cannot be a worse method of education than that!

But even if you do learn the church’s theology in a genuine manner, that still tells you nothing about the idiosyncrasies in the faith of the individual within that system. Some people are orthodox and some people are lax. Some people put more emphasis on what the scripture says, some people prefer the teachings of their modern leaders, and some people are guided by their own conscience. Even when all the same doctrines are shared by a people, different lenses and perspectives will result in a broad array of diverse interpretations of those doctrines. Thus, after you have done the genuine work to understand the faith as a whole, then you still must learn the faith of the individual that you are actually speaking to.

Thus, if your first interaction with me is to speak against my faith, you are a fool. You don’t even know anything about what my faith even is, and if you don’t know anything about what it is, then what is your justification in speaking against it?