Different Religious Dictionary

Have you ever taken a comparative religion class? Or just a world religion class in general? There's Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and maybe even Zoroastrianism  but how often does Mormonism get thrown into that mix?

Think about this, all the terms you use to talk about Christianity, but with completely different meanings. You talk of atonement, they talk of atonement. You talk of God's love, they talk of God's love. You talk of God as your Father, they talk of Heavenly Father. Yet each of those means something different

Their idea of atonement is not the Evangelical Christ view of atonement, nor their idea of God's love the same, nor their view of God as their Father.

It all sounds the same but all the meanings are different. Apologetics with a Mormon are, I would guess, a waste of time. How can you move a conversation forward if you're both working from different dictionaries? (To add to this, they always come in twos and have "lying for the lord," as backup for getting into tricky conversations.) 

So what is the apologetic we use? Relationship.

We use the dictionary we both have in common, our humanity and need for community, to build a relationship wherein we can form trust and literally show 2 Peter 3:14-17 to those of another religious dictionary.

Confession: This Semester

Before I get into this’n it’s been freeing to say, “I was wrong.” At the end of the summer I planned out the semester, 12 hours of classes didn’t seem too bad. I’d taken a couple grad level classes before in undergrad so it seemed like it’d be doable. Mom said it was too much – she was right, I wasn’t.

It’s safe to say this has been one of the most difficult semesters I’ve had. Sure some undergrad semesters were hard, and when finals came they were really gross, but this one is taking the cake in the realm of stress, tiredness and changes. There’ve been a few breakdowns.

Taking the workload from school, the job at the church, fostering a new relationship and the normal things of life all together has been rich and difficult. Rich because there’s much to learn and much to be humbly amazed by; difficult because I’m prideful and thought I knew it all and this has been three months of being wrong. (In some ways I feel like a raw blister - hyperaware of failures.)

Yet there are three thoughts, which have made this semester more bearable:

1) Bear your burdens well.

Sure they’re heavy and sure they’re daunting, but they’ve been given to you by God to bear, so bear them well. Be emboldened by the simple fact of knowing God – for his own reasons – planned this.

 2) It’s good to be carefree.

When the moments of relaxing come, take them. Whether they’re on Skype, a phone call, staring at the stars from my front porch, in a book, with the roommates, or holding a sleeping nephew whenever and wherever learn to relax in a moment. 

 3) (This has been the most difficult to remember) your biggest problem has been taken care of by Jesus.

This one is beautiful. At the end of any day you can lay your head down on your pillow and remember it’s not your education that saves you, your job that saves you, your interactions that save you, but it’s Jesus’ death on a Roman cross two-thousand years ago that has saved you.

Sure I don’t remember all of these all the time. But at the end of my life – whenever that may be – this semester will be just a simple dark place in the patchwork of life – the dark tiles of a mosaic without which the picture is lost. You see it’s a perspective thing seeing life from the vantage point of farther along.