When I was on my mission, we were encouraged to stand boldly for the truth. If you offended someone, it was okay because we were simply telling people the way it was. Jesus wasn't afraid to offend people...
This story was relayed to me by my good friend. This actually happened to them just a few days ago.
While my friend was at work, the LDS missionaries stopped by his house and spoke with his wife. They told her that they were bad parents and that they didn't really love their daughter because they weren't raising her Mormon. And because they refused to bring her up in the LDS religion, they were damning their own daughter to hell.
My friend used to be Mormon because he was forced into it when he was living with his grandfather years ago. My friends wife has never been Mormon. So, because he is technically a member on their records, they follow him, like they usually do.
But can you imagine the audacity! It is one thing to believe that your religion is true and to try to share it with other people. But to downright tell someone that they are damning their children to hell for not raising them LDS, that's just plain rude and offensive.
I might have been an LDS missionary at one point in my life, but I would have NEVER said something like that to anyone. To say that they were offended is a huge understatement.
I can vouch personally for my friend and his wife that they are wonderful parents and they love their daughter very much. In fact, they are probably better parents than I am. When I got home from my mission, my friends daughter (the one who is hell bound) was only a few months old. Now she is a teenager and is beautiful, smart, and talented.
I don't know if this is just an isolated incidence. Perhaps the guy who said those things was just an extremist. Maybe the church has instructed its missionaries to be as bold as they need to be to get more converts. I know that my friend and his wife will NEVER welcome the missionaries into their home again. If this is a new tactic being used by the church to coerce people into joining, IT WON'T WORK!
Everyone, please remember that the LDS missionaries, for the most part, are naive about their own history and religion. They do what they do because they sincerely believe it to be true. So when you turn them away, do it politely if possible. If they knock on your door on a hot day, offer them a drink of cold water. We can all be civil to each other BUT if they start their manipulation tricks, you do not have to take it. You can end the discussion and ask them to leave.
I can't help but notice that if they are that manipulative to non-members, just think how much worse it is for active members. If you are a member, you NEVER say "no" to the church. NEVER. If you do, you are rejecting Jesus and you need to repent.
This incidence makes me embarrassed to admit that I was once an LDS missionary.
3 comments:
That would be a great tactic if you were selling burglar alarms. You could say "Hey you will be robbed and or murdered if you don't buy our alarm system. Do you want that to happen?"
In that context it might actually work.
In the context of saving 'souls' no.
That although an interesting approach is offensive and would cause any REASONABLE person to close the conversation and say "thanks for playing, buh bye."
All I can say is wow. I am sure it's not a constant with the missionaries, my experience has been more along the lines of "Baptism?" "No." "thanks we won't be coming round again" then I never hear from them till there are new missionaries in my area...
I really doubt that the missionaries were trained to act this way or that this behavior is typical. With something like 50,000 Mormon missionaries there are bound to be some bad apples like the ones who vandalized a Catholic shrine.
I don't understand why the daughter would be going to hell... Was she a member at one time?
Post a Comment