Look at me, blogging up a storm. Who knew I could stay so on task with blogging?

Today I was working on some web design stuff, watching tutorial videos so I can learn Flash CS5, and scanning old documents so they can be thrown out, when an unexpected interruption came.

I heard a firm knock on the door, followed by a muffled bark. (PS is trying to become more of a guard dog these days by barking when people knock on the door, but she’s still getting the hang of it. It’s hit and miss, sometimes she gives a series of loud, threatening barks, sometimes no bark at all, and sometimes a half-hearted, quiet bark like today.)

I ignored the first knock, thinking that it might be the FedEx guy finally delivering the bubble envelopes I ordered on Ebay early last week. (I’m also in the process of selling many of our old books we don’t want anymore on Amazon, so I needed a large, cheap supply of bubble envelopes.) Anyway, I figured if it was the FedEx guy, he would knock once, leave the package, then take off and leave me in peace to finish my many projects. No such luck. Another knock came (this time no bark).

Photo by brentdanley (flickr.com)

I grudgingly got up to answer the door. I glanced through the peephole to see two nicely-dressed women smiling at me. They were youngish looking, not very threatening, and didn’t seem to be moving off my doorstep, so I decided to answer the door instead of pretending like I wasn’t home. I had a feeling they were religious solicitors, but we’ve had several fundraising solicitors come to our door in the past (selling cookies, magazine subscriptions, etc.) so I figured I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and maybe get some cookies out of the situation.

Unfortunately, cookies were not to be. My initial instincts were right. Young, well-dressed, happy-looking people = JW or LDS. These two were LDS. I wasn’t in the mood for, nor did I have time for a rigorous debate with them, so I feigned ignorance about their purpose and tried to be polite/nice/non-inviting. I left the door half-closed as I talked to them so they would understand that I didn’t want to invite them in.

As soon as I found out they were Mormons, my gut reaction was to end the conversation immediately, send them packing, and pray away the evil from my front door. After all, I was raised in a denomination in which people anoint their homes with oil and pray God’s blessing when they first move in so nothing left over from previous pagan occupants has an effect on the new owners. I was quite tempted to view these two girls as abominations and Satan’s workmanship, created to do evil works that he prepared for them in advance.

Then I caught myself emotionally. Also, it’s hard for me to treat anyone, no matter how much I may disagree with them, rudely to their face. So instead of making the sign of the cross and slamming the door in their faces, I talked to these girls like I would talk to anyone else. I answered their questions honestly and nicely. I asked them a couple of questions about their faith in a non-threatening way.

Although I would have liked a chance to share my faith with them and really get into the nuances of Mormonism versus orthodox Christianity, I didn’t have time for it, nor did it seem that they were prepared for that type of conversation.

At one point in our conversation, I asked one of the girls if Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon. She had told me that the Book of Mormon is the “words of Christ.”

“But how can they be the words of Christ if Joseph Smith wrote it?” I asked.

She quickly responded that Joseph Smith didn’t write the Book of Mormon; the prophets wrote it. “You know, like how the prophets wrote the Bible. Like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and all of the other writers of the Bible. They were the Eastern testimony of Jesus. The Book of Mormon was written by the Americans who were here at the same time that the Bible was written in the East. It’s the Western testimony of Jesus. Jesus isn’t just for one culture, He’s for all cultures. So this is just another testimony of Jesus, but it says all the same things as the Bible. Everything about Jesus has to match up and be true. Joseph Smith found the writings of the American prophets and translated it by the Holy Spirit.”

“So the Book of Mormon was written by Native Americans?” I asked with a hint of skepticism in my voice. (I really tried hard not to sound skeptical, but at that point, I couldn’t help it.)

“No, it was written by American prophets,” she responded.

“But you said that it was written at the same time that the Bible was written. And when the Bible was written, American hadn’t been discovered yet. So the only people here were Native Americans. So they had to have written the Book of Mormon.”

“Yes, so it was written by Native Americans,” she said.

At least we were getting somewhere logical. These ladies were pretty adamant about the Book of Mormon being entirely compatible with the Bible and simply illuminating the Bible even more. It would take hours to travel down nuanced paths of theology with them to point out incompatible things between the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and unfortunately I was out of time.

They could sense my impatience, so one of the girls asked if they could give me their number so they could come back and talk for 15 more minutes. (She actually said, “Would you have 15 minutes to have us come back and talk to you again another day?” I guess the LDS church teaches 15-minute increments for best conversion practices.)

I took their number and told them I would see if my husband wanted to talk to them. One of them was Chinese and I thought he might be interested in practicing his Mandarin with her. But mostly I took the number because I would have done the same if they had been generic fundraisers and not religious people. I did it because I wanted them to feel normal, and I wanted them to think of me as a kind person.

At the beginning of our conversation, they had asked me if I went to church. I told them about Calvary and why we liked it. I told them I went to Wheaton College. I made it clear that I was an evangelical Christian. I didn’t want their impression of an evangelical Christian to be someone who is hateful and afraid. I wanted them to see that I treated them with respect and care.

It was funny – when they small-talked with me at the beginning and the end of their spiel, I felt like I was talking to any normal girl. They were nice. I felt like we could actually have been friends in other circumstances. But the reason they were on my doorstep talking to me was because they wanted me to convert to their beliefs. They had an ulterior motive.

On the one hand, it impressed me that they were so zealous about what they believed that they would knock on strangers’ doors and ask them about their faith. It impressed me that they cared about others’ relationships with God enough to do uncomfortable things.

On the other hand, I feel like genuine relationships (versus doorstep blitz conversations) have a lot more weight in actually changing the way people think. I have never made any life-changing transformations in a 15-minute conversation with a stranger.

Instead, it was hours of discussion over lunch, it was midnight prayers and tears, it was genuine compassion and love from people who really knew me, that had an impact on me – drawing me closer to Christ and shaping the way I relate to Him. In those 15 minutes today, I wished that I could give that kind of relationship to these two girls. Maybe we’ll connect again, maybe we can develop a relationship. But probably not. It’s hard to have that kind of relationship with people, even people you see every day.

Relationship is uncomfortable. But I think it’s how God wants us to relate to each other, how He chooses to reveal Himself, and how He’d like us to reveal His love.

So what do you do when Mormons come knocking?

I recently joined a cool program that Thomas Nelson publishing company started. It’s called Book Sneeze. If you agree to review their books on your blog, they send you free copies of some of their new releases for you to review. Here’s my first…

A Review of The Fight of Our Lives by William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn

I’m sure we all remember the post-9/11 fervor that hit the country immediately following the largest terrorist attack on American soil. Church attendance skyrocketed and people started to think about what really matters in life. People also banded together in patriotism and defense of the US. Most of the public approved of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the strong stance of President Bush in the “war on terror.”

But now, almost a decade later, Bennett and Leibsohn say that America has lost its resolve. And that loss of resolve began even in President Bush’s second term. They show several examples of “doublespeak” and “nospeak” from both President Bush and President Obama, as well as from many other American leaders. They claim that political correctness and appeasement of Muslims have overtaken the desire of the American people to see radical Muslim terrorists brought to justice and stopped from making further attacks.

According to the book’s cover summary, “The Fight of Our Lives helps readers refocus, to reframe and understand the threats we face. By surveying and explaining the current scene, Bennett and Leibsohn point the way to a future in which our enemies are properly acknowledged and firmly opposed.”

I think that Bennett and Leibsohn do a good job in their book of disclaiming that their intention is not to start a war with all Muslims. They agree that most Muslims are peaceful and don’t want to harm Americans. But they point out many disturbing facts that show how moderate Muslims are allowing extreme Muslims to get away with unacceptable, violent behavior because many moderates are unwilling to address root causes in Islam that make peace with Jews and Christians impossible.

Islam is not a tolerant religion. Muslims believe that everyone should be Muslim. But then, Christianity is not really a tolerant religion in its rightful form, either. The key is for both Muslims and Christians to realize that violence and war are not acceptable ways to make converts. One of the great things I learned about American government in high school is that the American system is designed so that people can believe whatever they want to believe – even that everyone not like them is going to hell. But once a person’s belief is acted out in a harmful way toward other people, their belief can no longer be protected.

Bennett and Leibsohn do a very good job of showing how radical Muslims have been able to get away with beliefs that intentionally harm others because our nation has become overly concerned with political correctness.

The only strong criticism that I have for this book is that I don’t think it analyzes fairly enough the tendency of all people toward prejudice, groupthink, and racism. Here is a quote from the book:

“Have their been outbreaks of violence against American Muslims beyond the odd nut-job perpetrator? Have we as a country, under both Republican and Democratic Party administrations, not shown wide berth of tolerance and civil liberty that, for example, might be contradistinguished with how Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and the American people treated Japanese Americans in World War II?” (pg. 108-9)

One of the points Bennett and Leibsohn are making here is that many Muslim governments have actually treated their own people worse than Americans have treated American Muslims. And yet America is blamed for killing more Muslims than al Quada has killed non-Muslims. While this may be true, I don’t think it excuses us from looking inward at our own thoughts, feelings, and actions toward other people. This book is not really intended to be read from a Christian perspective, but Thomas Nelson is a Christian company, and I assume that Bennett and Leibsohn are Christians. Being a Christian myself, I read this book mainly through the eyes of a Christian, secondly through the eyes of an American. In other words, I consider my first duty to be trying to be more like Jesus. After that, my patriotism can kick in, but if my patriotism blinds me to seeing people through Christ’s eyes, then my patriotism isn’t worth much.

I think that Bennett and Leibsohn’s message is an important one. But I think that in not delving further into our responsibility as Christians to love and pray for our enemies (instead of just keep our anger stirred up so all the bad guys can be stamped out once and for all), they lost some of my respect and attentiveness to their message.

I am not a pacifist because I realistically understand that there are cruel people out there who will commit atrocious acts against defenseless human beings, and if it’s in our power to prevent those atrocities from being committed (whether against other nations or against our own nation), then I am supportive of taking action.

But even as I acknowledge the realistic actions secular governments need to engage in, as a believer in the power and grace of Jesus, I also want to love and pray for these enemies who hate me and my country. I don’t believe that there is anyone so far gone that the grace of God could not reach them. I’m not saying I think we should sit back and wait for all the terrorists to just come to Jesus and become happy peacemakers. Would it be amazing if that happened? Yes. But is it likely to happen? No. They still have free will, and no matter how much we pray, many will probably use their free will to continue to act out in violence and hatred.

But still, I am responsible for my own feelings and actions. Despite what Bennett and Leibsohn say, I remember the newspaper reports of American Muslims being attacked and raped in the US after 9/11 happened. I remember a guy in my American History high school class saying that we needed to take all the Muslims and deport them to Afghanistan, then drop a nuclear bomb and get rid of the problem once and for all.

As a nation, we may need to do a better job at identifying our enemy for what they are – radical Muslim terrorists – but I, for one, do appreciate the efforts of our leaders to make sure that American Muslims are not treated like second-class citizens. Our leaders have a very difficult job to do. They are expected to take all necessary actions to keep our country safe. But they are also expected to protect the rights of their citizens under pressure from very emotional people on all sides of the issue. Could they have done better? Could they still do better? Absolutely. But Bennett and Leibsohn’s failure to recognize the legitimate threat of groupthink and racism overtaking the American public, and the success of our leadership in preventing that, made their argument just a little too weak and naive in my eyes to make a strong difference in public opinion.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

A few weeks ago, our pastor preached about unjust authority. At the time, I thought it was a great message, but didn’t see any immediate application to my life.

How wise is the God who sees the past, present, and future. He truly knows exactly what we need and when.

Now just weeks later, this message is my lifeline to warding off bitterness and depression.

When I first came to work at Matt’s company, I wasn’t very attached to the job or the company. I had never heard of it before Matt started working there, but my personality is such that I put 110% into anything I do. So the longer I stayed and the more roles I was put into, the more I began to care – not just about my own success, but about the success of the company in general. I would get emotionally upset whenever we didn’t take advantage of opportunities to make more money and to be more successful. I wasn’t paid based on commission, so it honestly had nothing to do with my own sense of reward or compensation. It was just that I had invested myself wholeheartedly into doing my job and doing it well.

So when I heard that I was being let go due to economic cutbacks, I felt disappointed that my hard work didn’t make a difference long-term. But I realized that it was for the best, that indeed, the company did need to save money, and that it would allow me to accomplish some things personally that I hadn’t been doing because I had been working so much.

But then I found out some other things. Like that at the same time I was being told that I would be let go, the entire company was getting a memo that explained what was happening and who was being let go. Some of the people who were affected by this (either through losing a management position or being let go themselves) had heard nothing about it until they were reading the memo at the same time as the rest of the company. We’re not a Fortune 500 company with far too many people to treat them like anything but cattle. We have about 20 or 30 people at most. It would have been logistically easy to personally tell everyone affected about the decision before it was passed out in a company memo.

In addition, I was pretty surprised when I found out that I was the only manager who was actually let go. The rest received different positions, and even people who were supposed to be “below” me on the totem pole were given rearranged responsibilities, but not let go.

I’ve spent multiple night working for this company until 2 am, making images, setting up promotions, writing copy. Working overtime even though I was on a salaried paycheck with no extra compensation for my hard work, just because I knew that it was expected of me to get extra promotions done. I felt almost crazy all of fourth quarter because things were so busy with the holidays. I had tried to get my boss to make decisions about holiday promotions months before the holidays approached, because I knew how crazy it would be if we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare in advance. But as usual, he made up his mind a few days before Thanksgiving weekend about the specific sales we would run. Every day over Thanksgiving week, I worked until past midnight making sure everything was ready to go in time for the next day’s sale.

Meanwhile, several of the people who were not let go during the past two weeks were on vacation, not working a bit. It’s just a job, just a paycheck to many of them. And it hurts that even though I gave more of myself than that, it wasn’t appreciated or rewarded.

So unjust authority means a lot more to me now. I am grateful that God was preparing me and also speaking to me through some timely words at Sunday school the week I found out about the lay-offs. Come what may, my work ethic has to be because of Him, not because of the promise of earthly compensation or recognition.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism. -Colossians 3:23-4

In
1952
President  Truman
established  one  day  a  year  as  a
“National Day of Prayer.”
———————————————————————

In
1988
President Reagan
designated the
First Thursday in May of each year as
the National Day of Prayer.

———————————————————————

In June
2007
(then)
Presidential
Candidate Barack Obama
declared that the USA
“Was no longer  a
Christian nation.”
———————————————————————
This year
President Obama
canceled the
21st annual National Day
of Prayer ceremony
at the White
House under the ruse
Of “not wanting to offend anyone”

———————————————————————

BUT… on September 25, 2009
from 4 AM until 7 PM,
a National Day of Prayer
FOR THE MUSLIM RELIGION
was Held on Capitol Hill,
Beside the White House.
There were over 50,000 Muslims
in  D.C. that day.

HE PRAYS WITH THE MUSLIMS!

I guess it Doesn’t matter
if  ”Christians”
Are  offended  by  this  event -
We  obviously
Don’t  count  as
“anyone”  Anymore.

The direction  this country is headed
should strike fear in the heart of every Christian,
especially knowing that the
Muslim religion believes that if Christians cannot be
converted, they should be annihilated.

———————————————————————
Got this email from a relative today. Related link I found after about 3 seconds of Google searching upon receiving the email: http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/ss/obama_praying_at_mosque.htm

Thoughts?

First off, I strongly recommend the book I’m reading right now: Surprised by Hope by NT Wright.

I think I read NT Wright in a Bible class at Wheaton, but I’m pretty sure it was the class I took with the worst Bible prof Wheaton has probably had. He was no longer teaching right after the semester I had him for New Testament. The highest grade in our class on our midterm exam was a D. For New Testament. At Wheaton College.

Anyway, because of the other negative parts of the class, I don’t think I paid much attention to Wright.

But now, reading through this book for pleasure and for desire of the knowledge it contains, I am really falling in love with Wright as a writer. He reminds me a whole lot of CS Lewis, and that’s pretty sweet, because he’s still alive. Hence, there is a chance I could interact with him some day. I probably won’t, but the mere prospect makes me happier to read his writing.

But on to the topic of the book…

Ever been confused about what happens when we die? There are a lot of scriptures about this, but I always felt confused. People say you go to heaven when you die. Movies show the saved knocking on St. Peter’s gates, being let in if they were good (or for Bible-fearing Christians, if their names were written in the Lamb’s book of life). Then the saints sit around worshiping God, falling on their faces and calling Him ‘holy’ for the rest of their lives.

I’ve heard that you see everyone you know when you get to heaven, that it’s okay to lose Christian loved ones to death, because they’re waiting for you “on the other side.”

And then there’s “the other side of the other side” aka hell. In youth group, I remember being shown a video about a girl who died in a car accident and went to hell. The video graphically showed a place of horrific terror. Then at the end of the video, the girl came back to life and knew that she had to change her life so she wouldn’t go to that awful place. I can’t count the number of altar calls I’ve heard given with the threat of “Do you know where you would go if you walked out of this building today and got hit by a bus?”

People die, they go to heaven if they’re good (or if they accept Jesus, depending on whether you’re a Christian or you’re following popular belief about life after death in our culture); they go to hell if they’re bad (or if they reject Jesus).

Okay, easy enough.

But then I knew the Bible has all this stuff about “new heavens” and “new earth.” What does that mean anyway? What is a glorified body? Do dead people have consciousness?

I won’t say any more for now because I have to go to bed, but I will say that NT Wright’s book answers these questions with great sensibility and understanding of Scripture. My thoughts on heaven, hell, salvation, resurrection, Kingdom of God, stewardship of the earth, and so much more have been radically transformed by this book. Check back soon for part two…