Are Mormons Christians?

The Question that Divides Us

 

I believe deeply in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and Lord, and worship God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost as one God in power, purpose, and mind. Yet many of my Christian neighbors don’t consider me a Christian because my interpretation of how the three members of the Godhead relate to one another is different than theirs.

 

One of the first times I was confronted with the clear difference between how I viewed God and how other Christians saw Him, was as a young seminary student. Our class met in the basement of the post chapel at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where my father was stationed, and the chapel was used by many different denominations on the base. Near the door was a pamphlet stand that contained pamphlets distributed by the different Christian sects who met there. Countless times I passed the stand and paid no attention to the pamphlets, but one morning as I passed the words “Who is God?” caught my eye.

 

I picked up the black pamphlet with the bright bold words, and below the words there was a picture of a swirling mist of light, which reminded me of pictures of galaxies I had seen in astronomy books. I stared at it for awhile thinking “this can’t possibly be what they think God is,” surely my Christian friends did not picture this in their minds as they poured their hearts out to God in prayer. The God I had known and loved all my life was much more personal to me than this, I viewed him as my Father in Heaven and addressed him as such, I could never attach such an ambiguous picture of God to the Father whose spirit I had felt wrapped around me in love in my moments of need.

 

Experiences that followed proved to be more instructive in pointing out the fundamental differences between myself and other Christians. As a young mother I was blessed to know and love a dear friend who was of the Baptist faith. Our friendship was a great support to me at a time in my life when I was far from my mother and sisters and felt very alone. Our friendship saw us both through difficult times in our lives in which we shared a common heart ache, she loved me and served me as I did her, our friendship was almost perfect but one thing stood between us, religion.

 

Being a Baptist my dearest friend had been taught by her church to be weary of Mormons, and had been taught by her teachers that we are not Christians, that we worship a false Christ and false prophets. To each of us our religious beliefs were a very important part of our self-identity and purpose in life, and being heartfelt friends it was not possible for either of us to avoid subjects of faith.

 

There was a barrier between us that my love for her was never able to completely break down; she was always on her guard. I believe it was because she was protecting herself as Christ admonished, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” (Matt 7:15) To her I was the ravenous wolf, or at least my church was. Still, how could she see all that I was, and know my heart and still believe that the Christ I worshiped was a false Christ, and the prophet Joseph, a false prophet? Our Lord has given us the way to judge which the wolf is and which is the false prophet when he said, “Ye shall know them by their fruits…Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit…Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” (Matt 7:16-20)

 

One cool summer evening early in our friendship we spent several hours talking meaningfully about how our beliefs differed and she opened up enough to ask me some clarifying questions about my religious beliefs. This was important to me, not necessarily because I wanted to convince her of my beliefs, but I thought if she could just understand me better perhaps she would judge me differently, perhaps we would be closer.

 

Our conversation focused mainly on my understanding of who God is and who we are in relationship to him. I told her that I believed that we are literally the children of God, that we were created in spirit by our Father in Heaven and dwelt in his presence until we came into the world to receive bodies and progress toward eternal life with Him. I explained our belief that our loving Father in Heaven provided a plan for his children that they would be able to return to him through the atoning power of his Son Jesus Christ who he would send to the world that all who would believe on him might have eternal life; and that by coming to know Christ we would come to know and understand our Father.

 

I explained to her that we believe God has a body of flesh and bones and that we are “created in his image” (Genesis 1:26), but that unlike our corruptible bodies, his is incorruptible, glorious, and perfect. I told her that we understand the resurrection to mean the reuniting of the spirit and body eternally, as it was with Christ who was resurrected into a physical form, for he said “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (Luke 24:39) I told her that I believed us to be the “offspring of God” (Acts 17:29) the Father, and that as such our Father desires us to return home and to be like He is; that if we are faithful when we are resurrected we will be like our Father and His Son Jesus Christ as it says in the Bible, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” (Romans 8:16-17)

 

She was confused by my profession of the nature of God, but what confused me the most was her reaction to my characterization of man’s relationship with God, as having the potential to be as our Father is. She was truly offended by this thought and pronounced it the worst type of blasphemy. To her it was an evil thing to believe man divine. To me, what is eternal life, unless it is life itself? Christ himself was resurrected and he said that would be resurrected and be joint-heirs with Him. My friend believed that our doctrine was a doctrine to exalt man’s status to that of a God, and by so doing to debase God to that of a man. She made it clear that she did not believe in the resurrection as I did, that she did not believe Christ was resurrected to a physical form, but that he is a spirit.

 

Instead, my friend described her belief in God as the “only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible. . . .” A God who is both living, but without body, parts or passions, a spirit being who is invisible but is not contained in space? She tried to explain that in the “Godhead there are three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." One person, and yet without personage, without form? Is this the Christ who was resurrected in body and ascended to his Father in Heaven? Did he ascend in the flesh to re-morph into the conglomerate spirit of the “body” of the Father?

 

She told me then and there that I did not believe in Christ, because I did not believe in the true Christ, I was not Christian. That moment it seemed the world stood still. For the first time in my life I had a caught a glimpse of why people in the Christian community at large are at best skeptical of the doctrinal declarations of Mormonism. She was right, I did not believe in the Christ she described as a God with no form, nor did I believe that the scriptures teach of that being, a being of no form, this was not the God I knew and loved. This could not be the Father that had loved me in my youth and sent his spirit to witness the truth to my heart; the Savior who had died to make me whole, was he not also whole? The faith I had in the glorified personage that God is, framed all that I knew and all that I felt about myself, where I came from, why I am here, and where I am going. Without these things I could not see the purpose of life.

 

Did she expect me to believe that we would be “resurrected” into nothingness to become like God this God with no form? Did she expect me to believe that we would retain no self-identity or personality; in essence that we would cease to exist? No, this I could not believe any more than she could except the idea of herself as a literal spirit daughter of her Father in Heaven, who lived with him before she was born, was created in his likeness, and born to live an eternal life as an heir to all her Father hath.

 

I quietly replied in a steady voice to my friends challenge, “You are right, I do not believe in the Christ you described, it is incomprehensible to me and every feeling in my heart protests against this vision of our Savior and our benevolent Father in Heaven. If believing in this spirit with no form is the only way to be considered a Christian, then I suppose I would have to say I am not a Christian, nor by this definition can I ever be.”

 

Until that day I had not fully realized how deeply my personal concept of God affects all that I understand and believe about the doctrines of salvation. This is the thing that continued to divide us, that conversation was the last of its kind between the two of us. We met for bible studies and often talked of God’s infinite love and Christ’s infinite atonement, but never again did her heart open to me, and never again could I share the fullness of my thoughts to her. “Who is God?” became the question that divided me from the friend I cherished and loved. This encounter has lead me to face the perplexity that is the creeds of Christendom, creeds that unequivocally declare that God is incomprehensible, a God of mystery, without body, parts, or passions; and that faith in God is not possible unless knowledge of him is shrouded in mystery.