I have been in loose contact with a few local Mormon Missionaries for several months now. I first met them while they were handing out free Book of Mormons on my college campus. I have several Bibles and a Koran, but not the Book of Mormon, so I wanted one. The catch, of course, is that you are required to follow up and meet with the missionaries. That was fine with me, indeed, I welcomed it. I have spoken with many Christians over the years and a few Muslims but never a Mormon. In fact, I really didn’t know much of the details of Mormon doctrines and beliefs. Needless to say, I accepted the book and agreed to talk with them.

Back in March I described how one of these missionaries, who used to be an atheist until the age of 16, came to the Mormon faith:

After searching out a few religions, he got a good feeling about Mormonism (I can’t imagine what about Mormonism made him feel good) – one that filled him from head to toe. Then he read the Book of Mormon and became convinced that it could not have possibly been made up byJoseph Smith (even though there is no independent external evidence for Hebrews living in the Americas). After much praying, he felt like God answered him in some indescribable manner and he is now 100% certain of the truth of his religious beliefs.

After my last encounter with the missionaries I wrote a post concluding that they are essentially self-deluded. As with the person quoted above, their reasons for belief essentially boil down to it feels right! When you ask them how you, too, can come to know that Mormonism is true their answer is you have to pray over the book of Mormon and wait for God to tell you that it is true. In other words, you have to fool yourself into believing that you are receiving divine signals from God. The more warm and fuzzy you feel, the more that is a sign that it is all true.

Let’s be clear here about something. The missionaries are young, usually late teens and early twenties. Based on my experience with several of them, they are not particuarly well versed in apologetics and deflect the most serious challenges to their faith. Rather, they seemed to be trained to simply introduce the faith and then facilitate in creating some sort of emotional connection. They do this by asking you to read out loud various verses from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, to pray with them, and then by inviting you to a local worship service where you can experience the faith in action.

None of this was surprising to me, to say the least. After the last meeting it seemed to me that I had gone about as far as I could with them. They obviously thought otherwise by contacting me yet again to arrange another meeting with two new missionaries. Since I didn’t really give them the chance in prior meetings to fully explain the intricacies of their faith to me I decided that I would hear them out this time around.

After they arrived, I let them go through their entire explanation of the Mormon ‘plan of salvation’ with little interruption. In a nut shell, it goes something like this: You lived with God as a spirit body before you were born on Earth. During this pre-Earth life, you were already told all about the plan of salvation and about Jesus Christ. However, you won’t remember this after you are born because all of your memories of it are withheld from you (makes sense, right?). As with Christianity, once you come to Earth in a physical body you must accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior and for atonement for the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This is God’s masterful plan, mind you. After death, your spiritual body leaves your physical body and travels to the ’spirit world’ which is more or less like a holding place. In this case, your memories of Earth are not withheld from you. If you had accepted Jesus Christ during your life, you will end up in the better half of the spirit world (where you can just relax). Otherwise, you end up in a spirit prison. At some point in the future Jesus will return and reign on Earth for a thousand years. God will then physically ressurect everyone who has lived and died in order to be judged. From there you will proceed to one of three different kingdoms. Those who are sinful and do not repent go to the Telesial Kingdom. Those who did not accept Jesus but lived honorable lives go to the Terrestrial Kingdom. All others go the the great Celestial Kingdom of bountiless joy.

I was immediatley struck by how their doctrines allow you to get around some of the stickier aspects of plain Christianity. For example, what happens to all of those people who lived and died before Jesus or did not have an opportunity to hear the gospel after Jesus? According to the missionaries, everyone who dies will get another opportunity in the spirit world to learn about and accept the Gospel. That almost gets you there. Another requirement if you want to get into that coveted Celestial Kingdom is baptism into the Mormon Church on Earth. Well, shucks. How can you be physically baptised after death? No fear, however, they thought of a way around this problem, too. A Mormon priest on Earth can baptise anybody who has died by ‘proxy’ or after the fact.

Well, that’s just sweet. Unfortunately the consequences of these doctrines gives a person little incentive to do anything in this life if you can easily convert after death while in the spirit world. I pointed this out to them and asked what my incentive is to convert (especially if I am, ehem, highly skeptical of their claims anyway)? I don’t think that they had ever thought about this question before because they seemed to be a bit baffled by it. So I was like, OK, if I end up in a spirit prison after I die and spirit Mormons are there telling me that this was in fact all true, then that would be sufficient proof for me. Apparently I am good to go so long as I am baptized by proxy by a Mormon on Earth, which the missionaries claimed will be done for everyone anyway during the 1,000 years that Christ reigns on Earth!

In response, they said that it would be much better if you accepted the doctrines now because there would be less work in the after life for you to do. So – with Christianity I am risking eternal hellfire by not accepting their doctrines but with Mormonism I am only risking a little more work in the afterlife. That settles that for me!

Even if I were Blaise Pascal then I wouldn’t worry if Mormonism was true or not right now.