This is kind of a strange approach to religion. If one uses the Webster’s collegiate dictionary rather than a Catholic dictionary to define well known words, they are using “mind control?”
My goodness–is that what they teach in Catholic schools–that no dictionary can be used except a Catholic dictionary or it’s “mind control”? Very strange educational approach, and a case where the words would seem more to apply to the people doing the teaching if that is their approach in the teaching of their students. But whatever…
You have hit on perhaps the most important point: Using Mormonism to argue that Catholicism, and even Protestantism has a “strange approach to religion” is like a Caucasian professor of cultural anthropolgy telling American Indians that they have a strange approach to Native American culture.
Catholicism has been a religion for 2,000 years. The LDS approach to religion began in the 1820s and evolved over a few decades. What Brigham Young carried to Utah differed immensely from what Joseph Smith introduced in New York.
Mormon theology in general, and the Book of Mormon specifically, identifiably reflect the religious and social ideologies of the American frontier in the 1830s, and the attitudes and understanding of the Western New York’s “burned over district” specifically. These were largely promulgated by self-educated pastors, or those versed in traditions created by under-eduacted preachers. Compared to the rest of the world, it was a “strange approach to religion” already.
Mormonism made it stranger still by re-writing references in the Bible it could not reconcile with its teachings. It did this by advancing the Apostasy theme all the way back to Adam. It affirmed that from the time of Adam the teachings of Christ were taught as clearly and distinctly as if the Gospels had a;ready been written. The Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants became superior references to the Bible – which was already incomplete since it did not include the Greek Old testament – and the Bible makes much less sense without the Greek Old Testament.
Part of this emereged from the Protestant “Sola Scriptura” heresy, which somehow manages to assert the authority of an incomplete Bible as directly revealed from God, like God whispering in the ears of every author what they should write. PRotestants do not realize that everytime they assert the Bible as inviolable Word of God they validate the Catholics who compiled it and so declared it in the first place.
The only way that Mormonism can assert its positions is by declaring the Bible irretrievably corrupted, necessitating new “scripture” to help understand it, and re-writing it to match the new writings. This includes redefining a lot of terms so that you cannot read it for what it says in appropriate context, but must affirm that words that seem to mean one thing in that context really mean something else.
These definitions supplant definitions that have been in place for 2,000 years by saying what is written does not always express what the authors really intended.
Hence, to address the OP, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind,” sounds like it agrees with the body of Christianity, but the fact is a Mormon means som ething very different about the nature of God and Jesus, their relationship to each other, adn our relationships with them than do most Christians saying the same thing.
This is a very strange approach to religion, trying to convince people your beliefs essentially match theirs before telling them what you really believe: Seeking commitments from people who are partially informed before explaining some very crucial details.
By comparison, there is probaly no stranger belief in any religion than the idea of transubstantiation. We do not let people join until they understand the teaching (even if they do not understand the mystery of it, since none of us really do) and acknowledge belief in it. Yet this is a foundational tenet of all Christianity, and the distance of Protestant groups from Catholicism can be fairly well-gauged by how far they stray from this teaching (Lutherism & Anglicanism: Consubstantiation, not Transubstantiation, but they still believe they have the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – Mormonism: It is all just a symbol, so it matter not even what you use, hence water instead of wine, a heresy dismissed before the end of the First Century.)
Specific terms have always been important. The preachers that influenced Joseph Smith in fomulating Mormonism did not understand the Bible to begin with, and his Father – his greatest influence – understood it even less. They had neither the correct words (since the KJV translators had to manipulate translation of passages that refute the King of England’s right to lead a separate Church) nor the cultural understanding to recognize them in what context remained.
If you think that Chritianity is a strange approach to religion then you support Mormonism’s exclusion from Christianity. Come to think of it, I can think of few approaches to religion more strange than to claim that all the creeds of Christianity are abominations in the eyes of God, and then get upset when people claim you are not Christian.
P.S. For a long time the only English translation allowed was literal translation of the Vulgate. If this seems a 'strange approach to religion" consider that in Islam you have to read the Koran in the original language to officially read it, and in Judaism even characters have to be blocked out in the right place on the page when copying a Torah.
