The sights and sounds of Utah

"So where do you think your spirit was before this life?" "What do you think the relationship of your family will be after death?" "If you use the Bible as your only authority, why do you have so many denominations?"

These were just some of the questions I was asked by my new Latter Day Saint friends this past weekend in Utah. The weekend was fascinating, although it raised many more questions than it answered. I will share with you a few highlights.

First, having the freedom to ask questions and hear how I am percieved as an evangelical by someone of a different faith was intriguing. As my opening quotations illustrate, the questions asked were just as revealing as the answers given. For example, eternal marriage and families are an imporant belief for those of the LDS faith.

Second, the Dean of the Intercultural School at Fuller was one of the conference presenters . The paper he gave was itself a brilliant missiological reflection, and yet the real highlight was the compelling way in which he presented it. I felt I was witnessing someone speaking in the power of the Holy Spirit: courageous, truthful, compassionate, and filled with an authority that seemed to surpass his humanity.

Third, one of the presentations by a popular and prominent LDS theologian was incredible. She told a testimony of encountering Christ a few years ago and how that changed her life. After her story, there wasn't a member of our little Fuller group who wasn't thinking, "If she hasn't experience salvation, than none of us has."

So of course that raises many questions. There are, without a doubt, disturbing theological differences between the LDS church and the orthodox church. However, I begin to suspect that God is doing something within the confines of the LDS church. This woman is the most popular theology professor at Brigham Young University, and she has enormous influence over hundreds of students each year. And you know what she is teaching her students? They come in thinking that evangelicals believe that one can accept grace and then live however one chooses whereas Mormons work for their grace. She challenges that assumption, and from the "Quad" (the Mormon holy books which encompass the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants), shows how it is through Christ, and Christ alone, that salvation, and therefore true life, comes.

Confusing? Exciting? Disturbing? Join the crowd! I will save my commentary on the LDS temple(which we toured) for another entry...this one is becoming a tad too long.