Christian Love

I just had a very interesting experience. I’ve technically been on Twitter for several months, but I’ve just started getting the hang of following stuff. Recently, I noticed that a lot of blogs have been using the #mormon hash tag, so I added that to my list of stuff to follow, and the results have been—shall we say—less than 100% enjoyable.

Besides the wonderful pages that have popped up with information that’s actually relevant, this morning I saw a British preacher tag his podcast with the #mormon tag. Interested, I listened to the entire thing: it was a one-hour sermon on how to identify a cult, and was actually quite good. In fact, I agreed with virtually every word he said, except when he offhandedly ran down a list of so-called “cults” and, with absolutely no indication of why he was doing so, included the slur “Mormons” as part of his rapid-fire list.

It frankly rather amazed me: the whole sermon was wonderful, and then he tossed in that one, tiny, off-the-cuff slur and undermined every other word he said. And the worst part is that I doubt he has the slightest clue what Latter-day Saints believe, else he wouldn’t be making such ridiculous claims. I am reminded of a quote from Joseph Smith, Jr.—which, strangely, I cannot currently find anywhere—to the effect that if ninety-nine truths are told to perpetuate one line, the hundred statements together constitute falsehood. Surely this would be a perfect example of that phenomenon.

As annoying as that was, I let it slide off my back; yet this afternoon, there was a post that really affected me: it consisted, aside from the tags, of the words “I’m out!” and a link. Following the link brought up a support group for disaffected Church members, where the tweeter in question had started a thread celebrating a letter s/he had just received in the mail: it was from the Church, informing him that his request for excommunication had been granted.

I don’t know who this person was, nor do I know how much s/he knew before making the decision to leave Christ’s Church. What I do know is that this simple rejection of the Savior brought me to tears—not only for the individual, but for what our Heavenly Father must be feeling. Like the aforementioned, ostensibly ignorant preacher, this person is probably completely unaware of what so-called “Mormonism” is about, and yet has chosen to abandon his or her Savior, the very One whom s/he had previously accepted.

It’s funny how much we can love a person we’ve never met and will probably never see again.