This past month I was invited by my friend and pastor, Tim Rupp, to join him and the LDS missionaries with whom he had been meeting for a number of weeks.Tim landed in Idaho Falls by way of San Antonio, Texas almost two years ago where his direct exposure to Mormonism was scant.Suffice it to say, focused self-study and active participation in a number of STS classes were two courses of action in preparation for his pastorate here in “River City.”Tim will be the first to tell you, however, that all of the preparation in the world can never supplant actual face time with Mormon missionaries.
This truism was made especially manifest during our discussion with two LDS elders on the subject of the Melchizedek Priesthood authority.Tim took the lead by explaining the typology behind Melchizedek’s and Christ’s figurative and literal eternality, respectively (i.e. being “without beginning of days or end of life”–Heb. 7:3 NIV).He went on to demonstrate how man, being a creature, and Christ, being the eternal Creator, disqualified the former from holding the Melchizedek Priesthood, which did violation to one of the fundamentals of the LDS faith.
As I suspected this catapulted the conversation into the elders’ defense of the LDS Godhead and Tim’s defense of the Trinity—not only getting us off course but almost instantaneously devolving into some emotionally charged retorts.I quickly stepped in to stave off more doctrinal salvos and offered the following suggestions.
First, we needed to do what we had all already agreed to do and that was to flesh out only one topic at a time.More importantly, however, we needed to change the goal of our fleshing-out process and thus the process itself perhaps.The goal, I suggested, should not be to make our respective doctrines more defensible but rather more understandable.In other words, I wanted the elders to be able to accurately articulate why Tim and I believed what we believed and how we came to our conclusions and vice versa—acquiescence or agreement had no place in the process.After all, stepping into someone else's spiritual state doesn’t require that we take up residence; it frees us up to more clearly see what he sees.Maintaining this mindset helped us to avert the affronts that loomed large earlier in the evening.
