Today my niece shared on Facebook a beautiful photo of Jesus accompanied
by a quote from 2 Nephi 25:26. The quote basically said “we believe in Christ”
and my niece affirmed that this is indeed what she believes.
I’m pretty sure that her cross-posting is an attempt to help
those who don’t know about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
understand and know that they too are indeed believers in Jesus, and therefore
entitled to be considered Christian. This topic, as most of us know, has really
entered the consciousness of our nation, as Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon,
marches forward to become the Republican Candidate for President.
It reminds me of another argument LDS folks make for being
Christian when they say something to the effect of “well of course we believe
in Jesus, His name, after all is in the name of our church.” Truthfully, LDS
folks are quite offended and perplexed that we’d ever consider them anything
but Christian when they so obviously embrace Jesus Christ, more or less as
depicted in the pages of the Gospels.
I once read a clever analogy written by an acquaintance of
mine about buying a truck. His analogy went something like this: I wanted to buy a truck, and I
saw a truck that looked great to me. I couldn’t see any obvious problems, the
price was right, and I was ready to buy it. However, he happened to live next door to the
owner of the truck and knew that this truck was a real lemon. It had recently been
to a mechanic who said it was on its last legs, and wouldn’t even last six months.
To top it off, the body was full of rust that was carefully hidden by wax and a
great detail job, so while I saw a few cosmetic defects, I was missing seeing
that it was ready to fall apart. Would it be kind, or fair for my friend to not
tell me the truth about the truck I was buying? The answer to that question is obvious.
The analogy applies here in that Jesus, and who He really
is, isn’t just cosmetic either. He’s not an unimportant point in our religious
discussions, but instead who Jesus is, is very probably the most important
issue in our religions. Unfortunately it’s not really a discussion most LDS
folks want to get into.
The LDS Jesus is a man who also is a God, the son of God
really. He’s also the brother of Satan, and coincidentally you and I. The LDS
Jesus is a man who is working and striving to learn and improve to achieve
full-godhead so that someday He too can be a “God the Father” on another planet
and another time. The LDS Jesus is
eternal only in the sense that his intelligence is eternal, just like all of
our intelligences are eternal. In a very real sense the LDS Jesus is a man—very
much like you and I, except of course that he’s perfectly sinless, and we, alas
sin.
The Biblical Jesus on the other hand, is God Almighty (Is.
9:6) who also chose to be God with us (Matthew 1:23). He is eternal, and was
always eternally God. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere all the
time. He, in many ways, is indescribable and certainly can’t fully be
understood by our finite minds. In short, He is God (John 1:1) and because He’s
God, He really is too big, too awesome really, for us to understand.
The difference between the two is the difference between us
and God, the difference between the finite and the infinite. The difference
between a God who really is a man, with a man’s limitations saving mankind by
their own works, and his sacrifice, and a God who became a man for a time in
order to save us from ourselves.
It’s the difference really of limiting Jesus to His barest
reality found in the gospels, that of a great, important, and even awe-inspiring
man walking among men. It’s forgetting or ignoring those parts of the gospel
that scream out that Jesus was not just a man, but He was also God, the God who
walked among us, the God who could have called down 10,000 angels to fight for
Him, but instead chose to die a horrible, cruel death on the cross and a death
that none of us, no man among us could die because no man, no matter how noble
is good enough to pay the price He paid.
It’s the difference that Thomas saw when he fell at Jesus
feet and cried “My Lord and My God” (John 20:28) worshipping Jesus as God, as
God Almighty, as the Prince of Peace, and as the Lamb who was slain.
It’s a difference that’s important; fundamental really.
