What if there was an organization whose main purpose was to go out into the world and draw people away from the faith of their fathers, or in other words, create a faith crisis in them? Well guess what? There is, and it is the Mormon Church (LDS). The stated purpose of missionary work is to bring people unto Christ. But not just any Christ, it must be the LDS-approved Christ. So whether you are Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or any other religion, you must go through a faith crisis, reject the faith you grew up with,, and then join the LDS Church in order to be saved. [1] It appears that a faith crisis is only bad if the faith in crisis is LDS. If you are a Mormon missionary and cause a faith crisis in a 20-year-old guy that is still living with his family, and as a result he leaves his Catholic faith and is baptized in the LDS church, becoming estranged from his family, that is considered a great story of faith to share at your missionary homecoming. You get bonus points if he eventually marries in the temple, excluding his extended family from the ceremony. That would be General Conference-level story material about faith and commitment!
If you share the gospel with your elderly neighbors and they leave their Baptist church due to a faith crises, good news! , The fact that it worries their grown children and grandchildren that their parents have been brainwashed is not your concern.
Why is a faith crisis only a concern if it is your faith, but is the desired out come of our missionary program, and the sole purpose of sharing the gospel? Every one of my 38 baptisms in Chile were Catholic, at various stages of activity. My whole job as a missionary in a Catholic country was to induce a faith crisis in these people, and then provide the answer to that crisis. We had lessons that caused doubt about the authority of the Priest to do a baptism. Was their baptism valid? If not, were they destined to hell? Should they doubt their doubts as Mormons are taught to do? No! We as missionaries encouraged these doubts, and then rushed in with all the answers.
At appears that a faith crisis is only bad for .02% of the world population (Mormons of record), but for the 99.98% of the world a faith crisis is the stated goal of the Church, which is to convert everybody, or at least give them the chance.
Putting on my TBM hat, I would say that since they did not have faith in the true God/Christ (which Mormons have the corner on), then the faith was false, and there was no real crisis, just a redirection of misplaced faith.
What are your thoughts on the Church purposely causing a faith crisis in other people?
[1] the one exception I can think of is for an atheist. Since they don't believe an any type of God, there would be no "faith crisis" per se if they converted
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