In my last post I wrote about my weekend trip to New York to visit Neeners, a friend I hadn't seen in two and a half years. It was a great weekend, but what I didn't include was the oh so interesting plane ride home.
There's always that moment when you're about to board a plane by yourself that you can't help but think, "I hope I don't have to sit next to someone crazy. I hope the person next to me is really nice and doesn't snore or fidget too much." I have it almost every time I fly (because more often than not I fly by myself). I had this daunting thought as I boarded the plane after my layover in Detroit. When I saw my seat I noticed the couple sitting next to me looked quite normal -- late 20s, maybe early 30s, conservative, well-dressed, etc. "This will be a peaceful flight home," I thought. I took my seat next to the wife in the couple, Jenny. She did not snore, did not fidget too much and was not crazy. However, how someone as kind and sane as her is married to the man that sat next to her, I still don't understand.
Jenny and her husband are from Orem, but they had been in Michigan visiting family. I told her where I was from and where I had been. She asked about my England sweatshirt and phone case, and I explained that my mom lived in England until her family moved to Utah for the church. I stupidly assumed that a young, conservative, out-of-state couple now living in Orem, Utah was probably Mormon, but I didn't say anything. As soon as the plane was in the air, the man, Tom, pulled out his Bible, which looked like it was in a different language from my seat. Again, maybe he served a foreign-speaking mission and was reading the Bible in that language. I asked him about his Bible. If I had known what that question would bring about, I probably would not have asked.
Keep in mind that I have been working on my LDS mission papers since January (look out for an announcement of my future home in about a month) and had just spent the day at Palmyra where the Book of Mormon was found by the Prophet Joseph Smith.
Tom asked if I was Mormon and when I said yes, he asked why we don't use the cross as a symbol in our church. I honestly believe this was a sincere question he didn't know the answer to, but it was probably the only sincere question of the flight. Thankfully, we had just discussed this in my Mission Prep class a couple weeks ago, and I told him our church prefers to focus on the resurrection of Christ rather than the crucifixion. He couldn't wrap his mind around that; without the crucifixion the atonement would not exist. True, but without the resurrection the Atonement also would not exist. Moving on.
Next he asked what we believe the Gospel to be. I told him we believe the Gospel to be the events and teachings of Jesus Christ's life. He didn't like that. He referred me to 1 Corinthians 15, which, as he interprets it, says that the Gospel is the crucifixion and resurrection, and that's it -- nothing more -- and that because we believe differently we are not Christian. I have definitely heard people protest that the Mormon church is not Christian, but usually it's because we believe the Godhead is three individual people. Yes, 1 Corinthians does say the Gospel is the Atonement, but nowhere does it say that is it and nothing else. I asked him if he calls Matthew, Mark, Luke and John "The Gospels." He said yes, so I said that they teach the teachings of Jesus Christ, not just about the Atonement and that without the teachings, we wouldn't have sins to be forgiven of. Thankfully I had my Preach the Gospel (missionaries' manual) on me, so I read him the definition of Gospel out of there, which says: "God's plan of salvation made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The gospel includes the eternal truths or laws, covenants and ordinances needed for mankind to return to the presence of God." This debate continued for a while, and finally I said, "It's just different interpretations," to which he chastisingly replied, "Yes, very different, I'd say." I told him it was fine if he didn't agree with our interpretation.
Then he asked about the period we believe exists between death and judgment. I told him we did believe that after death you could be forgiven of sins before judgment because you can't repent 24/7, and of course you are going to have some sins between the time you repent last and the time you die. This was also not okay with him. He referred me to another scripture that says something like, "There is death, and then there is judgment." He said he didn't see any space in between those two events. I wish I had thought of this while I was sitting next to him, but I should have said, "When I tell my friends I'm going out of town for the weekend, I say I'm going to New York, not that I'm going from my house to the airport, stopping in Detroit, then going to New York. I just said I was going from Salt Lake to New York." I said that, again, it was just a different interpretation, and it was okay if he didn't agree; you can't teach someone who doesn't want to be taught.
He asked if I had served a mission, and I said I was preparing to go so this was good practice, thanks. He kind of smirked and shut up for a minute. I fully admitted to him that I didn't know the Bible as well as he did (he knew it really well, but he is a Baptist Bible teacher), but that I was only 21 and hadn't really had that much time to learn it so well since I had figured out for myself that I believed the church to be true and realized how important it was to me. He made some comment about how that was good that I had taken the time to figure it out for myself instead of just believing what my parents had taught me while growing up. I told him that our church encourages that people figure it out for themselves and that's why we baptize at eight when kids are more accountable for their actions and know the different between right and wrong better. That answer shut him up for a bit, too.
He was very narrow-minded and definitely wanted to try to prove to me and the kid on the other side of him that our church was wrong, but neither of us were going to let him convince us of that. I bet he didn't think that when he started that conversation that he would be sandwiched between a BYU student and a future missionary. He really wanted to Bible Bash, and I'm sure he does it a lot as a Baptist Bible teacher in Orem, Utah, but I didn't want to get into that, so I told him it was fine if he didn't agree with our beliefs. But trust me, I wanted to bash so bad. Though it took me a while to get my grounding and stop feeling flustered, it was good missionary practice.
And his sane wife sat in between us with her eyes closed not saying a word the whole time. I'm sure she was thinking, "Oh boy, here he goes again."
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