Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> \u2014 service that routinely puts them into situations where they\u2019re obliged to expound, advocate, and defend the claims of the Restoration \u2014 goes a long distance toward explaining why men predominate in online and other debates about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And such debates are an important component \u2014 though not the sole component \u2014 of apologetics.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In my experience, many women who are confronted by attacks on their faith (or, for that matter, by impassioned political arguments) are inclined to simply turn away. \u00a0Many men, by contrast, aren\u2019t. \u00a0(In both cases, I say many \u2014<\/em>\u00a0by which, among other things, I mean not all<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are, obviously, good things to be said for both reactions. \u00a0Sometimes one is more appropriate than the other. \u00a0Truth matters, and it should be defended. \u00a0But we should choose our battles. \u00a0And, specifically, Latter-day Saints should always remember that contention drives the Spirit away.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think that I may have told this story before, but it\u2019s apropos<\/em> here in any case:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I developed the reputation, during my mission in Switzerland, of being able to hold my own rather well in what we missionaries called a \u201cBible bash.\u201d \u00a0Accordingly, one day while I was serving in the mission home at Pilatusstrasse 11 in Z\u00fcrich, I received a call from a pair of missionaries in the city. \u00a0They had set up an appointment that evening with an investigator who was a member of the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses \u2014 and with a high-ranking official of that group who would be debating them. \u00a0Could I possibly come to help?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t exactly happy about the prospect, but they really felt they needed me. \u00a0So I went. \u00a0And, quite frankly, it was a slaughter. \u00a0The Jehovah\u2019s Witness official wasn\u2019t particularly good, and, by the end of our roughly two hours of \u201cdiscussion,\u201d I felt that I had actually humiliated him.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Which I absolutely hated<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I told the two missionaries that they should never, ever, call me in for such a debate again.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The man had been defeated in debate, but he was no closer to accepting the Gospel at the conclusion of the evening than he had been before. \u00a0Nor was their investigator. \u00a0The Spirit had been palpably absent. \u00a0It was a horrible evening, and I\u2019ve never forgotten it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of which means that the truth shouldn\u2019t be contended for or defended. \u00a0But it certainly does suggest that we should be very careful about how we do that.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 In my previous post on this topic, I wrote the following: \u00a0 \u201cFrankly, men tend to dominate apologetics because men are more inclined to be combative and more interested in certain styles of dispute. \u00a0This really isn\u2019t open to question, I think. \u00a0It shows up in international politics, in crime statistics, in sports, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,2995,975,114,2992,2201],"class_list":["post-69682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apologetics","tag-bible-bash","tag-interpreter","tag-interpreter-foundation","tag-leadership","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>