The Table Video

“Isn’t it ironic that you would be in a battle for the truth, but not want to tell the truth?” Richard Mouw has been involved in Mormon-Evangelical Dialogue for going on 15 years. In this video he shares about his experience, focusing on the importance of intellectual integrity in a “battle for the truth.”

Transcript:

I’ve been involved for 15 years now in dialog with Mormon scholars and a lot of the things that I thought they believed, they don’t really believe. A lot of things that I didn’t know they believed, they do, and I’m not happy with all of that either, but just I realize that a lot of us have born false witness and I went to hear a counter cult speaker one night.

He was gonna tell all about Mormonism and he had some good points that he made, but he said some things about what Mormons believe that I know that my Mormon friends would just say that’s not, that’s kind of a folk Mormonism, that’s never been endorsed and we fight that kind of stuff. Some of my Mormon friends talk about some Mormons are going planetary on us and those kinds of things.

So I know they’re jokes and so I went up to this guy afterwards and I introduced myself, which was probably a mistake, but I said, “You had some good points, but you know there are a couple of things there that you really ought to study more, because you don’t have it right.” And he said, “Oh, you intellectuals, you always got to make all these distinctions.

We don’t have time for that, we’re in a battle for the truth and we got to win.” Then I thought, isn’t it ironic that you would be in a battle for the truth and not want to tell the truth and so just that simple desire to be speakers of the truth to me is a crucial thing in civility and cultivating good relations with people with whom we disagree.