A Quick Response to Kwaku El

Accurate Representation and the Problem of Misrepresentation

Hey, I just wanted to do a quick video here. I'm down in Tucson. I'll be preaching tomorrow at a great church down here in the Tucson area. But I just saw today the response provided by Kwaku L in regards to the dividing line that Jeff Durbin and I did last week.

Where we reviewed a video that he had put out, invited all Christians to view this, and now is not happy that we did evidently. And it was the video in which he face-plantingly badly misrepresented what Christians believe.

Where he did exactly what I've seen Muslims do, and Jehovah's Witnesses do, and one does Pentecostals do. Take the Athanasian Creed and try to make it sound uber complicated and self-contradictory. Which it is not if anyone just has just enough honesty or commitment to truthfulness to allow it to speak for itself and to understand its background, what it's addressing.

It is actually very clear, very balanced, makes perfect sense. The young people at our church can explain it and understand it, so if you can't, it's because you don't want to, not because it's not possible.

Why Internet Drama Is a Cover for an Indefensible Video

Well, I just a few minutes ago listened to Kwaku's response, and so I'm just going to address this to Kwaku. You know, you said that you don't like internet drama, except what you just posted was nothing but pure internet drama and totally unnecessary.

Totally unnecessary. It took you 27 minutes to get around to actually talking about the video. Why? Because you wanted to create a tremendous amount of drama, and it's because you produced a video that is indefensible.

You can't defend what you said there. You didn't even offer defense in that video. You said, well, it's just my ideas, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, we documented where you grossly misrepresent. You would read the creed.

The next sentence, you would ignore what you just read. That's called misrepresentation, twisting of words. It's not honest. It lacks integrity, and we documented it, and we did so because this is our faith.

This is what I've written books in defense of, books which are used as textbooks in the English-speaking world, which came out of my doctoral work on that subject. By the way, if you want to call that place a diploma mill, here's my challenge for you.

Go buy one. Go buy one. You can't because it takes years worth of work. Anyway, we documented the fact that you presented something that was indefensibly misrepresentational. Now, it could be ignorance on your part.

It could be bias, prejudice, or deception on your part. Those are all possibilities. We pointed out that we had corrected you on these things before, and of course, I think part of your intentionality here was to say, well, I've never really listened to what you all have to say.

For example, you were talking about, I offered to send you my books, and you're like, well, I'm an undergrad at BYU, and it was homeless week, whatever the world that is. I was just too busy, and so I didn't, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The point is we made the information available. We have interacted in the past, and what you're saying is, I can't be bothered. Yeah, there's lots of good historical information on the Athanasian Creed, and there's lots of stuff back there that would help explain this stuff, but I just can't be bothered.

I'm an undergrad, man. That is what prompted me to make this quick video, even though I'm traveling. As most people know, this isn't my normal location for recording something. That's the difference between you and I.

Learning Mormonism the Hard Way and Reading LDS Sources

See, I started studying Mormonism when I was your age. In fact, I think I was younger than you, a couple years younger than you. I was between my freshman and sophomore years in college, so I was 19. I freshly married a little over a month after I got married, was when I met with Elders Reed and Reese, and that's what started my studying.

There was no internet back then. I know a lot of people struggled to even, wow, did you fight dinosaurs too? There was no internet, so the only way to learn about something was to talk to people and to read books.

I read every book I could get my hands on about Mormonism from a Christian perspective, but for some reason, I had no one to guide me here. There was no one. I didn't talk to anybody at my college. I don't think anybody there would have known much about it, about how to do apologetics or study other world religions or anything like that.

Mormonism wasn't all that big back then, maybe three and a half million. Somehow, in the midst of that, I became absolutely convinced that to have integrity, I would have to read Mormon sources. I would have to seek to accurately represent what Mormons believed, even though I disagreed with them vociferously.

I don't know where that came from. I've tried to live and make my ministry for 37 years now, 36 years, commensurate with that commitment. While you're complaining about not being able to read a book because of Homeless Week, I was going to the LDS bookstore, so I'd read a Christian book on Mormonism.

Wow, they're really citing this book a lot. Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, the three-volume set, Joseph Hewling Smith.

I started going to this LDS bookstore, 35th Avenue and Northern. It's not there anymore, but Mary was the lady who worked there. I'm buying these books, and I'd read them, and I would mark them. I'm checking not just the citations, I'd read the whole book.

Mormon Doctrine, Bruce Armaconkey. Yeah, he was still around and popular back then. And then there's this set that I keep seeing it referenced over and over again, the Journal of Discourses. I'll never forget buying that thing.

26 volumes, it was in a paperback slipcase. I had to bungee cord it to the back of my motorcycle. I thought my wife might kill me because it was like 70 bucks, and back then that was like a half a month's salary.

It was terrible. So the point is, I did my homework, and I showed respect to Mormons that way. And when I wrote my books eventually, years later, that would be 17 years later, something like that. When I wrote Letters to a Mormon Elder, and especially when I wrote Isamor and My Brother a few years, a number of years after that, which we haven't looked at as far as I can tell, those who have know that there are hundreds of original source citations from LDS sources in context.

In context. To make sure that you accurately represent the LDS position before you then criticize it and offer something else. Because see, from my perspective, that's absolutely necessary. If I'm going to say that's not the truth, here is the truth, then I have to be absolutely truthful in the representation of that.

And so, forgive the sounds, but some notifications on a Mac are hidden so deeply that you'll never find them. Anyway, so that's what I did. And that's what you didn't do. And that's the difference between us.

Calling for Repentance, Withdrawal, and a Consistent Standard of Truthfulness

Now you've chosen to go nuclear and to get all nasty and, you know, getting all personal and stuff like that. Jeff and I didn't. We raised the possibility in light of how many times we have offered you the information to correct your ignorance on these issues.

And you keep putting out videos based upon your ignorance. They're misrepresentational. They are not truthful. And so we raised the possibility. How many times do you do this? Before you go, this guy just either doesn't care about truth or he's purposely trying to deceive people.

We raised that issue and it's a proper issue. You responded with just nastiness and nearly half an hour's worth of drama. And your interpretation of this and that and the other thing never did mention that real nice Bible you were given.

But anyway, you want Internet drama, you're the one that produced it as a cover for the fact that that video you put out should be withdrawn with apologies. And see, I'm also consistent at this point.

I have called upon Christians to withdraw information that they put out on Mormonism that was untrue and unfair. I got in trouble years ago by criticizing Godmakers 2. Ed Decker has never really liked me much because, oh, it's that consistency thing.

Because I criticized it. So that's the difference between us, Kwaku. You can talk about lying all you want, but the proof's in the cards or in the books in this case. So just a response to what you had to say.

I hope you'll think about it. And I hope you do the right thing. If not, well, the fact of the matter is we're still going to respond when a teachable moment comes up. If you're misrepresenting something and it's going to help us to help others to see why that is so they can correct that kind of error when they encounter it.

As long as we still have the freedom to do it. I'm not sure how long any of us are going to have the freedom to do it, but as long as we do, we're going to take advantage of it. So just some thoughts for Kwaku L. as his video dropped, I think, today.

I wanted to respond to it. Thanks for listening.