"Ask a Mormon" #1

So none of my friends are Mormon except for the ones I see at youth activities and on Sunday. Because of this I'm constantly surrounded by people who don't understand my religion and have been getting their questions answed incorrectly from either Anti-Mormons or people who are too stupid to realize that we don't practice human sacrifices in our temples. Because of this I'm constantly needing to clear up misconceptions and I figured it'd be a good idea to put the questions my friends ask me followed by my answers. Today I'm only answering one question since it has a very long explanation.

What makes you different from other Christians, like Catholics?

I can't pretend to be an expert on other religions, so I wouldn't feel right comparing us if I'm ignorant of their beliefs. I do, however know a decent amount about the Catholic religion, since my entire Dad's side is Catholic and I've attended their church a decent amount of times.
First off, do not think that I am, in any way, attacking the Catholic religion. Personally I think that there's nothing wrong with a church as long as it teaches it's members to be better people. I'm only comparing the LDS church to the Catholic Church because it's the only other religion I know enough about.
So here we go.
There are endless differences between the Catholic Church and The Mormon Church. One main one is our perception of God.
Mormons usually referre to God as Heavenly Father and to ourselves as Children of God, and this demonstrates how he think of him quite well. We think of him kind of as an all-knowing loving Father who - if we listen to his guidance - will lead us down the path that is best for us to travel. We believe that like any good Father he has to use discipline sometimes. We don't believe that he punishes people out of rath, but because if he let us run wild we'd probably get ourselves blown up, like any child.
We also believe that Heaven Father and Jesus Christ are two completely seperate people. They have different personality traits and two different bodies as you'd expect from any two different people. We believe this because when Joseph Smith experienced the First Vision he saw "two personages" God pointed to Christ and said "this is my beloved Son, hear him". Information on the First vision can be found in Joseph Smith History, Chapter one.
The Catholics beleive that Christ was merely God's mundane form, sent to Earth to conquer both life and death. I don't want to expand on this much, because I don't want to misinform you. It's also my understand that Catholics believe that God punishes people for being bad, which we do believe in to a certain degree. This doesn't really work all the time though because "bad things happen to good people". I'll get into the LDS veiw on the next time I do one of these.

Another major difference between The LDS Church and the Catholic church is that Catholics believe that all God has needed to say to mankind has been said in the bible, we do not believe that. Although we do still believe in the Bible and are taught about it in Church and Seminary.
Our belief that God has more to say to us in modern day is expressed through several different things.
The first is that we receive modern revalation through our Prophet (currently Thomas S. Monson). This means that he receives present-day instruction from God through the Spirit (I'll explain who the Spirit is in a later question).
We also (of course) have and believe in The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. The Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price were both translated by Joseph Smith, and the Doctrine and Covenants were written by God through Joseph Smith. That is to say by revelation.
We also believe in something you can't understand unless you've experienced it; personal revelation. This is when (often through prayer and/or scripture study) we recieve instruction from God through the Holy Ghost (AKA the Spirit). This is for things relating to the individual and not everybody as a whole.

Another, more obvious difference between Catholics and Mormons is that we have different "rules".
Catholics beleive that (more or less) to avoid going to Hell (we call it Outer Darkness usually) you simply must obey the Ten Commandments.
We, on the other hand follow many rules, so many nobody's ever bothered to number any of them. Of course we do follow the Ten Commandments, but those are merely the beginning for us.
We don't consume addictive substances (alchohol, drugs, coffee etc...) and we don't swear or wear immodest clothing. There are many more, but basically we can't do anything that is likely to interfere with our health, harm others or ourself or get us into undesirable situations.
People constantly ask me why our church has set up so many rules. At first I wasn't completely sure, but now I know. It's becuase the members of the Church have a duty to uphold the light of Christ, and in order to do this we cannot be the same as everybody else. We need to be stronger, have more integredity and have a better peace-of-mind.
Next I'm usually asked why I personally follow all of these rules. I always answer simply that "I believe in my religion,". If they ask me to expand I do, but that's usually enough of an answer for them, whether they think I'm crazy or not.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure I've covered the major differences, if you have any questions you can ask me or go to FAIR.

http://www.fairlds.org/