I was in a discussion with a good friend of mine this week who is a Mormon, and she pointed out that she personally believes that Jesus was not fully God and fully man---that he has aspects of God, which made him perfect enough to redeem us as humans, but that God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all separate beings. The 'egg concept' (God as the shell, Christ as the yolk, the Holy Spirit as the white) I had been taught growing up as the Trinity being 3 in 1 seemed to float around in my already befuddled head as I tried to grasp this Unitarian concept.
Although Mormons wouldn't associate with the Unitarian church in any way, shape, or form, Unitarians have a similar idea. I found this the weird way by googling information about the Trinity. I was actually shocked to hear Bible believing Christians disbelieving Jesus' divinity! To me, it has always been essential that Christ was fully God, because to view him as anything less would not only seem blasphemous to me, it would seem as if his sacrifice was nullified by his only half shrug at divinity.
I did some research of my own to see what Scripture said about the issue. One of my favorite verses I found was 1 John 5:7 (KJV): "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word [which, when referenced to John 1, is Jesus], and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."
Colossions 2: 9- 10 (KJV) also states, "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form...", supporting following verses in Col. 1:15-20. Christ himself declares, "I and the Father are one" (John 10:29-30).
These were just a few verses I used for my Trinitarian point of view.
My prayer as I talk to my Mormon friend, and all other religious people I know, is that I don't forget they are intelligent people who have reasons and culture of their own to believe what they feel is correct. Although I disagree, I need to find my own reasons to support that disagreement and back up my points. I remember doing this once about a year prior when a friend was protesting at the church's lack of acceptance of people with homosexuality. A homosexual minister made a Youtube video crying foul play on certain verses and their Hebrew context, but when I looked the same verses up, it became clear to me he was botching them to suit his own purposes for his decision to sin. The same goes for other religious viewpoints. Even if it is not sin, is it preventing this person from grasping the true nature of God? Is it telling them a Gospel message that could be flawed? If so, the glory and wisdom of God is being maligned, and we as Christians are called to search and find the precious treasure of truth.
You have hit the nail on the head: we need to be searching out the Scriptures ourselves, to be confirmed in our own minds, to know what we believe. Only when we know what we believe--essentially, what we ARE--can we portray that to the world. We cannot grow apathetic, take our so-called beliefs for granted. For if salt lose its flavor, can it made salty again? Thank you for this reminder.
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