A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest, hmmmm

Several months ago I was asked by a discussion forum owner if I would join her forum to discuss Mormonism. She found out through a different blog that I was LDS, and she wanted an LDS perspective on some gospel ideas and she wanted to know a few things about our beliefs.

The discussions went fine for a few months and the forum owner was pleased with my responses and everything seemed hunky dory. A couple of other LDS people came on as well and everything was great. A couple of people were mildly critical of the church, but noting major. Normal stuff really.

Things started going down hill. I must give all the credit to a convert to the church going by the username hitchiker. He knows his stuff much better than I and I think he is a writer by trade. He did a spectacular job of explaining things that I couldn't find the words to say. He has a deeper grasp of gospel principles than I do in some cases. (Hitchiker, if you blog here, drop me a note.

These "christians" were becoming vicious and they continually told us what we beleive etc. etc. ect. The normal stuff that these guys do when they feel somehow threatened by us. They blew off everything we had to say. Recently, I got frustrated that they weren't listening to what we were saying and decided to bow out of the discussions. Neither of us were trying to convert them, we were trying to reach an uderstanding really. Hitchiker finally washed his hands of the situation as well.

But that isn't what this post was about. Ever since I quit posting in this Christian forum, I still go back and read what these guys have to say. There are three of these guys that are all from different christian churches. They all seemed in perfect agreement when they were united in "evangelizing" us heathens. But now that their opposition is gone, they are left to themselves.

Now to the point of the post. They are actually arguing against each other. Two other threads have broken off from the Mormon thread. One is the discussion of the necesity of baptism. Some think it is, some think it is not. The other is a discussion about the different creeds (apostolic, nicene etc.) because some think they are more important than others do.

While they were preaching to us, they made it sound like the principles and teachings in the Bible were cut and dry. According to them, the bible is perfect in every respect.

This begs the question. If the Bible is perfect in every way, then why are some of the most important aspects of the gospel still debated, like baptism, among all the Christians who have the Bible?

Like Simon and Garfunkle said "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."