One of the dumbest mistakes any religion or political party or ideological group can make is label or insinuate that their opponents are evil. It's one of the classic logical fallacies, an "ad hominem" attack, which means attacking the person's character rather than the actual problems in their reasoning that there necessarily must be if they are, indeed, wrong.
And it is simply NOT TRUE. Conservatives that accuse liberals of being selfish brats and liberals that accuse conservatives of being selfish brats are wrong because the vast majority of both parties simply and sincerely believe that the policies and ideas they endorse are truly the better way to go, the way that will make the world a better place for more people. It's easy to find anecdotal support for anything, including the idea that your enemies are evil, but that doesn't mean it's the norm. Politicians that use this emotional way of marketing themselves at the expense of their enemies are being manipulative. That's called propaganda. People that simply laugh about the opposite political party's ideas and hand-wavingly, dismissively cite some ill-documented evidence for why that proposition is absolutely ridiculous, rather than actually giving some logical, factual, provable reasons why they're wrong, are victims of the propaganda mindset.
Another case in point: people who, for one reason or another, attack the Church and try to make it appear that we are evil and manipulative, use these fear tactics (inspiring fear about Mormons by magnifying and distorting obscure incidents from decades and centuries ago). Upon closer inspection, their arguments NEVER measure up to the size of their claims. True, they can ask questions that the most faithful and knowledgeable of Church members don't know the answers to, but they cannot prove that we are evil or worse off because of the Church because it's simply not true.
And this is my main point - we need to remember that the same is true about other churches. True, we Mormons believe with all our hearts that we have the true Church of Jesus Christ with all the correct doctrines. But that does NOT in any way give us license to speak with a condescending tone when we compare our church with other churches -- because the people in the other churches also sincerely believe everything they preach, and it makes them a better person. The things other churches do are not evil. People aren't bad, they're not selfish, they're not evil and they're not necessarily even going to hell right this second if they don't up and join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now.
The scriptures don't say that because a person was born in the church, they're better than everyone else. They say "the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have." That means that the teachings of other churches are basically good, not basically bad.
I guess the point of this whole thing is that sometimes in our missionary efforts we emphasize how right we are and how #1 we are more than we emphasize the Christian virtues such as love and tolerance and optimism.
This has been another of Heated Rants on Life with Jan. Tune in next time for "What were they thinking?"
