My boss has told me that she no longer wants me to 'pursue discussions of religion' on the job. I asked her why, and she is afraid evidently of some sort of 'discrimination complaint'. I have a fellow employee who is L.D.S.(Mormon), and she thinks he may get upset with me and take some sort of legal action.

I assured her that was highly unlikely, as I have only talked with him about his beliefs when he has approached me. She remained resolute. I told her that I felt that I had a moral responsibility to answer his questions from the Bible if he comes to me because he is being deceived on a grand scale. She said she still didn't like it. I don't know whether that was a rejection of the notion for sure or not, but if he comes up to me and asks me a question that is pertinent to his salvation, I feel I must answer him. I can however do my best to wait to speak to him about such things after work. That wouldn't harm either one of us.

Her concern stems from the way he has responded to my answers to his questions. When I tell him what his organization hierarchy teaches, he gets a little excited and demands proof. I in turn give him chapters and verses (many) from his own organization's readily available publications and he somehow manages to forget to look them up.

He would come to me with more questions and I would tell him that he didn't investigate the information I gave him before. He would persist and I then "printed up" the excerpts from online versions of the publications, with before and after passages to prove context. He would avoid reading those and still ask me yet more questions and I resorted to obtaining my own books bringing them to work to place in his hands. He still would not give them a fair reading.

That is willful ignorance. He would rather be ignorant of facts that offend him, or facts that seriously challenge his belief system. This type of willfulness is not exclusive to Mormonism by any means. I have spoken with people who can't conceive of, "a God Who would create a world so full of evil." I feel for people who say that, because they grieve for the immoral state of the world as I do, but I'm really tired of that statement.

I'm tired of hearing that statement because of what almost always follows. I tell them that God didn't create sin. The response is almost always that sin exists, therefore it had to be created by the God they won't believe in, so there can't be a God.

Okay, if you can't believe in God because sin and pain exist in the world, who is responsible for sin? That's right, man. You and me.

In Colossians 1:16, the Bible states that, "All things were created through Him and for Him." All things includes you and me. We were created by Him, through His power, for Him. That's right. We were created for Him. We created to be compatible with Him for fellowship with Him, and to worship Him as our Creator, but we were ripped off through deception, and people are still deceived.

Sin came into the world because of man's own pride and weakness, and the fact that he had a right to choose whether to sin or not. Man chose to sin, and he's been sinning ever since. God being the merciful One that He is though, by His grace toward us provided a way, through Jesus, for us to be washed clean of sin and through Him have a spotless record. No sin. That's all He wants for us, to impart His goodness to us.

The people who are of this world are damaged goods. His free gift is an offer of healing and restoration through Him and to Him, out of the absolute kindness of His heart. That isn't the act of someone who could create sin. It's the act of Someone Who hates sin, and what it does to His creation.

In order not to talk about Him to those who ask, I would have to willfully make myself ignorant of these things, to ignore their need for Him in their lives. I would be worse than a god who created a world of sin.