by Wade Englund

1.  "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"(Mt 22:39), and "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." (Mt 5:44)

2.  Their efforts tend to generate interest in the Church, and keep our faith frequently in the public eye, which helps our missionary work prosper when they are around.

3.  They provide us with a unique insight into the life of the Savior by demonstrating what it must have been like for him to deal with the Scribes and Pharisees.

4.  Who else is going to motivate us to study the peripheral, obscure, and markedly unimportant aspects of our religion.

5.  They make us laugh with their obtuse, inane, dubious, nefarious, absurd, rancorous, and spiteful antics.

6.  We get to dust off our Logic 101 books, and find application for the many fallacies we learned about in school.

7.  They give religious bigotry a bad name.

8.  Their "cottage" industry is a boost to local economies--particularly paper and print businesses; and their tracts provide a cheap source of fuel for wood stoves and fireplaces.

9.  We are no longer left to wonder: "how many times can the same weak and well-refuted claims be made against our faith?" (Infinity!); and, "to what extent will the anti-Mormons go in forwarding their un-Christ-like agendas?" (Anything goes--including "lying for the Lord".)

10. They provide a loving "home" for the chronic discontents, and they help make even the most misinformed and unscholarly writers of religion feel important and erudite.

(See Response to Criticism home page; General Criticism home page)