People who leave traditional Christianity for Mormonism often think that in doing so they are having big mysteries solved and gaps filled. In reality, they are exchanging one set of mystery and certainty for another set of mystery and certainty. The question is whether a given set of mystery and certainty is acceptable.

Mormonism says we can’t know if God sinned, but it does tell us the way to tithe.

It says we can’t know if God the Father submits in worship to another Heavenly Father, but we can know the correct mode of baptism.

It says we can’t know if God the Father is still learning, but we can know what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 15:29 about baptism for the dead.

It says we can’t know if God the Father invented eternal law or submitted to an external eternal law, but we can know if nuclear family units can persist in the afterlife.

It says we can’t know if God the Father knows the definite future, but we can know what happens to the unreached.

One’s value system and commitment to the Bible (or lack thereof) helps shape whether one thing or the other is acceptable mystery. Followers of Jesus and his word, the Bible, want to major on the majors, and minor on the minors. We celebrate both certainty and mystery. We do not want to be so arrogant as to turn God’s revealed clarity into mystery, or mystery into certainty. In other words, it is our duty as Jesus-followers to submit to both God’s revelation and God’s lack of revelation.

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)