The goodness of God?

I have not been able to reconcile it with the premise you have stipulated.

My take is that I am not going to tell God he can’t be OK with polygamy or tell someone they must do it, but from what I see of early Mormonism’s polygamy I do not think it was of God.

[Admin Note]: We have discussed polygamy multiple times in detail very recently, and we will not revisit it again in that exact same manner – especially here where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone abhors the way it was implemented in our religious history.

We can dress it up in lots of different clothes, but we won’t rehash the same conversation over and over and over among the exact same people with no variation in the input from anyone.

I believe God is good. I don”t believe God would force anyone to do something they find abhorrent against their will.

If that is the consensus here, there isn’t much more to say; if someone disgrees with that, we can talk about it – but the conversation will end if it gets contentious and becomes nothing more than a rehash of the same conversation we have had so much recently.

Rob4Hope:

I don’t see that particular canonized scripture as being truly from God.

If you look at the OT, prophets were very much fallible men. They had weaknesses and problems.

We hear so much of Moses, yet we don’t discuss the man he murdered. We don’t discuss his Ethiopian second wife showing up and the dissing Moses got over that by Aaron and Mirium. We don’t talk about the fact God was going to kill him because he hadn’t circumcised his sons. His wife did the circumcisions and saved his life. We don’t discuss his sister Mirium at all. OT calls her a prophetess. LDS doctrine choses to call her merely “inspired”.

Men of God are simply men first. Uchdorf, when he was called as a GA, had someone tell him not to inhale. He was told that it was too easy to let the situation go to your head, then you start thinking you are something special and that the same rules don’t apply.

Did JS have some inspiration? I think so. But he was very weak in some ways. He was human. I believe some parts of the D & C reflect his humanity more than his inspiration.

Ray wrote: I still see the potential in our current theology, and one primary reason is that we have moved past a literal intepretation of that passage, generally speaking, as a people. Most members now view it much like they view the problematic passages in the Bible, even if they won’t say it that way often.

Well stated!

As others have said, I take all scripture as writings of men who may not clearly understand what is being conveyed to them (seeing through glass darkly). I also see much of the D&C as made up by Joseph Smith.

So, lets proceed on the premise it really is scripture and came from God.

Why?

In a Macro sense the “goodness of God?” is the problem with evil. If God is good and all-powerful, then why is evil permitted to exist? There are many different theories to help reconcile this apparent contradiction. I believe that the world around us is what it is. We humans are natural born storytellers and tell ourselves stories of all sorts about what our lives mean. These stories help us to understand, categorize, and explain our environment.

Somewhere in our quest for meaning and understanding we expect our stories and beliefs to control our environment. We expect God to bless us, support us, and strengthen us as long as we do xyz. This is very attractive. Meaning is good but control is better. This is where I was. It therefore came as a huge shock to me when something terrible happened and my years of faithful church service and donations did not move God to intervene. In the aftermath, I have had to re-examine my assumptions.

I currently believe that God exists (though I cannot prove it)

I even more fervently believe that God loves me on a very personal level (though I cannot prove it)

I also believe that it was a mistake to believe that the above two points would control, manipulate, and subvert all the trials and vicissitudes of this life for my benefit. My beliefs are designed to affect how I understand, frame, and cope with my environment. My beliefs do not control my environment. My beliefs may direct how I interact with my environment but they will not dictate how my environment interacts with me.

What does this have to do with your question?

I believe that the scriptures contain the stories that men have told themselves to help them find meaning. I believe that much of these writings contain pearls of God inspired wisdom (wisdom literature). This wisdom in addition to helping us with meaning in our lives also helps us to live together productively and draw closer to God individually. Intermixed with those bits of godly wisdom are also many other things that I believe come from the mind of men independent from God. These stories can be used to accomplish great good. These stories can also be used to divide us and justify unethical actions. I believe that is what is happening in the scriptures you are using here – the story or narrative is justifying a wrong action.

So, lets proceed on the premise it really is scripture and came from God.

So the simple answer to your question is that I cannot assume this scripture to come from God because it contradicts how I have imagined God to be and I am heavily invested in this God of my own understanding.

I treat this passage as similar to the decapitation of Laban or the annihilation of entire towns and cities in the OT. They are not consistent with the God of my understanding. I feel free to personally discard them and the God of my understanding smiles down upon me as I do so.

OTOH, JS seemed to believe that whatever God commanded became good by default. He seemed to think that if God were to command something that we knew to be bad then it would result in an overriding good somewhere down the line (the eternal ends justify the temporal means). Unfortunately, this too flies in the face about what I believe about God. The God of my understanding does not command his children to do things that go against their conscience in order to accomplish his designs. My belief is therefore different than Joseph’s on this point.