LDS daily – Elder Oaks & Heavenly Mothers

Yup.

As a thought exercise, I sometimes posit that “being a Creator in the afterlife” is a lot like middle school class projects where you have to team together to complete the project – with the students banding together to determine what the team composition is before even understanding the scope of the project itself. The bad part of that scenario is that I would in general prefer to work with a trusted female colleague over a male colleague any day – and I am easily not the only one if the “bear-choosers” are an accurate representation of dynamics.

100+ years from now when there are artificial uteruses, historians will have a tough time making sense of this ongoing debate and “teams” will be larger as genetic diversity is a huge selling point for being more inclusive – that will be interesting. Or maybe in a few thousand years, we will have re-written our DNA so that we have specific breeding seasons that are utilized instead of the free-range system that we currently have that spans decades.

Did he know that he was being recorded?

I doubt it but it’s hard to tell post-covid. Some wards still broadcast their sacrament meetings. Even still, I think the expectation is that people don’t record the meeting. There’s a difference between a live broadcast and a recording.

When someone that high up in the church hierarchy visits, local members are given a spiel about protocols during the visit. Not recording the meeting is heavily emphasized. Probably for this exact reason.

I’m not sure I understand the distinction though. If it’s something that can be said to people attending sacrament meeting in Belgium why isn’t it good enough for others to hear via a recording? Or to turn it on it’s head, if you don’t want it getting out in public, don’t say it.

A private meeting sure, that communication is private, but it was a meeting open to the public.

I just think that he was ad-libbing his thoughts and at that time he thought about the numerous woman in his life who had “Mothered” him – and this came out sloppily as “singular man, multiple women” in his language. I don’t think he was trying excavate theology (at least any more than usual) and I don’t think he meant what he said the way it is being taken in terms of theology.

Honestly, if this were almost anyone else besides Oaks I would agree. But Oaks does not tend to speak off the cuff, and his public statements are always backed up with multiple scriptural and other references to prove he’s “right” in a very lawyer like fashion (not surprising at all given his background). While this particular statement might be open to some interpretation, I think he meant exactly what he said, and his view is exactly as most people are interpreting it. And while I am not a believer in polygamy nor that polygamy in the early church was “ordained of God,” his statement is theologically very sound from the LDS perspective.

I had a different take.

I don’t think it was a slip of the tongue. I think a slip of the tongue would go something like, “So we know that we have Heavenly Mothers… Mother.” You slip up, then immediately correct yourself.

Oaks said, “So we know that we have a Heavenly Mother or Mothers.” That comes across as an intentional clarification to me. I think Oaks is very legalistic and he intentionally added the caveat to make sure his comment was as technically correct as possible.

I also don’t think it’s an expansion of an official doctrine, I think it’s a callback to an older official doctrine that we’ve been to sheepish to acknowledge in the last 100 years.

It is inconvenient that serial monogamy becomes polygamy or polyandry once mortal space-time restrictions are lifted.

The push to make “temple marriage” the cultural priority to legitimize priesthood authority and motivate members to engage more with the church organization (and “obey the rules”) drove up the desire for a “temple marriage sealing” over a “this life marriage/civil marriage” made the impacts of these inconvenient truths more apparent, in my opinion.

I have a hard time understanding why religion (LDS Church specifically) & the designs of a Heavenly Father wouldn’t make the plan of salvation as clear & understandable as possible. Instead, we have from time to time, discussions, topics & speculation about issues like this. And then introduced and presented by a GA (and others) once again.

On days when I am in a benevolent mood, I see it as people (GA and others) talking about what generates motivation for thinking about, exploring/processing through, or interests them. Most denominations have a simpler Plan of Salvation – that is one reason that our “Celestial Glory” reward is talked about so much.

I thought that the focus was Jesus Christ. His role, His mission, His teachings & His sacrifice on the cross. This life is very short. I am still having difficulty FULLY understanding Jesus.

The focus generally has been on “following Jesus Christ through what has been restored” via additional scripture and other individuals to follow. But while we “believe Jesus Christ”, our theology doesn’t fit the majority perspective of “Christianity” – including a belief in the Trinity. There is a bit of needle-threading going on to be a “Christian religion” like the other denominations out there without losing too much of our “Mormon” restoration theology that has vastly different interpretations of the Fall, “Salvation”, the nature of God, and the role of Jesus Christ being a few topics.

I never thought of there being multiple Heavenly Mothers, but it makes sense if we believe a man can be sealed to multiple women. Interesting how I never thought of that — probably because everyone talks about our Heavenly Mother (singular) rather than our Heavenly Mothers (plural).

I do believe religion in general and the LDS church* specifically complicate things. If you read the Bible (or the Book of Mormon for that matter) there isn’t anything akin to the “covenant path.” Faith (belief in God/Jesus) and repentance (change) are recurrent themes, baptism is mentioned**, and something like the gift of the Holy Ghost is mentioned even less. I’m not totally convinced of Jesus’s role at Savior/Redeemer or that Jesus is a God or any more of a son of God than the rest of us. Jesus/Messiah/Savior/Redeemer is a great idea, but is open to a great deal of interpretation and is understood very differently among different religions and different churches.

I tend to agree with the quote above DJ. But what continues to nag me is the powerful spiritual experiences I had teaching the gospel when I was a missionary. It continues to nag me when I get comfortable in my less-activity. I sure am happier than I was as fully active Mormon though, if that is any indication. I spent a lot of time frustrated at the lack of commitment of people, and feeling pressure at the imperatives the bishop and stake put on us to clean up the records, activate everybody, get everyone going to the temple, etcetera. And the sacrifices of time and money aren’t something I miss either. A lot of time was expended pursuing goals that were unachievable, particularly those that involve influencing the agency of others. Something I never really enjoyed.

That’s for another thread, and I think I mentioned it before about the difficulty I have reconciling what my heart is telling me (that’ it’s not as true as everyone says Mormonism is), and the spiritual experiences I had, particularly as a missionary.