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Is the Mormon God a big God or a Little God. When I was TBM I viewed God as all powerful, able to create the Universe, in control control of the elements, able to affect the lives of his children to the smallest degree. Now I look at that point of view and see no evidence for it. Perhaps God is a big God but it appears more to me that he acts as a little God. Take for instance spiritual healing. We talk about it in church, we read about it in the bible, but in reality it never happens. Sure you hear stories of how someone had a bad head cold and got a blessing and miraculously 7 days latter they felt better. Maybe there are more drastic examples but again in reality the overwhelming majority of people get little real physical relief from spiritual healing. This is evident in the fact of what we are willing to bless people to receive. We will give them a blessing to overcome an illness or recover from an accident that has caused internal injuries, but would we ever bless an individual to who was an amputee to grow a leg back. No because we know it is very unlikely to happen. So to me this makes God more of a little God. He really does not live up to the Power we attribute to him.
You can look at many things that are beyond our control that we may desperately need the assistance of God yet for the overwhelming majority of instances we really do not get any physical assistance that we can conclusively say was God. Sure things happen but just as likely they would have happened anyway. Statistically speaking God does not exist in the affairs of man. Or at least they way we interpret him to act.
They analysis that God can find your car keys but he can not feed the hungry seems to illustrate my point.
Perhaps to focus on the physical dealings of God is unfair and in reality it is the spiritual side of God that is important. Perhaps God really is involved in the lives of his children or perhaps God stays out of our lives much more that we think and lets us figure it out on our own. What ever the answer is I think it would be a more healthy approach especially to Mormons to accept God on his level and stop applying actions and motives to him that really there is not evidence off. In essence we could get of our knees and focus on the problem.
I’ve experienced some miraculous healing experiences involving doctor’s diagnoses of impending death, a priesthood blessing, followed by sudden healing and discharge from the hospital. So, I tend to believe in the power of miracles and ascribe them to God. However, is our God a small g or large G god? I think both — therefore, the name gGod or Ggod. He is small g in that he progressed from being a man to a powerful being. Large G because he’s the only one we recognize.
I do believe he has power to heal given my personal experiences. I also realize He chooses not to at times for reasons I don’t completely understand.
Quote:In essence we could get off our knees and focus on the problem.
Fwiw, the global Church leadership has been begging the membership to do that for decades.
I also have experienced directly a few cases of truly miraculous healing. I also have experienced instances of piercing insight regarding things of which I literally was not and could not have been aware. I also have experienced a couple of things that were truly miraculous about which I almost never talk.
Having said that, I have no idea how much God works actively in our lives, but I do believe we can connect to the divine in us much more than most of us do. I see GOD as a big “G” god – and I see us as little “g” gods. I think we fail to understand gods every bit as much as we fail to understand God.
As far as Mormon theology goes, I think we present mostly an image of a big “G” God — all powerful, all knowing and all loving (not unlike the rest of Christianity), and directly involved in every minute detail of our lives. Mormonism in particular formulates an extremely personal God, and pushes a close personal relationship (very Stage 3 in characteristics). Whether that is true in the absolute sense, or in our direct experience, is another matter. But I think that is the predominant image of God in Mormonism.
The real question to me relates to this comment:
cadence wrote:He really does not live up to the Power we attribute to him.
I throw out this challenging questions: So who went wrong?
There are two parties in that statement — God and humans. He does not live up to the expectations that some (most?) humans place on Him (he/she/it/they).
I am often practical to a fault, but it seems to me that if there is a supreme being, a God, then the best way for me to form expectations is to watch what actually happens and formulate my assumptions and expectations from that. I am much more likely to have my wishes fulfilled and understand God that way (the real G/g-od)
If I start by saying “I want God to be a man with a white beard sitting on a space throne that pays attention to all the things I am interested in, and agrees with all the things I find a problem, and fixes them with magic powers whenever I ask,” well … like others have already noticed, that is likely to lead to disappointment in God. It didn’t work for me either that way, even though I tried pretty hard.
But I can’t in all fairness say that makes God non-existent or limited, simply because this being doesn’t do what I want. It actually gives me an electric sense of challenge, like a hunter stalking dangerous prey
😈 Just give me a few thousand lifetimes of reincarnation, or an eternity in some kingdom somewhere in the afterlife … and watch out! I’m gonna jack this whole system of reality and take it for a joy ride. WOOOHOOOO!Big God that intervenes with us humans minimally yet if all. No matter what happens to me I just can’t wrap my brain around the idea that God helps some people but not others..When the “others” who were not helped get chalked up to it being their destiny to die, not heal, etc. and those that were helped were just blessed and it was God’s will, their destiny etc.
I don’t believe God is evil. Miracles have happened in my life but I’ve never connected them to God, simply like I said, b/c of the many individuals, babies, children, and the sick that deserve a miracle but it doesn’t come … and then we go back to explaining it as will or destiny. Just out of respect for others who have had that child die of cancer, got abused their whole life..I just keep my mouth shut about when I think God might have been blessing me, on a personal level. I’m not afraid to say God is good but careful to walk the blessing/miracle line .. that is just me.
I definitely lean towards .. We are all on our own physically. Call it good luck, bad luck, right place at the right time, biology whatever! Spiritually, many miracles can happen … mind can sometimes come out on top of matter.
I have had things in my life that I could attribute to miraculous but I can also point to things that were misleading. My point is it is easy to focus on the few times that something beyond ourselves happened but what about all the misses. I would dare say those are greatly more prevalent among all peoples than the miracles. For every miraculous healing that people attest to there are many more individuals who suffer. The ratio has to be a thousand to one or more. Not to say those are not genuine but again it seems to make God little or maybe Big but deciding to treat his children differently. Do make a reference to something that happened to you as miraculous is somewhat misleading with out detailing the experience. Something that seems miraculous to one may be a common occurrence to another. Also it is not miraculous if it can be explained by common events. Like I said earlier someone overcoming an illness is not the same thing as seeing a totally crippled person stand up and walk.
Ultimately I do not know. I just look at the evidence and ask reasonable questions of God. I just never get any answers.
I love this kind of talk. Spock – you make me laugh every time I read your comments — because of all the folks on this board, you sir, are the least likely to beat around the bush and you DO NOT mince words. THANK YOU! Okay, so here is what I get from this thread. I personally have seen “miracle” and performed “miracles”, but like LLL said, I’m not so sure I can give a guy with a white beard sitting on a throne all the credit.
Quote:I definitely lean towards .. We are all on our own physically. Call it good luck, bad luck, right place at the right time, biology whatever! Spiritually, many miracles can happen … mind can sometimes come out on top of matter.
i kind of think there is a power in the universe that one can tap into – and I have done so on occasion – but that “power” is not what i was told it was all those years growing up in the church. And I think, Cadence you are absolutely right. If one truly believes in a BIG GOD, than why are we not blessing folks to grow a new arm or to move mountions? How many folks on this planet, who have great faith and believe that god is all powerful, believe that miracles are possible through the priesthood, have given a blessing to grow a new arm? I am going to guess ZERO. We teach that it is possible, but than we put a qualifier on it that “if god wanted to he would…” Oh really – how convenient. I think this is an absolutely fair question to ask – but of course like you said, we have only questions, very seldom do we get answers.
To me, the answer at this time for me, as ugly as it may be, is quite simple…either 1. God is a small god that fits Spocks original description. 2. There is no god. or 3. He’s too busy running the universe and doesn’t have the time, and probably just doesn’t really care. or 4. God is not a dude with a white beard sitting on a throne watching a computer monitor of earth’s dealings. perhaps god is nothing more than an “idea”.
Cadence wrote:They analysis that God can find your car keys but he can not feed the hungry seems to illustrate my point.
Yes, I believe it does.
I chuckled at the car keys versus world hunger analogy. On the other hand, I think we also have to be careful about superimposing our own ideals of how a divine being would direct their power — and what outcomes they are actually seeking.
For example, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen the merits of letting people suffer so they can obtain far-reaching knowledge. With my children, there are certain things they won’t agree to, or advice they won’t listen to. So, at times, I’ve let them go ahead and do that thing that I advise against, knowing full well they will hurt themselves. (Not too badly, lest my philosophy turns to a philosophy of negligence or cruelty). To an outsider, it might appear that I’m not using my authority or power as a parent to do what’s best for my children. But in actuality, I’m helping them gain valuable life lessons, and also increasing their belief that their father DOES have advice worth listening to when their own decision blow up in their faces.
Also, most of us have experienced people who want you to just do everything for them. It’s within my power to do so, but it’s not always good for them, or for myself personally. So at times, I will let them suffer until they get the motivation to help themselves, for their own benefit. For me, sometimes divine intervention is characterized by no intervention at all.
And finally, I think God sees the far reaching consequences of decisions he makes — far further ahead than we do, and he knows the hidden variables we don’t see, and so his actions seem wrong or unlike the actions of God. Here’s an example — my son had a diabetic coma in Wal-Mart. He fights you when he gets into this semi-conscious state and won’t let you administer high-glucose liquid to bring him back to consciousness. To the onlooker unfamiliar with diabetes, he appears as if he’s a willfully uncooperative and out-of-control child, when really, he’s not in control of himself.
As my wife tried to administer the liquid to him as he lay prone and “fighting” on the floor in Wal-Mart, and woman walked up and said “You’re spoiling him if you give him what he wants every time he throws a tantrum like that — especially at his age!!!” (he’s seven). This woman thought he was throwing a tantrum because he wanted a drink, and my wife was caving by giving it to him. This woman was entirely judgmental of how my wife was using her power as a parent. However, my wife was able to see the deeper variables of the situation, and her actions were actually kind and loving, and definitely appropriate.
I think we often criticize God the same way this woman criticized my wife given this woman’s lack of knowledge, vision, and intimate knowledge about my son’s particular situation.
SD – I can live with that. Valid points. Cadence wrote:Is the Mormon God a big God or a Little God. When I was TBM I viewed God as all powerful, able to create the Universe, in control control of the elements, able to affect the lives of his children to the smallest degree. Now I look at that point of view and see no evidence for it…
Take for instance spiritual healing. We talk about it in church, we read about it in the bible, but in reality it never happens…would we ever bless an individual to who was an amputee to grow a leg back. No because we know it is very unlikely to happen…
…we may desperately need the assistance of God yet for the overwhelming majority of instances we really do not get any physical assistance that we can conclusively say was God…Statistically speaking God does not exist in the affairs of man.
Personally I think God is a big and powerful god that intentionally acts like a small and ineffectual god on purpose most of the time simply because he prefers to do things in a subtle and mysterious way that is not intuitively obvious to people
(1 Corinthians 1:21-25). It looks to me like he will typically pick his spots to interfere in the natural course of events very selectively and he will often just let things play out in a random haphazard way. If God is anything like many theologians say then it seems like he would have a fairly complex thought process that is always many steps ahead of what people would typically think about in the same situation. To expect him to do things exactly the same way we would in most cases just doesn’t seem very reasonable or realistic to me. Of course, for die-hard skeptics that are looking for an excuse to doubt God, I suppose that second-guessing God’s work or apparent lack of work in many cases is as good a reason as any to question his existence or usefulness. For example, if God is all-powerful and benevolent then why would he ever allow so much suffering and injustice (“the problem of evil”) in the world? If the Bible is supposed to be the “word of God” it’s hard to believe this is really the best that an all-knowing God could do and it looks more like the words of relatively primitive, ignorant, and superstitious men to me. If man is the most important thing created by God then why would he wait around for billions of years rather than just creating humans right away?
There are many different possible variations of this same general idea. The assumption is that if there really was a nice Christian god then he should have done many things differently but because he didn’t this supposedly means that either God doesn’t exist or else he/it must be some kind of impersonal deist/pantheist type of god that doesn’t really do anything for people at this point. To me this idea is not very convincing and I don’t see any reason that God couldn’t have done things this same exact way if he really wanted to for whatever reason; but this is a fairly common argument that is repeatedly put forward against the traditional Judeo-Christian God.
Since I have no problem with the idea of multiple mortal lives, especially for those who die without having had a full life of opportunity, I am less prone to get upset at God for the problems of the world and more prone to lay the blame at our feet for causing much of the suffering in this world and not alleviating it when we have the power to do so. I tend to trust that God will take care of what we can’t, but that we can take care of FAR more than we do. I don’t see that as God’s fault; I tend to see it as ours.
ABCDEFG. Goat girl googoo goggles G … g … G Big God little god G … g … G
Sorry for that distraction. I have 6 kids and read endless hours of Dr. Suess to them. The title of this thread keeps reminding me of the ABC book.
Back to the regularly scheduled discussion…
I’m with Ray in that I don’t blame God for the bad things that happen to people. However, that is part of the reason why I feel he shouldn’t get all the “credit” for most of the good things either. But I feel that once prayer or any type of meditation between someones spirit/mind and the divine connect … miracles can and do happen. People have power … and I think it comes from no one other than themselves when it comes down to the chemistry of it all. If that makes sense. I believe in God and that he/she is good. And I believe Big God Little God does sound like A Cat in the Hat theory I’ve always tended to think of God/Heavenly Father as that massive spirit (Great Spirit – as the BoM ITSELF has it!) and creator of the Universe, but the LDS sometimes demote him to tiny man with a human sized body, ruling over this planet/system/galaxy, and just one in a long chain. Maybe, that’s a hangover as a convert. I can see we have the divine spark, but the idea of a man ruling over everything is a bit parochial.
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