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Not to argue the point, Roy, but if it really mattered don’t you think it would be as plain as “love God and love your neighbor,” believe in Christ, and be baptized? This is repeated over and over in the scriptures. (I think the knowing God part comes in knowing God pluralmeaning I can know God by knowing Jesus and/or the Holy Ghost as well as knowing God the Father – they are all one in purpose and thought, so a true follower of Christ knows God.) I think it’s really clear what God wants from us and I think that’s what scripture is for. In other words, I think he has told us very plainly what is required. The rest, while of value, is commentary or appendages. (See my signature line) hawkgrrrl wrote:I’d love to see us own Heavenly Mother and completely disavow polygamy. The problem is that polygamy existed in the early days of the church, and too many people descended from it to disavow people’s great grandparents. With 51% of earthlings being female, I still don’t see how polygamy makes any mathematical sense in the eternities.
Amen. And for me it’s not the ratio that doesn’t make sense, polygamy seems to be the very opposite of perfectly divine. Jacob 2 speaks the Godly attitude to me. I saw a documentary on cult leaders one time and the tendency of rising to power was to turn to either a form of polygamy, or a form of open relationships – for the leader at least. I know that doesn’t put Joseph Smith in a flattering light, and I’m not trying to lump him in with the bulk of cult leaders – I am offering the information as a characteristic of polygamy; in my mind it usually happens in patriarchal societies where women have few rights, or as more of an exception in situations where women are taught that enduring it is part of their earthly calling/lesson/commitment.
Quote:why do we think the creation of spirit children is sexual?
I don’t – not at all. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. Seriously, it simply isn’t logical at all.
Having said that, I understand completely why earlier saints, including prophets, thought so. They couldn’t fathom any way to create “children” other than through sexual reproduction – any more than they could have fathomed space travel.
We have the technology to fathom it now, but too many members (including leaders) don’t bother thinking about it in any other way.
DarkJedi wrote:I was going to stay neutral on this thread and just read the rest and not comment anymore – but I have to put my two cents in.
I buy that Heavenly Mother is “doctrine” in that it fits in with what is taught in and about the temple, and if all of that is true then logically there must be a Heavenly Mother along with a Heavenly Father. In my mind this is very much like the Jesus being married debate (or doctrine) – If we believe that in order to enter into the Celestial Kingdom one has to be married, then Jesus must be married. (There are other reasons I believe he is married unrelated to this.) I do stick to my guns that this really is all supposition and speculation, but it only makes sense if one believes the other stuff – realizing, of course, that some here do not and others here have serious questions and doubts about the other stuff.
SO…even if there is a Heavenly Mother, why do we think the creation of spirit children is sexual? In other words, if we believe that Heavenly Father is the Creator of our spirits and therefore our Father, how do we know or why do we think he needed a partner to do that? I get the whole “As man is…” couplet, and thus God must be married if that’s the case – but I have a hard time believing the creation of spirit children is sexual. Isn’t it just as possible that Heavenly Mother is really just Heavenly Wife?
(Disclaimer: I normally dislike getting into this kind of theological/philosophical discussion, not because I don’t enjoy them but because I think they are fringe doctrine/gospel which don’t matter to our salvation.)
I’m not really equipped for a big discussion about this, but I do have to say that it’s something of a shock to wake up to the fact that I DO care about a Heavenly Mother. I don’t think this is all that similar to the question of whether Christ was married, and, although I agree that creation of spirit children could have nothing to do with sex in any form, I think we in the church should take a break from calling God Heavenly Father if we’re not able to explore the idea of Heavenly Mother. If she is “just Heavenly Wife,” is he Heavenly Husband?
On paper I might look angry, but I’m not.
I didn’t think you were angry, Ann, I’ve never seen you angry here. All I’m saying is that the scriptures always refer to Heavenly Father as the Creator (although it may sometimes be referring to Jesus) and that’s how we talk about it, too. As I said, I have a hard time believing spiritual creation has anything to do with sex, hence Heavenly Father wouldn’t need a Heavenly Mother to create spirits with but he would (according to LDS theology) have to be married because he’s in the Celestial Kingdom – so, yes, in a sense he’s just Heavenly Husband. That doesn’t negate the idea that Heavenly Mother may have an other than sexual parental role, as an adoptive or step mother might have here on earth. Since my idea of Heavenly Father leans Deist, I don’t believe he takes much of a parental role and hence neither would Heavenly Mother. Fact is we just don’t know what either of their roles are and they both remain quite hidden. As a side note, I’m sure my own psychology figures in to my views on this whole idea. I wasn’t raised by my mother, I was raised by my grandparents and while I did and do see my mother, our relationship has always been more of an “aunt” type thing. My grandparents fulfilled the parental role of raising me and taking care of me and were more my parents than she was. It’s not at all that I don’t believe in Heavenly Mother – it does make sense and it does fit LDS theology/philosophy but I don’t actually yearn for either a Heavenly Father or Heavenly Mother. I am an adolescent of God.
I wrote two posts on my personal blog three years apart – and they are very different messages about the same general topic. They aren’t about Heavenly Mother, directly, but they do relate to framing our relationships with deity in familial terms. “
The Power of Jesus As Brother” ( http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2010/06/power-of-jesus-as-brother.html “
A Testimony of the Scope of Mormon Theology, the Atonement and Valuing Differences” ( http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-testimony-of-scope-of-mormon-theology.html DarkJedi wrote:Heavenly Father wouldn’t need a Heavenly Mother to create spirits…
I can also hear someone say: “Heavenly Mother wouldn’t need a Heavenly Father to create spirits.”
Orson wrote:DarkJedi wrote:Heavenly Father wouldn’t need a Heavenly Mother to create spirits…
I can also hear someone say: “Heavenly Mother wouldn’t need a Heavenly Father to create spirits.”
That might be…we don’t know how spirits are created.
Quote:That might be…we don’t know how spirits are created.
This. Precisely. It’s all speculation, but we have a few interesting statements that are uniquely Mormon and that I like. The most important of these is the idea that everything, even a spirit, is material and eternal in nature.
Also, from a purely scientific standpoint (which I know is funny to some people when talking about speculative religious concepts like this), we teach that spirits are not “born” but rather “created” or “organized” from “intelligences” – whatever that means. Also, we talk about spirits being physically different in nature from the “parents” who create them. We talk in terms of an evolutionary process of development that is radically different than gestational birth and mortal development – literally, a process of fundamental change from one type of “being” to another, with at least five distinct stages of being.
There is NOTHING in our discourse about intelligences or spirits to indicate a gestational birth process EXCEPT the inability to imagine any other method of creating sentient life and the subsequent statements based on that limitation. Scientifically, we now can talk of a child being conceived and “raised” to viability completely outside a “natural” womb. Thus, we now have the practical advancement to consider the creation of “spirit children” in ways that simply weren’t available to our ancestors – even my own parents.
When it comes right down to it, we have almost nothing that tells us much about Heavenly Father– and much of that, when we look at the totality of our scriptural canon, is contradictory. Therefore, I choose to see those descriptions the same way I see all of our canonical record – as the best approximation of the people of that time, replaced by the best understanding of a later people right up to our own understanding. The ultimate evolution relative to this discussion, for me, isn’t necessarily “fleshing out” Heavenly Mother is some unique way; rather, it is the simple acknowledgment that we accept Godhood as parental in nature, that if we have a Heavenly Father we also have a Heavenly Mother, and that they, combined, constitute perfection (wholeness, completion, full development). Thus, I don’t have to know exactly what “a” Heavenly Father and “a” Heavenly Mother are like as individuals – and I don’t need to see either as “perfect” (whole, complete, fully developed) individually. I can see them as complimentary to such as degree that they are complete together – and then apply that to my own situation and strive to be perfect (whole, complete, fully developed) with my own wife, even if the exact nature of who she and I are as individuals is different than other couples.
This means that I am totally fine with Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother being different for me than they are for someone else – and it means, theoretically, that my wife and I eventually can be different Heavenly Parents than any other couple will be.It helps that I believe in a Council of the Gods concept that allows us to work together with others and not all by ourselves (kind of a shared parentage, if you will), but the concept is NOT of “becoming like GOD” as much as it is being/becoming godly – and, for me, doing so as half of a companionship whole. Orson: “I saw a documentary on cult leaders one time and the tendency of rising to power was to turn to either a form of polygamy, or a form of open relationships – for the leader at least. I know that doesn’t put Joseph Smith in a flattering light, and I’m not trying to lump him in with the bulk of cult leaders” Bushman actually makes the exact same point in Rough Stone Rolling, that it nearly always follows as night follows day, that there is some sort of sexual experimentation in new religious movements. Quote:we don’t know how spirits are created.
I’m reminded of E. Bednar’s talk on sex a couple GCs ago in which he said that Heavenly Father & Jesus share their creative powers with mothers, which nearly made me do a spit take. So we oppose gay marriage, but we’ve now gotten so unwilling to talk about HM that two divine dudes can procreate?? It was poorly worded at best, and incredibly tone deaf and lacking in self-awareness, IMO.
Justifications / explanations based on speculation nearly always are worse than the actual idea being addressed. Aside from race and Priesthood issues, if we learn nothing from the history of the race-based ban, we ought to learn that. “We don’t know” is much better than silly explanations.
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