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I thought I would make a new topic out of this because I am curious to know others thoughts on my point of view. I have always been troubled by the idea that we would be Gods/Goddesses of our own worlds and that we would be like God to those worlds. Here is why: I have never liked the idea of us coming to earth with no memory of the pre-existence, allowed to flounder and find our way. Hoping that we were not sent to some 3rd world country where we would starve to death or something. As a mother, I can’t imagine being a “heavenly mother” and sending my children down to experience such a life with no memory of being loved and wanted. Of sending my children off to something unknown to them and just hoping they made it back to me.
So then, that brings me to the afterlife and becoming Gods/Goddesses. If you look at the whole mind blowing eternity idea if we are to pro-create in the afterlife and have spirit children and we create a world. By the time we create a world and whatever else it involves then we have a gazillion spirit children. Since these spirit children are just spirits and live in heaven they really don’t know what is joy or sadness so they are just content. Then we decide that for them to have joy they must go to our world and have a body and thus the cycle repeats itself. The same cycle that we are in. Maybe this is what happened to us.
And that is why I don’t want to pro-create in the after life. I don’t want to create this for others. Personally, I like the idea of living in contentment with those that love me and are around me. I don’t want to be the missing Heavenly Mother figure. That just doesn’t make sense to me and makes me very sad to think that is what happened.
What are your thoughts on that?
God’s ways are not man’s ways. 
I seriously think there’s something to that, and certainly that would be part of the response from any TBx (true believing whatever) to that question. As for me, I don’t think anyone really has a clue of what the afterlife will be like. We have a model in the church which works for a lot of people, though the model falls apart at a certain point for me. I try to look at it as no more than a best guess.
I second Doug’s thoughts. Any model falls apart if you follow it too far, and nobody living can speak from experience about what the afterlife is really like. If something makes more sense to you, and you feel the spirit is leading you in some thought process, go with it. For me, I feel like I should become more comfortable in saying “I don’t know.” If I concentrate on making heaven on earth I think the afterlife will take care of itself. Butters wrote:I have always been troubled by the idea that we would be Gods/Goddesses of our own worlds and that we would be like God to those worlds…So then, that brings me to the afterlife and becoming Gods/Goddesses. If you look at the whole mind blowing eternity idea if we are to pro-create in the afterlife and have spirit children and we create a world. By the time we create a world and whatever else it involves then we have a gazillion spirit children. Since these spirit children are just spirits and live in heaven they really don’t know what is joy or sadness so they are just content. Then we decide that for them to have joy they must go to our world and have a body and thus the cycle repeats itself. The same cycle that we are in…
I don’t want to create this for others.Personally, I like the idea of living in contentment…What are your thoughts on that? The scenario of becoming gods sounds too much like work to me and my guess is that this idea is based on pure speculation and conjecture. I believe there will some kind of afterlife mostly based on a few ghost stories and out-of-body experiences I have heard about but I doubt that anyone really knows exactly what it will be like. I will say that I feel fairly confident that Mormons will not be condemned to hellfire and damnation for believing what they do the way some Christians like to claim. There is also some anecdotal evidence for reincarnation like people supposedly remembering details of past lives that turn out to be correct when checked. I just don’t know about the whole idea of some eternal reward or punishment based entirely on what we do in this life, it seems way too convenient as a manipulation tool for me to take seriously without being cynical about it.
Yeah, this is one area where I am totally comfortable saying, “I don’t know” – even when I’ve already shared some of what I think makes the most sesne to me. I don’t usually discuss my views of the afterlife, they greatlydiffer than what I have been taught. But so much of what I was taught, never felt right or fair to me, so I instead formed beliefs of what feels right to me. (again, these are my own personal beliefs which I usually keep to myself.. they wouldn’t go over too well among my TBM family and friends, especially my ideas of multiple lives!) -God is love.
-God is neither male or female, but both.
-God does not judge us.
-There is no hell.
-There is no caste system.
-Heaven is having a closeness to God, knowing ourselves, and discovering the god within us.
-Life is not a test. (and if life were a test, it would be unfair if one life were all we got, considering the horrible circumstances some are born into.)
-We are here for an experience. (It is through experience we come to know ourselves)
-We may choose to be reborn and even choose the life we are born into. (Because we are here to “experience”, it make sense that we would want to experience
allhuman conditions. How else could we ever truly know ourselves? This could never be done in one life. Therefore we may choose to come back and experience more. Maleness, femaleness, love, wealth, power, success, poverty, discrimination, suffering, abuse, etc… This helps me to understand suffering, and view it as an incredible experience. I still however, have a strong desire to ease suffering… perhaps because I have experienced extreme suffering in a past life) -Those that we love and bond with in life, will remain connected in spirit forever. (our relationships can be eternal, but
onlyif we have cultivated the necessary amount of love.) The doctrine on Gods/Goddesses always stopped me dead in my tracks too. I just can’t imagine and it seems wrong to me. I agree, I couldnt send my children out to a world like this and watch suffering. It’s hard enough to watch my children now in this wonderful crazy world. I don’t know what the after life entails. But I want to believe that God and heaven is this unimaginable place of love,security and infinate happiness. I love the pre-mortal existance doctrine that we lived in heaven with God………..though I can do without the “we’re here to be tested to prove our worthiness” to be with him. If my spirit was worthy before why did it have to be tested. This question of why we are here is irrelevant to me…. I am already here. I also don’t believe that there is a hell or outer darkness. I believe “hell” is a state that you may be in in the afterlife if you have not made ammends with God or others who you have hurt. Too many souls in this life are born into some pretty devistating conditions/families. I dont believe God cares what religion you are. I believe he’s looking for who you are. Glad you brought up this topic. It’s an interesting one to me. 
To me, the whole Godhood thing makes terrific sense. It’s a continuation of what we experience here on earth (most of us). We are born to parents, progress, get our own homes, then often, have our own children, and then those children grow, have grandchildren, and the population grows. We also grow in our capacity to achieve and grow and do other things as we get older. As we progress, our children are often incredibly impressed at what we know and what we can do, when to us, they are simply outgrowths of our life’s experiences and the school of “hard knocks”. We actually grow up to be like our parents in many respects — physically, and in some of our habits. On the other hand, is this for everyone? To be Gods and have our own worlds? I don’t think so. While we all have that potiential, I think some would reject that lifestyle. In this life, there are people who don’t want to go beyond living a single life. They have their sights set on other goals, and gain fulfilment from them. I can see myself being that way when I get older.
So, what does this mean for everyone? I think this means that there will be great diversity in what people do for eternity — and most of it by choice.
I think all these responses have merit. I tend to be cynical about it much like the DA stated, and my personal belief is very similar to Flower. And kind of like Ray said, I have finally become comfortable admitting that I don’t really know, I’m probably never going to know in this life, and I don’t think anyone else on this planet knows anymore about this particular topic than I do. (and yes, that includes the prophet and the Dalia Lama!
😈 )BTW Flower – It is NOT a good thing to say, “there is no hell.” to TBM type personalities and especially protestants. I’ve made that mistake, and both groups have their scripture they will quote at you. Was it Korihor that said there was no hell before he got struck down?
Quote:I don’t want to be the missing Heavenly Mother figure.
This is very close to my feelings about the whole becoming Gods/Goddesses in the afterlife. I don’t have any desire to be “worshiped” as a Goddess but becoming a nameless, unseen, unspoken to entity in the lives of all the “spirit children” I’m supposed to help bear just does not sit well with me. We are taught to understand God as a loving Heavenly Father so naturally we would extend our own experiences as parents on earth to what we imagine in the afterlife. Which makes me hope that we either don’t really comprehend what God is or that there is something I’m missing about the purpose of our existence here on earth.
:think: Flower, You have given me a lot to think about and strangely enough I had a spiritual experience reading your post. I’m not sure what it means but I think I gained some insight into my own life and I thank you for sharing your thoughts so that I might gain understanding.
Canada
Quote:Flower,
You have given me a lot to think about and strangely enough I had a spiritual experience reading your post. I’m not sure what it means but I think I gained some insight into my own life and I thank you for sharing your thoughts so that I might gain understanding.
Canada
ME TOO!
💡 Quote:-We may choose to be reborn and even choose the life we are born into. (Because we are here to “experience”, it make sense that we would want to experience all human conditions. How else could we ever truly know ourselves? This could never be done in one life. Therefore we may choose to come back and experience more. Maleness, femaleness, love, wealth, power, success, poverty, discrimination, suffering, abuse, etc… This helps me to understand suffering, and view it as an incredible experience. I still however, have a strong desire to ease suffering… perhaps because I have experienced extreme suffering in a past life)
The idea of reincarnation has always rang true to me. But I never really thought about why until your post. I don’t know what God is. I think I exasperate my husband because one day I will be content to conceptualize God in the traditional sense and the next day have no problem conceiving God as a benevolent being/beings from another world who helped jump start our planet before moving on.
But if we are to one day become Gods/Goddesses we would need something like reincarnation to be truly omniscient wouldn’t we?
Fwiw, I think we talk of Heavenly Father because our scriptures were written by men. Period. I really like the concept of Heavenly Mother, at the very least just to state explicitly that women can become “God” just as well as men. There’s so much cultural and historical crap wrapped up in seeing God as exclusively male that I’m glad Mormonism makes the claim that such a construct is wrong.
SilentDawning wrote:To me, the whole Godhood thing makes terrific sense. It’s a continuation of what we experience here on earth (most of us). We are born to parents, progress, get our own homes, then often, have our own children, and then those children grow, have grandchildren, and the population grows. We also grow in our capacity to achieve and grow and do other things as we get older. As we progress, our children are often incredibly impressed at what we know and what we can do, when to us, they are simply outgrowths of our life’s experiences and the school of “hard knocks”. We actually grow up to be like our parents in many respects — physically, and in some of our habits.
On the other hand, is this for everyone? To be Gods and have our own worlds? I don’t think so. While we all have that potiential, I think some would reject that lifestyle. In this life, there are people who don’t want to go beyond living a single life. They have their sights set on other goals, and gain fulfilment from them. I can see myself being that way when I get older.
So, what does this mean for everyone? I think this means that there will be great diversity in what people do for eternity — and most of it by choice.
This is what I believe too SD. I thought alot about this on my mission and wrote about it here:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1108&p=12546&hilit=intelligences#p12546 That couplet about “As man is, God was once was, and as God is, man may become,” is something I really liked because I always felt that I could not pray to a God who had not gone through the earthly experiences and pains I was going through. As far as how could God allow or watch all this suffering?….well, first of all we do watch our kids go through suffering in order to mature and grow. Along the way alot of damage can occur. But, through the atonement of Jesus Christ (a Savior) the damage can be reversed….that is the only answer that has made any sense to me.
The idea of a heavenly mother is interesting but other than for the line in “Oh My Father” I don’t think anything has ever been taught about it . I read that someone read Eliza R. Snow’s diaries and there’s no reference to the doctrine during the time she was with JS. It seems to be the conventional wisdom in the church but as GBH pointed out, it’s not ever taught. The couplet about “As man is…” dates from about the 4th century from St. Ireneaus and the doctine of theosis as was pointed out by Mormon Heretic a few months back. The problem when you apply it to the conclusions that mormons make about it it raises questions that aren’t answerable. If God/Heavely Father was once mortal then who was his God and who was the savior of his world? Is God just the God of this world or this galaxy or the entire universe? If he had a mortal beginning will he have an ending so someone can take his place and continue the progression? It can really give you a headache and for me doesn’t do much to encourage me to a better life now because everything is focused to the after mortal life. IMHO.
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