Author’s Note: After the past few weeks focusing on political issues, I would like to re-align this blog in a different direction. Earlier, I talked about the different aspects of Mormonism that would be discussed on this blog – cultural, historical, and doctrinal. We have touched on all at some point. Now, I would like to change the focus for a while to consider doctrinal issues. Hopefully it will be insightful for all, Mormon or not. Comments, questions, and discussion are still encouraged from everybody.
One of the fundamental aspects of every major world religion is a belief in some supreme or higher power. For many of these religions, this power is identified as one or more gods. Mormonism is no exception. God plays a very central role in our belief system.
A few weeks ago, a Mormon missionary related an experience about teaching a young woman about Mormon beliefs and doctrines. Despite her interest, she continued to use the terms “your god” and “our god” when asking questions and making comments on their teaching. Finally, the missionary asked what she meant by these comments. She said that since she belonged to another religion, she thought that meant they believed in different gods.
It is true that the definition and concept of “God” can mean different things to different people. For some, the very nature of God is something that is impossible for humans to comprehend. For others, God is simply a concept of goodness and/or love that we must find within ourselves and others.
The Mormon concept of God includes many of these same elements, albeit to different degrees. We believe that the fullness of the nature of God is indeed difficult if not nearly impossible for mortal humans to understand in completeness. However, unlike some other religious traditions, Mormonism highlights the importance of continually seeking to gain understanding and comprehension of whom or what God is and what He is like. In fact, this quest for knowledge and understanding is viewed as a fundamental human responsibility.
Mormons also believe that love, happiness, and joy are godly characteristics. We believe that we should find and/or develop these attributes within ourselves and recognize them in others. However, we do not believe that these virtues are, in and of themselves, God. We believe that God is an actual immortal and exalted human who has developed to a point far beyond any of us. Love, joy, and happiness are defining characteristics of God.
For Mormons, God is literally the Spiritual Father of every human being who lives or has lived. This is why Mormons regularly refer to God as “Heavenly Father.”
The best descriptive titles I can give in explaining how Mormons view God are these: God is a perfect parent, as well as our greatest role model. As a parent, he is intimately concerned with our happiness. With His developed understanding of life, He knows even better that we do how to gain true happiness for ourselves. As a role model, He stands as an example of the type of people we ought to become to obtain as much of this happiness as possible.
In connection with His intense concern for our happiness, God is also the world’s greatest library. He has gone to great lengths to ensure that everything we need to know about life is available to us. At the same time, like a good teacher, He ensures our own complete agency over this learning process. We obtain and understand this wealth of information only to the degree which we choose to seek. It is through this learning process and through the obtaining of knowledge and intelligence that we can also become like God is.
And so, yes, there is a “Mormon God.” However, unlike the belief of the girl, we do not believe that “our God” is different than the God of any other religion or belief system. He is everyone’s God, not to mention everyone’s loving and concerned Father.
So, tell me all your thoughts on God…
DISCLAIMER:
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
12 comments:
'Cause I'm on my way to see her.
Sorry, I had to finish the line of the song, but in doing so, it made me think. As Mormons our beliefs about God, the nature of God, etc. extend and include truths from all religions and beliefs. This will just be a short post to find out from Nils if we are only going to discuss here Our Heavenly Father, or a more generalized discussion of Godhood.
Good question geoffsn, I think either would be fine. I wrote the post considering Heavenly Father as the main subject, but you are certainly welcome to look at ideas of Godhood in general. Let me know what you think.
Let's stick to Heavenly Father since that was your topic. Very good job of introducing the topic and summing it up. I really enjoyed Elder Holland's talk on God the Father in the October 2002 Conference. I think it helped a lot of people get a better understanding of God the Father.
I fear that all too often mormons get the impression that God is Father is a cold, emotionless, perfect being. I think this is because of how often we talk about Christ mediating for us to get into heaven and our misunderstanding of the analogy. The faulty reasoning being: if it weren't for Christ, God our Father wouldn't let us into heaven. I think the misunderstanding carries over to many other issues, like when we discuss the relationship between mercy and justice.
How many of us have seen the seminary video about justice and mercy? If we don't understand or take the parable too far, it seems that God the Father is the main one demanding justice and Christ steps in to satisfy him and provide the mercy. I fear that this happens too often (perhaps because I had that impression when I saw the video). Of course the key to understanding this is that justice and mercy are both eternal laws which God himself must follow. (This is an interesting concept itself, that God, the Supreme Being and Creator must follow laws and exercise obedience to them.)
The beauty is that God our Father perfectly walks the line of obeying the laws of justice and mercy (which often from our mortal perspective seem contradictory). He knew that Christ was the only way to balance out those inherent eternal laws. Christ represented the Father on earth and acted in the exact manner that our Heavenly Father would. Joseph said (and Elder Holland repeated) "Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive..."
My last thought is the connection between the concept of the Divine Investiture of Authority and the godly attributes. The doctrinal exposition given during Joseph F Smith's presidency elaborated the concept of Divine Investiture of Authority, saying in essence, that God the Father will work vicariously through Christ, and at times angels. In some way we can say that Christ's entire ministry was the Father's work vicariously performed by Christ. When we act under inspiration of God's spirit could we say that God is acting vicariously through us, and thus "... he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him"?
The Mormon god is very similar to the ancient Greek god Zeus.
http:www.truthandgrace.com/Mormon.htm
Actually I would say he's more similar to the God of the ancient Persians, the "Ahura Mazda", (I hope I spelled that right) if you're going for a historical aspect, although the Mormon concept of god has flesh and blood. But actually, while it's obvious that Muslims, Christians, and Jews all fundamentally believe in the same god of Abraham, amazing similarities can be drawn to the gods and deities of other faiths such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhism has a program of study and meditation to eventually reach a stage of enlightenment like the Buddha himself achieved, similar to the Mormon concept of becoming like god. While my experience with Hinduism is limited, I have started reading the bughavad gita, (again hope I spelled that right) and I have noticed amazing similarities between Christ, (though Mormons believe he is a separate individual from God himself, he is essentially, someone who has achieved godhood in our eyes,) and Krishna. Both seem to preach that humility and meekness and servitude to others are the greatest strengths and both are represented by meek and small creatures, Christ by the lamb and Krishna by the fawn. Just thought that was interesting.
nils
I like your thoughts.
geoffsn
I believe that the purpose of the atonement is to satisfy the demands of eternal justice that reside in us - to appease our conscience. This concept is a bit heavy, I realise. But the Book of Mormon points out that it is us who will shink from the presence of the Lord because of how we feel - not a problem he has with us. I have experienced the feeling of having sufficiently atoned (by my personal suffering) for one of my sins before letting Christ do the rest. This he talks of in the D&C when expressing how much he suffered.
Sword of Laban and Savvyj
The God of Mormonism relates to older concepts of God because it was the original concept from which all the others stemmed. And I believe Gottama (the Buddha) to have been a Christian prophet (yes, I know he lived before Christ) who's ideas were twisted over the time.
doug
I totally agree. I think Elder Holland was alluding to the concept of the atonement satisfying the demands of our internal justice with the quote I mentioned that God is more liberal and willing to bless us than we are willing or ready to receive.
I'd also echo your comment about the similarities of all other concepts of God anciently and our own. Our belief that God has revealed truth to men throughout time and that almost always apostacy follows explains much of the Mormon view of other religions.
Along those lines, I thought that it was interesting to see that many biblical scholars believe that Israel only became monotheistic at around 600BC, before which they were monolatric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolatry A nice tie in to mormonism
Being Romania's resident Jew, and a former resident of Utah, I feel like I can speak up here. First off, I have always found the idea of the LDS G-d (or the Trinity/Christian G-d in general) to be interesting, if not perhaps convoluted in its logic. I don't know a whole lot about Heavenly Father, to be honest, and I certainly feel like there is only one G-d, but there are certainly varying interpretations of Adonai. I would agree that the ancient Hebrew had a concept of multiple gods and I am glad I didn't come up with this idea by myself. For instance, if you read the Shema (a central Jewish prayer) carefully, it says "Hear O Israel, the L-rd our G-d, the L-rd is one." Why state the obvious? To me this has always implied that someone needed to be reminded of uniqueness of G-d.
The quest for knowledge and understanding is also central to Judaism, though it is safe to say that no Jew believes G-d is a human being or ever was or ever will be- as pointed out by Rambam in the Articles of Faith. But anyway, some similarities and some differences.
More to come later!
Also- about happiness and G-d: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/741726/jewish/Is-Happiness-a-Realistic-Goal.htm
Just a thought to toss in, and you can judge its ultimate relevance.
I spent two years in Siberia talking to people about God and teaching them what kind of God we believe in. There were a number of interesting encounters, considering Russia at large had had atheism forced upon them by the government to a large degree. A few churches still stood here and there, but by and large, no religion.
That caused us to meet a large number of self-proclaimed atheists. But as I talked with them, I felt that many of them felt not that there was no God at all, but more that He didn't have anything to do with them. I don't know if that makes them "true" atheists, but it was an interesting observation. I wonder how many other atheists fall into this category.
Just a thought.
midoriliem
Thank you so much for participating. I love learning more about other religious beliefs especially from people who profess them. I do have a question for you if you're willing. I've been told that El-him has the plural ending for the same reason that a king or queen uses the royal 'we'. The same reasoning that most languages have a formal 'you' which doubles as the plural 'you'. I totally get that, I just don't know how to interpret the passage "...Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil..." using that reasoning. How is that passage taught? It is one of the few passages where I can't apply the royal 'we' concept because it would need to be "... become as us...". I hope you don't feel that this is a passive aggressive stab at your beliefs because I certainly don't have any such malintentions. I just honestly don't understand the Hebrew interpretation and am very curious to find out. Of course, this board is supposed to be about "the Mormon God" but I feel that it will add to the discussion if you feel so inclined.
Steven
I got the same thing in Ukraine, and honestly I see more and more of it in the states. Actually when people have that belief, they're not atheists. What you described is the definition of a Deist. I had a friend in high school who was a self-proclaimed Deist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
Geoffsn-
I really like how you stress the nature of God as certainly something more than cold and emotionless. I think one of the major indicators of His more liberal and caring nature in Mormonism would be the fact that we actually pray directly to our Heavenly Father. Despite the fact that Jesus Christ plays a mediating role in many ways, He isn’t a middle man through which we are always required to go for everything. We can go directly to God and develop a personal relationship with Him.
Savvyj-
I do think there are certainly a lot more similarities between Western and Eastern deities than many take the time to consider. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on these ideas. Many of the Eastern religions have a much closer to the Mormon concept of eternal progression with their philosophies on the paths to reaching enlightenment. I think we can all learn a lot from these ideas, and I have found that they often go together so well with Mormon ideas.
Doug Towers-
I really like how you described what “justice” is, as far as we are concerned. We’ll definitely talk more about the Atonement in the future.
As for the Buddha’s role as a possible prophet, I definitely have always seen that as a possibility. I don’t even think his ideas need to have been skewed over time, as I find almost everything I have ever read or studied about Buddhism to be completely in line with Mormon teachings. As a missionary in Siberia, one of the cities in our mission, Ulan-Ude, was the capital of the semi-autonomous republic of Buryatia. The people were Mongolian Buddhists, and missionaries found tremendous success teaching people in this city. Moreover, those who became Buddhist converts to Mormonism were incredibly active. Retention rates were general over 90%. I have heard similar success stories on how missionary work in Mongolia has progressed, with the Mongolian President even joking once that there were now two religions in Mongolia – Buddhism and Mormonism. I have heard from many Buddhist converts to Mormonism that they have found the transition very natural. Moreover, since Buddhism is not a church- or congregation-based religious system like most Western religions, there are no restrictions in Buddhism about joining another church or faith.
Midoriliem-
Thanks for giving the Jewish perspective on the nature of God. Your comments made me think of something that is often used to criticize Mormonism (generally by other Christian churches). Sighting the first commandment given to Moses, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,” Mormons are accused of polytheism by suggesting that God and Jesus Christ (as well as the Holy Ghost) are separate and distinct Gods, and that we are in essence “potential gods,” who are on a path to develop to become more like God is. I personally don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with polytheism, though I suppose it has been labeled as a bad thing by many monotheistic religious individuals. Polytheism has certainly been the majority when it comes to belief systems over the history of the world.
Mormons claim that they do keep the first commandment based on the fact that none of these gods are to be above God – our Heavenly Father. He is and always will be our God and Father, and therefore, any other “gods” that may exist will never come before Him. I think this is an interesting topic and would be willing to explore it more if you or others are interested.
By the way, thanks for the great link. If others haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, I recommend it.
Steven-
I think a blanket term of “atheist” is pretty hard to identify, just as hard as it would be to find a common definition for all religious people. I would say that most non-religious people these days have to lean more towards the idea of agnosticism, not because they necessarily are just covering their bases just in case, but because many feel that there is something to life, though they might find the various interpretations and ideas of God to be unacceptable for them.
I know before my conversion to Mormonism, I did not believe in the existence of a god per se, though I did believe in a greater human existence, and that there was more to life than pure happenstance. I suppose I could have been classified an “atheist,” though maybe “adeist” would be more appropriate. (Theism generally meaning the believe in some greater existence than this world but not necessarily belief in a supreme being, while deism is recognizing one or more supreme beings which may or may not be classified). Thanks geoffsn for the link on deism, so those who are interested in learning more can take a look.
Post a Comment