The moral stature of God in LDS scripture

[_ludwigm]

In the Waiting for Godot "Some benefits of attending Sunday meetings" thread

You have made my day.

[_Chap]

Darth, these arguments are beneath your intellect. You are better than elementary school arguments about how mean god is.

Kid: "Mummy, Daddy! I can see the Emperor's bum and his *****. So he's got no pants on!!!"

Grown-up bystander to parents: "Isn't it amusing how naïve childrens' view of the world is? Never mind, as he grows up he will come to understand how elementary and risible such arguments are."

[_Sethbag]

No, no, you are missing the point of the OP. "[C]ontemplate what it might look like if we were to apply our loving Heavenly Father's ethics in our own lives."

Thanks for tossing us a softball Darth. The Lord himself has explicitly told us, in D&C 64:10, that we may not do this.

10 I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.

[_Bazooka]

The God described in Mormon scripture is certainly a lot more morally praiseworthy than the God described just by the Bible.

2 Nephi 5:21-23:

"And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them."

"And thus saith the Lord God: I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities."

"And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done."

"And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey."

1 Nephi 4

"7 Nevertheless I went forth, and as I came near unto the house of Laban I beheld a man, and he had fallen to the earth before me, for he was drunken with wine.

8 And when I came to him I found that it was Laban.

9 And I beheld his sword, and I drew it forth from the sheath thereof; and the hilt thereof was of pure gold, and the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine, and I saw that the blade thereof was of the most precious steel.

10 And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him.

11 And the Spirit said unto me again: Behold the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands. Yea, and I also knew that he had sought to take away mine own life; yea, and he would not hearken unto the commandments of the Lord; and he also had taken away our property.

12 And it came to pass that the Spirit said unto me again: Slay him, for the Lord hath delivered him into thy hands;"

Moses 8

28 The earth was corrupt before God, and it was filled with violence.

29 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth.

30 And God said unto Noah: The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence, and behold I will destroy all flesh from off the earth.

D&C 132

" 61 And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.

62 And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law."

Abraham 2

"22 And it came to pass when I was come near to enter into Egypt, the Lord said unto me: Behold, Sarai, thy wife, is a very fair woman to look upon;

23 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see her, they will say—She is his wife; and they will kill you, but they will save her alive; therefore see that ye do on this wise:

24 Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live."

Racism, Cold Blooded Murder, Mass Murder, Misogyny and Deceit but you think that makes the God of Mormon scripture more moral?

[_fetchface]

Scenario 1: Little Suzy is getting the living crap beat out of her by her older, bigger, stronger brother, Bobby. She is crying and screaming in pain as his fists rain down on her face and body. Blood is rushing from her nose; severe bruises have formed all over her. Mom says to Dad, "Huh, maybe we step in and protect Suzy, seeing as how we have the power to do so." But Dad says, "No, because we're going to punish Bobby afterward, and sitting here watching him beat the crap out of her will justify us in punishing him for the thing we allowed him to do in the first place."

I've always thought that since LDS leaders frame the God/man relationship as the relationship between a loving parent and a child, that the best way we can evaluate the morality of an omnipotent loving parent would be to come up with an analogous real-life family situation. Anyway, I'm going to adapt your analogy to the Canaanite genocide incident.

The family lives in a two bedroom house. Suzy has her own room and so do parents, but Bobby sleeps on the couch in the living room. Parents really like Bobby and decide that they are going to groom him to become a great man. They train him to kneel and bow every time they enter the room. They also tell Suzy to do this but she seems to resist this and plays with dolls a lot instead. After a while, parents become furious at Suzy's lack of compliance and go into the kitchen to retrieve a knife, hand the knife to Bobby and tell him to slit her throat and move his stuff into Suzy's room. Bobby does this and his parents buy him several presents to celebrate.

[_Chap]

Scenario 1: Little Suzy is getting the living crap beat out of her by her older, bigger, stronger brother, Bobby. She is crying and screaming in pain as his fists rain down on her face and body. Blood is rushing from her nose; severe bruises have formed all over her. Mom says to Dad, "Huh, maybe we step in and protect Suzy, seeing as how we have the power to do so." But Dad says, "No, because we're going to punish Bobby afterward, and sitting here watching him beat the crap out of her will justify us in punishing him for the thing we allowed him to do in the first place."

I've always thought that since LDS leaders frame the God/man relationship as the relationship between a loving parent and a child, that the best way we can evaluate the morality of an omnipotent loving parent would be to come up with an analogous real-life family situation. Anyway, I'm going to adapt your analogy to the Canaanite genocide incident.

The family lives in a two bedroom house. Suzy has her own room and so do parents, but Bobby sleeps on the couch in the living room. Parents really like Bobby and decide that they are going to groom him to become a great man. They train him to kneel and bow every time they enter the room. They also tell Suzy to do this but she seems to resist this and plays with dolls a lot instead. After a while, parents become furious at Suzy's lack of compliance and go into the kitchen to retrieve a knife, hand the knife to Bobby and tell him to slit her throat and move his stuff into Suzy's room. Bobby does this and his parents buy him several presents to celebrate.

Yeah, but the problem is the way you are telling the story, like it was something that actually happened to real people. Put it into proper Bible English, and nobody would have any problem. I mean, that's what Bible English is for!

[_Finn the human]

Dostoevsky already solved this one in "The Brothers Karamazov". If God's plan is built on the "unexpiated tears" of children, then its time to turn your ticket in and leave your money right at the door.

[_Nightlion]

It appears to me that atheist lose touch entirely on the concept of God. If you want to question God on any point you cannot change him to a man's lowliness where you can grind his face in moral shame.

God has all power and will rest every soul in eternal bliss equal to their heart's desire. He does not consider us alive only in this world as he is aware of our eternal nature. Death in this world and even bad dying is of no moment to him as he notices even the sparrow's fall and comprehands all living, births and dying.

This harping on God as if he was one of us is getting old and tiresome. Would somebody please call a snappy tune.

[_Sethbag]

So, Kevin, if the father of that family told the wife that the Spirit constrained him to let his son continue pummeling the daughter, what should the wife do? Accept that her husband has received his instructions from the Creator of the Universe and stand idly by, or reject that notion and intervene to help the daughter?

Or do you take some other tack, such as suggesting that she go off and fast and pray about it for a while to see if God sends her her own witness?

Well, and there's the minor matter of why the Spirit coming from a perfectly moral and just deity would constrain anyone to idly watch innocent people suffer when they could prevent it. "So I will be justified in getting revenge for the thing I let them do in the first place" is not a very impressive moral ground to stand on.

The thing that gets me is that most Mormons pay lip service to revelation, but are very quick to judge when revelation comes that they don't want to believe in. They either do it through legalistic posturing (ie: claiming that whatever it is isn't in that man's stewardship, therefor presumptively invalid) or by assuming that other person is doing it wrong or misinterpreting The Spirit. Thus probably no Mormons (or hopefully at most very few) would take the Laffertys' revelation that he should kill the one brother's wife seriously.

But that just illustrates the point you were making in the OP. I doubt very many Mormons would want to believe a man who tells you the Spirit constrained him to let his son pummel his daughter in order that the punishments of the son be justified. People just wouldn't buy that. And yet that's exactly the sort of thing their God does in the Book of Mormon. As you pointed out, this means that Mormons don't really regard their God as someone whose moral example they are meant to follow.

[_Bazooka]

I'm confused. If instead of the God portrayed by scripture there really wasn't a God at all, in what way would we notice a difference?