Mormons facing the Abusive God

[_MrStakhanovite]

Case in point:

Yep. The "primitive" LDS understanding of anthropomorphic, gendered, embodied Gods is one of the most wonderful things about our religion, in my opinion. It really is, as Joseph Smith said, the "great secret". In theological discussions, I constantly hear that our beautifully idiosyncratic bodies are [suffocating and] "limiting" and any real God would transcend mere embodiment, but I just can't understand that. To me, bodies aren't limiting, they're liberating! They let us move, let us dance! They're organized in the very image of the Gods! When they are healthy and whole and cared-for, they are the most amazing creations I can imagine. The great promise of the Resurrection is that our bodies will be healed, so that our age and sickness and infirmity is done away with. Love it.

Organized in the very image of the Gods. The sad part is, given that LDS theology is pretty much wedded to materialism, God can never bring people back, your resurrection will not be you. For an example of Jeremy’s God, read this passage from Elie Wiesel:

Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light , the child was still alive…

For more than a half n hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:
“Where is He? Here He is--He is hanging here on the gallows…”

That is an image of Jeremy’s God, swinging from the gallows. That child cannot be brought back, there can be no justice for him, only the cold embrace of death and the thought that some “perfected” simulacrum will continue on in his stead.

[_huckelberry]

“perfected” simulacrum will continue on in his stead.

A monstrous view, worthy of his Satanic majesties secret service.

[_Nightlion]

How would the faith of the Jewish people be today had there been no abuse?

It’s not very useful to do counterfactual history.

I personally am familiar with how abuse can invent faith and love and charity from out of nothing but the hope against hope of wanting these things and somehow knowing God must be out there.

I don’t buy it James. There was no net result of good to come out of the systematic execution of 11 million people.

Let's not be so dramatic then. If you get cancer, heaven forbid, do you crumble? Do you concede that no good will come of it? The fortitude of faith against all odds is insisted into existence by the sheer will power in those who win. It is an accepted therapy and I bet the most successful. How's that for factual?

[_Morley]

In the western world (and especially the US) we’ve partially forgiven Jews their perceived murder of Jesus because in the Holocaust they seem to have suffered and paid for their sins. (We love us some righteous victims.) Kind of like we revere Native Americans now that we’ve killed them off and shoved their descendents to the edges of culture. And then we assign this narrative to a grand design of a munificent God.

Our belief that the innocent are somehow ennobled in their suffering assuages any reflexive guilt we might otherwise have felt.

[_Chap]

In the western world (and especially the US) we’ve partially forgiven Jews their perceived murder of Jesus because in the Holocaust they seem to have suffered and paid for their sins. (We love us some righteous victims.) Kind of like we revere Native Americans now that we’ve killed them off and shoved their descendents to the edges of culture. And then we assign this narrative to a grand design of a munificent God.

Our belief that the innocent are somehow ennobled in their suffering assuages any reflexive guilt we might otherwise have felt.

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous agitator. Normal stuff for them, and how they kept their empire together.

Have 'we' forgiven the Italians for that yet?

[_Drifting]

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous agitator.

I was speed reading and so mistakenly read your line as:

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous alligator.

[_Morley]

In the western world (and especially the US) we’ve partially forgiven Jews their perceived murder of Jesus because in the Holocaust they seem to have suffered and paid for their sins. (We love us some righteous victims.) Kind of like we revere Native Americans now that we’ve killed them off and shoved their descendents to the edges of culture. And then we assign this narrative to a grand design of a munificent God.

Our belief that the innocent are somehow ennobled in their suffering assuages any reflexive guilt we might otherwise have felt.

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous agitator. Normal stuff for them, and how they kept their empire together.

Have 'we' forgiven the Italians for that yet?

viewtopic.php?p=566704#p566704

[_Buffalo]

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous agitator.

I was speed reading and so mistakenly read your line as:

Jesus was executed by the Romans as a dangerous alligator.

Wrong species.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Let's not be so dramatic then. If you get cancer, heaven forbid, do you crumble? Do you concede that no good will come of it? The fortitude of faith against all odds is insisted into existence by the sheer will power in those who win. It is an accepted therapy and I bet the most successful. How's that for factual?

Factual, but mundane. If I survived my cancer, it would be because I was lucky enough to be born into circumstances where I could get treatment. If ti was terminal, I would have powerful pain killers to ease my passing, be surrounded by the love of my friends and family, and spend my last hours either with them or in the therapy of books. Would that suck? Sure, I don’t want to die this young, but those circumstances are pretty decent.

Now if I’m taken from my home forcefully, humiliated and dehumanized, made to face unspeakable horrors of watching soldiers throw babies into ovens, slowly starve into a shade of my former self, alone with strangers and ignorant of where my family is, if they are alive, and how they are doing. And then, when I can no longer help dig a ditch, I get herded into a chamber where I await in agony with my fellow prisoners as gas seeps in and kills us all.

Dying from cancer in a wealthy nation and upper middle class existence sucks to be sure, but I’d count myself lucky. I didn’t have to share in the pure horror, terror, and suffering that millions of human beings have had to deal with in the 20th century alone.

[_MrStakhanovite]

From Bill Hamblin:

We need to understand that while God has a body, this does not mean that he is a body.

(Emphasis in the orginal)

To say that Bill Hamblin is a sloppy thinker is an understatement, but I found this amusing. Now contrast Bill’s assertion with this:

Spirits are just as familiar with spirits as bodies are with bodies, though spirits are composed of matter so refined as not to be tangible to this coarser organization. They walk, converse, and have their meetings; and the spirits of good men like Joseph and the Elders, who have left this Church on earth for a season to operate in another sphere, are rallying all their powers and going from place to place preaching the Gospel, and Joseph is directing them, saying, go ahead, my brethren, and if they hedge up your way, walk up and command them to disperse. You have the Priesthood and can disperse them, but if any of them wish to hear the Gospel, preach to them (DBY, 379).

(emphasis mine)

If all that there is, is matter Bill, where else could you place identity in anything other than the body?

Fruits of the Gospel, seeds of Mopologetics.