Reflections of a Mormon God vs finding God after Mormonism

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_AmyJo
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Reflections of a Mormon God vs finding God after Mormonism

Post by _AmyJo »

[color=#FFBFFF]Despite differences of perceptions on God and the world we inhabit, there is a distinct God found in Mormonism, than the biblical God found in the Bible.

Joseph Smith's views of God were not static. According to one source, at the beginning of the LDS church his steward Oliver Cowdery addressed God as having certain attributes as found in the 1834 version of the Articles of Faith such as: "We believe that God is the same in all ages, and that it requires the same holiness, purity, and religion, to save a man now, as it did anciently."

Later, as Joseph's religion was taking form, he would change that wording from Cowdery's version to this: "We believe a man must be called of God by the laying on of hands, by those who are in authority to administer the ordinances of the gospel." Smith insisted that there could be no salvation without a legal administrator. (excerpted from, "Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity
By Terryl L. Givens")

But did Smith even mention in his discourses the element of human suffering? Deprivation? Godlessness? Other than his plagiarization of biblical concepts from the 1759 KJV Bible his family used in their upstate NY farmhouse, he really didn't address a biblical God at all, in his keynotes.

It seemed that for Joseph Smith, the suffering and persecution he addressed was not because of what someone else was going through, but when he himself was at the brink of destruction, wrought by his enemies with whom he had caused his own suffering because of his ruthless activities.

Towards the end of his life he put his reflections into canonized D&C 122:5-7 for all the Mormon world to proclaim his righteous indignation: (Me thinks his speaking of this suffering was in direct proportion to his own, and not that of the other saints. Like a con man who the law finally caught up with, who has no remorse for how his actions affect others, but only how they affect himself.)

"Joseph Smith while in Liberty Jail pleaded with the Lord concerning his own sufferings and those of his fellow Saints. The Lord answered, 'If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea; … if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; … if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shaft be for thy good.' (D&C 122: 5, 7. Italics added.)" (quoted from https://www.lds.org/new-era/1975/04/wha ... g?lang=eng)

Did he at that time know his own end? As a prophet, seer or revelator, how could he have not? I believe in his own delusions of grandeur he did not envision his own untimely death because he continued perpetuating the same fraud upon the saints of Nauvoo and others who would soon follow them. Either Smith himself was extremely deluded, or extremely calculating and cold - all the elements of a sociopath perpetuating a fraud for his own personal gain.

He didn't live for others. He propped himself up and made himself a King among men. That isn't how a true prophet would have lived or set an example. He took the wealth from others to support himself and his own family into the manner he desired for himself what was fitting for the head of the Mormon church. The fraud became self perpetuating to what we now know as the incorporated Church of Jesus Christ of LDS.

But through it all, how is God viewed as preferential to Mormons when we know otherwise? As a form of magical thinking, Mormons do many times allude to their God protecting them because of their great faith (or wearing their garments.) Without which they, like the rest of the world, are just open to more suffering and deprivation as a form of punishment for not being subject to the Mormon version of Jehovah.

Fearing God's wrath is Mormonism's way of keeping its members in tow. Legalism gets channeled through the church mouthpiece (SLC headquarters,) and because God is speaking every time, the saints had better listen up.

But those here know that isn't so. Nor does the rest of the world follow that God of an empty Book of Mormon, or D&C empty words of Mormon scripture.

So besides fabricating a religion, it has fabricated a God that doesn't understand suffering or equip its members with the tools to deal with the great dilemmas of life. Is that one reason why living LDS doctrine leaves many feeling like we're floundering on the rocks, in a sea of confusion?

I remember used to feeling spiritually void from the center of my being, as a young adult active in the LDS church. So void, that in place of a center in myself felt like a vacuum of nothingness in my quiet moments of reflection. It was inexplicable and a sense of not only loss but a sense of eternal suffering and gloom because there was no escaping the sense of nothingness in my soul, from years of living LDS doctrine.

Praying, going to church, living all the LDS laws, and the reward/s of this life came up replete with no fulfillment or sustenance - I was hungry and spiritually starving to death. I was eating "empty calories" of Mormon doctrine, when my body (spiritual self) was screaming for a wholesome banquet that would satisfy my spiritual longing. Where or would it be found?

The emptiness was such that it felt like I was already living in purgatory, while living the legalism of Mormon religion. The legalistic didn't make me whole; it left me wanting.

That was before I started to question the church; and may be what led me to eventually do that over the course of the next several years. At first I thought it must be me, not the church, that would cause this emptiness inside me. And yet I must say, that after leaving Mormonism with its flawed doctrines and tenets, despite my odyssey of searching and living forward rather than living in the past, just being in the world and "of the world" (remember how we were drilled as Mormons to live "in the world but not of the world,") that being in the world day to day with all its drudgery, toil, and at times suffering sometimes great suffering, and sometimes joy has been still superior to life as a latter day saint.

I don't have that empty place anymore; it's been filled with something. I still don't have all the answers. But now where there was absence, and a sense of perpetual loss, is a quiet stillness inside that has found a sense of joy, and purpose, in my being and at the core of who I am.
_AmyJo
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Joined: Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:23 am

Re: Reflections of a Mormon God vs finding God after Mormoni

Post by _AmyJo »

“Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment.

Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

"I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why."

After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!"

"And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night
_Quasimodo
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Re: Reflections of a Mormon God vs finding God after Mormoni

Post by _Quasimodo »

AmyJo wrote:“Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment.

Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

"I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why."

After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!"

"And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night


I once read that the only thing worth praying for is understanding.
This, or any other post that I have made or will make in the future, is strictly my own opinion and consequently of little or no value.

"Faith is believing something you know ain't true" Twain.
_AmyJo
_Emeritus
Posts: 1288
Joined: Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:23 am

Re: Reflections of a Mormon God vs finding God after Mormoni

Post by _AmyJo »

Quasimodo wrote:
AmyJo wrote:“Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment.

Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

"I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why."

After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!"

"And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night


I once read that the only thing worth praying for is understanding.


Cool. I just shared a nice video on another social site that ties into your comment. And this thread. :)

In a speech to a youthful audience, from 1972... on the search for meaning and the most important gift we can give each other... Hungarian Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist has this to say, (it's pretty good for an old video. Some things are just well, timeless.) http://www.ted.com/talks/viktor_frankl_ ... of_meaning
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