The Mormon God and Conditional Love
Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:12 pm
I hope that Infymus doesn't mind, but I borrowed a quote from the "Tanner is Burning in Hell" thread on the Telestial Forum to springboard a new topic:
Although I am a faithful member of the Church, I honestly do share some of Infymus' concerns, and have struggled with some of these concepts. The "house of order, house of God" concept just doesn't fly with me in all of these circumstances.
As a parent, it is unfathomable for me to think that God would punish his children for doing their best. The Mormon culture is one where you never feel like you quite measure up. You are always feeling guilty for not being at the top of your game all the time. Life happens. People get upset. They struggle. And yet, even though we preach that it is important to be understanding and helpful to our fellow man, there is still a superiority complex which seems to exist when someone else is going through a trial other than you. More often than not, false sympathy and judgementalism seems to get in the way of real service and empathy toward each other.
If I have really done my best to live a moral life, but I have still made mistakes, according to Mormon theology, I will lose my husband and children and be relegated to a "lower kingdom" where I will be single forever and ever.
It just doesn't seem right to me. This is a large piece of doctrine that I struggle with.
Thoughts?
Infymus wrote:Gazelam wrote:"Since the Mormon Jesus’ plan is a plan of compulsion – every knee shall bow and accept he is God, therefore none of us have a choice, even if we reject it all to the last day. No free agency, no decision made on our parts – we are forced to accept and obey. "
Wow, you must really hate gravity then, you know, being this confineing law that holds you down and all. Do you go outside and look up and the sun and scream alot? "Curse you! Damn you , you bringer of confineing gravity ! If it werent for you, I could fly!!"
Post something else, you make me laugh.
Is that all you have Gazelam? Suddenly I hate gravity because I hate the Mormon Plan Of Imprisonment? Typical Mormon. “I have nothing to add, so I will – change the subject!” Is what I wrote too difficult for you to comprehend? I know that Mormonism teaches you not to think about things too seriously, so I will try and explain it a little for you.
You don’t care that the POS™ is flawed – because I’m very sure that somewhere deep inside you – you hope that you are going to make it to the top – as long as you keep paying, praying and obeying. Of course, you better hope that Joseph Smith accepts you, hope that you remember your secret handshake, secret new name, secret passwords – providing you have paid enough money to get into the temple and the maintain paying money for the rest of your life. Even if you make it that far, you will of course be assigned no less than 3 wives because to become a God, you have to be polygamous. And still, you’re at the whim of both Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. If you have at all strived for individuality during your lifetime - you will be rejected.
Mormonism offers no alternate plan to the POS™, no back door, no way out. Either you follow the Mormon God, or the Mormon God is going to place you in a prison cell. That prison cell may be adorned with flowers and sunshine, and vast tracks of land – but in the end, after millions of years – it will still be a prison.
The Mormon God is nothing more than a cruel warden.
It is interesting that Mormons who are enthralled in the cult cannot see the POS™ for what it truly is. You Mormons always get side tracked into mental gymnastics when faced with actually “thinking” about your own doctrine. You confuse the true meaning of Agency. You obscure the truth behind the POS™ and when you cannot mentally explain it, stoop to “all will be revealed after death” line of b***s*** reasoning – and the one I hated the most, “You choose this plan before you were born” crap.
Mormon POS™ has only two choices. Either accept and obey, or reject and be punished. There is no third choice. There is no walking out the door. You shall bow before the Mormon God and give him your ultimate obedience – or you will be punished. There is no "otherwise". It is not a consequence-determined event. It is black and it is white. And Mormons call that “choice”, they call that “agency”. In the Mormon Universe™, the only thing that exists is Mormonism and the Mormon POS™. Why would you want anything else?
The spirit prison and the plan of salvation is akin to this. There is no choice. Mormons state that the choice is that you would stay in that prison until judgment time - in which you will be forced to bend knee and worship God. And then you will be placed in a kingdom - definitely not the Celestial Kingdom - but some other kingdom that is "set aside for that which is filthy" because the Kingdom of God is not filthy. No, it is full of those with no mind of their own, no choice of their own – no individuality.
All three kingdoms of heaven in Mormonism - if we look at the universe as a whole, as an expansive place that has infinite expansion capabilities, and we place each eternity to eternity into a "bubble" as we would call it, we would look out and find an infinite number of bubbles for each eternity to eternity that has existed for which god has raised children to salvation and those children have gone on to be god's themselves and continued the cycle. Each bubble expands to fill the proportion of space and time that is necessary in order to carry out the plans that are necessary to raise spiritual children from stage to stage wherein they would come to a created earth, get a body, and move onto further stages.
What we would find if we examined this closely, is that we would find an infinite number of 1st and 2nd degree kingdoms full of those persons who did not transpire to the level of the Celestial kingdom for which they could continue on as god's themselves. Therefore we would find a number of souls that could not be calculated in numbers that are in states of prisons where they cannot move from kingdom to kingdom. This is an awful state. Mormonism accepts this state because they claim either these people merited this state of existence, or, these people were complacent and they choose to be in these kingdoms for all time and eternity - not just one bubble of eternity but all bubbles of eternity henceforth and forever. I am not even taking into account the number tossed away into Outer Darkness – and who knows how many times that has happened during the course of one eternity to eternity.
It is an atrocious fact that the Mormon God creates prisons in order to house those who are in disagreement with him. Because a person, who God claims is a son or daughter, a literal offspring of God, does not agree with God, that God locks that son or daughter away forever and ever. He claims that where he is, they cannot come. This flies in the face of reason and love and the statement that God has unconditional love.
No, the Mormon god is conditional - conditional that you fully obey him. That you turn off reason, you turn off choice, you turn off your individual self and become nothing more than a mindless follower who will always pay, pray and obey.
Agency, is an illusion created by those with power. Mormonism creates the illusion of free agency but further research and analysis points otherwise.
The POS™ is nothing more than a carefully crafted deception where the Mormon God casts his children into eternal prisons.
As I said, I would rather stand in front of the Mormon God and slit my throat than follow him in any way – shape – or form.
Although I am a faithful member of the Church, I honestly do share some of Infymus' concerns, and have struggled with some of these concepts. The "house of order, house of God" concept just doesn't fly with me in all of these circumstances.
As a parent, it is unfathomable for me to think that God would punish his children for doing their best. The Mormon culture is one where you never feel like you quite measure up. You are always feeling guilty for not being at the top of your game all the time. Life happens. People get upset. They struggle. And yet, even though we preach that it is important to be understanding and helpful to our fellow man, there is still a superiority complex which seems to exist when someone else is going through a trial other than you. More often than not, false sympathy and judgementalism seems to get in the way of real service and empathy toward each other.
If I have really done my best to live a moral life, but I have still made mistakes, according to Mormon theology, I will lose my husband and children and be relegated to a "lower kingdom" where I will be single forever and ever.
It just doesn't seem right to me. This is a large piece of doctrine that I struggle with.
Thoughts?