Accountability: God Is Within and Among Us

My favorite part of the concept that we are gods and children of the Most High God, and that the kingdom of God is among/within us, is that it takes away our natural tendency to blame someone outside the collective "us" for the bad things that happen and puts the responsibility to deal with those things squarely on us as individuals and as a collective people.

It makes Hitler responsible for what he did, but it also makes Mother Teresa responsible for what she did - and it makes me responsible for what I do on both sides of the scale. Mormonism's addition of degrees of accountability and the idea that our judgment is and will be nothing more than an acknowledgment of who we are and become (what we make of our "divine nature") is precious to me - and both of those concepts point toward the "god within".

I think it's interesting that the temple endowment paints a picture of competing Gods in this world. It hints at the primary contest being who we will follow in this world - that the ultimate goal is to build the kingdom of God on earth and establish Zion - that the struggle is to see who will be able to say, in the end, that it is the day of their power. I also think it's interesting that much of the early Mormon vision was focused less on theology and more on kingdom building - and that one of our Articles of Faith says we believe part of the plan is to make the earth a paradise.

I believe in seeing where the LDS Church has legitimate, important similarities with other religions, and I have no problem admitting and celebrating those similarities, but I think one area where we have become too much like the rest of Christianity is in our current focus on the Celestial Kingdom as somewhere out there and after this. I think we have lost sight to a degree of the idea of creating the City of Enoch here on earth, and I believe that idea is centered on the concept of the god within each one of us and the kingdom of gods we can build into Zion in the here and now.

Who Gave Birth to God's Spirit Children?

The following is a question I received from someone who is not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My answer follows: 

Question: Who gave birth to God's spirit children, and if it wasn’t God, the Father, where did the women come from?

Answer: "Gave birth to" is something we don't say with regard to spirit children, since it is not taught that way in any of our scriptures. In my decades as a Mormon, I have never once heard it phrased that way; rather, we speak of spirit children being "created". We have no idea whatsoever how we were created as spirit children, again since that is not explained to us in any detail, at all.

"Created" does not necessarily mean anything remotely related to "giving birth" - and there is no official doctrine of sexual relationships (in the way that they occur here in mortality) in heaven - either prior to the creation of this world or after the resurrection. Unfortunately, that is a common misapplication - among some members (including prior leaders) and nearly all critics, but it is not doctrine. There is no doctrine whatsoever on the process of spiritual creation. This is one case where the proper answer, in my mind, is, "We don't know."

Having said that, I will speculate here.  (*grin*)

Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." We aren't told what that means or how God created male and female in "His" image. Given the totality of the imagery and the familial terminology that is used throughout the Bible to describe our relationships (before our birth, during mortality and after death), we speak of a Heavenly Mother - but there is no obvious, canonized scriptural, unmistakable basis for that belief. (For example, the hymn, "Oh, My Father", includes the following statement: "Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I've a mother there.")

Personally, I believe that women are created in the image of God, the Mother (my own phrasing and not a title I've heard used in the LDS Church - ever), mostly because of what the Bible says about marriage and our intended end as "one" - as well as statements by our prophets and apostles. Frankly, I believe it is the only way to stay within the Biblical concept of heavenly family and validate women as women - to believe that sex / gender identity has eternal meaning and that women are not simply bastardized, sub-standard men (as has been implied or stated blatantly in many statements by Christian leaders throughout history and as is the natural interpretation of many when the only reference to God is in masculine form). However, I personally do not believe that Heavenly Mother "gave birth" to spirit children, and I personally do not believe that the creation of spirit children involves anything like pregnancy and gestation - in ANY way, shape or form as we know it here on earth. 


So, in summary, my own response is that I believe nobody "gave birth to God's spirit children" - that our Heavenly Parents created us in some way, but that it was not in the way children are created here on earth.