LaMachina wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2018 11:25 am
w2mz wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2018 9:16 am
LaMachina wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:58 am
...the idea that we're literal children of the most powerful being in the universe, literally gods in embryo, is pretty powerful.
Or narcissistic. I could get on board possibly if everyone started with the same baseline.
I have a mentally disabled daughter, if I’m god, I don’t start some of my kids off at a disadvantage.
A totally fair criticism. It's clear that this idea can exacerbate narcissistic tendencies. I shudder at some of my thoughts and actions as a young person because I thought I was "special".
I also feel I understand where you come from in regards to your child. I have a child who suffers from at times debilitating mental illness and if god were to appear before me I feel like I might give him two middle fingers and tell him to go kick rocks. No child should have that burden placed on them.
And yet, while I find many good ideas have potentially ugly sides it doesn't diminish their potential beauty. Like I've mentioned I find it reflected in our culture everywhere for good and for bad. What if god were one of us? The last shall be first? What if that weird green creature on that swamp planet were actually a powerful master? The idea that there is real, concrete divinity in all of us, including my struggling child, is powerful to me. While the world sometimes looks at her with pity or even disdain she has something important to share with the world that I never could precisely because she experiences the world differently than I do. She's as divine as anyone else.
Of course, these ideas are shared by many without quite the materialist version found in Mormonism but from my perspective, being raised in Mormonism, I have found it to reinforce that profundity that we and god share our DNA.
I very much understand the position that the Q15 are morons posing as god's anointed and that they have no answers. I very much understand the tendency to pick over these ideas and view them as the stupidest theology ever concocted. I do it all the time with many theologies! Yet I sometimes think we miss something beautiful when we do. And I include LDS inc in that as they try to sweep anything potentially unique about mormonism under the rug.
This is beautiful about the divinity in your struggling child, and you point out how "I am a child of God" can be uplifting and humbling or appallingly arrogant
But even without Mormonism's "I am literally a child of God." There were problems with being "God's special creation given dominion over the earth." This belief shows up in the Bible and has been used to abuse the earth, the other animals, and even our fellow humans.
If we are using either belief to love others, it is good. But when we use either belief in arrogance they both become toxic.
I also have a "why would God do that to a child?" Kind of child. She is on the autism spectrum, dyslexic, ADD, and lesbian. So not your neurotypical child. But brilliant. So, I believe that God gives us trials to overcome, but, come on, this life test is anything but fair. If pres Nelson is our version of righteousness, then the test is way way rigged in his favor. If he had been dyslexic, no way could he have been a heart surgeon, get left and right confused and cut left through the aorta instead of right and patient dies. Or ADD, the fourth time during surgery that he loses track of what he is doing and patient dies. Does he KNOW that this test was rigged in his favor? Probably not. Yet the arrogant #}{#%^^*%%# ) has the audacity to say my daughter is not good enough for his God????
Well let me tell him that MY God is going to whack him up the side of the head with a 2X4.