Heavenly fatherliness #23 - Peace talks

According to popular wisdom, a good father is a supportive and active disciplinarian through the power of his words, not his fists.

When it comes to words, nothing gets more ink than religious writing. Everyone, even non-believers, have a copy or two of books filled with holy writ, so I should probably concede that God and his fans are doing what they can to "discipline through the power of his words." If only those words made more sense. 

When it comes to fists, sure God's had to do some smiting from time to time, but we're adults, we can deal with it.  

Besides he seems to be done with the whole smiting thing for now. He seems to be content sitting back and watching his children following his earlier example.

*These attributes represent the popular thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #12 - Initiative to help

According to popular wisdom, a good father takes pity on his wife and children and takes the initiative to help them.

Once again we run into the issue of a Perfect, Infinite Being having the capacity to relate to and feel anything for such lowly creatures as man, but let's just pretend he does. The issue here then becomes whether or not God takes the initiative to help out.

You've maybe heard that God works many miracles among his children everyday for which we all should be amazingly humbled and grateful. Sounds totally legit, right? One quick look around and it's totally obvious that God's being a Big Help around here, isn't it? Maybe not. It seems he basically just uses us as miracle helper pawns. So is it God or is it us? For some there might not be a difference, I suppose.

Just consider that God doesn't want to just give his goods and services away, we at least have to ask first. The initiative, it would seem, is ours.

I'm pretty sure there are people the world over praying for a hand. Nonstop prayers all asking for a little recognition from an All-powerful Being, but once again whoever considers the extent of human suffering in the world - even in a single historical moment - or takes the time to recall the endless production of carcinogenic material all over the world will probably wonder where the hell God is. 

Oh wait! God already took care of our suffering souls when he killed Jesus... or let Jesus die... or let Jesus let himself die... or kill himself... or whatever that was. Can we clean things up Heavenly Father's way and just kill our firstborn children and then resurrect them again? It seems logical enough, right?

Heavenly Father's also got the whole environmental mess taken care of too. How could I be so silly? God's totally a helper.

*These attributes represent the popularized and popularizing thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #10 - Tidying up

According to popular wisdom, a good father helps with household tasks.

God, the Father of All, clearly never raises a finger to help keep our home, planet Earth, clean; it's totally and entirely our responsibility to clean up after ourselves and try to maintain things in pristine condition. Maybe we could say something like "hey, God teaches us correct principles, lets us govern ourselves, and gives us the strength to exceed our capabilities," but that's not exactly leading by example, is it?

The funny thing is that believers will often be the first to say that the state of things couldn't be worse. In fact, according to many believers, God's been telling us the world's going to burn at some point, which seems to send a message that sounds something like "kids, I'm not doing shit to make this place better because I'm just going to torch it in a few years anyway." What kind of father would do something like that? God's the worst.

*These attributes represent the popularized and popularizing thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Heavenly fatherliness #7 - Got your back

According to popular wisdom, a good father stands up for his children when needed.

Supposedly God's the Ultimate Sky Warrior and he can decimate anyone or anything he wants like, say, Egyptians or the Red Sea. He's the Ultimate Backup. Even if God isn't killing all your Egyptians with the most horrific tortures imaginable (like turning all water into blood, plaguing your enemies with boils, or killing their first born), believers will tell you that you had better side with God because in the end God will prevail against Satan and his evil hosts. So run and hide under God's warrior wing. It's your only chance at survival, or eternal life, or something like that. 

It will be so awesome and gratifying to see God destroy everyone who disagreed with you (and didn't repent), and you'll totally feel important and loved. Not only will you feel vindicated, you'll feel powerful!

Or not. Let's think about how this would play out in real life. How gratifying could it possibly be to have your dad stomp on over to that one person's house who, when you were in third grade and he was in fifth, called you and your friends insulting names, beat the crap out of you, and pissed in your lunchbox? What good is it going to do anyone at this point? After all these years, the only thing your dad should probably do about that injustice is sincerely apologize to you for not having gone to have a talk with the bully's parents the same day you came home with a black eye. What's the point in God waiting until the very end to exact justice? Is that a good disciplining tactic?

I sincerely hope that when we get to Heaven God takes some quality time with each of us to apologize for not being there when we needed Him. "Hey, um, remember that time you totally felt like shit and you had no one to turn to at all so you prayed to me and I didn't answer or anything? I'm sorry about that. And you know that time you prayed that I would protect you as you walked home late at night and you ended up getting mugged? That was my bad. I'm sorry."

"Now hang on," you might be thinking, "this is about God helping us keep the stuff we have, not protect our feelings or even our bones." That would be less appreciated by most, in my opinion, but at least it would be something. Unfortunately God's not so great at watching over our stuff either, not even the stuff we think he has explicitly given us.

Essentially every Sky Father religion out there has its persecution sob story. Why is that? Why hasn't God protected His children?

Heavenly Father is probably the worse dad in the universe when it comes to getting our backs, especially because he could turn on you at any moment either because you did something that offends him (e.g. wearing a cotton-poly blend) or because he just feels like you need a good old fashioned test (think of poor Job). Instead of getting your back, he might stab you in the back. It's pretty fucked up of Him.

*These attributes represent the popularized and popularizing thoughts of Ask Men’s Jullian Marcus, examiner.com’s Tanya Tringali, and Open Talk Magazine’s Glenn Silvestre as per their respective articles on what makes a good father.

Together in the clouds?

Do Mormons believe in the Rapture? I think the answer is no. I only ever recall teachers mentioning it as a belief in other faiths, not ours. And yet the scripture in 1 Thesselonians is quite clear:

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." (4:17, emphasis added)

I've already commented on the whole cloud thing, so let's move on to the issue of how Mormons might understand this verse. Good thing Joseph Smith came along to clarify the translation for us:

So now, thanks to Joseph's amazing powers to translate, we have:

“Then they who are alive, shall be caught up together into the clouds with them who remain, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we be ever with the Lord.” (JST, 1 Thes. 4:17, emphasis added)

Dang. We're still getting beamed up into the sky to hang with JC. So is that a "yes" on Rapture?

The Apocalypse - a baptism by fire

In my study of the Bible I learned, thanks to the Church Institute manuals, that one reason why it was so important that the Earth literally be literally baptized by immersion by the Flood was because the Earth needed that ordinance in order to receive the Holy Ghost. This later ordinance would take place just before the Second Coming during the Apocalypse, when the entire Earth would be literally burned with fire and literally purified.

This information was a little hard to swallow for me. Really? The Apocalypse is the Refiner's fire? The entire world needs to burn LITERALLY, NOT SYMBOLICALLY? I swear I had never heard this silliness before in my life. Is it not obvious what a bad idea that would be? All that smoke and ash will be a very serious problem. Besides isn't it going to be bad enough with the Four Horsemen running around? Do we really need a global fire? Mormon's don't really believe this, right? At least not any more, I hope.