Mormon vs. secular - where we're going

WHERE AM I GOING? WHAT HAPPENS AFTER I DIE?

We all ask ourselves these question from time to time, don't we? They're two of life's greatest mysteries... unless you're a Mormon. If you're a Mormon you're pretty sure that you're not going anywhere. Check it out. When you die you'll roam the Spirit World (probably just another dimension of our physical earth) as a missionary seeking to teach of Christ and convert the spirits restricted to Spirit Prison (yet another earth dimension?) to the One True Church. Then you'll be resurrected into a perfect body! Then you'll be judged by Joseph Smith or whoever he's delegated judgment to. But you'll be found spotless because you've truly repented and been saved through Christ's Atonement! And you'll be welcomed with open arms by Heavenly Father, the Great Elohim himself, into the Celestial Kingdom, which just happens to be... EARTH! But not like it is now. Earth will be exalted and perfected as well, which means it will be a gigantic seer stone, or Urim & Thummin. It will be beautiful and we'll all be immeasurably happy forever.

Now if you're not good enough you'll still have a perfect resurrected body (so that's good news) but you won't get to live on a crystal ball with the rest of us and if you're really, really bad (like, apostate bad!) you'll have to float around sadly in absolute nothingness with Satan and his defeated angels. That would totally suck, so for the love of God don't apostatize please.

Secularists really have nothing on this happy explanation. They think our bodies just decompose and enter that whole stupid scientific circle of life bullshit, and make no claims about an eternal spirit (because they're too afraid to make BIG CLAIMS without any backing evidence at all!). How is anyone supposed to be sold on something so... natural? It's like they think we're supposed to observe the world and somehow conclude that we human beings are just a part of it instead the purpose for it!

Mormons clearly have the better explanation. Never mind that it produces an endless string of unanswerable questions that quickly lead to ludicrous and infantile notions of what life after death must be like. Thinking too much about it might lead to doubt and we don't need any more of that!

Heavenly fatherliness #42 - Feeling protected

According to popular wisdom, a good father makes his children feel protected.

Feeling protected means we experience peace of mind knowing that Heavenly Father protects us, loves us, comforts us, and will stand up for us. I think a good many believers do feel that protection and it gives them confidence and strength. But I also believe just as many believers constantly feel vulnerable and in need of protection. In fact, I would say that believers, the righteous as well as the wicked, even feel threatened by God himself and his ever-looming judgements against them.

It's a strange head game God is playing, one in which we're always left guessing whether or not we're still on his good list. How safe does that really make us feel?

*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 #40 - Whatever it takes

According to popular wisdom, a good father will do whatever he can for his family.

Heavenly Father does exactly what he has to do for his family. He came up with the Perfect Plan involving the Perfect Murder (or Suicide), and everything has gone, is still going, and will continue to go according to plan. So make sure you're on the his side when the final whistle is blown. If you can't make sense of the Plan or are put off on his murder scheme, don't blame God. It's your fault, not his.

You really should be doing whatever it takes to doubt your doubts.

*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 #30 - Work ethic

According to popular wisdom, a good father has a strong work ethic.

We all know that God worked very hard when he created everything and declared it all to be very good. Then he rested a lot. He also works to bring about our eternal happiness. Works... Worked. Well maybe not him, but Jehovah-Jesus worked. God kind of delegated everything to him, remember?

Jehovah (who is pre-mortal Jesus, according to Mormon doctrine) created the Universe and was the god of the Old Testament. Then, when Jehovah took on a tabernacle of flesh, he changed his name to Joshua (a.k.a. Jesus) and took a couple of hours to die for everyone, at which point he declared "It is finished." Work's over, time to go home.

But we can't say Heavenly Father's not pulling his load just because Jesus gets to do the all the heavy lifting: creating, self-sacrificing, and final judging. Let's not forget that someone had to come up with the blueprints, the plan, and the laws. That's a lot of big brain business. I'd like to see you orchestrate something as detailed and time sensitive as setting up a purebred Joseph son of Joseph (descendant of Joseph, who was sold into Egypt) finding ancient scriptures before anyone else. I'm sure he really had to sit down and think that thing through.

Then again, how hard can this kind of organization be for God? Can we really believe the Man who knows everything and has all power does anything that he himself might call work? What kind of effort would actually register on the scale of God's infinite abilities?

I'm not seeing how this adds up.

*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 #27 - Tough but fair

According to popular wisdom, a good father is tough, yet always fair.

We like to think that God is perfectly just and everyone will receive his or her just reward in the Hereafter. We're obsessed with the idea that everyone will be getting what they deserve one day. I'm not sure why anyone believes this, though. God has given no indication throughout scriptural history of ever being fair. In this life God is totally unpredictable, if that were not the case people would have learned that the benefits of living righteously outweighed the benefits of evil doing. Instead we see that being a backstabbing fuck often pays and that climbing the ladder of success means stomping on the fingers of the people on the rungs below.

And God? He's no better than the rest of us, is he? He'll mess anyone up in order to keep his place at the top.

If God's willing to stoop to racism, genocide, war, murder, theft, petty, controlling rules, etc. here and now, why should we believe he's going to sort everything out at the Final Judgement? Because he said so? Are we really going to trust this lying, sadistic megalomaniac? 

"Don't run! I am your fair and loving Father-God!"

*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 #26 - Tolerating mistakes

According to popular wisdom, a good father allows his kids to make some mistakes, however, he makes it clear that repeated irresponsibility won't be tolerated.

 Mormon beliefs about Heavenly Father's tolerance of sin suggest a fairly benevolent god, who will forgive us as often as we repent. Of course, if you don't repent you'll be eternally damned, so it's hard to maintain that the Father is entirely benevolent. His approach is "I forgive you only if you're sorry," and yet he asks us to forgive all regardless of whether or not they ask for that forgiveness.

"I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men." (D&C 64:10)

That's called a double standard.

We should also keep in mind that proof of God's forgiveness or of his eternal rage are impossible to find here and now. We have to wait until we die to see how it all plays out. For the time being the Father of the Universe is showing no limits whatsoever as to what behavior he will tolerate.

*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 #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.

Why are we doing this?

Mormons believe God is a very fair judge. The fairest. No detail escapes his infinite wisdom.

"The Lord’s way of final judgment will be to apply his perfect knowledge of the law a person has received and to judge on the basis of that person’s circumstances, motives, and actions throughout his or her entire life." Book of Mormon Teacher Resource Manual, 2004, 304.

So why bother with the whole missionary work thing? Why do we need to convert the entire world to Mormonism if God doesn't need Mormon law to judge everyone perfectly? All he needs is "his perfect knowledge of the law a person has received" and he has that! Why force new laws on people if it makes no difference to how they are judged? Why not just encourage everyone to be kind and let them sort life out they way they see best? God will still judge them relative to their cultural and psychological circumstances. It's not like we're doing God a favor by telling people God is Mormonly rigid in making judgements. Don't we believe that God knows the desires of our hearts and will judge us according to those desires?

"And it is requisite with the justice of God that men should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good." (Alma 41:3)

Skepticism

Dieter, I know you would like everyone to be the nothing-doubting type, but there are some good reasons why many of us find greater security in doubt than in faith in certainty. Please sit back and let Mr. Deity & Co. try to show you where we're coming from.

I know you might not like this a whole lot. You're probably wondering what happens when this guy is made to stand before The Judge. Let's tap the power of the Deity to see how that might play out.

So we're cool now, right?
Good.