Alien gods

Joseph Smith, Jr. revealed a great many amazing things about God. For example, he taught that

1. God is a physical being
2. named Elohim

3. who lives on or near a planet or star called Kolob;
4. he has billions and billions of offspring (the spirits of all mankind)

5. that he implanted on an empty planet (Earth),

6. where they would have to face the wrath of natural disasters, disease, hunger, doubt and mutual violence

7. all in an effort to determine which of these billions of offspring would worship him enough to become the next generation of ultra-intelligent gods.

A later prophet named Lorenzo Snow put it this way: "As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be."

Lorenzo, confident enough to sport the godbeard early on in the program.

In other worlds, for Mormons, God is a super-powerful, mega-smart alien who colonized a planet with his larvae and turned the world into a kind of jungle boot camp as a sort of test. He's currently out there in the Universe somewhere watching us and waiting, waiting to see which of us will qualify to join the ranks of the GODS! It's called the Plan of Happiness, guys!

"HA!" "HA HA HA!" "HA HA!

I can't wait to meet God's god, our Grangod, and all the rest, all the way back to the Very First Colonizer, Alpha. Or did he have a heavenly father as well?

It's all fun stuff to think about!

Words that mean everything and nothing

Mormons believe that essentially everyone will make it to heaven, but heaven is not created equally. In fact, there isn't just one heaven, there are three, each with its own degree of glory. The highest heaven is the Celestial Kingdom, which is typically compared to the glory of the Sun; the middle kingdom is the Terrestrial Kingdom, which is typically compared to the glory of the moon; and the lowest glory, compared to the brilliance of the stars, is the Telestial Kingdom.

Let's not get too caught up with the fact that this sun, moon, stars hierarchy does not reflect the actual height or distance of these heavenly bodies from the earth (otherwise the stars like Kolob would be our heavenly goal and the moon would be the lowliest of all glories), the comparison relies more on the amount of light given off with respect to our position. Fine.

What's most bizarre and most doubt-inducing for me is the etymology of the kingdoms' names. Calling something celestial means that thing is either like or somehow pertaining to the sky. That works great for the Celestial Kingdom as long as you still believe in the idea of the Firmament and God living in the clouds, otherwise you get stuck trying to reconcile the description of Kolob with current science.

The moon, as it turns out, is a horrible symbol for a place called the Terrestrial Kingdom. Terra means earth in Latin. If you want the moon, call it the Lunar Kingdom. Anyway, just how exactly is the Terrestrial Kingdom supposed to be like or pertaining to the earth? I thought even the lowest degree of glory was supposed to blow our puny earthing minds.

The least glorious heavenly realm is special enough to get a made up name. Telestial, like curelom and cumom, didn't exist as a word until Joseph Smith revealed it to us. The word seems to come from tele-, which is a Greek prefix for distant or far away, but it could also be going back farther to the root teleos, which means the end goal of a completed cycle, so basically the idea of perfecting a circle. If we go with the first possibility we get the notion that the Telestial Kingdom is the "Far Away Kingdom." Far from what? God? Hopefully not too far. If we go with the latter option, the Telestial Kingdom would seem to mean it's the designated end of the Plan of Salvation, but we all know that's not the case - the Celestial Kingdom is where we want to be. Maybe God should have given us his divine Adamic names for these places instead of misleading us with Latin and Greek.

It's pretty confusing. The meanings and explanations of these kingdoms come across as poorly thought out. And don't go to the temple hoping to sort things out. Take the rooms of the Salt Lake temple for example. You have the Creation [of the earth] Room, Garden [of Eden, which is on Earth] Room, World [a.k.a. Earth] Room, Terrestrial [= of the earth] Room, and the Celestial [heavens/sky/clouds] room. Why are there so many rooms for the same place? Why is there no discussion of the Telestial and Terrestrial Kingdoms in the temple, just a quick entrance through the veil into the Celestial realm? I thought the temple was where we go to learn the details of The Plan, but we're only given a partial view. So much for further light and knowledge!

Kolob

I know the LDS Church doesn't like to emphasis this bit of doctrine and generally members don't feel much of a need to bear personal testimony of it, but that's no excuse for not acknowledging one of the most absurd aspects of Mormonism: Kolob, the star or planet nearest God's throne.

 God is no longer hiding among the clouds, but somewhere out beyond the nebulae of space! And yet Abraham and Methuselah saw this place thanks to the Urim and Thummim. So spare me all this modern science mumbo jumbo.

Oh yes, we also know that the Sun gets its light from Kolob, not from nuclear fusion. Thank God for modern revelation.

Sure, we haven't found God yet, but we can at least say we know what we're looking for.

Aspirations of empire

Maybe it wasn't until after I had taken a couple of anthropology courses that the Mormon Church's goal of filling "the whole earth" (i.e. taking over the planet) and spreading to "every kindred, tongue, and people" started to bother me.

What good would come of the Church invading countries and teaching them to abandon their traditions only to replace it with the wholesome business aesthetic of white shirts and ties? Why should Asians stop drinking tea and start drinking root beer and Hawaiian Punch? Why should indigenous American peoples consider their ancestors the cursed offspring of Lehi and Sariah? Why would Pacific Islanders really need to be wearing and covering temple garments in their hot climate? Why should Kung men start carrying around little vials of olive oil purchased from Utah? Do we really want to see marriage traditions disappear into the goofy mirrored sealing rooms of the House of the Lord, where everyone (not just Pacific Islanders) must give up local color for white cotton-poly blends? How are we all not cringing at the thought of the Aboriginal Australian singing "Come, Come, Ye Saints" or "If You Could Hie to Kolob" while their children sing "Chose the Right Way"?

The Church has no true appreciation for diversity. The Church doesn't give two shits about different world views. What the Church cares about is what Dallin Oaks calls "Gospel Culture" and snuffing out every other culture that doesn't conform to it. This is the Church taking the offense and being as offensive as possible without physically harming people. If you don't like it, just know that one day every knee shall bend and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ!

The more I thought about it the more I didn't have to doubt any more - I knew with a surety - that I did not believe in the is kind of approach to interacting with people outside of my faith tradition.

Where is Heaven?

Learning a second language opens up your eyes and gives you a fresh perspective on the world. It also gives you an older, even ancient perspective, a glimpse into the past.

I was a bit startled to learn that in my new language I would literally be praying to "our father who is in the sky" or "our sky dad". Mormons don't believe Heavenly Father's in sky! Where does the word "heaven" come from anyway? Oh, it means the clouds? Shit. So "heavenly father" means "cloud dad" or "dad obscured by clouds"? No shit? That makes it sound like we're part of some ancient tribe who worships the sun or something...

I remember as a child wondering about all the depictions of angels living in clouds and Jesus coming down from the clouds and God laying across the clouds and stuff like that and wondering what it would be like to hang out on top of clouds, but to my recollection I always had the presence of mind to not let my thoughts wander too far down that path. We Mormons knew God was in Outer-space on a planet in the Kolob system! We weren't delusionally looking to the sky for God!

The people at the Tower of Babel were naive enough to try to get to heaven by building a tower, though. And our dad in the sky was mad enough he changed all their languages (and apparently no one was insistent enough to get back together to sit down and learn each other's new language). Not like that's the only time the Scriptures indicate that God's in the sky or clouds somewhere. The references are many and often strictly literal.

I couldn't help but doubt. For all I could tell human beings once believed the gods lived in the clouds beyond our vision, but as science and logic expanded our understanding of the universe God has continually been pushed to the edges of human vision and understanding. We've chased God out of the sky with telescopes, airplanes, and satellites; we've chased him from our solar system; now God hides out in a galaxy far far away where we can never find him. He's an alien and space traveler with a taste for Earth clouds. Or is he? I mean Abraham 3 sounds pretty authentic, doesn't it? Nothing about it sounds like 19th century bullshit, right? 

I'm no fan of this movie but it gets some things right.