The Core Mormon Teaching the LDS Church Didn’t Jettison

[DonViejo]

Jay Michaelson

While the church got headlines for dropping its much-mocked ‘Mormons get their own planets’ doctrine, it quietly reaffirmed a far more important, and more radical, tenet of the faith.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently backpedaled on a key tenet of Mormon theology: that after death, righteous Mormons will become gods, with the capacity to create planets of their own. But while press coverage of the walk-back has focused on the “Mormons get their own planets” doctrine, already ridiculed on Broadway and TV, what’s remarkable is what the LDS church left in.

Indeed, the church doubled down on the core Mormon teaching that God had a physical/human body, and that, in turn, we will have spiritual/divine ones. In other words, that we are just like God and will later be “exalted” to God’s divine state. This despite a half-century of attempting to become more and more Christian, and less and less weird.

That campaign is why the former standard-bearer of polygamy, a practice the church argued all the way to the Supreme Court on several occasions, has stood up as the defender of “traditional marriage” by funding anti-gay marriage campaigns in California and across the country. And why a formerly segregated church, which until 1978 barred African-Americans from the priesthood and still has in its scripture the teaching that people with black skin are “stained” that way because of sin, has now launched a multicultural ad campaign and waffled on what those verses really mean.

Unfortunately, rather like Scientology’s efforts to rebrand itself as an alternative form of psychotherapy, the LDS church’s doctrinal whitewashing has been undermined by fractious ex-believers, pranksters just out to tease (or defame), and the Internet. The wackiest of Mormon teachings—many unknown to practicing Mormons today—have been dredged up and held to ridicule.

But unlike Scientology, Mormonism also has a hit musical to contend with.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/07/the-core-mormon-teaching-the-lds-church-didn-t-jettison.html

[djean111]

1. Looks to me like all religions have weirdnesses - all of them.

It is when they seek to inflict their individual weirdness on everyone else that things get bad.

Why would anyone really care about Mormon theology? How does it hurt anyone else if Mormons believe their god has a body and that they will be like their god? Or they will go to different planets instead of a heaven with streets of gold?
It is their ability to inflict their ideas about gay marriage on everyone else that is the danger. That sort of thing.
And, of course, the not paying taxes thing.

As an atheist, it has always amused me how religions don't see how they may look weird to atheists and other religions - they are in a bubble of sorts. Christianity seems weird to me, too. Glass houses and all that.

[nil desperandum]

2. Religious Belief

That's the tough part about religious beliefs, when you take a peek under the hood it gets peculiar rather quickly...humans in their arrogance created gods and placed themselves at the center of it all by imagining that humans are the greatest creation of their gods...

I suspect the reality of humanity's existence as a cosmic joke of random chemistry is far too much for some to come to terms with comfortably.

So many humans declare their love of nature and yet they miss nature's most basic premise. There is only one penalty and it is death, beyond that survival by any means is acceptable. Killing your own offspring, murdering your neighbors and their offspring to take their resources are some of the primary methods for survival in the wild. Banding together to run down different species and tear them to pieces is another acceptable method.

We humans have these lessons hard wired into our brains, we see them acted out every day and pretend it's not the extension of those base instincts carried out with better technology. We kill those whose resources we desire, there are nations where women and children are still viewed as chattel to be exploited for whatever purpose their male masters desire (much of that in the name of religion)...

Any disinterested 3rd party viewing the earth would conclude that every species on the planet, including humans, uses violence as the primary method of maintaining subsistence and existence.

If one believes that a loving, caring, god created this...I would hate to see what an uncaring god might create.

[Act_of_Reparation]

3. So. What.

Mormons think they'll become gods after death.

Every Sunday, Catholics pile into church to eat what they believe is flesh (crackers) and drink what they believe is blood (watered down wine of exceedingly poor vintage).

One of these is "weird" and "whacky". Making fun of the other, however, will earn you the epithet "anti-Catholic crank".

[TlalocW]

4. There's a part of me that says

Mormons are always going to be wacky (magic underwear) so why did they bother to change their doctrine? In fact, it's disappointing that they didn't have the (seer) stones to stick with it. And just how does a "church" that for decades said, "X is going to happen," get away with now saying, "X isn't going to happen?" I know religion blinds you in certain ways, but if you would think some church members would kind of wake up and say, "Hey... Maybe they've just been feeding us a line all these years to get our money!" I also imagine that some older Mormons are like, "What do you mean I don't get my own planet? I'm about to die! I want my planet!"

TlalocW

[MuseRider]

6. They have a Prophet.

He talks with God. IIRC it was Brigham Young who changed the polygamy doctrine? (I have been gone from them a long time and am fuzzy at this point) It changed because they wanted Utah as a state and the feds told them they must get rid of that doctrine. Ole Brigham talked with God and God agreed a state was better than 200 wives. Something like that. Prophets can change everything. Also the same with the council.

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. It was Wilfred Woodruff, actually

The 1890 Manifesto nominally banned polygamy as a compromise for statehood. Young died in 1877.

[MuseRider]

8. Ahhhh, thank you.

As I said, I am rusty. It has been a long time. Funny thing, I originally read this as Wilfred Brimley and thought you were making a delightful joke then caught it before I posted back.

[MuseRider]

5. I remember being told to get rid of my

organ donor status because if my body was not whole, God would have to work harder to replace my parts. Seriously. Honestly. I was told that. One reason, among many reasons I gave it all up and left. Can you imagine? Now I do not know if that is common or just something this particular bishop worked up himself but I was stunned by that and refused to do so. I told him that I figured me helping out someone else was a good thing and God would not mind recreating a kidney or a heart. I quit but I gather from friends who did not that they were seriously considering trying to make me leave for being a smart ass and questioning every single stupid thing they tried to tell me.

On one other point.....all religions have weird stuff and prejudices. Mormons take it pretty hard because much of what they say and believe is very strange. If it survives (and if we do) it will not seem all that strange centuries from now. Most of the people I knew were not bigots, were not intolerant and some of the kindest in the world. The church hierarchy is another thing entirely. Like most institutions they are corrupt and think only of themselves.