Stan asked some very good questions in “How Gods work in Wicca” which I’m going to answer here. The first one I’ll answer is “I see you mention a belief in Satan as well, so what do you believe about him?” First, I don’t believe that Christianity is monotheistic. That principle is very important to the rest of this post. It has a pantheon consisting in the very least of Jehovah the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit and Satan. Depending on what flavor you’re looking at you can add any number of angels, saints, Mary, etc.This is based on how “dead” religions are viewed by anthropologists. There were faiths very similar to Christianity, with a “supreme god” and a family of lesser gods around them but no one now calls them monotheistic, although the followers then did so. See this site for details. In all other faiths, the son of God was a God just not the Supreme God.
All that said, I believe in Satan as a God of Evil. I believe Satan is wrong and wants to harm us. I believe he works in direct cross purposes to Jehovah the Father. I believe he’ll use every means at his command to do so as well.
Stan continues, “As I believe that Satan is out to destroy mankind, creating false gods and setting them up to be worshiped strikes me as a very logical thing to do.” And I agree this is very possible and leads right into “The question, then–when one presupposes a belief in a belligerent devil with great skill at deception–is how does one determine which faces and facets of Deity are correct and trustworthy?” Anyone in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints already knows the answer to this, you pray. You ask, you listen, you evaluate the effects on your life, and heath and soul and you keep on praying.
There a nifty forum out there with a really interesting mix of people. In one of the posts, I found a link to this about the Heavenly Mother. I had some thoughts of my own about what she had to say. But the first thing I want to say, is I certainly support her wish to be Anonymous. Enough people over-react to what they don’t understand that her fears are certainly understandable.
The author comments,
The real reason I think the LDS Church avoids this? To avoid being labeled any more non-Christian than they already are. Add a second godhood and all of a sudden, you’re not monotheistic any more. They already deal with that to some extent. I hate it for fundamentalist Christians, but Christianity is already not monotheistic. If anthropologists a thousand years from now were studying it, it would have demigods and even a God of Evil. These would be less powerful than it’s main squeeze, Jehovah, but then Zeus, a very familiar pagan figure, is more powerful than Hermes. Hermes is still labeled a God.
So if you add Heavenly Mother to Heavenly Father at Church services, you open a whole new can of worms for a faith not really prepared to deal with this in addition to all it’s other headaches.
While this is understandable, it’s also a serious disservice to the Sisters of the congregation. She writes,
I hope the Church one day finds the courage to listen to Heavenly Father and reveal more about our Mother in Heaven and to allow those of us who need her to get to know her better.
The author comments,
I suppose there is a fear that if women in the church pray to a non-descript goddess figure she will inevitably develop into something less than perfect and virtuous.That might be a real concern but given how many gods there are out there, how many imperfect male figures in theology (Zeus, anyone?) that this could easily be overcome in much the same way that is dealt with. An example is the Virgin Mary in the Catholic Church. Many women from many walks of life and backgrounds revere this figure.
The real reason I think the LDS Church avoids this? To avoid being labeled any more non-Christian than they already are. Add a second godhood and all of a sudden, you’re not monotheistic any more. They already deal with that to some extent. I hate it for fundamentalist Christians, but Christianity is already not monotheistic. If anthropologists a thousand years from now were studying it, it would have demigods and even a God of Evil. These would be less powerful than it’s main squeeze, Jehovah, but then Zeus, a very familiar pagan figure, is more powerful than Hermes. Hermes is still labeled a God.
So if you add Heavenly Mother to Heavenly Father at Church services, you open a whole new can of worms for a faith not really prepared to deal with this in addition to all it’s other headaches.
While this is understandable, it’s also a serious disservice to the Sisters of the congregation. She writes,
Yet another time I knelt down by my bed in the middle of the day pleading to my Father in Heaven for help as a wife and mother, feeling much overwhelmed and unsure of myself. This time I felt the love of not only my Father in Heaven, of a Mother in Heaven. I felt her love, support, wisdom and understanding as a mother who desired to give her daughter, me, all that she had to assist me with my own earthly family.Would that we all had that available to us more openly! I really feel Sisters need that love and support and too many feel it is denied to them. She continues, “When I talk to a parent about childbirth, infertility or breastfeeding, and even potty training, I talk to my mother, not my father. Likewise when I want to pray about the most mortal-physical aspects of being a woman, I prefer to address someone in whose image I am created, and clearly, this is not the image of a man.”
I hope the Church one day finds the courage to listen to Heavenly Father and reveal more about our Mother in Heaven and to allow those of us who need her to get to know her better.
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