There was no subject too trivial to bother God about. The dead could be redeemed from purgatory by having ordinances performed vicariously by someone living. Through the intermediary of Joseph Smith God called men on missions to proclaim the wondrous new gospel God had restored to the world and no man courted God's anger by refusing the call. Members were exhorted to obey all commands given by the voice of God so they would be worthy to serve a Godship of another world after the glorious resurrections.
BUT! If you were a woman you could not receive the highest glory except along with your husband. Never, worlds without end, could a woman receive a godship on her own merits. People of Banida were rarely concerned with discrimination when it came to things of God. In all of my growing up years I never heard anyone, male or female, voice any complaint of the sexist discrimination within God's kingdom.
Joseph said in one of his many creative moments, "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become." Wow! Who could ever top that? Such egotism. Such grandiloquent ostentacity! Hardly a Mormon eye blinks at this absurdity. Of course J.S. didn't elaborate. Was man going to inherit an "earth" already in existence somewhere in the milky way or beyond, or would he be given a do-it-yourself-kit and left to his own devices? The question has gone unanswered.
In this grand plan of life and salvation, once a woman was "sealed" to a man she was his forever and would be a candidate for the Celestial Kingdom only in partnership with him. A man could have as many wives as he chose to be sealed to him, if they were not already some other man's property. When a man died who had fathered children by a wife and she married another man, in the afterlife all the children that she bore the second husband would belong to the first husband.
With the coming of Joseph Smith, who lived, preached and stirred up animosity for himself and his people in the early part of the nineteenth century, all other religions on the earth were made null and void, according to Mormons. Perhaps, "having a form of godliness but no truth". According to the beliefs of Mormons those religions fell far short of the real thing. Mormons were God's special people. The whole supposition is magnanimous in its portent but in reality---zilch!
In my early years I had no inclination and absolutely no information on which to debate any of those issues. I went along with what I was told, sucked up in the "gospel net" the same as many others. I swallowed it, hook, line and sandbag. I was sewed up tight into the fabric of Mormonism, although at the time I didn't know it, and there I stayed being a Mormon woman, trying to be everything to everybody, being the virtuous, altruistic person God expected me to be. I never knowingly spoke to another person who wasn't Mormon until after I was married.
Periodically I grieved for those who were not as fortunate a I was in belonging to God's elite. I was devastated when members of my family were not living up to the rigid formula that would get them into the glorious hereafter.
I was a snob. I was one of the uninformed being led by the misinformed.
And then I became one of the misinformed who was leading the uninformed. Because I never refused a church assignment that was asked of me the church became my whole life. I won't bore the reader with the many church offices I held from the time of my marriage to J. Greene Wells in 1935 until I "saw the light" in 1960. At one Oneida Stake conference in the late forties I was asked by President Shirley Palmer to read the story of Joseph Smith's wonderful first vision to the congregation. I read it with all the feeling and reverence I had for the tale. There were those in the congregation who wept as I brought the story to them again. When it was over John Longdon, the visiting General Authority from Salt Lake City, congratulated me on a fine performance. I believed it.
At that time I had no suspicion at all that the story of the first vision was written at least 18 years after it was supposed to have taken place. With several different accounts of it occurring in historical records and with no two versions agreeing as to content. Historians, even Mormon historians, admit the credibility of the account of the wonderful first vision is fogged in suspicion. The accounts of Smith's translating of the golden plates is equally complex and vague.
Then Syble married Max. Syble was Greene's sister, seven years younger than I. She has often confessed that I was her mentor. She believed everything I said. She was only seventeen and Max was twenty when Greene and I went with them down to the Logan, Utah LDS temple to be married for time and all eternity. I remember how on the trip back home after the ceremony I spoke of the wonderful blessings that would be heaped upon them now that they had taken the all important step in gaining a right to the Celestial Kingdom.
A year later Max died, leaving Syble with a small baby. Syble knew her world had come to an end. It was during the Second World War and Syble went to live with her parents who were employed at the Bushnell Military Hospital in Brigham City, Utah.
Nine months after Max's death Syble wrote me a letter. She had met a man, she said, whom she wanted to marry. In the logic of a Mormon woman she knew in the next world she would belong to Max. In essence her letter said, "What kind of a God can be that unfair to one of his so-called daughters, to force her to spend eternity with a man she didn't love? Can't a woman change her mind? I want Ardith, not Max."
Syble thought I knew the answer to that question? I had never thought on that eventuality before. But in my strong faith I knew that there was an answer somewhere. All I had to do was dig it out. I began searching the written word. What I found out wasn't answers to any of the questions I had, but more questions. Syble didn't wait for my profound advice. She and Ardith Beck were married.
Ardith had been raised a Mormon boy in a very devout family but he had received a B.S. degree in political science from the University of Idaho and he had also found out that there was a lot more to this world than what the Mormon philosophy embraced. He was already alienated from his family because he thought and spoke on a different level than they did. When he took Syble to wife outside the ceremonies of the Mormon church he became further ostracized from them. Syble was sealed to another man and therefore any resulting children would belong to Max and not Ardith in the glorious hereafter. Ardith told me shortly after the marriage, "I'd be dead as a rock in heaven without Syble." Even though he had intellectually drawn away from the church he couldn't quite pull out of the net.
Years later Syble and her family came to Preston to have Sunday dinner with our family. Ardith and I got into a heated discussion about the Mormon church. He told me that the Book of Mormon was nothing more than plagiarism and the product of Smith's imagination.
BUT! If you were a woman you could not receive the highest glory except along with your husband. Never, worlds without end, could a woman receive a godship on her own merits. People of Banida were rarely concerned with discrimination when it came to things of God. In all of my growing up years I never heard anyone, male or female, voice any complaint of the sexist discrimination within God's kingdom.
Joseph said in one of his many creative moments, "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become." Wow! Who could ever top that? Such egotism. Such grandiloquent ostentacity! Hardly a Mormon eye blinks at this absurdity. Of course J.S. didn't elaborate. Was man going to inherit an "earth" already in existence somewhere in the milky way or beyond, or would he be given a do-it-yourself-kit and left to his own devices? The question has gone unanswered.
In this grand plan of life and salvation, once a woman was "sealed" to a man she was his forever and would be a candidate for the Celestial Kingdom only in partnership with him. A man could have as many wives as he chose to be sealed to him, if they were not already some other man's property. When a man died who had fathered children by a wife and she married another man, in the afterlife all the children that she bore the second husband would belong to the first husband.
In my early years I had no inclination and absolutely no information on which to debate any of those issues. I went along with what I was told, sucked up in the "gospel net" the same as many others. I swallowed it, hook, line and sandbag. I was sewed up tight into the fabric of Mormonism, although at the time I didn't know it, and there I stayed being a Mormon woman, trying to be everything to everybody, being the virtuous, altruistic person God expected me to be. I never knowingly spoke to another person who wasn't Mormon until after I was married.
Periodically I grieved for those who were not as fortunate a I was in belonging to God's elite. I was devastated when members of my family were not living up to the rigid formula that would get them into the glorious hereafter.
I was a snob. I was one of the uninformed being led by the misinformed.
And then I became one of the misinformed who was leading the uninformed. Because I never refused a church assignment that was asked of me the church became my whole life. I won't bore the reader with the many church offices I held from the time of my marriage to J. Greene Wells in 1935 until I "saw the light" in 1960. At one Oneida Stake conference in the late forties I was asked by President Shirley Palmer to read the story of Joseph Smith's wonderful first vision to the congregation. I read it with all the feeling and reverence I had for the tale. There were those in the congregation who wept as I brought the story to them again. When it was over John Longdon, the visiting General Authority from Salt Lake City, congratulated me on a fine performance. I believed it.
At that time I had no suspicion at all that the story of the first vision was written at least 18 years after it was supposed to have taken place. With several different accounts of it occurring in historical records and with no two versions agreeing as to content. Historians, even Mormon historians, admit the credibility of the account of the wonderful first vision is fogged in suspicion. The accounts of Smith's translating of the golden plates is equally complex and vague.
Then Syble married Max. Syble was Greene's sister, seven years younger than I. She has often confessed that I was her mentor. She believed everything I said. She was only seventeen and Max was twenty when Greene and I went with them down to the Logan, Utah LDS temple to be married for time and all eternity. I remember how on the trip back home after the ceremony I spoke of the wonderful blessings that would be heaped upon them now that they had taken the all important step in gaining a right to the Celestial Kingdom.
A year later Max died, leaving Syble with a small baby. Syble knew her world had come to an end. It was during the Second World War and Syble went to live with her parents who were employed at the Bushnell Military Hospital in Brigham City, Utah.
Nine months after Max's death Syble wrote me a letter. She had met a man, she said, whom she wanted to marry. In the logic of a Mormon woman she knew in the next world she would belong to Max. In essence her letter said, "What kind of a God can be that unfair to one of his so-called daughters, to force her to spend eternity with a man she didn't love? Can't a woman change her mind? I want Ardith, not Max."
Syble thought I knew the answer to that question? I had never thought on that eventuality before. But in my strong faith I knew that there was an answer somewhere. All I had to do was dig it out. I began searching the written word. What I found out wasn't answers to any of the questions I had, but more questions. Syble didn't wait for my profound advice. She and Ardith Beck were married.
Ardith had been raised a Mormon boy in a very devout family but he had received a B.S. degree in political science from the University of Idaho and he had also found out that there was a lot more to this world than what the Mormon philosophy embraced. He was already alienated from his family because he thought and spoke on a different level than they did. When he took Syble to wife outside the ceremonies of the Mormon church he became further ostracized from them. Syble was sealed to another man and therefore any resulting children would belong to Max and not Ardith in the glorious hereafter. Ardith told me shortly after the marriage, "I'd be dead as a rock in heaven without Syble." Even though he had intellectually drawn away from the church he couldn't quite pull out of the net.
Years later Syble and her family came to Preston to have Sunday dinner with our family. Ardith and I got into a heated discussion about the Mormon church. He told me that the Book of Mormon was nothing more than plagiarism and the product of Smith's imagination.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
