In my introductory post on this blog, I noted that the topics I address on this blog will be a matter of prayer, and I will strive to have the Spirit be my guide. I have started and stopped a few blog posts, some that would certainly increase my page views (for example, gay marriage), but I have ultimately felt that none of those posts were supposed to be published at this time. As I have contemplated what direction to take this blog, I feel compelled, for the immediate future at least, to review and provide my own personal insights about my beliefs, about the basic principles of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. These may not be as popular as other posts might have been, but I’ll do what I feel I am supposed to do at this time.
Not only will working on these posts be helpful to me personally (seriously, just working on the supporting footnotes alone has been a great exercise for me), but if you are already familiar with LDS doctrine, hopefully the posts that follow will also be valuable to you as an avenue to “remember the basics,” as I highlighted in my last post. If you are unfamiliar with LDS doctrine, hopefully these posts will help you to become familiarized with what members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints actually believe as opposed to what you might have heard (and if I know you personally, that you can hopefully get to know who I am as you better understand what makes me tick). These expressions of my beliefs may conflict with your own personal beliefs, but that’s ok. This is a conversation, and I’m just opening up the dialogue, hopefully in a respectful way.
Keeping the basics at the forefront, I anticipate that for my next three posts I will dedicate a post to each of the three members of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe that the three members of the Trinity are three distinct beings and that when the scriptures speak of them as being “one,” rather than speaking of them as one being, they are instead one because they are perfectly unified in purpose. This makes sense to me as I read scriptures in the Bible, for example, when Christ was baptized and the three members of the Trinity were each represented,[i] when Christ prayed to the Father in the intercessory prayer in John 17,[ii] or when Stephen saw the heavens opened and saw “the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.”[iii]
Introductions aside, I begin with a discussion about our Heavenly Father.
What are the attributes of Heavenly Father? Heavenly Father is omniscient.[iv] He knows us perfectly, which means he knows us better than we know ourselves. He is full of truth, light, and intelligence.[v] Heavenly Father has all power and has created worlds without number, including our own.[vi] He is full of love,[vii] wisdom,[viii] and mercy.[ix] He has a glorified, perfected body of flesh and bones[x] and is perfect in every respect.[xi]
We are all His spirit children,[xii] and we lived with Him before this life.[xiii] He prepared a plan whereby we could gain His physical and spiritual attributes.[xiv] We came to this earth and gained a mortal body which will one day become immortal, glorified and perfected through the resurrection--made possible through Jesus Christ’s victory over death. We also have the opportunity during this life to gain His spiritual attributes as we are tried and tested, gain experience, and given the opportunity to exercise faith, to mature and grow spiritually, and to develop God’s attributes: love and charity, patience, wisdom, knowledge, mercy and forgiveness.
If you find the idea that we can become like God offensive, consider that any loving parent would want to pass on their best attributes to their children. Why then would our Father in Heaven, being perfect, not want to provide a way for His children to gain all of His goodness? Furthermore, in Matthew 5:48, Jesus Christ commanded, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”
How do we come to know Heavenly Father? Jesus Christ taught that life eternal is to know God the Father and Jesus Christ (John 17:3). So how do we come to know our Heavenly Father? We come to know Him through His Son, Jesus Christ (more on that in my next post). We come to know him through exercising our faith by choosing to believe in Him. We come to know Him by obedience to His commandments,[xv] by praying to Him in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and by studying the scriptures. We come to know him by striving to develop Christlike attributes of love, service, patience, obedience, humility.
Some Personal Thoughts. On a personal note, some of my strongest spiritual experiences have been when I have felt Heavenly Father’s love for me when I most needed it. These are some of the moments I have clinged to in my deepest moments of doubt. Thus, at the root of my faith is the knowledge that Heavenly Father loves me, cares about me, and is keenly aware of me and my needs.
I have learned much about my Heavenly Father and my relationship to Him in the last three and a half years of being a father. As I contemplate my love for my son, even as a father crippled with weaknesses and imperfections, I gain a greater appreciation for our Heavenly Father’s love for us, which is infinitely more perfect than my love for my son and not handicapped by weakness and imperfection. I can now more acutely see how disobedience by His children might cause Him to weep (and, my own disobedience throughout my life gives me pause to be more patient as a father, while my son grows, matures, and figures things out for himself). I can see how we as His children take for granted all the blessings He has given us, not realizing in many instances all that He does for us.
I conclude with one of my favorite videos that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has produced. This video resonated with me because of these lessons I have learned about my Father in Heaven as I have strived to be the best earthly father I can be:
For additional reading, see "The Grandeur of God," by Jeffrey R. Holland.
[i] The Son was present as Jesus Christ, being baptized; the Father’s voice could be heard announcing, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”; and the Holy Ghost descended like a dove. See Matthew 3:13-17.
[ii] James E. Talmage wrote in Articles of Faith, “Immediately before His betrayal, Christ prayed [in John chapter 17] for His disciples, the Twelve, and other converts, that they should be preserved in unity, ‘that they all may be one’ as the Father and the Son are one. We cannot assume that Christ prayed that his followers lose their individuality and become one person, even if a change so directly opposed to nature were possible. Christ desired that all should be united in heart, spirit, and purpose; for such is the unity between His Father and Himself, and between them and the Holy Ghost.”
[x] D&C 130:22. See also Genesis 1:27; James 3:9; Exodus 31:18 (describing that Moses’s tablets were written “with the finger of God”); Exodus 33:11 (describing Moses speaking to God “face to face”); and Joseph Smith – History 1:17 (but more on that later).
[xiii] Jeremiah 1:5; John 9:2 (the disciples demonstrate a belief in a premortal existence by asking if the blind man had sinned to be born blind); D&C 93:29; Abraham 3:22-26
[xv] James E. Talmage wrote in Articles of Faith, “A wilful [sic] sinner grows deaf to the voice of both intuition and reason in holy things, and loses the privilege of communing with his Creator, thus forfeiting the strongest means of attaining a personal knowledge of God.”
