Friday, October 19, 2012

Unknowable God

I've been having a conversation with a friend, started by All Are Alike Unto God. The conversation has gone all over the place, and recently hit on the notion of eternal gender. My friend had this to say about it: "But, I do believe that our spirit's gender is what it has always been. Can our body's sex be different than our spirit's gender? Would God allow a spirit woman to be born in a man's body? I would doubt it."

That struck me as a very strange statement, reminiscent of a statement made by Boyd Packer about gay people. He said that a loving God would never create a gay person. (This statement was removed from the official version of the talk.) Both of these men seem very sure they know the mind of God. Both are convinced that God would never do something they do not understand.

These men can accept that a loving God would create a child with a disability so severe they cannot walk, speak, eat or take care of themselves. They can accept a loving God would create a person with cancer, would allow people to be born into war zones and famines, would allow children to be born from rapes and addicted to drugs. All of this is okay for a loving God to do, but someone who is gay or someone who feels that they are a different sex then their body is not something God would do.

I realized that this has nothing to do with the love of God, but the need to make God make sense. I'm having flashes to the Joker in the Dark Knight (go with me on this) when he tells Dent that people can accept all kinds of horrible things as long as it is part of a plan they understand. Mormons have been taught that disease and tragedy is part of God's plan, so they accept that a loving God can allow these things to happen. But homosexuality and transgender are not a part of their plan, so in their minds God could not have been involved. So God becomes an excuse for their own belief system, rather than something outside of themselves. And since they define God, their God tells them that their opinions are doctrine. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I understand the need to explain God, to claim to know God's mind. It's a way to make the world make sense. If we know exactly who God is, that makes the world simpler; we can know exactly what we are supposed to do in any given situation. I don't begrudge anyone that desire, or the desire to provide knowledge of God to others. But I've found that the more I try to define God, the less divine God is. If God can be broken down into a list of do's and don'ts, God feels less like God.

While reading She Who Is by Elizabeth Johnson, her discussion of the Trinity spoke to me. The Trinity is a concept many Mormons struggle with, even mock, because it cannot be easily explained. They laugh or shrug because it doesn't make easy sense, while their God does. But Johnson believes is that the lack of clarity is the point. God in unknowable, that is what makes God divine. God cannot, and should not, be easy to explain or God would cease to be God. The Trinity serves that purpose. It makes God difficult to define so that we don't fall into the trap of thinking we now the mind of God.

13 comments:

  1. Good post. I tend to believe I'm the gender I've always been. That doesn't contradict in my mind the notion of being being born gay/ bisexual. It's part of who they are- I'm sure there's some psychological/ genetic component that lends for homosexuality to happen, as it also occurs in nature.

    As for the nature of God, I don't think anyone can say for certain what that is. I'd like to take the Jewish mysticism viewpoint that God is inherently unknowable- we can't fathom Him/ Her.

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    1. I agree that the eternity of gender does not half to conflict with someone being gay for feeling they are a different gender, which is what made the conversatin I had so interesting.

      I find myself drawn to the Jewish concept of God as well. I read a book called "Our Lives as Torah" that changed my whole view of divinity.

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    2. I'll have to read that! I love to read about Judaism (and religion in general), but Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are my favorites.

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  2. Wow, what an insightful post. I loved the thought that people reject qualities of God because "God would never do something they do not understand." It's also a fantastic point that people seem to be OK with people being born into mental retardation, slavery, drug addiction, etc. but to them, apparently being gay is a choice.

    It seems to be natural for humans to want to simplify things into black and white because ambiguity is frightening.

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  3. You misrepresent, or did not understand, what President Packer said.

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    1. Or I just disagree with your interpretation. And since I'm not bound by your interpretation, I stand by what I said.

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    2. I actually came to the same conclusion that DefyGravity did when I heard his talk because the very sentences that I strongly remember being problematic in making it sound like God would never create a gay person, were the very ones that were removed in the edited version the church published. But I respect that others could have inferred different things (and I certainly hope they did!)

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    3. I should point out that Ryan has a history of trolling The Exponent blog, my blog and other blogs he does not agree with. That is why I chose to dismiss him curtly.

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    4. It has nothing to do with interpretation. It has to do with the actual words spoken. You lie about what he said because it suits your attempt to denigrate the Church and its leaders. You can't do it truthfully, so you do it with lies.

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    5. Thanks for proving my point about trolling Ryan. ;) I appreciate it.

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  4. I look at it this way-if gender is eternal then that is a spiritual aspect of who we are, but once we're born into this life, all kinds of mortal problems and imperfections can affect us physically and mentally as we live in a fallen and contradictory world. Is a person with downs syndrome, or missing a limb going to eternally have that mental capacity or missing body part? We don't believe that, and often we believe that physical ailments are trials sent to test our spirits that will one day be whole with our perfect bodies. Why on earth couldn't a spirit be given the wrong-gendered body as a trial? And what about hermaphrodites? We can't deny that they exist and have both genders in their body. According to your friend's logic, then this individual must be both genders, or maybe just couldn't decide in the pre-mortal realm and gets to choose now. (sigh.)
    Your insights about allowing things that make sense are spot-on. Now that I have my own tiny child, I have realized how much I must be like her in the eyes of God. When things aren't clear or predictable, I get scared and demand things return to something that feels safe even if it isn't necessarily what I need or is even good for me. Maybe this life is just a metaphor for how much more we have to learn in the next. And just as a baby cannot grasp the intricacies of this world, we are unable to grasp the greatness of eternity and so we hold on to the small things we do understand. I don't think there's anything wrong with this (line upon line after all), but I DO think it becomes problematic when we deny that there is anything else beyond out current understanding and therefore something that doesn’t fit into our belief or world-view must not exist.

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    1. I agree that there is nothing wrong with wanting and trying to understand divinity and eternity and that problem occurs when we hold eternity to our understanding instead of acknowledging that our understanding is limited instead of God being limited by our understanding.

      I think you're laid out the complications of eternal gender; we are faced with fact that their are people who feel that they are in the body, and people who manifest both genders. We can't pretend they don't exist, and should try to expand our worldview to include them rather than clinging to a view that denies their existence. It's also interesting that the concept of two genders is actually in many ways a cultural construct. There are societies, Native American and Polynesian among them, that have more than two genders. Which raises the question of which concept of gender is divine: two genders or more?

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