He leaned in closer to me and continued in a lower voice,“If you were to see God right now [Jospeh] Smith says, right now, you would see a being just like you, the very form of a man. The great secret is that, through heroic effort and striving, God was a man who became exalted and now sits enthroned in the heavens. You see, God was not God from all eternity, but became God. Now, the flip side of this claim is that if God is an exalted man, then we, too, can become exalted. The prophet says to the company of the saints something like, ‘You have to learn how to be gods. You have to inherit the same power and glory as God and become exalted like him.’ Namely you can arrive at the station of God. One of our early leaders summarized the King Follett sermon with the words, ‘As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may be.’ ”
Simon Critchley for the Opinionator column in the NYT. The whole thing is worth your time to read.
Objecting to the Mormon view of God and of our destiny, by the way, in no way indicates who I'm voting for. In November, American citizens are hiring a Commander in Chief, not a Pastor in Chief. And objecting to this view in no way indicates who I will or will not build friendships with. But it's important to understand how very, very different our Mormon views are of God--and thus how very, very different are our views of the destiny we're meant for.
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