Q. Can [Mormons] have TV?

A. Yes

Q. Can the girls have Barbie dolls and the boys have video games?

A. Yes

Q. Can they have radio?

A. Yes

Short answer: Yes and No.

Long answer: You might think this question would have a straightforward answer, but turns out it doesn’t.  Entire ecumenical councils have been convened to address the relationship between Jesus and the Father.  It’s a sticky question, and this is why:

The Bible uses the term “Only Begotten” four times in reference to Jesus (the Book of Mormon and other LDS scriptures tack on a whopping forty more).  So it seems pretty straightforward; he must be the only one. At the same time, however, there are many other scriptures that seem to indicate there are more children of God—namely us.  Those scriptures refer to the human race as either being the children of God already (Acts 17:29: “Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God…”) or having the potential to become the children of God (John 1:12: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God”).  Furthermore, sometimes Jesus refers to the Father only as “my Father” (Luke 2:49), and sometimes as “your Father” (Matt 5:48), and sometimes both (John 20:17).

So which is it?  Is Jesus the only son of God, or are we all sons and daughters of God?  And if we’re not now, is it possible for us to become so?

I don’t pretend to understand how the majority of Christianity answers those questions, especially since the early creeds seem confusing on what exactly the relationship between the Father and the Son is.  Luckily you just want to know what Mormons believe and that is, by comparison, pretty straightforward.

1. All of us (including Jesus) are spirit children of God.

To suggest that Jesus is always and ever was the only son of God is to ignore a whole lot of scripture in the Bible.  In one sense, we are all children of God. God is the Father of our spirits.  This is why Paul calls us all “the offspring of God.”  We have that piece of divinity inside us.  Jesus is special because he was, as the author of Hebrews calls him, “the Firstbegotten.”  The same author calls His church the “church of the Firstborn.”  Just the use of the words Firstbegotten and Firstborn imply that there are others. Not only that, we were all with God and Jesus before the world was.  (See the posts on the pre-mortal life of man for a better explanation).  In short: all of us are children of God, but Jesus is the first.

2.  Jesus is the only begotten of the Father in the flesh.

If we all are children of God, why are the scriptures so adamant that he is the “Only Begotten Son”?  To beget someone is to father them.  Everyone born on earth has been begotten by an earthly, mortal father.  That is, everyone but Jesus.  Jesus was born to a virgin.  His father is God.  We don’t pretend to know the details of all that, but Jesus is the only one for whom that is true, and that’s why He is called the Only Begotten.

3.  We become the sons and daughters of God in a different sense by accepting the gospel.

If we are all already the children of God, what is all this scriptural talk of becoming the children of God?  Turns out sometimes salvation is spoken of as becoming the sons/daughters of God, or of Christ. When Jesus came to earth and atoned for our sins, he opened the way to be saved.  He gave us power to become the sons of God, as John said.  Maybe it’s confusing to describe it that way, but hey, it wasn’t my idea.  Besides, it’s a good way to describe the spiritual change that happens when we accept Jesus Christ.  I think the Book of Mormon king Benjamin described it best to his people, who had just accepted Jesus Christ with a covenant to follow Him:

“And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.”  (Mosiah 5:7)

So we see that if there were only one sense in which a person could be a child of God, the Bible would remain ambiguous on the question.  But if they are referring to different relationships, we get a coherent picture of our relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ. In one sense everyone is a child of God, in another sense only Jesus is, and in a third sense, we start out not children and then have the option to become children of God.

An important footnote: Do Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers?

One of the more shocking things you’ll hear about Mormonism is that we believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers. Now that we’ve outlined our relationships to God, we can address that claim in the proper context.  It’s true that they are brothers in the first sense that I described above, but saying it out of that context is intentionally misleading, because almost everyone is thinking in the second sense.  When you’re coming from the position that Jesus is the only son of God, putting Satan up there with him not only seems like a blatant contradiction of the “Only Begotten” scriptures, but also makes it seem like we consider them to be equals.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  Jesus Christ, the Greatest of all, who personifies goodness and grace, and Satan, the father of lies, who rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven, are not equals. They are brothers in the sense that we are all brothers and sisters, spiritual offspring of the same Father.  Aside from that, they couldn’t be more different.

Q. What do Mormons believe about hell, and who is going there?

Short answer: We don’t believe in the traditional view of “hell” as a place of never ending torment for those who don’t accept Jesus in this world. Hell is a temporary state of terrible anguish and pain for the wicked, but with very few exceptions, everyone will eventually accept Jesus Christ and receive some degree of glory. Our belief that everyone eventually gets the same chance to accept the gospel, and that hell doesn’t last forever, makes the Mormon doctrine of the afterlife one of the most hopeful and merciful in all Christianity.

Long answer: I wrote this article because I’ve found that people assume we believe in the traditional hellfire and damnation, and that causes a lot of misunderstanding. For instance, we claim to be the only religion with the “fullness of the gospel,” and that you have to be baptized by someone authorized by God (only in the LDS church) in order to be saved. People hear that and assume that we therefore believe that everyone else is “going to hell” in the sense that, say, Evangelical Christians would use the phrase. That isn’t our belief, however.

What is hell? The word hell in the bible is the English translation of the Greek word hades or the Hebrew word sheol. It originally referred to a temporary dwelling of spirits of all dead people, both righteous and wicked (1), and not solely as a place of punishment (this agrees in general with Mormon theology). The word hell didn’t evolve the sense of being a place of everlasting punishment until later.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place of suffering, however. We believe that when we die, our spirits go to a place that we call the Spirit World to await the resurrection and judgment. Furthermore, the Spirit World is divided into two general states: paradise and prison, depending on how you have lived your life (see Megan’s two-part summary of the afterlife). In the Spirit World, everyone gets an equal chance (if they didn’t have it on earth) to hear and accept the gospel. Unrepentant people will still suffer, and we still refer to their suffering as “hell.”

What is hell like? The torment of the wicked isn’t described in much detail in the Bible, but King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon taught that the knowledge of our guilt would be our torment:

Therefore if that man repenteth not, and remaineth and dieth an enemy to God, the demands of divine justice do awaken his immortal soul to a lively sense of his own guilt, which doth cause him to shrink from the presence of the Lord, and doth fill his breast with guilt, and pain, and anguish, which is like an unquenchable fire, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever. (Mosiah 2:38)

Alma (also in the Book of Mormon) wrote that we will not be able to look up to God, “and we would fain be glad if we could command the rocks and the mountains to fall upon us to hide us from his presence” (Alma 12:14)

It’s important to know that this suffering, while agonizing, will not last forever. Of those who would eventually inherit the lowest degree of glory, Joseph Smith taught:

These are they who are liars, and sorcerers, and adulterers, and whoremongers, and whosoever loves and makes a lie. . .These are they who are cast down to hell and suffer the wrath of Almighty God, until the fullness of times, when Christ shall have subdued all enemies under his feet, and shall have perfected his work; (D&C 76:103, 106)

What about the sons of perdition? We believe that one day “every knee shall bow and every tongue confess” that Jesus is the Christ. With a few exceptions  everyone will be redeemed. Death and Hell will deliver up their captive spirits (2 Ne 9:12, Rev 20:13), all men will be resurrected and be brought forth to be judged and receive a degree of glory. The few exceptions I mentioned are called “sons of perdition.”

Sons of perdition are the truly evil. They are those that want no part in salvation. They deny the truth and defy God’s power, and crucify the Savior unto themselves, and put him to an open shame. They are the only ones who shall not be redeemed in the due time of the Lord (D&C 76:31-38). They do not inherit a glory at all, but rather dwell with the devil and his angels forever. Their state is sometimes referred to as “hell” also, or “outer darkness,” though both of those words also refer to the temporary state. It’s hard to be a son of perdition. Really hard. Cain and Judas hard. For all intents and purposes, it’s not even an option for the majority of humanity.

If everyone will just be saved, why does anyone’s conversion even matter? I thought you’d never ask! It matters for two reasons: 1) The wicked will still suffer. A lot. Enough that no amount of raucous fun you could have on earth would ever possibly be worth it. And 2) There are very different degrees of glory that you will inherit forever, based on how much you were “willing to receive.” But that’s a topic for a different day.

(1) See Frederic W. Farrar, Eternal Hope (1892), xxxvi-xlii

Longish answer:  Funny you should ask.  Historically there has been some widespread speculation about that, particularly with respect to Mary Magdalene.  Thanks in part to The DaVinci Code, the issue has become more a part of popular culture in recent years.  It’s a fascinating debate, filled with all kinds of gnostic gospels and symbolism and things.

The LDS Church has no official statement about the subject (despite some speculation by early Church leaders in the affirmative).  The Bible doesn’t say He was, the Book of Mormon doesn’t say He was, and neither does the book of Doctrine and Covenants.  But—and I’m hoping I speak for the majority here—I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out He is, especially considering that we believe marriage and family to be a central and necessary aspect of full happiness in the eternities.  So, (purely my own opinion) I personally think He probably is, but I don’t think anyone now living knows for sure.

Incidentally, one of my favorite things about believing in continuing revelation and modern day prophets is that I have a good deal of hope that questions like these will be answered in the future through a prophet.  We don’t have to claim to know everything about everything now because the gospel is living and being clarified and added to all the time. It’s a luxury that’s somewhat unique to being LDS, and I like it.

Exodus 20:8-11 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.”

The word Sabbath comes from the Hebrew verb shavat, meaning to cease or stop. The primary purpose of the Sabbath is to be a pause amid the constant rush of life: a day to stop and get your bearings. A day of rest, of course, doesn’t mean to lie around the house all day. The Sabbath is a day to worship God in church, to partake of the Lord’s sacrament, to visit friends and family, to read good books and hear good music. Because we are only instructed to “keep it holy,” every Mormon family observes the Sabbath a little differently. But there are some commonalities: it is not a day to play sports, for instance, or go shopping, go boating, or spend money. Some families choose to forego television or movies or other media, in favor of spending quality family time together.

The move from an agrarian society to an industrialized world has changed the appeal of the ancient practice of the Sabbath. For the majority of Mormons, at least in the United States, the change from weekday to the Sabbath is not quite, to borrow a phrase from Herman Wouk, “the old dramatic plunge from gloom, trouble, penury, and crisis to peaceful and graceful pleasure.” Rather than the much needed privilege of rest it has historically been, the Sabbath Day is now almost viewed as an inconvenience—a painful restriction on a day otherwise useful for work or recreation.

But by making a conscious decision to consecrate one day per week to your Creator, you can have what the Sabbath offers: a serene peace amid a crazy bustling world. I love my Sabbath. Admittedly, when I was a child, I saw it as a day of “can’t”—the only day I wasn’t allowed to play sports, or go swimming, or watch movies. But now I have come to need it. I’m so busy with school and work and an almost frantic need to have fun, the Sabbath has become an oasis of peace for me. You may ask: “How do you keep competitive in business, work, or school when you’re losing an entire day every week?” Here’s my answer: I’ve been doing this my whole life and it’s just the opposite. Sure, as a biochemistry researcher it’s often hard to delay or pause a multi-day experiment mid-run to observe the Sabbath. But whether as a function of the weekly restoration to mind and body, or as a blessing from God, I know that I’m more productive during the week for it, and I’ve never felt at a disadvantage. I’ve come to trust in the words of Isaiah:

Isaiah 58:13 “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:
Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

Do you feel like you don’t spend quality time with your family? Keep the Sabbath Day. Do you feel constantly overcome by deadlines? Keep the Sabbath Day. Are you tired of the frantic commercialism and materialism in the world? There’s no better way to escape a hectic life than donating one day of your week to the Lord. It works.

<<Part 1: The Word of Wisdom>>                   <<Part 2: The Law of Chastity>>

“And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

And it came to pass that so great was their faith and their patience that the voice of the Lord came unto them again, saying: Be of good comfort, for on the morrow I will deliver you out of bondage.” Moroni 24:15-16

I just find it interesting that part of the reason God chose to free those people so soon was because they were just so darned patient and cheerful about everything, while, on the other hand, their less patient countrymen suffered a lot longer and a lot more (go read that. It’s an interesting comparison). Their situations were so similar, and they were both asking for deliverance, but their respective attitudes made all the difference in how God chose to respond to them. It rather reminds me of when I was little and my mom would refuse to give me something until after I stopped whining for it and asked nicely.

So as a terribly impatient person, I have to wonder if sometimes the Lord is just waiting for me to chill out a little and stop being so insistent all the time. Not that I’m saying we shouldn’t ask for things, or even be diligent about it, but I think there’s a difference between being persistent and whining. Maybe it’s that cheerful submission to his will that the scripture was talking about. And maybe it’s also faith:

“Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His” –Elder Neal A. Maxwell (“Patience,” Ensign, Oct. 1980, 28).

That’s all. Just something to think about next time you need help escaping from slavery.

Most commandments of the church coincide with basic laws of goodness that are common to all churches: don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t do drugs, don’t split infinitives, etc. So I’ll just discuss some major commandments which may be different from other churches, starting with the Word of Wisdom:

Mormons don’t use alcohol, tobacco, coffee, or tea. This is definitely the one people most want to know about. It comes from a much more general law of health given by the Lord to Joseph Smith in 1833. The entire revelation can be found here. We call it the Word of Wisdom because it was given as “a word of wisdom…for the benefit of the saints in zion.” In addition to some guidelines on eating healthy, it says that strong drinks (alcohol) and tobacco are not for the body, and neither are “hot drinks,” which was later clarified to mean just coffee and tea. (And by “tea” I mean green or black tea.)

So after I tell people about the Word of Wisdom, almost everyone follows up with the question: “Why?” Everyone knows that smoking will give you cancer. But isn’t a little bit of alcohol okay, even beneficial? And what’s so bad about coffee and tea?

There are 7.3 million studies and 2.02 trillion opinions about “what’s so bad about alcohol/coffee/tea.” Most people want some scientific proof of exactly which compound does exactly what, but honestly, it all just boils down to faith. The Lord doesn’t often provide a clear why with His commandments. If you believe the Lord said it, then you’ll just have to trust Him. Frankly, He would know. In 1833, when this revelation was given, everyone smoked and chewed tobacco, and there was absolutely no evidence that anything was bad about that. People living the Word of Wisdom just had to take it on faith for 150 years, and lucky for the ones that did. No doubt one day we will know why, but until then it’s just a desire to do what the Lord wants.

And the Lord promises all kinds of great things for living the Word of Wisdom. Things like “health in their navel and marrow in their bones” (an interesting way to put it) and “wisdom and great treasures of knowledge.” And look, it works! According to studies by Dr. Enstrom of UCLA, active Mormons live 8 to 11 years longer than the national average, with about half the mortality rate from cancer and heart disease.

It’s also important to note that health is not the only reason the revelation was given. It was given “In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days…” In that sense, it’s a warning against addiction. There are plenty of drug traffickers and companies that make a lot of money by creating and preying upon the addictions of others.

Can Mormons drink caffeine? I thought you’d never ask! There is actually no commandment or prohibition against drinking Coke, Pepsi, or any other caffeinated soft drink. However, there are quite a lot of Mormons who don’t, just out of a personal conviction. Many consider any addictive substance like caffeine to be implicitly against the Word of Wisdom. Among my devout Mormon friends, there is a pretty big range, from people who have never had a Coke to people who can’t live without Dr. Pepper. So it’s something to be aware of.

<<Part 2: The Law of Chastity>>                   <<Part 3: The Sabbath Day>>