the mother and the messiah

As per Ingrid's request, here are some thoughts I had last year on the LDS faith and the female divine. I wrote a pape about it. It wasn't good. But it sure was heartfelt!!! Here are some of the broader ideas:

The Cherokee tell a creation story about the female divine, a sacred narrative that is central to their theology and identity. The story says that the Daughter of God loved her children and wanted them to be happy, so she provided delicious food for them, food from a miraculous place, food that came from nowhere. The children, being afflicted with the curiosity of humans, needed to know where the food came from. They decided to find out, and hid in the room where she produced the food. They watched from their hiding place as she performed the miracle: the food came from her body, freely and purely. ‘She’s a witch!’ the children cried. ‘We must kill her!’ But the Daughter of God knew that this was an essential step in their journey to happiness. ‘You can kill me,’ she said. ‘But when I am dead, bury my body in the ground, and I will still provide food for you.’ So the children killed their mother and placed her body in the earth. From the grave of their mother, corn grew, nourishing and essential for the Cherokee people. The children knew that this was a miracle that could only have come through their selfish human error and their mother’s loving sacrifice.

Why is this story so familiar and poignant to those of us who believe in Christ? A parallel will seem obvious: the Daughter of God is Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and who provided us with living bread after his physical death. Why, then, is this story so much more familiar and poignant to those of the Mormon faith? It is because the LDS doctrine is the only Christ-centered doctrine to be dependent on the idea of gender as a divine concept, and therefore, dependent on the idea of a real and vital Mother in Heaven. If the LDS Church believes in a Mother in Heaven, and the LDS message is one devoted to Christ, then those beliefs are related - the LDS Church recognizes and celebrates the necessity of the female divine in understanding Christ. This idea is expressed in the defining scripture of the LDS faith, the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon’s planned and purposeful inclusion of writings about female characters, as well as the text’s use of female language relating to Christ, are tools used to draw the reader to a greater understanding of female divinity, and therefore help the Book of Mormon function as another testament of Jesus Christ.