thread: 2007-02-13 : Exorcism
On 2007-02-13, Brand Robins wrote:
Vincent,
I did, as a matter of fact, know about the baptism by fire—and the constant debate as to if it is an event or a process. It's one of those amusing things that I watched with the same sort of smile on my face that I reserved for the questions of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, even at my most faithful. Like the Adam/God issue or the "Adam as God's best friend from God's mortal life being given a second chance in this world" issue, I just couldn't take it seriously either way.
The Heavenly Mother thing is one that I find most unfortunate. My mother, when she converted to the church at 16 (the only missionary baptism in the Bismark North Dakota mission in 2 years, and she walked herself in after reading the Book of Mormon to prove it was false and discovering that she believed it) was told that Heavenly Mother was watching over her and had a special relationship with her. Girls don't get told that anymore. Instead they get to see the boys get the authority of God, while they get prepared to have children and be good mothers and wives.
My mother also always used to teach her Behives that there are, of course, multiple Heavenly Mothers and that its only logical that we know it. After all there would have to be a Heavenly Mother for God to become God (no 3rd Celestial level without temple marriage, yo) and that he would also have been bound to Mary mother of Jesus (no impregnating women you aren't married to, yo) and so has at least two wives that we know of through simple logical deduction. The girls always reacted to that with a bit of shock, but eventually thought it was kinda funny. Notably, many of them told their parents this and their parents had the same shock—as they'd never thought about it. Most born in the faith grandparents, otoh, didn't have that shock as they'd been taught that stuff when they were kids.
And no, my mother never got into trouble for it. Or even had anyone in the stake tell her she was wrong. In general my family didn't have that problem.
As for the "angel on one should, devil on the other" I was brought up to believe that was specifically false, or at best metaphorical. See, I never even heard about the whole "devil companion" until I got told it by a weird Utah Mormon that had just moved to the ward when I was 11 or so. When I asked my dad about it he rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, priesthood holders and the baptized get tempted a lot. We're targets for it—but we don't have a constant devil on our backs. The Holy Ghost is our companion, devils are just trials that come and go."
Its funny, because my father is a very devote and faithful man, but he's not a superstitious one. Much of the time he talks about devils more in terms of metaphor than actuality. There were a couple times where that was different, though he never told me the full story I think he did actually do a full out really real LDS exorcism once upon a time, and because of that was never able to take the lesser "get rid of a bad mood" exorcism seriously. When once upon a time I asked him how I would know if something was a devil or just a trial or a bad mood he told me something to the effect of "if you aren't in mortal terror for your soul or your life, it probably isn't a literal devil."
