My four year-old daughter Julia is quite adept at manipulating her parents. Unfortunately for her, she hasn’t yet learned how to keep her methods secret.
At one recent dinnertime, I made the mistake of giving Julia something she was pitching a fit over (another roll, perhaps?) without making her stop her little tantrum and ask for it politely. I wasn’t trying to simply shut her up, since I would have given it to her if she had asked in a pleasant manner, but I should have taken the time to correct her behavior before complying with her request. As it was, she learned the wrong lesson: a few minutes later, she turned to my wife Kristen and said, “Mommy, guess what? I screamed and cried and then Daddy gave me another roll.”
Another trick that my daughters have learned is to ask the other parent when one parent doesn’t give permission to do something. Kristen and I try to present a united front to the kids, but sometimes it just doesn’t work, usually because I am unaware of what has transpired at home during the day. For example, Jaymie, my seven year-old daughter, might come up to me and ask for a piece of paper to draw on. This is a common request, and I usually give her one without thinking. However, it happens often enough that Kristen has told the girls not to draw until after dinner, or until after some task has been completed, but I am unaware of the restriction, so I unwittingly undermine my wife’s authority.
Since Kristen and I don’t communicate telepathically, these breakdowns occasionally occur, and when they do, our kids learn that instead of obeying their parents, they can sometimes get away with asking the other parent, and thus receive parental sanction for what would otherwise be a forbidden activity. This is not a lesson we want our kids to learn, and we work hard to avoid situations where they might receive mixed messages from us. Still, Kristen ends up playing the bad cop to my good cop sometimes, and I know my girls have noticed this.
As I reflected on the difficulties of acting in unison with my wife despite our best intentions, my thoughts turned to my relationship with my Heavenly Parents. I don’t generally worry myself with questions about my Heavenly Mother, but it occured to me that if I were to have petitionary access to Her via prayer, I might unintentionally learn the wrong lessons about prayer and my relationship with Deity, much like my own children sometimes do in their relationships with me and Kristen.
The problem would be a bit different, of course. Our problem as parents is that we do not know perfectly what our spouses are thinking and intending, so we sometimes err as parents. Our problem as children is that we do not always interpret signals from our Heavenly Parents correctly. Presumably, our Heavenly Parents are united in purpose and will. However, our own apprehension of that will is imperfect.
Suppose I prayed regularly to both my Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. I might address one more often than the other, say Heavenly Father. Perhaps some of my most heartfelt petitions would go seemingly unanswered for a time as They waited for me to work some solutions out for myself. In frustration or desperation I might turn to my Mother for additional assistance. Suppose I were to get what I felt to be an answer only after doing so, even though receiving that answer is in reality more or less independent of who I pray to. I might mistakenly conclude that my Heavenly Mother understands me better and is more loving and more willing to grant blessings, even though this is not the case at all. My feelings for Her might take on a different character from my feelings for my Heavenly Father. In an extreme case, I might reject Him altogether as an uncaring, unfeeling God. Others might have similar experiences. Who knows, we might even form our own church.
This may be a commonplace observation, and it certainly does not account for all, or even most of the reasons that we know so little of our Heavenly Mother (I don’t claim to know any of the reasons, mind you). It’s an interesting little thought experiment, nonetheless.
Ah, how would it be to play good cop for a change…
My strategy might be very similar to our Heavenly Parents’ strategy, although entirely by coincidence. When one of my children ask for something, my first, unthinking, knee-jerk response is “go ask Mommy”. Forwarding all requests through one nexus relieves the potential of inadvertenly undermining one another.
On the other hand, it is true that sometimes, I take some wicked delight in undermining my wife. If she is having a bad day and irrationally refusing a child’s request (no doubt, because she is frazzled and worn out from the volume of requests that have been forwarded to her), I will occasionally announce in a loud voice “OK, ice cream for everyone in 5 minutes!”
This irritates my wife, from which I derive perverse pleasure, but it also turns the full attention of the entire household onto Daddy, and gives her a chance to reboot, (and thus, the reason to justify my actions).
…and, she has no compunction about doing the same thing to me, except when she does undermines me, she does not announce it in a loud voice, but she does it “secretly”, so that “Daddy won’t know”.
Ah yes… the dysfunctional Mormon family.
Bryce, you make an interesting point about Heavenly Mother and the unity of will. I had always supposed we don’t know much about Her because Heavenly Father was extremely protective of Her and didn’t want anybody to take Her name in vain. There are probably other reasons that are two speculative to bring up even in this forum.
Bryce, I think this is a very interesting idea. If we actually imagine a setup where we are invited to pray to more than one deity, we realize how quickly we could set our Gods up in opposition to each other. Each would come to represent different things, each would take on a kinder or more just persona, and suddenly, the Gods have their owns sets of followers and constituencies. Given that God’s house is a house of order, his single-conduit system makes a lot of sense.
Bryce, this is very interesting. I hadn’t thought too much about why we don’t worship/speak of our Heavenly Mother beyond the protection issue Geoff mentioned. Thank you for making that connection.
I suspect that by definition exalted Beings are formidable personalities and that none of them need to be “protected.” Occasionally I’m tempted to speculate as to why we don’t know much about Heavenly Mother, but I usually back away from the whole thing due to such a lack of information to base speculation upon.
I don’t think that the ‘need for protection’ is the only way of looking at it. I got from my father a tendency to fly off the handle when my kids sass their mother. I’m not saying that such is the case with God, but I am saying that there may be something to the ‘don’t expose Mother in Heaven to brickbats’ angle that may have more to do with notions of what kind of respect and treatment is due her rather than notions of protection. Frankly, I don’t know.
When my little stepdaughter was 4 years old, (we had custody), I got put out with her and threatened her with a spanking. “Is you gonna spank me or is Dad gonna spank me?”
“I am!” And she visibly relaxed.
My daughter told me today that a spanking from me didn’t mean anything, but if Dad did it, it meant business.
I thought I was pretty mean, but I guess they weren’t as scared of me as I thought.
I suspect our prayers to the Father could be heard by the Mother too whether we know it or not. It was only after I realized that all my prayers to the Father were equally heard and responded to by the Son that I began to feel an actual relationship with Christ. Before then it was the Father who I gave credit for all those comforts, answers, revelations, etc. When I realized Christ was in on all of it I suddenly realized I might have been slighting him. So if the prayers to the Father can be equally heard by the three members of the Godhead, it is entirely (at least theoretically) possible that their oneness could extend, at least in some degree, further. (Yes, I know this is pure speculation — forgive me if it freaks anyone out…)
Adam G.,
Whether mother-in-heaven needs to be shielded from scorn, or whether Heavenly Father is extra touchy about someone criticizing his spouse-in-heaven — I agree with you that we just don’t know. To me, these sound like speculations that don’t really account for the strength, power, omniscence and charity of exalted beings. But my gut instinct is that Heavenly parents could patiently and justly handle just about anything their spiritual children could dish out.
I think the real problem with the mother-in-heaven question is that maybe there is more than one of them. We just don’t know. If someone wanted to suggest this is the case (again I have no idea) then the question of praying to a mother-in-heaven would become even more complicated and problematic. How would we differentiate between them (by name?). If we tried to fully confront and grapple with these questions and the answer was some kind of celestial polygamous order — the Mormon religion would become way too complicated and its appeal would be greatly diminished in the world. It’s interesting that D&C 132:27 specifically describes the celestial status of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob but doesn’t specifically state the final status of their wives and “concubines”. My feeling is that D&C 132 is not trying to show any disrespect for Sarah, Hagar, Keturah, Rebekah, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah or Zilpah. But perhaps D&C 132 is avoiding raising this issue in the minds of the Saints. Why am I bringing it up then? I guess because I dislike the traditional speculations on the matter.
What we know of Sarah, Hagar, Leah and Rachel marks each of them as distinctive and powerful women who received personal revelations. We know less about Keturah, Bilhah and Zilpah, but I am willing to bet each was formidable in her own way as well. I am sure that a Mother in Heaven would exemplify a superior version of the very best characteristics of these wives of the patriarchs.
The Catholic practice of praying to the Virgin Mary provides a pretty good test case for your suppositions, Bryce.
Rosalynde, I’m not sure that the Catholic practice of praying to Mary is a good fit for my little scenario. There is a well established tradition of praying to saints in the Catholic Church; that tradition has not significantly challenged their understanding of Deity, as far as I can tell.
That said, you bring up an interesting point. I’ll have to think about it.
“Whether mother-in-heaven needs to be shielded from scorn, or whether Heavenly Father is extra touchy about someone criticizing his spouse-in-heaven — I agree with you that we just don’t know. To me, these sound like speculations that don’t really account for the strength, power, omniscience and charity of exalted beings.”
This is a very good point. It’s certainly reasonable to assume that Celestial women and men are equal, just as mortal men and women are equal. It’s possible, then, that the decision to emphasize our Heavenly Father and not our Heavenly Mother was a joint decision made by both parents, rather than by one parent wishing to protect the other.
[Warning, speculation ahead:] And since our Heavenly Parents preside over many worlds (see Elder Maxwells talk in the film “Witnesses of Christ”) it may be possible that some worlds are spiritually advanced enough to handle a joint emphasis on both a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother. It goes without saying that our world is not one of those worlds, of course. On this world, even the suggestion that a Heavenly Mother exists elicits cries of blasphemy and consternation. Perhaps in a world dominated by Goddess worship, the idea of a Heavenly Father would be so far outside the mainstream that our Heavenly Parents, in their infinite wisdom, would decide to emphasize the female half of their partnership rather than the male half.
But like everyone else I’d just like to emphasize that this is pure speculation. The Prophet and Apostles may come out with a statement tomorrow that would contradict everything I just said, and that would be just fine with me 🙂