Sisters Speak
What's God Like?

Our Sisters Speak question this time asks, What do you think God is like? How much was this idea influenced by your father? by the Church? by reading the scriptures? Does recognizing where your idea of God comes from change your thoughts about Him at all?

Sharon Vasicek
Karon Besselievre
Rhoda W. Thurston
Emma Lou Thayne
Our Next Question
Readers Survey

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Our first response comes from Sharon Vasicek of Westfield, Massachusetts:

My husband, four children, and I always watch a holiday movie together during the Christmas season, and this year we opted to see one we hadn’t for quite a while – the version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott playing Ebenezer Scrooge. It was like watching it for the first time.

I had forgotten, or not noticed, that Scrooge’s father disowns Ebenezer at an extraordinarily young age, holding him responsible for the death of his mother in childbirth. In a flashback scene, this father barely tolerates the presence of his son, now all grown and prepared to begin his life’s work in business. His sister, Faye, is entirely responsible for whatever conciliatory father-son accommodation is made. While watching the movie this year, I realized that the bitter and horrible Scrooge who bah-humbugs Christmas, Bob Cratchit, and virtually everyone else had zero experience with paternal or maternal affection.

In the midst of the season, when I sort through my disorderly, disappointing, discomfiting mess of a relationship with my own parents, it felt entirely therapeutic to watch this drama unfold. My birth did not bring my mother to her death bed, but any eighth child born to even a healthy woman in her late thirties might throw her for a loop. My mother probably staved off insanity by working full-time as a registered nurse, where on the night shift she could be assured a few moments of peace and quiet. No doubt she loved me as she loved each of her children, but she created a situation where, at best, she coped with me with precious little eye contact, conversation, hugs, or kisses. She was like the living dead to me.

My father isolated himself daily in his home office after teaching school. We could have lived a thousand years in the same house and never gotten better acquainted. 

I always knew who God was. Ours was a home where we talked with Him in prayer twice a day and read scriptures, a chapter a day. We completed the standard works more than once at the breakfast table during the seventeen years before I left for college. I probably talked more with God at home than I did with either of my parents. I knew God was my friend, but my parents were nothing to be sure of. 

Not surprisingly, my father’s descriptions of God seemed very much like himself. Dad described the ancient Israelites as ingrates and blockheads. Hadn’t God liberated them? According to my father, God is certainly a jealous and angry and justly vengeful God. 

My father probably put a lot of stock in that interpretation of the God of the Old Testament; he was known to beat, yell at, and criticize his children at will – his will. He said that he punished us because he loved us – a statement that could have been meat and potatoes for a truly enriching discussion, but conversation was out of the question because most ideas not his own were viewed as attacks. 

And he retaliated.

Enter Scrooge, the old, tired, and lonely man – his mother a dim, if non-existent memory; his father a bitter disappointment. All at once, I saw myself in the video: me, eking out my measure of kindness toward my loved ones; me, bitter and emotionally distant and sad during the extended family months of November and December. I also saw my father in Scrooge’s face and character and watched breathlessly as he was transformed. Couldn’t I do the same? Could even my father do likewise?

My soul is riveted to these particular scriptures, which tell me that there are real solutions to these long-standing, seemingly impenetrable problems:

Be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. And will be your Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. 

Leviticus 26:12 and 2 and Corinthians 6:16-18 are my back-up guarantee that whatever direction or action my parents take, I have a Father and a family, with or without my family of origin.

Matthew 17:14-21 describes how the disciples failed to cast out an evil spirit that Jesus successfully expels. Jesus said that this kind of healing requires much fasting and prayer. It occurs to me that year 2000 has twelve designated fast Sundays, so why not dedicate them to my cause?

Knowing I can say nothing to change my parents’ intolerance of my ideas and knowing that my powerlessness is not God’s powerlessness, I can regularly – even conveniently – ask God for miracles. I can imagine another Jacob, not Marley, but the father of the children of Israel, visiting my father to warn him of the dangers of playing favorites among his children. Maybe Dad can have a vision of his own neglected grave, neglected by the very people who would be attentive if he were more genuinely attentive to them. Maybe he can be shown the real meaning of his life’s experiences because I do believe that he, like Ebenezer Scrooge, was once abandoned and mistreated long before I was in the picture.

Having survived my holiday season bout with the extended family miseries, I expect little to change between me and Dad right away. The best I can hope for is change in the long term. Hence, it is best to accept the cross-country distance between us as a blessing. 

What I do have is a sense, emanating from the scriptures and through prayer, of a Father who really knows how to love me, day by day, year in and year out. Even as I mess up and play out my Scrooge-like behaviors and tendencies, I know my father – our common Father – really does love me.

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Karen Besselievre of Columbus, Ohio, describes how her image of God changed over the years:

When I was growing up, my image of God was my image of my father – remote, threatening, negative, and judgmental. God would never find anything positive in me because I could never be perfect. The minister of the church that I was raised in was similarly remote and very patriarchal. 

I struggled with my image of God because I had been raised to look to God for answers to problems and seek comfort from Him. However, when I did have problems, my image of God was not very comforting. He was uncaring and did not have time for me. 

I was able to make the connection in my mind that I saw God as being like my father; therefore, I knew I had to very consciously change my image of God. I had to come up with an image of an accepting, loving, and interested God. This was very hard to do.

I did not have many positive male role models to help me build an image of a positive and loving God. My grandfather was the only man I could even consider basing my image of God on. I felt that he cared about me, but he was so busy caring for my grandmother, who had had a stroke, that he could not help me.

I married at age 19, had a baby, and went back to college. My babysitter happened to be a Mormon. She talked about the Church but was not pushy. I was thrilled with the idea of a Mother in Heaven. I was concerned that the blacks could not hold the priesthood, but I was led by the spirit to know that they would be able to within ten years of my joining the church. I joined in June 1976.

The idea that a god could be a mother – an idea that was validated by a large organized church – was the beginning of my journey of changing my image of God. My mother had always accepted me and encouraged me. She helped me and supported me in whatever I wanted to do. She gave me unconditional acceptance.

By thinking of having heavenly parents, I was able to incorporate my mother’s love and acceptance into my image of God. Thus my image of God became one of a loving and caring person who was interested in me just as I was.

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The following are excerpts from Rhoda W. Thurston’s letter about the influence of her father and others on her concept of God:

My memories of my father’s teachings and his example of humble, honest living greatly influenced my concept of what God is like. 

He immigrated to America from Switzerland when he was fifteen years old with his family as converts to the Church. At age 19 he met and married my mother in the Logan Temple in 1894. They pioneered in the Bear Lake, Idaho, area, where their first child was born. They moved to Logan, where more children were born. He was called on a mission to return to Switzerland when they had four children. He filled a fruitful, honorable mission. When he returned, they moved to ten acres of rocky land in North Logan, where they planted a garden and an orchard. Since I was their fourteenth child, I came into a home of much industry, including their work in the Church as teachers of religion and priesthood class and Relief Society work. 

I was born in 1915. The proclamation of the Church, when it changed its doctrine of the Father and Son June 30, 1916, greatly upset my father. He preferred Joseph Smith’s revelation of who the Father and the Son were: 

"Commencing with Adam, who was the first man, who is spoken of in Daniel as being the ‘Ancient of Days,’ or in other words, the first and oldest of all, the Great Grand progenitor of whom it is said in another place he is Michael, because he was the first and father of all, not only by progeny, but the first to hold the spiritual blessings, to whom was made known the plan of ordinances for the salvation of his posterity unto the end, to whom Christ was first revealed, and through whom Christ has been revealed from heaven, and will continue to be revealed from henceforth. Adam holds the keys of the dispensation of the fulness of times; i.e., the dispensations of all the times that have been and will be revealed through him from the beginning to Christ, and from Christ to the end of all the dispensations that are to be revealed."

My idea of God has also been influenced by a 17th century theologian named John Owen, whose descriptions of God echo our own:

"It is a most glorious truth, though considered but by few, that believers have, or may have, distinct communion with the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. . . . 

"God must be revealed as lovely and desirable, as a fit and suitable object unto the soul to set up its rest upon, before we can bear any love unto him.

"Let, then, this be the Saints first notion of the Father – as one full of eternal, free love towards them: let their hearts and thoughts be filled with love breaking through all discouragements that lie in the way.

"And it is such a love – wherein he seeks not his own satisfaction only, but our Good also – the love of a God, the love of a Father, whose proper outgoings are kindness and bounty.

"It was from eternity that he laid in his own bosom a design for our happiness. . . .

"His love is not ours in the sweetness of it until it be so received. Continually, then, act thoughts of faith on God as love to thee – as embracing thee with His eternal free love.

"When the Lord is, by his word, presented as such unto thee, let thy mind know it, and assent that it is so, and let thy will embrace it and all thy affections be filled with it. . . ."

As LDS I hope we can be recognized as the family of Adam and Eve. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ, our destiny is godhood for Adam and Eve’s sons and daughters.

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Emma Lou Thayne has chosen to address the Sister’s Speak question for her column this issue by sharing with us the letter she wrote to her grandson when his beloved cat died. Michael’s letter to her inquiring about God and her response to him appear on the next two pages.

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Our Sister’s Speak question for the next issue comes from Robin Baker, a member of Exponent II’s board, of Belmont, MA:

Twenty-five years ago, when Exponent II was just getting started, there was much to accomplish for women – both in the Church and in the world. My daughters grow wide-eyed when I explain that when I was a girl, pants were forbidden at school in my California hometown. They also gape in amazement when I divulge that only men were allowed to pray in Sacrament Meeting when I was younger. They have no concept of my childhood reality – how a huge preponderance of books had boys as heroes or how the "generic" pronoun "he" was assumed to refer to everyone. They take multiple last names within families for granted, and they expect to select the career of their dreams, unhampered by gender limits. They have little appreciation for the symbolic importance of "homemaking" meetings being relabeled as "enrichment," or the prophet of the Church quoting scripture in a gender-inclusive way at conference.

Twenty-five years ago, the women of Exponent had a noble cause and a passion of pursue it. Today I wonder whether my LDS women peers feel as compelled to change the state of affairs. Are we less interested in changing the world and more interested in fitting into the Church? Are we so focused on trying to manage jobs and family that we have no time for other pursuits? Has the cause now shifted? What issues now burn for women in the Church? Are we dealing with these issues in new ways?

This perspective may be a function of my age and the needs of my young family. But the world is also different now. Information comes almost instantaneously over the Internet. People can stay connected in new ways with e-mail and chat rooms. People seem to read less and obtain their information in new ways. 

The Church atmosphere also seems different. For instance, members used to worry less about reading thoughtful "alternative" Mormon publications. 

We’re curious about how Exponent readers believe these fundamental shifts affect both the paper – and their interest in it. While it’s wonderful to let women’s voices be heard, should Exponent II be speaking about new topics or sharing in new ways?

We want to know if Exponent II is an important part of your life. We have provided a survey (see below) that addresses this issue and hope that you will fill it out and return it to us. However, we know that some of you will want to express your ideas in more detail in this column, and that others will want to read a sampling of what Exponent readers think about the future of the newspaper. You can also express your ideas and feelings in Exponent’s Internet chat room (http://sites.netscape.net/exponent2) [Note from Webmaster: that site is no longer active]. 

Please send us your Sister’s Speak responses by June 1.

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Reader's Survey

Over the past several years, subscriptions and submissions to Exponent II have fallen significantly enough for the Exponent II board to want to examine the reason(s) why. We have had several board meetings discussing the possible reasons. We have some ideas, but we feel that we need to know what our current readers think as well as those who are no longer subscribing. We are including the following reader's survey in this issue of Exponent II. We ask that you help us understand your preferences so that we can work to publish a paper that meets your interests. We will also be conducting a telephone survey with some former subscribers to find out why they no longer subscribe. Feel free to photocopy this survey, or if you feel that you want to answer these questions in more depth, please use another piece of paper, or consider addressing the Sisters Speak question or engaging in a discussion on our website.

1. How long have you subscribed to Exponent II?

2. Circle your age range: 15-25, 25-35, 35-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65+

3. Are you Mormon? Do you consider yourself to be active in the Church?

4. Does the magazine fit your lifestyle and expectations? Are the articles and essays relevant to your life?

5. What aspects of the paper do you enjoy the most? the least?

6. In what ways could the paper be more interesting to you? What changes would you make to the paper? Would you be interested in an electronic format?

7. What topics or issues would you like to see addressed in the paper?

8. Do many of your friends subscribe? Why or why not?

9. Do you lend your newspaper to others or recommend to others that they subscribe? Has anyone subscribed based on your recommendation/introduction?

10. Have you considered writing for the paper? Can we call and ask you for a contribution?

Please send your responses by e-mail (ExponentII@aol.com) [Note from Webmaster: That e-mail address is no longer valid. You can reach Exponent II at editor@exponentii.org.] or to Exponent II, P.O. Box 128, Arlington, MA 02476-0002.

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