fun time poll [about Mormon teachings] for your midweek buzzuh

[stoney321]

It'll make sense in a minute. So, in doing rewrites, I'm punching up a little section about how Mormons aren't really Christians and why (because of how they view Christ as their literal brother and how any good Mormon can become a god, God was once a Mormon guy on another planet, etc. etc.) and remembered a story of when I learned in church how Jesus... came about. Ahem. Poll time!

[Poll #1614124]

So! This'll be fun to find out about. I remember it being VERY WEIRD that this old man was telling us all this story on the traditional "Christmas story" day of church. I was freaked out. Then he started crying, and honestly, that freaked me out more, how "beautiful" it was that this virgin was consummating her love of her god in such a way.

HOW ABOUT GOD JUST CRACKS HIS HEAD OPEN LIKE ZEUS DID THAT ONE TIME? A lot less trouble, imo. Boy Kitteh (Smudge) is perched on my shoulder awaiting your reply.

[ETA] Oh, and as always, please feel free to comment with why you voted the way you did, etc. etc. Discussion is the word of the day today!

Comments

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I don't know, considering in the christian version he magically force insaminated her, the concept of him actually physically raping her doesn't seem like such a stretch.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I think that the general consensus of how the insemination "happened" in the Christian world is just a magical handwave. Which, still, I agree with you that it's a crappy thing to do to someone engaged to another man. But that's never seemed to bug anyone in charge of Christianity. (Which is a whoooooooole 'nother kettle of worms.)

Thanks for participating!

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Wait..wait. Ok, I'm obvs. not a Xian, but I always understood that Mary wasn't engaged to Joseph until AFTER she got knocked up by god, and this was bc Joseph wanted to save her from whatever horrible shit happened to little girls who got knocked up outside of marriage back in the day. I didn't even think they were uh, dating.

What do I know. I'll be over here, making the goyishe nachas face.

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Me too!

I also always thought that he magically planted a fully formed tiny tiny tiny tiny baby in her, rather than getting down with some magical sperm. I mean, he's God, so he can do it however he wants.

This amused me when, years later, I discovered that no one saw how conception actually happened (under a microscope, I mean) until the 1820s, and before that people in the West thought that men shot hundreds of fully formed tiny tiny babies into women, who then baked them.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

ANd how he wanted was to smack it down, flip around, oh no!

...I know you don't know this, but my sister and I were talking about a creepy Japanese movie she's working on that has THIS VERY PLOT. But instead of tiny babies, they're alien geckos. That go in your nose and make you an alien gecko. o_0

(And the two stories aren't that different, huh?)

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

So, in this movie, are men shooting alien geckos out of their junk? Into people's noses? Because . . . okay no, that's still not as weird as god taking human form to get it on with Mary.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

I had to stop and remember the convo. So, these aliens have neck vaginas (of course they do) and they shoot out the alien babies that then invade noses. Like a weird sexual spin on Alien.

IT'S ALL SO WEIRD.

ALL OF IT. Alien geckos, baby Jesuses...

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

Wow. So now I'm imagining a sea horse type of alien doing the SHOOT THE BABIES deal and then, geckos.

Let me contribute more weirdness (because I love this stuff) - this is, honest to god, an anatomical drawing of a WOMB (http://link.library.utoronto.ca/anatomia/application/digobject.cfm?PlateNum=RBAI007-0028&book_id=RBAI007&plate_id=0028&size=0&query=Genitalia,%20Female&browsetype=Subject&startrow=11) done FROM OBSERVATION (after an autopsy). 1605. Because culture doesn't change what we see, nu uh, nope, not ever.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

Woooooooooooooooooooooow!

[kuzu-no-ha.livejournal.com]

For a very long time the female genatalia didn't actually fancy Latin names of their own. They were called the same as male. Because we were just crappy males with horrible humors being that we were too moist and too cold.

Oh, and the womb tended to wander around the body. fun times.

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

*speechless*

[blaueteufelin.livejournal.com]

No, Mary and Joseph were already 'betrothed' when God knocked her up. One of the Gospels says Joseph was planning to "put her away quietly" when he found out she was pregnant - have never understood what that meant, but I guess the gist was that he was going to break off the betrothal but in a nice way? I don't know. Anyway, then an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him he has to marry her because she's preggers with God's Son, yadda yadda.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Ack. It sounds more like "put her to sleep like a dog." :/

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Basically, it means that he would break off the betrothal without publicly stating that she was pregnant and he wasn't the father. Because if he made an issue of it--as would have been legal--Mary would be stoned to death for committing adultery, since, under the betrothal agreement, she was already all but married to Joseph.

One of the apocryphal gospels--the Gospel according to Thomas, I think, but I could be wrong--states that the woman taken in adultery in the "whichever of you is without sin, cast the first stone" story was Jesus's mother. And that this didn't happen when Jesus was grown up, but when he was a baby. And Baby Jesus spoke up and--in essence--told people not to stone his mother.

[cat-eyed-fox.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly there is a (totally apocryphal) story that Mary was actually raised in the Temple and she was so pretty and smart and awesome and clearly beloved of G-D the Rabbis got all the widowers together and said "one of you gentlemen will have to marry this holy woman to keep her safe, so quick, someone catch this staff!" and Joseph grabbed the stick and married Mary. I can't remember if she was pregnant yet, but it was more of "what do we do with this holy woman?" since there weren't any nunneries around.
It is generally agreed that Joseph was much older and previously married, which is where the "Jesus' brothers and sisters" comes from. Because goodness forbid men think a holy woman can also have sex after giving birth to a God Child. Madonna or WHORE folks, you can't have both.

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Never heard that story, interesting.

It is generally agreed that Joseph was much older and previously married, which is where the "Jesus' brothers and sisters" comes from.

That's generally agreed in Catholic tradition, not so much in Protestant circles.

[cat-eyed-fox.livejournal.com]

Well Catholics are so dedicated to their cult of Mary (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) that the idea of her not being a perpetual virgin might break their little male heads.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I think it's a crappy thing to do to anyone. In no version of the story Maria is asked if she wants to donate her uterus to the cause, she's just told. All these skydaddy religions end up being crap for women, sometimes more, sometimes less.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

No, Gabriel comes to Mary (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%201:26-38&version=NIV) and says, "you will become pregnant", not "you are already pregnant". In my long-ago (pre-Roe v. Wade) Catholic schooling, it was emphasized that Mary *chooses* to bear Jesus, that he is not in any way forced upon her. Pictures of the Annunciation were meant to remind us of Mary's *choice* to accept God's plan.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Telling her "you will this and that" is not giving her a choice or asking her consent, it's just informing her about what's going to happen.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

That's not how it was presented to me in Sunday School, and we're talking before 1972, here. We were instructed to admire Mary because Gabriel told her what God wanted and she *agreed*, she gave it her free will. This included sermons about how she could have chosen to say No, how it would have been the smart thing to do in a practical, worldly sense.

And it was definitely also emphasized that she didn't just agree to go along with something that was already happening. It was a really big part of the cult of Mary, as I was taught to understand it.

What denomination/decade were you raised in?

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

Roman Catholic, rural Austria, in the 80ties, but I left the church on my 18th birthday and I never looked back.

Most of the stuff they taught us seemed so tremendously unjust to me and when I read the bible on my own to get the whole story I knew that I never could believe in such petty creature as the old testament god having any power over me without dispairing.

Sorry, I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I regard the bible as a literary text and if that happened in any other book, I'd just feel bad for Mary, because while she doesn't object no one asks for her opinion on the matter either.

I see why one would want to change that into her having a choice once such a thing as a woman's will became an issue for our society. And I don't see why people should not believe she had a choice if it makes them feel better.

It's just to me it's only a text and I have no incentive (like say a believe that god is a good being) to interpret it other than straight from the page.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

(I just wanted to pop in and say thanks for being so lovely in such a potentially heated discussion. I always believe people should be honest with their beliefs, but I do also like it when you can put it out there in a nice way. Even though I don't, lol.)

[lurkeriatipsos.livejournal.com]

At least in the New Testament, it was CONSENSUAL!!!!
(At least, I'm assuming that's what the "Behold I am the handmaid of the LORD. Be it done unto me according to Thy Will" business was about.)