#Biblical motherhood

[biblical-happiness]

[heverything]

[traditionalists-life]

Be encouraged that being a mother is a ministry to the next generation! God will continue to place wonderful ideas on your heart and reveal how to best implement them.

[my-traditional-world]

Spending the day reading bible verses on family and nursey shopping cant be beaten

[thatgentlewife]

[bunnygrlchai]

I just want as many children as God will give me. I desire for a life where I can raise, teach and nurture my children. brushing their hair, getting them ready, homeschooling them, holding them when they cry and kissing their boo-boos.

[lilas-garden]

Source: sollybaby.com

[littleflowerfaith]

Mary, Queen of Peace

[sanctatrinitas]

They have Borne more children than the Gods Thyselves. It is too Late to drive Them out, They have already eaten your Pests. The Hunger drives one to Devour the Offal of whatever is small enough to kill. Temet nosce, it is only Natural for Old Things to cause pain.

[callmemrscarter]

I know Tumblr is a “blogging” space, but I’ve been doing some branching out.

I started a blog! Like, my own website kinda blog. And a YouTube channel ☺️

While I am documenting my journey as a Christian, wife, and mother, I’m in it for the fun of it and excited to see where it goes.

If you’re interested, you can find me here:

[tata1q3]

[pmamtraveller]

GASPAR DE CRAYER - THE JUDGEMENT OF SALOMON, 1620

The painting shows the biblical tale in which King Solomon settles a conflict between two women who both claim they are the mother of a child. The tension and emotional stakes of the moment are vividly conveyed in the scene. A Solomonic ruling indicates a wise choice in a challenging conflict.

King Solomon suggests splitting the baby in half so both women can have a share. In order to save her child's life, the biological mother is willing to hand the baby over to her competitor. She now discloses her actual identity as the mother and triumphs in the argument. This narrative resonates with any viewer highlighting the emotional stakes involved in motherhood and the lengths one would go to protect her child.

This artwork portrays the historical context of the Counter-Reformation in Flanders. In this era, the Catholic Church focused on moral stories to support its doctrines, with art playing a key role in communicating these messages. De Crayer, a well-known Flemish artist at the time, was heavily engaged in creating altarpieces and religious artworks that expressed ethical and spiritual teachings consistent with Catholic beliefs.

De Crayer's artistic approach changed over the years, starting off with Rubens' vigor in his early works and transitioning to Van Dyck's emotional intensity in his later pieces. This development is clearly seen in the gentler, more emotional characters in his later pieces, which stand out from the commanding demeanor of Solomon in this specific artwork. Commissioned for a courtroom in Ghent, the artwork served both a decorative and didactic purpose, reinforcing the ideals of wise governance and divine justice during a time when the Church sought to reaffirm its influence in society.

[my-traditional-world]

Thought some people might be interested

[thatgentlewife]

I’m so excited to bear his children 😊🌷

[ainsi-soit-il]

mormons are christians

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you, anon. There are some key theological points historically shared by the rest of orthodox Christianity that the LDS Church does not share with the rest of Christianity.

(What I am about to say here presumes that by "Mormons", you mean "LDS", since that's commonly how the term is used. I am less familiar with trinitarian Mormon groups such as the CoC, so I don't feel comfortable getting into all that here, and I feel like that's another post anyway.)

((I am also aware that my explanation may be misconstrued as me biting your head off. That's not my intention at all, and I apologize profusely if it reads that way. I've just done a lot of digging into LDS theology and history over the years, and I wanted to give a rundown of why I understand this issue in the way that I do.))

(((This is also about to get really long and unwieldy so. Apologies for that too.)))

The LDS Church teaches a fundamentally different view of the nature of God. Little-o orthodox Christianity is trinitarian. Not going to get into any biblical defenses of the Trinity here, because I feel like other people have explored it in much more depth, but suffice it to say this is a very old and long-accepted doctrine. Protestants, Catholics, etc. are all in agreement here.

By contrast, LDS theology uses the language of three separate beings united in one purpose. This is particularly apparent in the Book of Abraham, which refers to "the Gods organiz[ing] and form[ing] the heavens and the earth" (Abraham 4:1, emphasis mine). In addition, LDS theology depicts God the Father as an exalted man (see the King Follett Discourse for more on that) and ascribes a physical body to Him (D&C 130:22), which is unheard of in orthodox Christianity.

Furthermore, LDS theology teaches a fundamentally different relationship between God and His People. In orthodox Christianity, when we speak of God as our Father, there is an understanding that we are not His literal children in a biological sense (John 1:12-13). Instead, God being described as our Father is one of various images that He uses in order to communicate His love for His people. As another example of this kind of language in action He is also described as our Husband (e. g. Isaiah 54:5, Ezekiel 16:32, Hosea). This is because God's love for us is so vast and so deep and so complete that it is impossible to use just one analogy and encapsulate all of it perfectly. (I'd argue it's also because the magnitude of God's love is what makes all these other forms of love possible. We love because He first loved us, after all.)

In LDS theology, however, this Father-Child relationship language is not an analogy. It's literal. We are the biological spirit children of a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

The Heavenly Mother is another aspect of this that is very different from Christianity. In LDS Theology, God is held to be actually male, with a male body and a wife. In Christianity, God is neither male nor female. We may use masculine language to refer to God ("Father", "Son", "He", etc.), and Jesus chose to take the form of a human male, but Scripture also uses feminine language to describe God through the language of motherhood, childbirth and breastfeeding (e. g. Deuteronomy 32:18, Isaiah 49:15, Isaiah 66:13, Isaiah 42:14), and various orthodox Christian theologians have leaned into that language (Julian of Norwich, for example).

I say all that not out of sensationalism or because I want to showcase how "weird" I think LDS beliefs are. All religions are weird (and heck, all of human existence is weird, if we're really honest about it). All of that to say, I'm saying this because it's necessary background to the LDS conception of who Jesus is.

In LDS theology, Jesus is the eldest of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother's spirit children (and therefore, our elder spirit brother), who volunteered for the role of Savior in our preexistence. Satan is Jesus' younger spirit brother, who was cast out of Heaven for trying to take away humanity's free will. Jesus was later exalted to the status of godhood after His resurrection.

In the event that someone tries to claim I am making all this stuff up or misrepresenting LDS beliefs, the LDS Church is completely transparent about this aspect of their theology:

"Every person who was ever born on earth is our spirit brother or sister." (Spirit Children of Heavenly Parents)

"In harmony with the plan of happiness, the premortal Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Son of the Father in the spirit, covenanted to be the Savior. Those who followed Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ were permitted to come to the earth to experience mortality and progress toward eternal life. Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and 'sought to destroy the agency of man.' He became Satan, and he and his followers were cast out of heaven and denied the privileges of receiving a physical body and experiencing mortality." (Premortality)

"The Savior did not have a fulness at first, but after he received his body and the resurrection all power was given unto him both in heaven and in earth. Although he was a God, even the Son of God, with power and authority to create this earth and other earths, yet there were some things lacking which he did not receive until after his resurrection. In other words he had not received the fulness until he got a resurrected body" (Joseph Fielding Smith)

"And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; And thus he was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first. And I, John, bear record, and lo, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove, and sat upon him, and there came a voice out of heaven saying: This is my beloved Son. And I, John, bear record that he received a fulness of the glory of the Father; And he received all power, both in heaven and on earth, and the glory of the Father was with him, for he dwelt in him." (D&C 93:12-17).

Again--and I cannot stress this enough--my problem with this is not that I think it is "weird". I don't think it is exceptionally weird, and again, all religions are weird, including my own. Something being "weird" isn't enough to make it not Christian.

My issue is that this is significantly different than orthodox Christian theology. Orthodox Christian theology holds that Jesus is fully God, and has always been fully God, even as an embryo in Mary's womb. Again, fully willing to say that the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, God's neither-male-nor-femaleness, and Jesus being eternally fully God, even as an unborn baby, is all pretty bizarre.

Now, there are absolutely places where orthodox Christian denominations and theologians have disagreements about Jesus. Some of those questions are really significant ones too, like the whole miaphysitism vs. hypostatic union debate. But whatever disagreements we have, I am of the firm belief that the question of Jesus' divinity--that He was, is, and ever shall be God--is a pretty fundamental tenet of the Christian faith. For all of our squabbling, Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Wesleyans, Russian Orthodox, etc. have all taken that question very, very seriously. Once a religion leaves that behind, I have a hard time accepting that a member of said religion is a Christian.

I'll concede that in anthropological contexts, it's not incorrect to categorize the LDS Church as "Christian" for historical reasons. After all, various aspects of LDS practice and teaching can only be explained through the fact that Mormonism came about as a blending of various 19th century American beliefs with Second Great Awakening-era low-church American Protestantism.

And I also recognize that there are other Christians around here that would take a much broader theological stance over who is or isn't Christian than I do. But personally, looking at LDS theology and comparing it to the rest of orthodox Christianity, I would consider the LDS Church one of several American offshoots of Christianity dating to the 19th century rather than orthodox Christianity-proper.

[bunnygrlchai]

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