Just kidding. Glad you don’t feel pounced on.

And thus we see Kiskilili’s true heretical colors come through . . .

Next I’ll be claiming the Holy Spirit processes only from the Father and not the Son.

(Now I feel a bit like an Arian.)

And thus we see Kiskilili’s true heretical colors come through . . .

But do we view Jesus Christ less important than God? I don’t think so. We view them very differently. We pray to Heavenly Father. We worship Jesus Christ as our Saviour. Why don’t we pray to Jesus Christ? Is God more important than Jesus Christ? Are God and Jesus Christ not equal?

I actually think there’s a good case to be made that we do view Jesus as inferior and subordinate to God (especially pre-Resurrection)–Jesus submits to God’s plan to fulfill God’s purposes, not the other way around, and he does it for God’s glory. (Now I feel a bit like an Arian.)

This is the way I see how it is possible for women to be submissive but equal. Men and women are equally valuable as spirit children of God but different in their roles.

It sounds like you’re resolving the tension by saying women and men are equal in value but not necessarily equal in power. I don’t think this resolves it at all. If women are equally valued or equally capable or equally accountable, why aren’t they gave the same quality relationship with God?

It seems that more burden is being placed on women to create unity in marriage (by deferring their own needs or desires) than is being placed on men. This just doesn’t seem fair to me.

I covenanted to submit to my husband when he submits to God.

There are two ways of understanding the covenant–you submit to your husband when he submits to God, or you submit to your husband in the same way that he submits to God. Although I realize the former interpretation has become quite popular, I think everything in the context militates in favor of the latter–women are placed in a relationship to their husbands that their husbands are placed to God. In any case, why would women promise to submit to their husbands if the intent is that they actually submit to God? The husband has then become superfluous to the structure. Also, why should women have to wait until their husbands submit to God (as this text has it) before they themselves submit to God? There’s no way around it: women don’t have the same quality relationship with God that men do.

While Christ is wonderful and perfect, and I do worship him, I still don’t see the relationship between Heavenly Father and Jesus as one of equals. They are one in purpose because Christ will always submit to the will of the Father. He does this because, as Lynnette said, he is trying to learn, progress, and become more like the Father. He is still the child in their relationship, and he is learning from His Father’s greater experience. Some day (according to Mormon theology as I understand it, at least), Christ and His wife will create worlds of their own, where He will be the Father, and He will send one of his own children as the Savior of those worlds, and they will have a similar relationship, but this time Christ will be the Father.

Since my husband is not some perfect being with more experience than I have, whose role and abilities I would like to have later in the eternities (though he is pretty awesome), I just don’t see the relationships as parallel. My husband is not my parent, and I think this analogy just perpetuates the ideas that men are more adult and more responsible than women — an idea that I think is very harmful, for both sexes.

I’m also troubled by a model of unity which places the costs on only one member of the partnership, in which the wife has to give up her identity in the name of some greater good, but a similar requirement isn’t imposed on the husband. And if the ultimate goal is for both parties to follow God, I don’t understand why they don’t both covenant directly with God. One of the most empowering (and just cool) aspects of Mormonism, I think, is the notion that anyone can go directly to God and get answers; your relationship to him isn’t mediated by any other mortal. So it’s kinda painful to see that potentially undermined in the context of husband-wife relationships. For me, the statement that men and women are equally valued by God is cold comfort if I’m not sure that God also values having a direct relationship with each of them.