I just finished reading a book about Vietnam written by my nevermo biological father. The book is certainly not preachy but is lightly peppered with references to God. I was struck by his characterization of God as a loving, and compassionate entity.

I'm not one to discuss religious beliefs anywhere but on this board. So I have never been exposed with any kind of depth to the notion of a loving supportive diety.

In contrast I was raised in an exceedingly adherent tbm family. The God I was raised on was angry, vengeful and unable to be pleased with anything less than perfection. As a child I remember thinking that spending eternity with a mean diety was no great reward or blessing.

How much of the angry characterization is a reflection of mormonism, how much is a reflection of my parents extremism? I'm not asking for a debate on the existence of God, only on your recollections of teachings on his nature.

What's been your experience?

To me it seemed god would become loving when loving is what would get me to do what adults wanted, and god became displeased whenever I needed to be shamed into compliance. The chameleon god

If yours is the usual mormon experience, then it explains why I was only exposed to the angry god. Shame was my parents motivation of choice. I was no easy LDS child to raise. So perhaps they ramped him up to keep me in line.

All hail to chameleon god and to his colorful son Raptor Jesus.

Me, I was usually under the impression that the Mormon God was perfectionistic, controlling, wrathful, and manipulative.
Even if the Mormon God exists, why should we worship a being that is like that?

A lot of what I was exposed to as a TBM was a loving God. That was my experience at home as well as in church for the most part. Also I've went to a fair amount of education week and stuff with the professional LDS speakers. These speakers focus very heavily on a loving God. For example people like Brad Wilcox & Kenneth Cope really stress this - they almost seem to be trying to change the culture.

I've also seen in the culture that most people in the wards I had been in felt that god was very benevolent and was guiding their lives and making a lot of good things happen.

I'd also always been taught that Christ/God are loving and want to have a personal relationship with me via prayer and spiritual experiences.

With that said there are still all the references in the scriptures about how we are going to be judged by god. The things like few will enter and if you make a mistake all your sins come back.

So there were both sides - on the one hand god was loving - on the other he is judgmental. I guess the way I understood it was that god loved us he just couldn't tolerate any sin and so we had to be cleansed of the sin first.

So to me I always saw a lot of the grace of Christ in what I understood to be the gospel.

That was just my experience personally.

Have you ever seen the picture they have of Jesus where if you cover up one side of his face and he looks loving and peaceful, but when you cover the other side you see a completely different expression, a stern face? Apparently tbms believe in a god with multiple personalities ;-p

Yep the whole Judeo-Christian God is pretty much bi-polar.

Thank you so much for your feedback. It seems the experience is pretty varied among us. I envy bc's exposure, but instead found myself giving up and taking hellrazor's approach. I never had a shot at receiving everlasting forgiveness. The "miracle of forgiveness" seemed more oppressive than miracle.

I was just surprised that the idea of a loving, forgiving, diety was actually a Christian belief. FormerLatterClimber the picture in our house was always the stern Christ. My parents lectures always invoked stern Christ and how unthinking I was to force his additional suffering. I was always tender hearted and hated the idea of making anyone suffer especially Jesus. Shame and guilt are powerful motivators that ultimately tear us apart from within.

I never did like the Mormon god either. His obssession with underwear and masturbation was creepy, to say the least.

Guilt, judgement and shunning are the Mormon god's tools for dealing with malcontents like myself. I couldn' see an upside.

No matter what you do, or don't do, it's never ever enough.

The endless demands entwined with guilt and filled with resentment and clothed with a sheer layer of smiles and agreeability.

I just couldn't go along with a God that wanted all of us humans to live a life that was so mentally and spiritually bankrupt.