Women, Men, and God

I replied to a friend's post with the following comment. I think it is important enough to share here. We were talking about women, and she was saying she had always thought it was a triangle - man-woman-God - and was wondering if, perhaps, she had been wrong,  and it was linear - woman > man > God.

I read what I had written, and felt it was something important. I felt as though the information came through me, not from me. In any case, here it is (with a link to the video mentioned):

Somewhere in my LDS training, I got the idea that a married woman was supposed to stop going to the Lord directly, and rely on her husband to do so. I believe it was the original temple covenant that taught me this. Being as faithful as I knew how, I gave up much of my mind and spirit to a very unkind man when I got married. (By the way, he agreed that I should give this up; he was delighted to "be as the Lord" to me.)

I don't believe this any longer, and I am frustrated when I come across things that seem to show me that a woman must obey "the priesthood" or "leadership" (whether her spouse or some other male) at the expense of following what the Spirit has or is directly telling her - or that a woman is supposed to give up her relationship with the Lord because she now has a spouse to fulfill that role for her.

In another thread, there was a link to the temple conference. I have listened to Margaret Barker's presentation at least three times. The point of her message is that the groves that were destroyed in the Old Testament, according to nonBiblical sources, were not Canaanite idols, but were part of the form of worship of the fathers (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and Melchizedek). In the purge, they also took out all evidence of a female deity, and had it burned.

What this shows me is that there is a lie perpetuated on this planet, and it has been going on for thousands of years. It is a suppression of the female aspect of God, and she is called Wisdom, according to Margaret Barker. If we, females, had this knowledge restored to us, perhaps we would not have this issue. We would know it was no sin to go directly to God, with no human (male or female) between us and God, whether we were married or not.

Margaret Barker also said that the early Christians had this knowledge.

If this knowledge was restored through Joseph Smith, we don't have it. Perhaps that is one of the things he did not ask about, or one of the things that would cause the people to kill him if they knew. Women were property in JS's day.

And this ties in with the original topic of the thread. Would we have recognized the Messiah? If he came, talking about a mother-God, respecting women in an era of women-as-property (and he did), condemning the temple practices (which he did, at least in part), and doing all manner of things against our traditions, cultural conditioning, and nonscriptural "doctrine" would we accept him? Or would we want to stone him, or excommunicate him? Keep him away from our loved ones and from our children and from ourselves, because listening to him would "put us on the slippery slope" into hell and spiritual destruction?

Margaret Barker