It matters what kind of God we believe in. Mortality can feel heavy. Bodies hurt, hearts break, and even the most faithful can feel worn down. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints worship a God who is not distant, abstract, or unknowable, like in much of creedal Christianity.
Yet our ability to imagine a God who can literally hug us has become almost common, so ingrained in our imaginations and beliefs, that we may not always notice how deeply it shapes our worship, our understanding of our body, and our sense of divine identity. The truth that God is embodied offers more than a theological quirk to Latter-day Saints and also provides intimacy, dignity, and hope.
In practice, it may seem as if belief in an embodied God does not make a difference in religious life. The physical act of prayer doesn’t appear to change whether the believer holds an image of God as an embodied being, or as the feeling or presence of love, support, or guidance. Commandments don’t read any differently whether they were spoken by God’s voice or given through inspiration.
The vast majority of people who have ever lived, even those who believe in a corporeal God, have not seen or interacted with Him physically, nor do they expect to, until after their own physical life has ended. That being the case, why is this doctrine of an embodied God so important, and how does it change Latter-day Saint worship and understanding of our own divine physical identities?
What Is Corporeality?
Corporeality, or embodiment, points to the form and physicality we are familiar with in our own bodies and suggests the capability for interaction. Corporeal beings can share a location in space, exert influence on, and be influenced by, physical surroundings, and communicate through sound, touch, and motion.
The truth that God is embodied offers more than a theological quirk.
As corporeal beings, we feel both positive and negative emotions in varying degrees of intensity, experience pleasure and pain through sensation, and suffer physically and emotionally. If our own embodiment is modeled after God’s, there must be a divine equivalent to the experiences our mortal bodies provide us.
Though we don’t know exactly what embodiment entails for divine beings, Genesis 6:6 and Moses 7:28 describe God experiencing grief and weeping over the wickedness of His children. Other scriptures describe His anger and jealousy—negative emotions rooted in disappointment towards His children’s rejection of Him. God’s work and glory in bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man is not a pain-free experience, even for Him.
God, of course, is not miserable in His work with His children, and is said to rejoice alongside heaven in many scriptural instances.
These emotional elements, along with the physical qualities of corporeality, allow for radical closeness and between humans and divinity through shared form and varying degrees of shared experience. The doctrine of a corporeal God changes the nature of the relationship a human being can have with their creator, lessening the gap between us and the divine.
Our Understanding of God’s Embodiment
However, because we are fallen humans living in a mortal world, this view of God comes with some problems. By relating too closely to Him, we can make “God in our own image,” and assign Him inappropriate expressions we see in our fellow mortal family members, friends, and associates. In this way, the doctrine of corporeality can lead us to lose the sense of wonder, respect, and even fear for the greatness of the Divine that inspired Isaiah to cry “Woe is me,” and Moses to declare “man is nothing,” along with the praise, celebration, and adoration expressed through psalms, poems, and hymns. God may have a physical body, but His glory exceeds our familiar mortal experience. Recognizing this difference inspires the awe and desire necessary to worship Him reverently.
God may have a physical body, but His glory exceeds our familiar mortal experience.
But this pursuit of respect can also go too far, obscuring our understanding of God’s corporeal nature. If our image of divine embodiment is completely detached from our current mortal experience, then the doctrine of divine corporeality loses all meaningful connection with human corporeality. The worship of a god whose corporeality is that of only the idealized and “positive” aspects of human experience, and that of an unembodied, emotionless god would not be so different. The Father has chosen to reveal Himself as a physical Being in Latter-day Saint doctrine, a Man even—albeit a Man of Holiness. This suggests that He believes corporeality is important, even necessary, for worship, and that He believes us capable of understanding the nature of that corporeality.
The exact nature of divine embodiment hasn’t been revealed to us, but we see suggestions of its nature in the scriptures. Doctrine and Covenants 93:34 tells us that we are incapable of receiving a fullness of joy unless our spirits and bodies are united. Resurrected bodies will be immortal and perfectly restored, down to the very hairs of our heads.
Despite this, Jesus Christ’s resurrected body retained His scars. Following His resurrection, Christ was also capable of eating food, feeling troubled, and changing his mind. We don’t know exactly what perfection in bodily form looks like, but the Greek word teleios, used in the Bible to convey perfection, can also be translated as complete or mature, suggesting similarity and continuation of experiences in mortality.
Does God Deserve Worship?
God inspires intense respect for His majesty and power. His love and compassion for his children also inspire reverence. These qualities move Latter-day Saints towards the worship of Him. The etymological source of the word “worship” originates in the Old English weorðscipe, from its root weorð, meaning “worthy.” To worship is to give reverence and respect to the being we recognize as worthy of our devotion. The nature of what and who we worship is therefore tied to the nature of that being.
A person could, in theory, worship a god who is cruel, as long as that god was also powerful enough to inspire devotion and respect purely out of fear. However, while this god could reward his followers for their adoration, he would not inspire a genuine relationship, nor would he be likely to inspire the qualities of love and compassion within them. In the case of our God, both expressions of the qualities we already respect, often referred to as spontaneous worship, and commanded worship, directing us towards what we ought to revere, are both possible.
Instead of seeing our bodies as a source of separation, we can see them as a source of connection between Him and us.
These two versions of worship—spontaneous expression and obedient devotion—indicate the dichotomy between the inherent light of Christ inborn in every human being, and the difficulty of accepting truths of God because of the biases, traditions, and trauma that come with life in a fallen world. Isaiah 55:9 tells us that God’s ways are not our ways, and that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, but how literally is this intended to be taken?
Our rational minds may be imperfect and liable to error, yet we were given the ability to recognize and seek truth by God, for the purpose of understanding Him and His plan. The image of a god completely outside the realm of human understanding is a god that is difficult to relate to, emulate, and even obey.
How Can You Worship an Embodied God?
To worship a corporeal God is to adore, respect, and honor Him in his corporeality, which can be extended to inspire honor and respect of our own corporeality. Through this, we can more actively and intentionally strive to emulate God. Instead of seeing our bodies as a source of separation, we can see them as a source of connection between Him and us. In a sense, we are divine (or like God) because we are embodied. To mutilate, abuse, or mistreat our bodies denigrates an aspect of our inherent divinity.
Beyond our physical bodies, this respect can extend to all aspects of our embodied experience, including our emotions and sensations. We connect with divinity in our ability to feel both joy and sadness, to see beauty and mess, and to hear harmony and discord. In Matthew 5:48 and 3 Nephi 12:48, we are commanded to be perfect like our Father, or if the alternative translation is used, to be complete or mature. The best aspects of being embodied on this earth—sensations, emotional intimacy, our capability to move, create, and work—as well as pain, must also be similar to the completion or maturity that comes with godlike perfection. As Latter-day Saints, our worship includes obedience to a health code, showing respect for sexual intimacy, and providing for the needs of others when we are able to. This lifestyle encourages respect for our bodies and becomes more clearly inspired when our corporeality is viewed as a connection to the divine.
In addition to the unique ways in which we approach the embodied experience, the worship of our corporeal God encourages prioritization of human relationships. To know that God feels with us and works with us to overcome the challenges of mortality on a physical level allows for a closer and more personal relationship with Him. In the best cases, our relationships with other humans can mirror the attributes of a corporeal living God. Through our belief in an embodied God, we are more able to view ourselves, in our own corporeal state, as capable of becoming like Him.
Though imperfect, our attempts to emulate these qualities in our worship lead us to treasure the good and work through the bad in our human relationships, for the “same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there…coupled with eternal glory.”
The worship of a corporeal God inspires the kind of relationship with Him and with our fellow human beings that can transform both our mortal and eternal corporeal existence.
