How to Know God

The scriptures say a lot about God.

God is the greatest intelligence (Abraham 3:19). God has a tangible body (D&C 130:22). God works within a community of Gods (Abraham 4:1). And God is present in and through the world itself (D&C 88:6).

God is courageous (Moses 7:28). God is compassionate (1 John 4:16). And God is creative (Moses 1:33).

Crucially, God is not (or at least particular Gods are not) static. In other words, in at least some important ways, God changes. Of that, Jesus Christ is the principal example. “He received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness” (D&C 93:13).

At least, that’s what scripture says. But can we know any of that for ourselves? Can you know God? And, if so, how can you know God?

When such questions arise, Mormons often appeal to Moroni 10:4-5.

“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.”

What does that mean? Of course there’s the face value meaning: you can know anything “by the power of the Holy Ghost” after sincerely, intently, and faithfully asking God. But what does it actually look like, in practice, to ask in that way? And what is an answer “by the power of the Holy Ghost”?

Often, Mormons interpret this to mean that we can know something is true by praying and feeling good about it. I think that can be a good start. But it’s a bad stop. Good feelings can sometimes be misleading.

Even more broadly, when you close your eyes and set aside appeals to authority, what do you know? Honestly, what do you actually know?

I suggest you know, at least, that which you’re feeling and thinking now. Regardless of the extent to which these immanent experiences may actually reflect anything that transcends you, you know the immanent experiences. Regardless of the extent to which your interior world accurately maps onto any exterior world, you know the interior world.

If you’re feeling good, you know that. Suffering you know equally well. Your hopes and dreams, however fleeting they may be, you know as perfectly as they can be known. Your doubts too are known to you, even if ironically, as fully as knowledge can attain.

That, I contend, says something about how we ought to interpret the Moroni passage. And, in turn, it says something about how we can ultimately know God most dependably.

After explaining that God changes, as exemplified by Jesus Christ, the scripture continues (D&C 93:19-20):

“I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness. For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace.”

That “fulness” that we may receive is the same that Jesus received. It is glorification in Christ, who is glorified in God. By extension, it’s a fullness of Godhood. And that, the scripture says, is what and how we ought to worship – the worship of emulation, rather than anything like obsequious groveling.

The scriptures say a lot more about the practical consequences of such worship, of emulating and becoming God.

God organizes us to gain intelligence and bodies, in community, expanding our presence in and through the world (Abraham 3:22-26). We increase in capacity for courage and compassion until, as God is, “so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17-18). Then we are Gods (D&C 76:58-60), made “equal in power, and in might, and in dominion” with God (D&C 76:95) by whom, through whom, and in whom “the worlds are and were created” (D&C 76:23-24).

We will “see as [we] are seen, and know as [we] are known” (D&C 76:94). We will “comprehend even God, being quickened in him and by him” (D&C 88:45-50). And “when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (Moroni 7:48).

Consider. How could it be otherwise? How could God not know God?

How could we not know ourselves, at least as dependably as we know anything at all? And if we recognize in our own experience, in our own feelings and thoughts, that which we esteem as Godhood, how could we not know God? To recognize God in ourselves, we must know God. This is simply true by definition.

The first principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ is faith. I understand that faith, in its most basic form, to be an active working trust in, or the courage to act on, Jesus’ claim that we, together with him, can overcome suffering and death. Joseph Smith, in his last general conference sermon, pressed us to understand that first principle, faith, in its ultimate form:

“These are incomprehensible ideas to some, but they are simple. It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”

Faith, well placed, ultimately leads to knowledge. Faith in God – and not just any God, but the God worthy of emulatory worship – ultimately leads to knowledge of God. We see and comprehend God when we become God. Joseph continued:

“Here, then, is eternal life – to know the only wise and true God; and you have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you attain to the resurrection of the dead, and are able to dwell in everlasting burnings, and to sit in glory, as do those who sit enthroned in everlasting power.”

“Dwell in everlasting burnings”? Maybe that sounds like a strange description of Godhood. But it can help us relate these ideas back to the Moroni passage, which claims that we can know all things “by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

Scripture recurrently describes the presence of God in terms of “fire” and related imagery. For example, John the Baptist says that Jesus would baptize us with fire (Matt 3:11). Paul the apostle describes God as a “consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). And more anciently, Isaiah connects the judgment of God to “the spirit of burning” (Isaiah 4:4).

Recall, if you can, the times in your life when you’ve felt most inspired by all that is beautiful. Feel again the provocative impulse to action, to make true all that is good. Remember the sublime esthetic. And consider that such may be merely a hint of grand possibilities, or as Paul put it, interest on our sublime inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14).

Imagine amplifying the sublime esthetic: broader and deeper, full and overflowing with compassionate and creative power. That is the “everlasting burnings” of which Joseph spoke. And it’s the fullness of the “power of the Holy Ghost” of which we read in Moroni.

As I imagine it, the sublime esthetic at its limit is how it would feel to be a compassionate and creative superintelligence. And that, so far as I can tell, is how to know God.