One of the difficulties involved in leaving Mormonism is that you leave a view of the Godhead that is very compartmentalized. Mormonism's depiction of what it says is the completely separate nature of God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit — these are easy to grasp and very hard to leave behind.
But such compartmentalization of the Godhead brings with it its own set of difficulties when a Mormon wants to try to reconcile Biblical teachings with those of the early LDS Church. In early Mormonism (and even today in splinter groups) it is taught that Jesus married and had children while on earth. That mirrors the concept that most all Mormon or Latter-day Saint groups teach: the concept that God the Father literally begat all humans in the pre-existence. Thus, Mormons would say, God merits the title of Father of all of us, and Jesus the title of Elder Brother.
But John chapter one specifically says that we attain the designation of children by our faith: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God — children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.” (John 1: 12-13.)
It's the same issue that Nicodemus had: How are you born again as an adult? Do you, he asked, pass again from your mother's womb into the light? No, Jesus answered, it's a spiritual rebirth, with the pronouncement that you have BECOME a child of God.
In that sense, Jesus who declared “Here am I, and the children God has given me” (Hebrews 2:13) can also be called “The Everlasting Father” because people still look to him as the agent of their spiritual rebirth — even though Jesus had no earthly progeny.
For more information, see The Mormon Mirage 3rd Edition: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today (Zondervan, 2009). Also available as an audiobook and as an expanded-text E-book for Nook, Kindle and other reading devices.
