Now imagine how you are with children. When you see children, you see little beings with the potential to be like you. However, they are more fragile than you and they lack the amount of understanding that you possess. Being filled with compassion, you desire to help them grow and become more like you, meaning capable of reaching their potential. Yet you aren’t perfect like God and your compassion and love is far from being as great as His. So wouldn’t it stand to reason that a loving and compassionate God would want to help those who could be like Him to actually become like Him? Of course it would.
Such was actually the case. God looked upon the imperfect intelligences and saw their potential. Being filled with love and compassion, He decided to help these imperfect beings become like Him—capable of choice and action. So He formed these intelligences into spirit bodies. This made Him the literal father of our spirits. This is part of the reason many in the world, including members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recognize Him as our Heavenly Father.
God is perfect, though. So He would have a perfect understanding of all things and He would be perfect in strategy. This means He would recognize the potential downfall of helping these imperfect energies become like Him. That downfall is that imperfect energies won’t necessarily follow the perfect laws of the universe, meaning they could and would make bad decisions. These decisions could lead these imperfect beings to the point of trying to overthrow God and the laws of the universe in the search for more power.
Recognizing this God developed a plan for the growth of these beings from a state of imperfection to a state of perfection. This plan included granting these beings a little bit of power to choose and act and testing how they handled this power. Those that chose wisely would be given greater power while those that chose poorly would not receive greater power. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we recognize four stages of this growth process: obtaining the spirit body, obtaining the mortal physical body, the temporary separation of the spirit and physical bodies, and the perfected being.
We’ve already discussed how we obtained our spirit body. This gave us a limited capacity to choose and act. After forming us into our spirit bodies, God presented to us the outline of His plan. This plan included entering a mortal state of being to suffer pain, affliction, and temptation in order to prove whether we would choose good or evil, the perfect or the imperfect. This plan would require an example from among us to show us the way we should live. The person who served as an example would also have to sacrifice themselves in order to provide the means for returning from a state of imperfection to a state of perfection. This sacrifice would include living a perfect life without any mistake and ultimately giving over life for death in order to break the bonds of death.
Upon hearing the plan, Jehovah (who is known as Jesus Christ) stepped forward and offered Himself as that sacrifice in accordance to the plan presented by God. Another, Lucifer, stepped forward and offered Himself, but with a different plan. His plan was for us all to come to mortality and be forced to live perfectly. This way none would choose poorly and lose the chance for a life like Heavenly Father. The problem was none would prove themselves capable of living that life either.
This brought us to our first test: would we have faith in ourselves and in Jehovah, choosing the plan presented by Heavenly Father, or would we give into fear and doubt and choose the plan of Lucifer? Make no mistake about the magnitude of this test. It would have been very difficult. But it was necessary to demonstrate who would choose the hard path in the face of difficulty. And the consequences were dire. Those who failed this first test would not gain progression to the greater capacity for choice and action granted by the physical body.
The books members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recognize as scripture demonstrate that a large number of the spirit bodies in heaven lacked faith in themselves, Jehovah, or both. Roughly one third chose Lucifer’s plan. They were sent to earth without physical bodies so they could try and tempt those who came in physical bodies. Thus they became a means for our second test. In addition they would receive no further growth and progression, having failed the first test.
The rest of the spirit bodies chose to have faith in themselves and in Jehovah in the face of uncertainty and difficulty. Thus they passed the first test. Any man, woman, or child born into this world was among those who passed the first test and earned the promise of the greater capacity for choice and action granted by the physical body. So congratulations and a job well done! You succeeded at least once in your existence! You practiced faith in yourself and in Jehovah! And here you are in your second test, which we will discuss in more detail next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment