How Gods are Raised

Phase 2 of the Plan of Salvation, the one that we are all now in, is called mortality. This phase has been called lots of things, one of which is a Test. I’ve thought a lot about this ‘test’ as I’ve been taking it and I’ll tell you what- I don’t think it’s a test. A test implies that there is a pass/fail standard that we have to measure up to. If you’re not this tall you can’t come into the Celestial Kingdom. If that were so, I’m hell bound for sure. But the more I’ve thought about mortality, the more I see that this pass/fail mentality will doom a person for sure. C. S. Lewis said,

“I think everyone who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam. Or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea to bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded. If fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam or putting Him in your debt…. When a man has made [this] discover[y] God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins.” (Mere Christianity, 143)

So to figure what mortality is then, let’s ask some questions.

What is its purpose? Why do we come here and put ourselves into the chaotic and messy dance of agency that involves billions of people? What is it supposed to do to us? What am I supposed to do with it?

When I’m trying to solve a problem I try and get outside the problem to figure it out. As the saying goes “we’re too close to the trees to see the forest”. If I try and understand these questions from the perspective of mortality alone-I might get a skewed, if not wrong, answer. So as we try and discover what the purpose of mortality is, let’s look at it from a couple different angles; the pre mortal perspective and the Celestial perspective.

First let’s see it from the perspective of the pre mortal versions of us; before we had lost the veil, while we were still in the presence of God and Jesus.

What do we know about this point in our existence?

-          It was a time of learning. What type of learning? I’m sure it ranged every subject that we have today on earth; everything from math (which might’ve been called something more like “the Quantification of Celestial Law”…I don’t know). There were surely other topics and subjects that are beyond our veiled grasp at the moment but probably made perfect sense there. Knowledge and learning were probably different. Here we have to struggle with information and repeat it and pair it in different ways and practice it for us to gain mastery. There, with the aid of revelation from the Spirit that was overly abundant I’m sure, we could learn easily and with grace. Elder Melvin J Ballard said “unto the Holy Ghost has been given the right and the privilege of manifesting the truth unto men as no other power will. So that when he makes a man see and know a thing he knows it better than he shall ever know anything else” while Joseph Fielding Smith said “The Spirit of God speaking to the spirit of man has power to impart truth with greater effect and understanding than the truth can be imparted by personal contact even with heavenly beings. Through the Holy Ghost the truth is woven into the very fibre and sinews of the body so that it cannot be forgotten.” Let’s remember that we had no bodies at this point, we were spirits. If we were learning by the spirit, which I’d say the vast majority of us were, then we were truly understanding things better than any mortal has ever understood things.

-          We had our agency. This fact is obvious because if we had no agency then Lucifer wouldn’t have had any free will to rebel and we wouldn’t have free will to choose to follow God. However again, our understanding of agency from now and then is probably a bit different. Here we struggle to make the right choices and in fact we choose wrong often. There, living in the presence of God and with our understanding of all truths as it was, using our agency to know and follow God’s will was probably a lot easier. An analogy might help; it might be like the difference between a water slide with an obvious path that’s smooth and there’s water around you to guide you in the right direction vs. white water rafting in a raging river with rocks and forks in the river. In the first it is still possible to disobey; for anyone who has been to seven peaks you know that it is fully possible to stop mid-slide. It’s also fully possible to climb over the side and jump to the ground, but why would anyone do that? Disobedience in the pre earth life was probably similar and is why it came down to a more or less black and white choice of whether or not to follow Christ or to jump off the slide.

Now if life was like that there, why even leave? The seminary answer to that is ‘well we had to get bodies’.  Granted, this is true, we were spirits and compared to God we definitely must’ve had the ‘I want to be like dad’ complex. But if the only purpose to mortality was to gain a body then I think it would’ve been done differently. Similarly; when Nephi and his family left Jerusalem the first time wouldn’t it have been nice if God said ‘oh hey you might want to grab these brass plates and your buddy Ishmael with his daughters on your way out.’ Instead, God waited till they were a couple hundred miles out of town to send them back for the plates and when they were back with those, sent them back for the Ishmael family. God’s designs here weren’t primarily to get those plates and that family-if it was he would’ve told them to do it the first time they left. His designs were to forge the character of Nephi and all those involved. So I don’t believe that our primary purpose in coming to earth is to get a body- I believe it to be a side effect. The purpose in mortality can be seen this scripture Alma 7: 11-13,

12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. 13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.”

This scripture says that through the spirit of revelation Christ could’ve known how to succor us fully and completely. As was said above, the spirit can make a man know a thing in the fibers of his being. Christ came and suffered according to the flesh so that He might truly know and experience our pains. This speaks volumes about the majesty of His character but for my topic this illustrates the difference between knowing something in your head and knowing something in your heart. Most of us have experienced the contrast there. You can read the instructions and look at the diagram in a handbook until you’ve got it memorized, but putting together the piece of the puzzle is a whole other thing. It’s the difference between a lecture class and a lab class; between reading in a book how a broken bone heals and actually having one of your bones heal.

The major difference between us and God was that his character is 3 dimensional while ours was 2 dimensional. The simplicity of the analogy betrays the reality of God’s magnificence but you get the point. God had the bonus of experience while we simply didn’t. Now I’m sure we had experienced sadness and heartache and such while we were there, but our perspective on it was not limited by a veil and was aided by the Spirit. God, who we know, thanks to the Prophet Joseph Smith, had previously gone through a mortal life and gained this mysterious experience that had thus far eluded us.

To understand this let’s take a jump to the other side of mortality. What is the whole point of the Plan of Salvation? In the Celestial Kingdom we get to be with our families forever right? Surely that is the purpose. I don’t think so-it may simply be a benefit of the Kingdom we’ve found ourselves in. A fantastic benefit, yes, but like gaining a body, I believe it to be a side effect. The whole point of gaining Salvation in the Celestial Kingdom is to be like God. Now when I say this I don’t mean to do as He does, but to be as He is; to gain His character. Let’s look at God’s character

The Lectures on Faith has probably the best list of the perfect attributes that make up God’s character and I recommend reading through it. But for now here are the highlights:

-         - He is Omniscience and Omnipotence; knowing all things and having all power

-          -He is a God of truth and can’t lie

-         - He is no respecter of person’s; this means that he’s not a judgmental guy. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your social status is, or what you’ve done, he will not hold the gospel back from you

-          -He is unchangeable. The same yesterday, today and forever. This means that he doesn’t suffer from mood swings like the rest of us do. He doesn’t have bad days and he doesn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed. There is no need to butter him up for anything like we’ve all done with our earthly parents

-        - Here is the best part of his character; God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, kind and is inclined to forgiveness. To quote Elder Holland- “surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don’t expect it and often feel they don’t deserve it.” Have you ever experience that? The thrill of Mercy.

The summation of God’s mighty character can really be boiled down to a single word; love. God is love. Or better yet, Charity; God is Charity. He is the man that perfectly embodies the character of Charity. That is what I want. I want Charity. The Celestial Kingdom is special because the people in it understand the way God does what Charity means. Isn’t that great?

The purpose of mortality is to learn and experience Charity. It’s often been said that we’ve come down here to prove ourselves. I don’t like that saying at all. After all God is omniscient, He knows everything which means He already knows where each of us will end up. If mortality is just a sorting ground it would’ve been much easier to use something like the sorting hat from Hogwarts. God wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of setting this world up for us if it was just some magical sorting planet. Mortality is for us, not for God.

I’ll illustrate this with an example from my life. When I was on my mission there were a lot of missionaries who had the idea in their mind that numbers and outward success accurately reflected the overall success and even the character of the missionary. Being one who never was blessed with high numbers, I frequently came under fire from my DL’s and ZL’s. I found solace in the fact that if the whole purpose of a mission was so that God could bring people into His Church, he would give each companionship a Liahona that would lead them directly to the door of the individual or family ready to hear and accept the gospel. That would be much easier and more efficient. But that’s not how it is. Ideally the heart should be like a Liahona that the Spirit can use to lead, but every missionary knows that that doesn’t happen every waking moment of every day. There is a lot of soul searching on a mission trying to figure yourself out.  I learned through this that the purpose of a mission is to forge the character of the missionary into what God wants it to be. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to and being who God intended you to be, you’ll come out on the other side something that God is pleased with and can use. Baptisms are a side effect of this process; a divine side effect, but a side effect none the less. Thus mortality is a place for God to forge us, as CS Lewis would say, into millions of tiny replicas of Himself, each individual in their own way; to teach us to love as He loves. This can be seen as Jesus gives us the two most important commandments; love God and love your neighbor. Everything is summed up with that.

Before we look at mortality from the perspective of mortality, let’s look at what mortality is. When we were sitting and listening to God tell us about mortality in our pre mortal state, it must’ve been terribly intimidating to some. Similarly to how the prospect of going on a mission feels; you have tried to prepare, you’ve heard stories about it, but nothing will prepare you for the thing itself other than the thing itself. It goes back to knowing something in your mind vs. you heart. God surely told this to us, that no matter how much we learned or how much he told us about it, we would never get the experience any other way then simply entering mortality.

The very environment of mortality is different than we were used to.  With our Faith we had while in the pre mortal phase, I’m sure miracles were not uncommon and were not referred to as miracles. They were simply what happened. Our wills could be extended beyond our bodies to manipulate a finite amount material, for this is what miracles are. But in the mortal phase, our will and agency would be wholly confined to our individual selves. Truly, our power of independent action will be the only power we are allotted. All else is God’s; our breath, our heartbeat, the very life energy that will bind us to our bodies is derived from God and is under his ultimate control. The physical material the mortal spectrum of the universe is made of is God’s and is under his control. If a miracle is to be preformed it will be by someone with His authority and will only be able to happen if it is His will, not ours. We will be vessels of choice and nothing else.

Imagining the chaotic dance of agency as choices of uncountable trillions of individuals cascade and intertwine to form the world that I live in makes my head want to burst. I’m sure we had to reassure ourselves that Omniscience meant just that. God wouldn’t send us into mortality if he didn’t think that we’d come out on the other side better for it. He would put us in life just where He wants us and in the family and environment that would ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness on the other side.

Perhaps the most intimidating thing about the whole idea of entering mortality was the Veil. Upon entrance into mortality a figurative veil is pulled over our memories, blocking our pre mortal experiences from us. If we are to be vessel of choice, then our choice cannot be taken from us by our memories of our lives with God. However, the veil doesn’t do anything about our individuality. It doesn’t make us a blank slate that our mortal environment can scribble all over. Our personalities and individuality would shine through in mortality, dampened yes, and also impeded by the conditions of the world, but if you would embrace God’s will, then the most fundamental things about who you are would still be there. Funny people would still be funny, musical people would still have a fascination with music. Putting a lily in another pot with new soil doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lily. I’m sure I asked Him something along the lines of ‘when I come out the other side, I’ll still be me right?’ to which He must’ve replied ‘oh yes; only the dross will be burned away. Everything that makes up the real you will be enhanced and made purer. But, even so, you will not be the same.’

I imagine myself, with all this stuff going on inside my head, standing on the precipice of an abyss looking down into blackness with God standing next to me explaining what it’s like during the descent, what it’s like beyond the darkness. But it comes down to the fact that my eyes need to see it, my essence needs to experience it to fully comprehend it. God knows it’s no use to tell me to not worry because He’s been where I am. What scares me is not whether I will make it through alright, because I know intellectually what the Savior did for us all; I will be caught on the other side with open arms and I’ll make it through the abyss unharmed, what scares me is how I’ll be different. All He does is square me up and look me straight in the eye and say, ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way, even when you don’t see me.’ And because I know that God can’t lie I step out into nothing and begin mortality.

Now that we’re here we can finally, from the perspective of our current mortal situation, consider mortality. The first thing that is obvious to me is that it’s really hard. I’m just talking for myself here but I’m not very good at this whole Charity thing. In fact, I’m terrible at it. And I’d venture a guess to say that you think you’re not that good at it either. If we took a survey of everyone on the planet to take an honest temperature of how we all think we’re measuring up to this standard of Charity; if people were resolutely honest I think it would show that we all fail at this divine love. Failure is present in our world.

I think in the pre mortal world failure was possible but probably rare for those who were doing what they were supposed to do. Obedience to God’s will can be compared to a water slide in the pre mortal life, but now it’s like that raging white water river. To temper this love that God is forging in us, mortality introduces failure to everyone. If you come into mortality you are subject to coming up short and unless you’re Jesus, you will come up short of the standard of Charity in this life. There is no getting around it so there is no use beating ourselves up about it. We all fall short. But because this failure happens, God has a purpose and a solution for it. For if there was no purpose in failure it wouldn’t exist. If there was no purpose in us being imperfect, then God would have made it so we could be perfect on our own efforts. And if there were no solution to it, then the purpose wouldn’t matter anyways.

I’ll illustrate with a story from a book called The Continuous Atonement. In it Brad Wilcox says ‘

Working on my Ph. D. at the University of Wyoming, I was required to take an advanced statistics course. I had completed the beginning courses several years earlier, but could remember very little. I had no idea how I was going to manage the requirements of an advanced class.

Several weeks into the semester, I was floundering. I approached the chair of my committee, Louise Jackson, and said, “This is really over my head. Usually I at least know enough about a subject to follow along. This time I am totally lost.”

“Good!” she replied…  “Remember how this feels. Memorize this moment. Don’t ever forget this lesson. This is how many of your future students will feel, and you must be able to relate to them in order to understand and be effective in helping them.”

He then went on and used tutors and regular checkups with his teacher to help him eventually pass the class. Here we can see that the purpose of our failures and sins is to teach us to depend on God and to have compassion towards those in our same position of need-which everyone is. We learn to love God because we find that he is the unchanging aid that will always forgive and always help. George Q Cannon said,

No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will. He cannot do it. It is not His character [to do so]. He is an unchangeable being; the same yesterday, the same today, and He will be the same throughout the eternal ages to come. We have found that God. We have made Him our friend, by obeying His Gospel; and He will stand by us. We may pass through the fiery furnace; we may pass through deep waters; but we shall not be consumed nor overwhelmed. We shall emerge from all these trials and difficulties the better and purer for them, if we only trust in our God and keep His commandments. 

I love God because of this magnificent Character. I want to be just like that, I’m far from it, but I want to be it.

And we learn to love our neighbors because we’re all in the same boat and are in need of the same assistance from God. We learn that the Rock of Eternity that is Jesus Christ is broad as Eternity and can fit everyone so we don’t need to be kicking and pushing people who are trying to climb up. As we serve and lift each other we gain love and acceptance of the individual.

I believe that the sole purpose of mortality is so that God can lay the foundations in us that will one day support the Divine Character that we will build, together with God, in the Eternities. In light of this, mortality ceases to be a test and becomes a project that God and I am working on together. If I allow God to help me and ultimately guide me, I’ll come out on the other side exactly the way He intended; not perfect, but with a foundation to lay perfection on. That is why there is only one way, one baptism, and one faith; not because God is an elitist, but because mortality is the only process by which the individual can be made into the foundation to support the eternal perfect version of that self with all its glory and majesty. In short: mortality is how gods are raised.