Progress

One thing that used to bother me was the question of: why did God let people progress in the plan of salvation if He knew that certain people wouldn't progress all the way to the Celestial Kingdom. Wouldn't it be better for them to wait and progress to a point that would increase their likelihood of exaltation before being born spiritually? Well this question leads to one to ponder why we choose this plan in the first place.

I believe that we existed as self-existent beings before we were born SPIRITUALLY. There are several reasons for this; Proclamation says that "God ordained families", or in other words, God put us in that order; TPJS says that we were self-existent beings. What does that mean? We were "self-existent beings and to what extent are we self-existent now?

Well, if God put families in order (ordaining them) then what social unit existed before families? How about none? After all we were self-existent. We weren't dependent upon any other individual for anything. We had no emotional dependency or physical dependency either.

In this regard, now in this earthly state we are not self-existent to any extent. Here on earth we need people. We are hard-wired to connect to others. We need to be loved in order to be healthy. We just don't properly function unless we have some sort of connection with other people.

What does this mean about our pre-SPIRITUAL life though? Well, its possible that we were ignorant of all of the emotions that come through relationships with other individuals. This means we most likely had never experienced love, sadness and happiness. We were intelligences with a vast knowledge, yet we didn't understand emotions to the fullest extent.

So, here we are as intelligences (and who knows what kind of form we had) that are capable of living forever with the knowledge that we had obtained, and could obtain in our state.

First encounter with God:

Imagine yourself during your first encounter with God. Here is an individual that is completely different than us. He has a different form, He's even composed of a different substance than us and this form, a body, enables Him to experience things we've never imagined. First and foremost, God has a wife. We don't even know what a wife is. We understand that there is another individual, or intelligence, that is inseparably connected with God. In fact that connection with that other intelligence is what qualifies Him to have the title "God". Well this connection is quite odd to us, because God isn't self-existent, in fact He is interdependent upon His wife and vice versa . This concept is completely foreign to us. These two seemingly disparate intelligences have been forged as One, yet they remain as individuals. This union that joins Them enables Them to experience a fullness of joy (D&C 93:33). It allows Them to experience emotions on a level never ever conceived by us before. For truly our emotional capacity is increased when we are dependent upon others.

So here we are observing this for the first time. Here are these Two individuals as One. Now there's more. We not only view God and His Wife, but we begin a relationship with Them. We begin to feel Their love for us. This is something totally foreign, we begin to feel something within us that isn't logical. It's a power within us that we don't fully understand, but we know who is the source of it, God. Let me say this in layman terms, we felt love for the first time. How would that feel?


We not only view God and feel His love, but we also observe God's family. God has children. He loves them. His children are entitled to feel more of His love. These beings are also no longer self-existent, they to have given that up, but as a result they are co-dependent upon God. They can feel His love and are therefore more capable of greater joy.

If agency is an eternal principle than we must have chosen, ourselves, to enter into God's plan and after feeling God's love why wouldn't we? God explains to us that He will teach us how to become like Him and also He'll enable us to feel love like He does.

Here is the answer to the first question: why did God allow those whom He knew wouldn't progress to the Celestial Kingdom to enter into the plan of salvation?

Well, for those intelligences that went through the previous mentioned process. Wouldn't they be better off to be part of God's family than to be eternally lonely? Especially after feeling God's love for the first time, there's no way they'd want to leave that behind and continue on in their realm of existence, their knowledge of God coaxed them to move forward and to progress. So even those that don't obtain the Celestial Kingdom will still always be a part of God's family and be happy and loved.

What does this mean to us in this life? What implications does this have for marriage? How does this change how we act now?

This gives so much more meaning to eternal marriage and what it stands for. It should change everything about how we treat our spouses and our family members.

God is trying to enable us to become perfect so we can repeat the process of helping other intelligences to the same state that He is in. Only those who become like Him will be give the title of God and the powers to create life.

When we marry we are literally becoming one before the Lord. We become interdependent upon that individual for our exaltation. We will never be the same. For eons and eons we had been single individuals, existing on our own, but now everything is different. But its done with good reason, for what we'll be able to obtain is far beyond anything we could on our own.

How sad is it to see individuals who do not understand the role of marriage in their eternal progression. For eons they were single and sadly sometimes those who are married struggle too much giving up that self-existing component of their existence. They fail to learn how to rely and depend upon their spouse. They live out their lives continuing as they once were and hence lose out on the blessings of marriage.

Our marriages should mean a lot to us. Not only in the eternal picture but also in our current picture. The most joyous thing to our souls is love derived from our relationships with other individuals and God.

It's no wonder that we struggle so much with relationships here on earth. They are such a new concept to us in our existence, as are emotions that come with them.

The Lord said "if ye are not one, ye are not mine." why is that? Is it perhaps because being God in and of itself implies being one with another individual? In order to understand this we must keep in mind that God is a title. A title that is given to a male who has achieved Godship with his wife.

Ironically it is God's same love that will carry us to back to His presence as He is. Only as we feel His love here on earth do we begin to truly obey Him and become like Him. Love is the common thread we find throughout the entire plan of salvation. It is the common thread that motivates us to progress and move forward.

God is trying to enable us to love has He does. That process is painful. With the increased capacity of love also comes the increased capacity for sorrow and sadness. Emotions are a double edged sword.

The true opposite of love is apathy. Its losing touch and importance for God's love. When we become apathetic we lose touch with that infinite power to motivate us. It was most likely the very reason that we chose the plan of salvation to begin with. Oh how dangerous apathy is.