I had a good discussion with my brother the other day about how I can believe in the church despite the follies of people in it and past teachings. It gave me the opportunity to express my unique beliefs. This is hopefully the first of a few posts describing my current understanding on some rarely talked about topics in the church and how they shape my beliefs.
The question posed to me that introduces the topic was "Why do you believe that only people of your faith get into the best part of heaven?" My answer was "I don't think everyone wants to be there." This through him for a loop, he couldn't believe that anyone wouldn't want to go to the best place.
Intelligences
A question that is asked of many religions is "How can people be evil if God is good and God created people?" The answer to this is that God did not create us out of nothing.
The Law of Conservation of Matter says "energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed." We believe that the essence of a person is eternal-like energy; it cannot be created or destroyed. That is why we can live forever after this life. We were always eternal, we were just in a different state. It cannot be created or destroyed. That essence of each of us is referred to as an "intelligence". See this lengthy article.
When you create a table, you don't actually create it, you organize it from other materials. The term the church uses for that transformation/creation is "organization". In the same way, we believe that God did not create our spirits before this world. He took "intelligences" and organized them into spirits, "creating" us. Then He took space dust and organized it into a planet, then He organized, most likely through evolution, a body that could hold a spirit which is where we are now.
The reason that there are evil people is that God took "intelligences" that have always existed and set them on a path to become more like Him.
The Law of Conservation of Matter says "energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed." We believe that the essence of a person is eternal-like energy; it cannot be created or destroyed. That is why we can live forever after this life. We were always eternal, we were just in a different state. It cannot be created or destroyed. That essence of each of us is referred to as an "intelligence". See this lengthy article.
When you create a table, you don't actually create it, you organize it from other materials. The term the church uses for that transformation/creation is "organization". In the same way, we believe that God did not create our spirits before this world. He took "intelligences" and organized them into spirits, "creating" us. Then He took space dust and organized it into a planet, then He organized, most likely through evolution, a body that could hold a spirit which is where we are now.
The reason that there are evil people is that God took "intelligences" that have always existed and set them on a path to become more like Him.
Glories
The Church's teachings on the afterlife are different than that of other Christian faiths. Instead of Heaven and Hell, we believe that there are Kingdoms(degrees) of Glory. They are, in best to worst, the Celestial Kingdom, the Terrestrial Kingdom, Telestial Kingdom, and Perdition. Perdition could be considered hell and everything else heavenly. Perdition is pretty impossible to get into, so let's not worry about that and just talk about the Kingdoms.I believe that God, Heavenly Father, loves all of us more than we can imagine. I don't think that He wants anyone to go to hell. His goal is for us to become the best that we can be. If we don't want to be the best that we can be, He still wants us to be happy. That is the purpose of the kingdoms of glory. I believe that depending on where we are in our progress to becoming more like God is how we get sorted into the degrees. I don't believe that the Telestial Kingdom is there to torment the people that were bad. I think that the people there would be completely unhappy being surrounded by the goodie goodies of the Celestial Kingdom. God made the Telestial and Terrestial Kingdoms as a place for people whose hell it would be to be in the presence of God all the time, being eternally tortured by their guilt. Those kingdoms are places for them to exist.
Gods
People of my faith have sometimes been referred to as "Godmakers". I would like to flip that and change the idea to be that God is a God maker.My belief is that happiness comes from helping others and that God is perfectly happy. Caution, blasphemy ahead. I believe that God at some point was probably another "intelligence" just like every unorganized intelligence. I won't even guess how He progressed to the point where He became God. Now that He is God, He is in a unique situation where he knows how perfectly happy He is, and wants to share that with as many being as possible. That is where we come in.
I believe that God has a body similar to us. That he took intelligences and organized them into spirit bodies. Those bodies were given a choice to follow His plan. Those that agreed are those who have and will receive bodies, us, in order to become more like Him.
What does it mean to become more like God? I think that as intelligences we couldn't interact much with anything else. We have spent eternities only caring about ourselves. God is giving us the chance to change that, to be less selfish. He gave us sprit bodies so we could communicate with other spirits and start caring about others. We currently have bodies and no memory of our previous selves. This gives us an opportunity to make choices on our own to either stay selfish or to gain charity.
Every day we get opportunities to choose others instead of ourselves. Each commandment teaches how to focus less on ourselves. I say charity instead of selflessness because I think we still need to have self-care and be sufficient enough to take care of ourselves, but once we get the basic needs covered we start to help others. I think marriage is part of the plan because I have learned to put my wife's needs in front of my own often, and it brings me joy. I think I will experience the same when I have children. Everyone says seeing your children progress is the best joy that you can attain.
In the show The Good Place, spoiler alert, I think Tahani was the only one that actually made it to what we would call the Celestial Kingdom. Everyone else made it to where they were happy and then moved on. Tahani was never happy with just finding happiness. She chose, rather than moving on, to join the beings that are helping others find happiness. That is what I consider "God making".
To answer the original question of why I think that not everyone wants to go to the highest kingdom of glory is that not everyone wants to become charitable/selfless. God knows that like in the Good Place where only Tahani wanted to end up helping others, He gives everyone a place where they can be happy even if they don't want to devote their everything to others. Intelligences are selfish and Gods are charitable. He wants us to be like Him, but is happy in knowing that he has made every intelligence happier than where it started.
