According to Mormon mythology, the war in heaven occurred
before we were sent to earth. This war was incited by Satan, who presented a
plan that was contrary to god’s plan. These plans were what would decide how we
would live our lives on earth. God’s plan was to send us to earth to have
physical bodies and to be tested. This test would be gods way to see if we
would follow everything he said:
And we will prove them herewith, to see
if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them;
Abraham
3:25
[Please note that Abraham is in the
Pearl of Great Price, a book that was “translated” by Joseph Smith.]
The price
for failing his “test” is to end up in one of the lower tiers of heaven, apart
from families and without the presence of god, or in outer darkness
(hell) for eternity. God called this free agency, and claimed it was a gift.
While I think that agency is indeed, a wonderful gift, god’s concept of free
agency seems contradictory to the thing itself.
Satan’s
plan, similar in all ways but one, thought that rather than only
a few of us being saved in the end, he would save us all. His only request was
to receive the glory himself, rather than allow god to have the glory. Let’s be
honest though, god doesn't contribute a whole lot to this grand plan, whether
it’s Satan or Jesus who saves us all. He’s not the one suffering on earth and
then allowing people to crucify him. His whole idea was to send someone else to suffer and die for our
sins, rather than take the burden upon himself. Both Satan and Jesus were
willing to take on this burden, but because Jesus was willing to give the glory
to god, he got the gig. Lucky bastard.
The way the
myth proceeds, is that we, as intelligence's, were allowed to decide whose plan
we wanted to make “The Plan”, and we fought it out, although with words, not
our fists. This was the first great debate, if you will. Ultimately Satan lost,
and along with 1/3 of the host of heavenly beings who advocated for him, Satan
was cast out of heaven forever, with no hope of ever having bodies of their
own.
Mormons are
taught that Satan and his hosts are continuing their fight by enticing us away
from god. I suppose that this is more or less how most religions view Satan. He
has been labelled as the Great Deceiver, the Father of all Lies, the Adversary,
and all this because he wanted to SAVE EVERYBODY. A crime indeed.
Mormons call our existence before earth “Pre-Existence”, where we were
intelligence's capable of learning and essentially making our own decisions. Why
did we need to come to earth to receive bodies? Why are these bodies essential
to our salvation? Why did we need saving? We were already living in the
presence of god, choosing and learning for ourselves. What did we need saving
from? Certainly not ourselves. We weren't imperfect beings yet.
A staunch
believer in Mormonism may answer some of the preceding questions as follows:
“We needed bodies so we could become like god, who already had a physical
body.” Setting aside the absurd notion that a physical body can literally
exist in an immaterial world, you might ask something along the lines of, why
couldn't god have just given us physical bodies in heaven? “Well that just
wasn't part of god’s plan. He couldn't give us bodies in heaven because we
needed to be tested,” would be the insightful response. Why do we need to be
tested, and why is coming to earth and having a physical body an essential part
of this plan? Mormon’s thrive on the idea that the whole reason for this test
on earth is so that we can not only be like god, but become god’s ourselves. I
touched on this idea of the Mormon belief in becoming gods in an earlier post,
so I won't go into it here. But one is still left wonder, What the Hell was the
Point!?
In Jesus the Christ, an LDS manual (with a
page count of almost 800), written by James E. Talmudge- and legend has it that
he wrote this in a room in the temple that only the First Presidency is allowed
in, so it’s extra special- I found the following passage:
Thus it is shown that prior to the
placing of man upon the earth, how long before we do not know, Christ and
Satan, together with the host of the spirit children of god, existed as
intelligent individuals, possessing power and opportunity to choose the course
they would pursue and the leaders whom they would follow and obey.
There are at
least two ways to interpret this passage. One is to assume that Talmudge is
only referring to the choice between two plans and their leaders when he writes
that we were “intelligent individuals, possessing power and opportunity to
choose the course they would pursue…”. Another interpretation could be that
this passage is alluding to the idea that this power we possessed contributed
to our capability to learn. That’s what intelligence means, right? Why was this
choice necessary? What couldn't we learn in heaven, of all places, and in the
presence of god, no less, who is supposed to be an all knowing, all powerful being?
From a
Mormon’s understanding of god’s “plan” and why we’re here on earth, the
ultimate goal is to not just become like god physically, but to become gods
ourselves, and for some inexplicable reason, we had to leave the presence of a god, to learn to become a god, while having
our knowledge of god and our preexistence withheld
from us.
Another
absurdity comes in the form of “free agency”. Mormons love to promote the
belief that Satan’s Plan would not have allowed us free agency. He would have “coerced”
us into following the rules and thus he would save us all. I find this belief nonsensical
because nowhere in Satan’s plan did he ever say that we wouldn't be able to
make choices for ourselves on earth. The following passage is from Moses 4,
another book from the Pearl of Great Price:
v.1 And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses,
saying: that Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine only begotten,
is the same which was from the beginning, and before me, saying- Behold, here
am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul
shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.
v.3 Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled
against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God,
had given him, and also that I should give unto him mine own power; by the
power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;
How does the
phrase, “I will redeem all mankind” translate to “they will have no choice but
to follow my commandments”? The above passages are as detailed as Satan’s plan
gets. All other details that may be included in lessons or discussions do not
come from the scriptures. They have been made up in an effort to uplift the
image of god and further denigrate the image of Satan. God says in the above
versus that Satan’s plan would mean we would not have free agency, but I think
it’s important to address what we really wouldn't be able to “choose” between.
On an
episode of Dogma Debate, Lydia says to their Mormon guest speaker (and I’m
paraphrasing) that the idea of life being a test is silly. Five year olds don’t
take the SAT because they haven’t acquired enough knowledge. Life as a
test is ridiculous because we weren’t allowed to take all of the information
with us. God hid himself from us.
He did all
of this ON PURPOSE. What kind of a teacher is that?
Some may
argue that he did give us a tool: the Bible, and in the Mormon’s case, the Book
of Mormon. But as has been pointed out countless times by minds much brighter
than mine, every single one of these books was written either before Jesus’
time or after. Neither Jesus nor god himself wrote anything down. We just have
the hearsay of “prophets” of old, and even of today.
In my mind,
Satan’s plan accounted for this lack of knowledge, and rather than punish us
for something that was out of our control, he was going to save us all. God’s idea of
free agency is to let us “choose”, through our actions on earth, whether we go
to Heaven or Hell in end. This is god’s idea of free agency.
God rejected Satan’s proposal because he wanted to get rid
of a bunch of his spirit children by imposing an impossible test on them and
the inexplicable reason for this test was so we could return to live in the
place that we already living in,
presumably in harmony, just to see if everyone would make it back. God’s plan
was solid.
Comments
Post a Comment