Answers to questions. More questions.

This conversation with Abraham and the Lord, must have been so educational. Abraham, having lived in Egypt with all the different religious teachings of that area, is given more than a few things to ponder and reconcile. He is first given a lesson of the celestial bodies. I suppose that before being introduced to doctrines such as pre-earth life, foreordination, choosing a Savior and the second estate of man, it's good to be humbled. Like Moses, I'm sure Abraham felt the nothingness of man after the Lord declared "the works which my hands have made" and being told a couple of times that he is speaking with the Being whose intelligence is greater than anything else. So, he's probably ready to hear what is next.

What is next is the Plan of Salvation. There was a pre-earth life, that spirit dwelt there, they were organized, there were noble and great ones and he was one of those. All monumental revelations that breed questions. What was the point on knowing all this?

Point: These spirits are going to live on a world. They need to be proved, tested, move on to the next part of seeking salvation. If they are going to be proved, that means there needs to be opposition, that means they might make mistakes, that means that there needs to be different kingdoms of glory. If they make mistakes they can still keep their first estate if they access the power offered by a Savior. Who is the Savior?

The Savior is the one who understood the plan, who understood where the power belonged. Now we need the opposition: the one who did not understand the plan, the one who wanted the power to transfer to himself. At this exhibition, he lost his first estate.

Now here is an interesting doctrine with not much detail. What exactly is a first estate? McConkie defines it as “the first time we lived as conscious identities. The spirits who were faithful in that first estate earned the right to be born into this world and get mortal bodies.” There is some doctrine and a lot of speculation about what we did in that first estate. Did we choose our mates? Did we choose our worldly difficulties? Did we form our families (a la Saturday’s Warrior – thanks a lot) ?

It seems to me, this is my own opinion, that at a very basic level, it doesn’t matter what we chose, other than choosing to be faithful enough to get bodies. We are here and whatever has happened to us, or whatever we have chosen, we need to deal with. A step up from the basic level, it is my current opinion, that we chose to choose. That is, we chose to have bodies so we could choose how we react to certain people and experiences, because we knew there would be a Savior. It does not seem congruent to me that a person who has been born in the covenant, has a wonderful temple marriage with children who have all served missions and married in the temple and have grandchildren following in the same way, can say that this is exactly what he/she chose in the first estate. Wouldn’t everyone choose that? Yet, very few fulfill that. Maybe those are the noble and great one, who knows. People who have had the unfortunate experiences of abuse, alcoholism, a wide variety of diseases, infidelity, I cannot believe that they chose to experience those things in the pre-earth life. First, how could they even know what those were without experiencing them, without having bodies at the time of decision?

Like I said at the before, I think we chose to choose. Which means we believed in the Plan, we believed in a Savior. Some people who believe we chose specific things in pre-earth life use that belief to get them through rough times. But shouldn’t the knowledge that we had confidence in a Savior then, be enough to get us through rough times?

Good stuff. It’s good to know where we came from and why we are here.