Does our existence as mortal beings in a fallen state can lead to a higher and holier state of existence in eternity? The idea that mankind is in a state of utter depravity comes from the teachings of Augustine in the 4th century and his struggles with sexual sin. Protestant theologians as well did not see any possibility or potential for men and women to have any form of a divine nature even though they are created in the image of God.
Biblical apologists think the situation we are in now is an accident, the result of sin and pride, and is not part of God's plan. My thought is how could it be God's plan to live in the Garden of Eden forever if God all-knowing knew that Adam and Eve would fall. Wasn't it the Father's eternal plan to save humans through the atonement of Jesus Christ? This grand misunderstanding underlies the doctrines of mainstream classical trinitarian theology.
This life was and is God's plan, not Satan's and not Adam and Eve's. There is a divine reason for us to be living in a physical world and having our spirit and flesh dwell in a fallen state for a time. The purpose for human interaction is stated in scripture to be a divine pattern. Men and women are created in the image of God, male and female. We are commanded to love one another and to multiply and replenish the earth.
Why is it that we are given this opportunity, the freedom to love or it's opposite, to lust, to create or to destroy? What does it mean to be created in the image of God? We see only two distinct genders and when joined together a wholeness becomes apparent as the powers of creation are merged in a oneness of spirit and body that can produce new life?
Christian scholars, philosophers, and apologists have come up with some conclusions to try and explain both existence and its purpose. Their doctrines, however, are filled with contradictions in both logic and theology. God's latter-day prophets, on the other hand, have given clear and succinct teachings about the nature of God and our relationship to him, and the purposes for which creation is carried out.
Few things are less pleasant to think about than a motherless child. Every person on earth, for better or worse, has a mother, even the Son of God. That connection to a child never ends. It is eternally binding. Is marriage and the creation of family a new thing, a random transitory spur-of-the-moment institution, or patterned after the order of heaven and given to mankind for happiness?
There is no discrimination when it comes to our physical creation. It requires a father and a mother. This self-evident science is well understood. Whether this to happens naturally from a relationship, or under the scrutiny of scientific manipulations, the seeds of creation are carried separately in human beings and most other creatures of the earth. Womanhood is eternal. It was not a new creation or invention starting in the Garden of Eden.
When referring to our existence as a person, many with religious perspectives refer to themselves as a child of God. Wouldn't the men be sons and the women daughters? How is it that mainstream biblical scholars say that gender is simply a transitory state of body and mind produced by an incorporeal being that mysteriously transcends gender? Such a conclusion means that their idea of deity has no image and that God the Father is not really a male being and is incapable of being a father. Does this not contribute to the identity confusion that abounds in societies around the world today?
To be created in the image of God, male and female is a declaration of profound significance. Preachers of most religious persuasions and gurus of many self-development movements use it on a regular basis. Such a statement may cause some to act with incredulity that naturally occurs in the brain when we hear something astounding. We tell ourselves there is no way it can be true, especially looking at our present state of contentious living. The mind of the natural man or woman seeks to eliminate information that pertains to realms of knowledge that only a few deep thinkers are willing to explore.
Eternity and the cosmos are infinite and yet a finite body of knowledge, principles, and powers exist that pertain to it. The body of extant knowledge that pertains to the never-ending realms of time and space dictates everything that happens. There is no new truth! It never changes and yet change occurs inside its bounds on a continuous basis.
Science sees and discovers more and more evidence of the dimensionless cosmos with succeeding generations of powerful telescopes and space-traveling probes. Philosophers have contemplated man's purpose for existing since the time a person could actually spend time thinking, without wondering where the next meal would come from.
Contemplating the infinite is indeed a talent, a characteristic of the mindful few seeking to more fully understand the nature of truth, including our existence and purpose.
Simple observations are often overlooked or ignored. There is no creation without a mother. The creation of life cannot occur without a real mother and father. These terms of creation are often used as metaphors by people when they don't understand how something came to be.
Most religious definitions of God as a father are figurative or metaphorical and not literal. Traditional biblical dialogues about deities refer to God as an incorporeal, genderless, and mysterious being. This being they seek to describe can only create inferior creatures.
Scholars of theology have applied metaphors to satisfy the inability of mankind to relate to something or someone so seemingly incomprehensible and indefinable. Why would a being with perfect love not be capable of creating children that can relate to him?
What is real power? It is the existence of real powers of creation that are part of real beings. Why have the philosophers imagined a single mystical being that they need to identify with metaphors? Is not the nature of God manifest in creation itself? If there is a father of all creation there must also be a mother who is a co-creator.
God the Father is a being of truth that comprehends all things. He is omniscient and omnipotent. He did not invent the truth. He is not a solitary single parent. To be a God is to be a rational naturally existing being in the truth, not outside of it.
The all-powerful nature of our Eternal Parents comes from their love for one another and their ability to produce spirit offspring. They control the elements of creation to give their children life, mobility, and the power to choose their direction in eternity, even to become as they are. The fullness of Godhood is found in the union of manhood and womanhood as exalted beings.
The doctrinal misunderstandings of philosopher theologians have given us a God of limited capacity, one that can magically create but that cannot liberate. The traditional or so-called mainstream ideas about God are that he saves a limited number of metaphorical children through the grace of a metaphorical savior. That grace, however, is limited to granting a state of static inferiority forever. The God and Savior that I worship can not only save but exalt their children because they have in their creation divine eternal spiritual DNA.
The eternal Son of God with his perfect priesthood power can exalt his fellow brothers and sisters, lifting them to a state of godliness. Resurrected with perfected bodies, capable of eternal creation, men and women can achieve their highest potential as sons and daughters of our Eternal Parents in whose image we are created. Those that love God and covenant to follow Christ can through his grace inherit all that the Father has and live in a dynamic celestial realm that will forever increase in love, creation, salvation, and happiness.
C.S Lewis, the prominent Christian thinker, and apologist said:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. (See the rest of the quote at the end of the article.)
“It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
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