The Man with the Plan

“As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be.” -Lorenzo Snow

I'm always amazed when people criticize what they claim to be this so-called "ridiculous" statement of President Snow's and of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, scoffing at the very idea that any human being would dare to claim that such might be the goal of our existence. In fact, I heard a non-LDS friend of mine say so over the previous weekend.

Very well, then. Before I go further on this point, let's take a look at the other side of coin.

What do most other Christian denominations think the afterlife is going to be like? I have been acquainted with a large number of them in my travels, and a surprising quantity, in spite of what the Bible and their churches teach, don't believe in any afterlife at all. The ones who do believe in an afterlife have broken it down into two starkly contrasted perceptions:

1) Hell: where the bad people and L.A. Lakers go to roast forever in the fires of damnation and sorrow, much like a typical August day. All the while, compounding their torture and misery, they are forced to listen to death metal and must attend planning meetings. (Well, that's hell to me.)

2) Heaven: where the good people go to get fitted with a pair of wings and a halo, then spend eternity playing a harp and walking around on clouds and . . . well, that's really about it.

I believe that the Buddhists, for example, have a much cooler belief of the afterlife than do these other Christian churches. The idea of building up good or bad karma and then being reborn into a new life or as a new kind of animal has far more appeal to me than sitting around on a cloud playing a harp all day, every day - because at least it's progression of one kind and not stagnation.

By contrast, there is a Man with a plan, and he has revealed through his Latter-day prophets that there is much, much more for the faithful to do, and there is much more awaiting them in the great realms beyond than playing stringed instruments.

Not that there's anything wrong with stringed instruments. Because there isn't.

At any rate, the LDS idea of eternal progression is a mindboggling one for me. I don't know that I fully grasp the concept at this point. Nevertheless, however long it may take - in my case, we're talking tens or thousands of years at the very minimum - the goal of each of God's children is to one day, however far off, become like him, just as caterpillars are reborn as butterflies and puppies grow up to become dogs.

Not cats, though. They belong in hell.