Why do we desire separation?

[rongo]

8 hours ago, bluebell said:

I think for me, it's because I can't ever be like Christ.  Christ is sinless.  He is justified by the law.  I can't ever be that.  No matter how many millenia goes by.  I will always be someone who was/is only worthy  because of the Savior.

And that's why, in my mind, He will forever be eternally different from me.

I think that this is the intellectual underpinning for what Joseph Smith taught in the Sermon in the Grove (a few weeks after King Follett and like a week before the martyrdom). I believe it was revealed truth, not just reasoned out. But that is part of the reasoning he gave: that saviors are obviously different than we are in ways we can never experience or attain. So, when we envision ourselves as "rags to riches" Elohim, their path was not and will never be the same as ours, as you pointed out.

 

Edited August 1, 2021 by rongo

[Stargazer]

On 7/31/2021 at 11:51 AM, bluebell said:

I think for me, it's because I can't ever be like Christ.  Christ is sinless.  He is justified by the law.  I can't ever be that.  No matter how many millenia goes by.  I will always be someone who was/is only worthy  because of the Savior.

And that's why, in my mind, He will forever be eternally different from me.

You are a humble person, so of course you feel that way.

When I happen to wonder about all of this, considering all that I am not getting done that needs doing, I feel quite the same as you.

But on the other hand, I consider what is said by some of our Protestant friends, which is that Christ's atonement is powerful enough to make us into something we cannot in mortality imagine. C. S. Lewis once wrote: “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..."

We don't make ourselves. Christ makes us. So you don't have to worry about making the grade yourself. You can't. Just do the best you can, and He will make you into what He wants you to be.

But nevertheless you're right, He will forever be eternally different from us. In degree, at least.

[bluebell]

9 hours ago, Stargazer said:

We don't make ourselves. Christ makes us. So you don't have to worry about making the grade yourself. You can't. Just do the best you can, and He will make you into what He wants you to be.

But nevertheless you're right, He will forever be eternally different from us. In degree, at least.

Yep.  And thank goodness.

[bOObOO]

10 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You are a humble person, so of course you feel that way.

When I happen to wonder about all of this, considering all that I am not getting done that needs doing, I feel quite the same as you.

But on the other hand, I consider what is said by some of our Protestant friends, which is that Christ's atonement is powerful enough to make us into something we cannot in mortality imagine. C. S. Lewis once wrote: “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..."

We don't make ourselves. Christ makes us. So you don't have to worry about making the grade yourself. You can't. Just do the best you can, and He will make you into what He wants you to be.

But nevertheless you're right, He will forever be eternally different from us. In degree, at least.

I believe our own choices shape how we are and how we become what we will become, and that how we become what we become often varies from person to person.  Most of us make mistakes and then learn from those mistakes to become better and better people, and some of us make more mistakes than some others of us, with some of us not making the same mistakes as some others of us.  Our Savior for example did not sin even once, so he did not need to sin to learn that it is or would be a mistake to sin.  But he still became how he is now by his own choices, just as we become how we are based on our own choices.  And in the end what will matter most is whether or not we have become as he is, regardless of how we got that way.  Perfect is perfect regardless of how that perfection is or was achieved.  So the how of it isn't as important as what it is or what it can be.

[Metis_LDS]

On 7/27/2021 at 2:03 AM, JLHPROF said:

Why do we want to keep godhood on an unreachable pedestal?  Why do we want to keep God and Christ eternally different from us? Why can't many of us believe we can become exactly as they are, even if it takes millennia?

I am going with a simple human answer.   Most children do not want to become like their parents here on earth.  I think it is an extension of this human thing.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Metis_LDS
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