Let me set perameters around this blog. This blog comes from the mind of a devout christian, with Latter-Day Saint views. This is not meant to be a pious narrative trying to convert the world, it is more of a mere analytical thought process that happens to involve religion (ie nature of god). This is also not meant to come to any definite answers (refer to 2nd Nephi 9:28 in the Book of Mormon).
Imagine this. Someone has given you (the reader) the opprotunity to get everything you want in life. Ferrari's? They are yours. Friends? Done. Money? Its there. Cake batter ice cream with a cookie dough mix in from cold stone? Bing! you've got half a gallon of it in front of you, and it does not melt or run out. To recieve this amazing stuff, all you need to do is fly. Just flap your arms hard and hope to do it. Go ahead, flap your arms. Is it not worth a shot?
It is worth a shot yes, but it will not happen. Humans are not made to fly.
Now putting this into context, the thing that we desired most in the preexistence (from what the bible tells us) is the opprotunity to live with our creator again. The only thing we need to do is be perfect. Which seems fair. . .but your body seems to want to do everything to get you to lose this opprotunity of "eternal life". This is called the natural man. Our creator wants us back, but he has made our bodies into natural men, which is the opposite of what we are supposed to be. If our creator wanted us back, since we also want to go back, why then did he create our bodies to challenge us from going there?
C. S. Lewis gave some incredible insight to answer this question. He said:
"{being perfect} would not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. . . However important {perfection} may be, this process still trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. "
There is an answer right there. I have been taught that there must be an opposition to all things. We must fight against something (Alma called this "bridling our passions") to get into our eternal home. Why we have natural man desires is so we can be more humble and call upon our father more often.
While we have these fallicies, our creator then gave us the opprotunity of 2nd, 3rd, and umpteenth amounts of chances. This came from the atonement. For the sake of the subject and it's sacred nature, I will not delve to far into this act. But C.S. Lewis had this to say:
"We learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and , on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection."
What we do know is that "Man {were made} to have joy." We were made human, but we also have the ability to get past our human tendencies. From doing this, we seem to experiance happiness down here on this "earthly" life. When we get past our natural foibles, our creator seems to bless us with blessings like friends, inspirations, and happiness.
So why does the lord make us to do one thing, but ask us to do another? It is so we can depend on him; it is so we can have an opposition and an experiance; and he does it so he can bless us with happiness.
