Kathleen,
As I have thought about your comment here, it seems that the idea of being “tested” and that this seems arduous ought to be explored more.
We each no doubt have many “tests” every day we live after we are old enough to make choices. We can view those as opportunities to show God how much we love Him and love keeping the commandments, or I guess someone can view this process as arduous.
It was one basic choice to be made in pre-mortal life–to trust God enough to follow His plan willingly, trusting that indeed Jesus Christ would be our Redeemer and Savior and trusting that God knew “we have what it takes” to learn and gain the wisdom to make right choices by coming to this earth and “walking by faith” with the “memory veil” (about pre-mortal life) so we have greater free will choice.
But in this life we have thousands of “choices”, and we get to learn from making them, and to show (to God and to ourselves as it is mostly a “self test”) our love for God and for others every day by the “right choices” we make.
The major problem between LDS and Christian belief about there being a preexistence is not the fact that God tests us. We have no problem with that, because we are meant to be tested here on earth, in a similar manner that the angels were tested in Heaven. It isn’t a matter of a one question test. It’s based on all of our actions during our whole lifetime, and how they develop our spirituality and love of God, as well as how well we interact with all mankind.
God teaches us how to live, by teaching us how to discern between right and wrong (aka: good & evil), in the Bible. We’re all born with an inner knowledge of the existence of God, that urges us to seek Him out and do His will. He sends us grace and inspires us to do what’s right, but the devil also tries to tempt us not to follow God’s inspirations. That’s the spiritual battle that constantly rages within all of us while we’re here on earth.
So, if we’re not properly taught the difference between right and wrong by those around us, then we’ll tend more toward choosing sin, even though we might think we’re doing the right thing. That’s what happens when we’re taught that wrong is right, and right is wrong. We grow up with a distorted view of those basics of spirituality, and it makes it much harder for us to ever do the right thing, so we’re more likely to fail God’s test.
The problem with the LDS belief in the preexistence of souls, that supposedly come from some kind of “intelligence” that’s co-eternal with God, is that it’s just the beginning of learning a distorted view of spiritual reality for all those who believe it. It teaches them that they are co-eternal and, basically, already equal to God from the beginning. All they have to do is follow the proper ‘procedures’ of Mormon belief and they can also become “gods” like Him in the future. That’s why Christians reject that entire premise, because it diminishes Who God really is, and makes men seem to be much higher in position than they really are. Believing that we are actual “spiritual sons of God” before we come to earth, in the same way that Jesus supposedly is, as opposed to our being His
adopted sons and daughters through grace, is the worst kind of blasphemy. Because only Jesus is the true Son of God that came down from Heaven. He created us, and we have a totally different nature than Him.
God has a purely spiritual Divine nature, while we have a combination of spiritual and physical human nature, that He created along with the entire universe. They are not the same nature. God took on the flesh of human nature through the Incarnation of Jesus, to show us that He was willing to lower Himself and come down from Heaven, in order to save us from our sins. He became man so we could more easily identify with God. God knew that no man could ever look into His face and understand Him as He truly is, so by becoming one of us, He took on a human face that we could more easily recognize and understand. So, Jesus has two complete natures. He’s completely God (Divine) and completely human at the same time, in the same way that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three individual Persons in One God.
So, believing in the preexistence also sets the precedent that the Holy Trinity is made up of three separate “god-like” entities (three separate gods), instead of One Eternal God, which is another heresy and blasphemy against Him, that leads us into even greater and more serious errors.
