Summary: One of the unique doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we can someday become just like our Father in heaven. That means we can inherit all that he has, including his glory, majesty, might, power, and dominion. This is what God refers to as eternal life. For this reason, members of Christ’s restored church look forward to the time when they can be exalted and live forever with their earthly family. However, there is much more to becoming like God than most people imagine. This article takes a closer look at the responsibilities God has.
In our day, the Lord has revealed, “And he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him” (D&C 84:38).
One of the unique doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that we can someday become just like our Father in heaven. That means we can inherit all that he has, including his glory, majesty, might, power, and dominion. What this also means is that if we are faithful to the covenants we make, we will become eternal kings and queens, priests and priestesses unto God, sitting on thrones, and wearing crowns, to rule alongside of Jesus Christ (see Revelation 3:21).
In fact, the very reason why we were born into mortality was to learn how to become as perfect and as holy as God. This is what we were created to become, and as we keep God’s commandments, we are fulfilling the measure of our creation. Furthermore, God swears an oath that if we remain faithful to him, we shall inherit eternal life.
For this reason, members of Christ’s restored church look forward to the time when they can be exalted and live forever with their earthly family.
However, in their mind, they imagine all they need do is just put forth some effort at living a good life and not do anything to seriously violate the covenants they’ve made with God, and then when we’re resurrected, we will live with God in an exalted state where we will enjoy never-ending happiness (Alma 28:12).
Whereas all of that is true, it is just the basic pencil outline of the plan of salvation that doesn’t take into account many important details. To help us better understand what it takes to become an exalted being, we can compare it to something we’re familiar with,
When people look at the rich and famous, they see their glamorous lifestyle and envy them, wishing they could be like them. For example, people look at movie stars and see pictures of the multi-million-dollar homes they live in and the beautiful clothes they wear, and the adoration that’s showered on them, and dream of one day living that kind of a life.
But when we search a little deeper, we find that for actors to have reached that level of fame is something most of us wouldn’t want to go through. For example, there is a saying in Hollywood that it takes ten to twenty years to become an overnight success. To illustrate this, there is a very popular and successful TV show called “The Chosen” starring Jonathan Roumie. From outward appearances, he seems to be an overnight success, but his rise to stardom came after being a struggling actor for almost fifteen years, where many times he had no acting jobs and could only afford to live in low-rent apartments while often going hungry for days at a time.
And even after someone has become a successful actor, they often have roles that demand a lot of physical and emotional stress. For example, they often spend very long hours during filming, some in very cold or very hot climates, and if they have to wear special makeup, they may find themselves sitting for hours while extensive makeup is being applied to them Some have had to either lose or gain a great amount of weight in a short period of time for their role, and if they are playing the part of a villain, it can take an emotional toll on them. For example, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was playing the part of the Terminator, his character was so evil that it affected how he behaved at home. His wife commented on how much better he is at home when he’s doing a comedy film, such as Jingle All the Way or Twins.
In America we say that anyone can become president of the United States, and although that is true, it’s not something easy to accomplish. We tend to focus on the prestige and power that a president has but there are two other things we’re well aware of but don’t really think about.
The first is the grueling process someone has to go through to become president. There is not only a Primary process they have to win, but once they are the nominee, they face three months of almost non-stop campaigning all over the country, which is physically taxing and exhausting. It’s not uncommon for a candidate to lose their voice before it’s all over.
However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg because to win the election against someone who is equally determined to win, takes strategy. We can compare the election to two people playing a three-dimensional game of chess where the loser doesn’t just lose the game but hundreds of millions of dollars.
But the winner then faces a second problem. Once in office they may be the most powerful person in the United States, but they have inherited the most stressful job in the country. It’s their job to keep our country’s economy healthy and strong, and from going into a recession. They must also deal with international problems, that may include preventing or engaging in war. In addition to this, they are responsible for overseeing one of the largest governmental organizations in the world, which often requires struggling to get both houses of congress to support the president’s agenda. These are all serious issues that are constantly needing attention, and worse yet, the president will be blamed for everything that goes wrong, even those things they have no control over.
Just because young boys and girls are told they could someday become the president of the United States, most people don’t want to go through what it will take for that to happen. And should they actually succeed in making it to the White House, the amount of pressure they’ll have to endure is something most people are not capable of handling.
When we lived in heaven, we lived a happy and carefree life in the mansions of our heavenly Father. We were well aware that he was the king of the universe and had great powers, and when we were told that we could become just like him, we didn’t really comprehend what it took for our Father to become God or the tremendous weight of responsibility he must now shoulder.
From the outside, all we saw was a happy, smiling, loving Father and thought it must not be that hard to become like him. After all, since heaven is perfect then surely it has no problems, and everything works perfectly smooth and that everything is easy to do. At least, that’s how it looked from our perspective.
But if that is true, there could never have been a war in heaven because that certainly was not a perfect situation. We know that our Father in heaven loves all his children far more than we mortals are capable of doing, but if that is true, imagine the heartache he must have felt to lose one-third of his children when Lucifer and his followers rebelled against God. They didn’t just get kicked out of the celestial kingdom. They were cast into outer darkness where there is no possibility for God, their Father, to ever visit any of those wayward children of his.
We believe that Jesus is God but look what he had to go through and the pain and suffering he had to endure in order to atone for the sins of the world. That pain was so hard to bear that it caused even God to tremble and would that he could shrink from the task he had to perform.
The greatest gift God has to offer us is eternal life, which is to become an exalted and glorified person as he already is, but where much is given, much is not just expected but is required (Luke 12:48). Along with all the glory, honor, majesty, might, power, and dominion God offers us, also come great and terrible responsibilities, and perhaps the greatest of all those responsibilities is being a heavenly parent.
Being a parent isn’t easy, and someone doesn’t become a parent until they have children. To make matters worse, the more children someone has, the more difficult parenting becomes because each child has their own unique personality and therefore requires individually unique parenting skills. Although there are basic rules of parenting that apply in all cases, yet what may work with one child may not work with another child.
The first responsibility of a parent is to care for the physical needs of their offspring which includes providing them with shelter, food, and clothing. Providing shelter is easy because children live where their parents reside, but providing them with food and clothing becomes increasingly harder as they get older.
When a child is an infant, their food is fairly simple but as they grow older, they need more complex forms of food, and because of their growing body, their need for food increases. Teenagers especially seem to have a voracious appetite and it’s common to hear parents complain how their children are eating them out of house and home. And yet, parents are expected to provide their children with all the food they need.
When a child is an infant, they are dressed in simple outfits, but as they grow, the kind of clothes they need become more complex, and that includes the shoes they wear. And as they get older, parents are faced with three additional problems.
The first is that because children are growing so fast, they outgrow their clothing very quickly. What once used to nicely fit them becomes too small in six months. The second problem is that older children need to have a wider variety of clothes to wear, especially if they are to wear a different change of clothes each day. And the third problem parents have to deal with is that as children grow older, they begin to develop their own taste in what they will wear. What a parent would buy for them may not be something the child wants.
Besides providing for these kinds of physical needs, parents must meet the needs of their children’s health. This includes making sure they’re eating nutritious food. When children become sick, a parent’s responsibility is to help restore them back to good health.
In addition to the physical needs of their children, parents are also responsible for meeting their intellectual needs. This includes such things as teaching them how to read, how to do chores, and learn how to get along with others. It includes making sure their children learn math, science, writing, music, and many other skills. This often involves making sure their children attend school and helping them with their homework.
But schooling takes money, and since children aren’t able to pay for what they need, it’s the parents who must pay for everything connected with their child’s education. In most cases, when a child goes to college, it’s the parents who ultimately pay for their child’s tuition, books, and housing.
Parents are also responsible for meeting the emotional needs of each of their children. To grow up to be emotionally well-adjusted, all children need to feel loved and wanted. In addition to this, all of them need encouragement and support, and this becomes more critically important when they get into their teenage years where they struggle with feelings they don’t understand. At this age they feel conflicted between wanting to be independent of their parents while still desperately needing them in their life.
What makes this hard on parents is that all children have very different personalities. Some are easy to raise while others are more rebellious and stubborn. Some are quick learners while others learn slowly. And because each child is different, parents often have to deal differently with each child on an individual basis.
Of course, the more children a couple has, the more difficult it becomes for parents to meet the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual needs of each one of them. However, as these children become adults, they eventually leave home to live on their own, and at that point, each child then becomes responsible to provide for their own needs instead of depending on their parents to do that for them.
As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe that in the resurrection we can not only live in heaven WITH God but live in heaven LIKE God. Our goal isn’t just to be angels in heaven who sit around doing nothing but singing praises to God. Our goal is to become an exalted being who is able to do what God does.
And what does God do? His WORK is to help his children gain eternal life, which is the kind of life that God, the eternal, lives. What that clearly infers is that God must first have children, but instead of him having ten or twelve, or a hundred children, he has so many that they number more than all the stars in the universe, and there are more than a hundred billion galaxies with each one containing a hundred billion stars.
We refer to God as our heavenly Father, but what that means is, he is our parent who is fully responsible for providing for the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs of each and every one of his numberless children. When we lived in heaven with him, there was nothing we lacked because God, our Father, made sure that all our needs were met.
While there, he taught us many things but there came a time when we had to leave home to attend formal schooling, and so we were sent to earth. However, it was our Father who created this earth for us to live on and he stocked it with everything we would need to live here comfortably. He provided water for us to drink, plants and animals for food, and trees that provided us with the material to build the things we want. But he didn’t provide us with just enough to get by. He gave us an overabundance of these things, As he has explained, “For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things” (D&C 104:17).
In order to meet all our intellectual and educational needs, God has provided people to instruct us, including his Son, the Holy Ghost, and prophets who declare his word. When we are feeling spiritually sick, our Father comforts us and helps heal us. In short, God does what all good parents do, which is to provide his children with everything they need because we are not capable of providing any of these things for ourselves.
In addition to this, God must also deal with each one of us according to our own unique personalities. Some of his children are easy for him to raise, such as Jehovah, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and others, but God has to also deal with others who are not so easy to raise, such as Lucifer, and all those who followed after him. And even those who were originally obedient to God in heaven, some of them, when they came to earth, decided to disrespect their heavenly Father. These include such people as Cain, Caligula, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and many others. All these are God’s children, and he has to effectively deal with each one of them as well as those like Enoch, Abraham, Samuel, Isaiah, and Joseph Smith. To do that takes great wisdom and patience.
This is what it takes to be a divine parent and when we become exalted, we too will have dominion over our own spirit children. But with that dominion comes great and tremendous responsibilities because no longer will we be dependent on God to provide for us, but instead we will become the ones responsible for providing all that our spirit children will need because that’s what it means to be like God.
But, just like any righteous parent, God has not left us on our own to learn how to become an eternal parent who is capable of fulfilling the responsibility that goes with being exalted. We must be taught how to become a wise and effective father and mother in heaven ourselves, and that will take much more time and training than we currently imagine. Therefore, God’s work requires him to do all in his power to help us become capable of handling the tremendous duties of godhood, and that too is also one of his great eternal responsibilities.
We came to earth, excited to learn how to become like our Father in heaven, but what that means is that when we become an exalted being, what our Father in heaven is now doing for us will become our eternal responsibility.
Related articles can be found at “The Nature of God”