The tragic vision of Mormon Christianity has four dimensions.

The first tragedy is that growth can only come through suffering and death.

The second tragedy is that free will means people can choose with finality to reject God and damn themselves.

The third tragedy is the tragedy that those we love can only grow through suffering and death and sometimes choose not to grow. Love holds us hostage to them, and it has to, or else it wouldn’t be love.

The fourth tragedy is that people miss out on growth that they are capable of, because they refuse to take the steps that would get them there. And perhaps nothing can be done about this.

That fourth tragedy deserves a little explanation. (more…)

Here is a Mormon model of the pre-existence. Christ presented a plan for us to experience mortality and Satan presented an alternate plan. Christ’s plan allowed full scope for our free agency, so we’d sin, which He would repair by atoning for the sin. Satan’s plan restrained our free agency through repression and tyranny and disinformation/propaganda and who knows, so that we wouldn’t sin. We voted to accept Christ, but Satan and his followers wouldn’t accept the vote, like king-men. Consistent with their plan, like king-men they then went to war to get by force what they had lost by vote. They lost this confrontation too and were thrown out. But the war continues. It has become a bandit resistance campaign of subversion and sabotage.

The model is wrong. (more…)