Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Heaven

After the first two posts, I suppose it might sound surprising but I love my beliefs.  I never feel more peaceful and happy than when I'm in one of our beautiful temples or at church (although I'm often more in my own head than listening to people).  In thinking very seriously about what I like about Mormonism and my testimony, I concluded that maybe it is about the after life.  I see lots of perfectly happy people every day who are not Mormons and so I have no illusion that Mormonism is the only way that a person can be happy.  So it really is about the temple and how that connects with death and post death.

I really appreciate that I don't have to believe in a black and white heaven and hell with an awful gray purgatory in between.  I love the idea that there are three levels of heaven and if you're the best you can live with God in the celestial kingdom.  No one really goes to hell, or outer darkness as we call it.  I, personally, would be happy to live in the telestial kingdom that is supposed to be a beautiful idyllic Earth.  I also really love that I'm not going alone, that Adam goes with me.  And that I'm connected to my parents and my kids somehow.

The temple is very open and white inside and when I'm there I feel light and unburdened.  It seems like we're super secretive about what happens there, but I think a lot of that is because its a long explanation about somewhat foreign sounding things and there is one thing we're not supposed to talk about that people are afraid they'll come to close to. Once your twelve you can go and do ordinances for the dead: baptism and confirmation.  When you're an adult you can go and receive the next couple levels of ordinances  including the sealing ordinance that seals you to your spouse (our version of marriage) and then do them for the dead.  The others are difficult to explain and so I wont try it here.  I know it seems like we're obsessed with the dead, but there is something logical to me that everyone should get an opportunity to go to heaven.  If we didn't provide those services for everyone ever the whole concept of needing ordinances to go to heaven wouldn't work for me.

I'm happy here on Earth and I don't need to have this knowledge to be happy.  But, the whole idea of the three degrees of glory (as we call them) really resonates with me.  I believe.

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