The Latter-day Saint Answer to Life’s 4 Big Questions

There are 4 big questions about life:

Why are we here?
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?
What’s the way of living this life that provides the most joy and meaning?

A fifth might be “who is stealing the socks that disappear from the dryer?” but we’ll examine that later.

A diagram of the Latter-day Saint answer to the big four is below.

Premortal life

We believe that we lived before we were born here on earth. We were spiritual children of a loving Heavenly Father (so we’re all much older than we know). He wanted us to become like him and share the joy he has, and so he created a plan to accomplish it. It’s called the Great Plan of Happiness.

A central part of Heavenly Father’s plan was giving us our agency. We believe Satan was there in the beginning. He offered a different plan of redemption, one that would remove our agency to choose. Heavenly Father knew that wouldn’t work and rejected the idea. Satan, and a third of our brothers and sisters, rebelled, figuring Heavenly Father was an idiot.

But God doesn’t want robots. He wants sons and daughters who are fully committed to helping him in the family business. Our agency is vital to God’s plan. The purpose of his plan cannot be fulfilled without our choice. We believe God doesn’t want us to obey him—he wants us to choose to obey him. When we do, he can change us.

Earth life

An important part of that plan was to create a world for us where we could get a physical body and learn and grow with it. We believe Jesus Christ is central to Heavenly Father’s plan. Not only did Christ create this world, but he made it possible so all of us could be saved, or in other words, take advantage of Heavenly Father’s plan for us. Furthermore, he showed us the way to do that.

Therefore, the key thing we are to do in this life is follow Christ and try to pattern our lives after him. And the hallmark of his life was hearkening to and trusting our Heavenly Father and loving others.

Of course, we make many mistakes. But part of the plan was for Jesus the Christ to come and make it possible to grow and become more like our Heavenly Father despite our mistakes. He would also make it possible for our bodies and spirits to be reunited in glory and immortality. He did this through his atonement for our sins, death, and subsequent resurrection.

So Jesus Christ not only created this Earth but made it possible for us to be successful down here. All of us—no matter who we are or what we’ve done. There is nothing so far gone, so broken, that He can’t fix it. We just need to choose to follow him.

Physical death

We understand death to be the separation of the spirit from the body. One way to think about it is a hand and glove. The glove is like our body. Our spirit is like a hand. When we come to this Earth, our spirits are joined to a body. At death, they are separated.

Spirit world

When we die, we believe our spirits go to the Spirit World, which is on Earth. I often wonder what it’s like. We don’t know a lot about it. But modern-day revelations have given some information. They state that we associate and cooperate like we do here on earth. And that those that didn’t hear about Christ and Father’s plan for us while living on earth will be taught there so that all can have the chance to be ready for the resurrection. It’s important to emphasize we believe all will have a chance to hear about Christ and accept him before the resurrection.

The resurrection

We believe our spirits will be joined again to a body. This reuniting of body and spirit is what we call the resurrection. Except this time our bodies will be immortal.

After the resurrection

When we follow Christ, we allow him to change us. The more diligently we choose to follow him (the more coachable we are) the more he’s able to fill us with his light. We believe that everyone follows God’s counsel to different degrees and so will be changed to different degrees. The description of our state after the resurrection simply reflects those different degrees of change.

There are three general divisions in the levels of glory in heaven. They describe in general the size of the change we allow Heavenly Father to make with us.

Celestial glory. The highest glory is the celestial. It’s the glory of God. Those who choose to strive as hard as they can to follow Christ allow God to make the most dramatic change with them. He changes them to become like him and share in his glory.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him”
(1 John 3:2)

It’s important to remember that these folks are not perfect people. They will make a lot of mistakes during their earth life; some of them are terrible mistakes. What allows Christ to change them so much is that when they fall, or even dive, off the path, they reach out for the Savior again and get back on.

All of us can receive this change, no matter what we’ve done. All of us. There is nothing we can do that is so awful that Christ can’t fix it. We just need to try to live the best we can with whatever level of knowledge we do or don’t have about Christ and the plan. When we do that, his grace changes us.

Terrestrial glory. The next glory of heaven is made up of those who are honorable, but choose to not try as hard with the light and knowledge they have been given and, therefore, don’t allow God to make as big a change in them.

Telestial glory. The lowest glory of heaven is made up of those who, well, let’s just say they choose to make a lot of mistakes when they knew they should be choosing otherwise and didn’t really care about it. These folks allow God to change them in a smaller way.

No glory. There is a kingdom of no glory at all, not shown in the image above. This is for those who, in essence, know Christ and Heavenly Father are real and reject them altogether, fighting against them with full knowledge. These are those who don’t allow God to change them at all.

The good news is that we believe the Lord will show as much mercy as possible when judging us, allowing for all sorts of extenuating circumstances. He isn’t interested in damning us. He’s interested in helping us, changing us, leading us along to a glorious end. That’s the reason he created this earth. But we have to choose to follow him.

Will there be animals in heaven?

The modern-day revelations we believe in say there will be. We don’t know much about it other than that, but believe that God has a plan for all of his creations.

A loving Father and personal choice

When talking to Moses, God explained why he created the earth.

“For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”
(Moses 1:39)

That’s his work and glory, what he cares about, his focus. For me and other Latter-day Saints that’s an amazing thing to contemplate. Heavenly Father’s whole desire is to share a wonderful future with us. Talk about a loving father.

We all have different circumstances and different levels of knowledge about Christ and Father’s plan. There are a lot of wonderful people on Earth who haven’t ever heard of Christ. But they’ve tried to do their best. And Father’s plan to help all of us takes that into account.

However, at the end of the day we are responsible for what we choose with the light and knowledge we’ve received. We’re all going to make mistakes. That’s a given. The key is what we choose to do after we’ve made them.

Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to revel in our mistakes. That doesn’t help us develop into the types of people he wants us to be. Nor does he want us to beat ourselves up about our faults and run ourselves down. That doesn’t get us there either. The way to the bright future he has planned for us is to simply get up each time we fall and follow Christ as best as we can.

The path of following the Savior is a path of change. And the more eager and diligent we are in following him, the more he can do with us through his wonderful power.

We don’t work our way into heaven. We choose to open ourselves to his power by doing what he’s asked us to do. And he makes the change.

For me and other Latter-day Saints, this plan gives us a lot of insight into who we are and what we can become. And it helps us look at others differently. Hopefully, in the way our Father sees them—people full of potential to become like Christ. People beloved by our Father. When you think about it, it’s quite an amazing plan. It really is glad tidings.

Some people believe God is wrathful, prepared to smite us at the slightest provocation. Others believe he doesn’t care about what we choose to do. We believe neither. We believe he’s a loving father who wants us to change and progress and become more like him.

This short but fabulous talk explains this and how to make the most joyous change. It’s called “Choose You This Day” by Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. If you’re interested in this stuff, I think you’ll enjoy it.