by Shawn Tucker:
Of course we don’t believe in that, right? Well, let’s imagine a couple of things. Let’s imagine that you get to the Spirit world, and there you have a chance to serve others. You communicate with them about your mortal experience and how you embraced the light/love God offered you. You learned from others there as well, seeing how you can embrace more light based upon their experience and insight. Lovely! What a great place!
And, while there, you enjoy a different proximity to God. I’m guessing that there is still some veil there (?), but I would guess something else: you see that you are still not like your Heavenly Parents. First, you lack a body, and you know that the Resurrection will take care of that. But are you ready for a final, permanent, eternal body? Do you yet have the spirit for that? One trip to earth and some great conversations in the Spirit world just might not be enough to prepare you for a final, perfected body like God’s and to live a life like God’s.
So, you get to the Spirit world, you grow, and then you get the offer to go back to mortality and continue your training. You are told that there are still lessons to learn in an imperfect body and surrounded by imperfect people. You are also told that you will run the same risks as last time. But could it be that the same spirit that learned and grew will go with you the next time? What gifts would you get to bring? Would your next mortal experience be one of recollection, or embracing again lessons you had learned previously, but with the added bonus of having them added unto?
Now, of course, there are problems with this idea. Some of those problems relate to time and some relate to eternal bonds we make here in mortality. Oh, and the problem that nothing that I have ever heard at church or in the scriptures seems to easily support this idea. But, maybe Terrestrial and Telestial souls are exactly that because they choose to not continue their growth. They don’t want to try again and they are happy with the amount of light/love and glory that they have embraced. So, they get to resurrect into bodies terrestrial or bodies telestial, and they are done. If that is anything like the case, then faith and courage might have a slightly larger meaning than what one might have thought.
Shawn Tucker grew up with amazing parents and five younger, wonderful siblings. He served as a missionary in Chile during the Plebiscite and the first post-dictatorship election. After his mission, he attended BYU, where he married ... you guessed it ... his wife. They both graduated, with Shawn earning a BA in Humanities. Fearing that his BA in Humanities, which is essentially a degree in Jeopardy, would not be sufficient, Shawn completed graduate work in the same ... stuff ... at Florida State University. He currently teaches at Elon University in North Carolina. He and ... you guessed it ... his wife have four great children. Twitter: @MoTabEnquirer. Website: motabenquirer.blogspot.com. Image credit: h.koppdelaney (used with permission).
