The Hierarchy of Faith

by Robert Rosskopf

People generally get about as close to God as they feel comfortable - and no further. We all want to feel God's love, but few want to be accused of being "holier than thou", "miss goody two shoes", "Molly Mormon" or "Peter Priesthood". We want to be spiritual and worldly at the same time. God's life is alien to our own. The worldly life is also alien to us. Somehow each person must choose between them.

There is a hierarchy of faith that goes something like this:
1) Life is good.
2) God creates life, and God is good.
3) God loves his children, and wants us to be happy.
4) God listens to and answers prayers, talking to people today as in times of old.
5) God is alive, and wants us to enjoy a life like his. Adam in the Garden of Eden - Jesus after the resurrection - that is our perfect state and his current state. We were meant to be alive and live in righteousness forever.
6) Jesus was our spirit brother in the premortal existance, and he had a perfect respect for God and life and truth. As such he was selected by God to come to earth and be born as his physical son. He lived the perfect life, never sinning against his knowledge of righteousness, and thus breaking the bands of death and becoming the first child of earth to be resurrected, and stand in the presence of God as a physical being.
7) The gospel, as taught by Jesus and others, allows a man to become perfect. It changes his (or her) very nature. It is basically I. Faith in God and in his son, Jesus Christ, II. Repentance, III. Baptism as a token of a covenant to keep God's commandments and IV. The Gift of the Holy Ghost which sanctifies us - changes our nature to become more God-like. It is more than just a one-time series of events, but a cycle to be repeated until a person is perfect, with the Sacrament taking the place of Baptism as the token of our commitment. Thus we endure to the end.

Like Adam and Eve, we are children of God and don't have enough respect for God, life and truth. God has given us this temporary probation in order to correct those weaknesses. As we give ourselves to the spirit of the Holy Ghost, we learn to love life, love God and love truth. We become born again. Our very nature changes. We become the children of God, and not in name only. God has promised us that we can inherit all that he has.