Imagine you are in a car joyriding in a dangerous place that God has said you should not drive. Without warning through no fault of your own the brakes go out and you are heading towards a cliff.
The broken brakes, the law of gravity, the landscape itself, none of the reality around you was Gods fault. It simply is the uncreated eternal reality both you and God inhabit. He simply is unbelievably wiser and more capable than you.
God comes flying in on a helicopter with a rope to help you escape from the car which is about to fly off the cliff. It is impossible for him in the helicopter to reach down and pull you out of the car but the rope is there within your grasp. He freely is offering to save you but the choice must be yours, you must CHOOSE to take the rope he offers.
Perhaps you think it’s not that big a deal or you think it will be fun to go off the cliff into the water below. Perhaps you don’t think the cliff is really a cliff. Perhaps you are not even paying attention at all as you are distracted by the songs on the radio. Perhaps you think you got this on your own and can save yourself or that the rope is not strong enough to hold you. Perhaps you think God is a jerk and his offers to help are just another attempt to control you.
But the reality remains.
You are heading toward a cliff, you will be crushed if you don’t accept his help and none of this was his doing. He loves you, he wants to save you. Will you trust him enough to take the rope and hold on?
God is not an arbitrary rule maker whose laws exist to punish you for silly things like having too many earnings. He is a loving father trying to help you become the best possible version of yourself by escaping the path that leads to a hell of your own making as you sell yourself short of the ideals that make up a celestial level of being. Trusting him and doing all you can to grab the offered rope and holding on is how we are saved from the brutal and unchangeable laws of reality that act as the fabric of reality itself.
This is the conception of God in Alma 48. It is the conception of God offered by the restoration. God no longer is a tyrant whose arbitrary will we must obey in order to avoid his wrath and torment in hell. He is a loving fathers trying to help us. A father offering us a covenant path to the greatest good possible. An eternal life on his level.
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