"And I said unto them that our father also saw that the justice of God did also divide the wicked from the righteous; and the brightness thereof was like unto the brightness of a flaming fire, which ascendeth up unto God forever and ever, and hath no end."
1 Nephi 15:30
This caught my eye today because it talks about dividing the wicked from the righteous. So much of the gospel is about unifying and becoming one, so dividing just sounds bad... which is fair, because this particular verse is in the context of explaining why people need to go to hell. Later in the chapter it says "...if they be filthy it must needs be that they cannot dwell in the kingdom of God" and "there cannot any unclean thing enter into the kingdom of God; wherefore there must needs be a place of filthiness prepared for that which is filthy."
We're all jumbled up together on earth, so it almost seems wrong to think about whatever permanent-type barriers there will be later... and I'm not pretending to be the expert on why, but thinking about it today I came up with a couple of ideas. On earth we often separate people who have harmed each other--could be kids, or could be adults with prison sentences or restraining orders. We separate groups of people who have broken laws because them mixing in with a society that isn't breaking laws is disrupting. ... And I think that we wish we could make some additional separations, like separating the innocent from those who would prey upon them, whether that is abuse or robbery or other kinds of bullying and exploitation. We wish we didn't live in a world where people weren't trying to cheat us or harm us with robocalls, viruses, and ransomware. We wish we didn't live in a world where human trafficking existed, or sexual abuse, or rape, or hate crimes.
God is going to solve all of those things, and more... but since he is never going to force anyone to be "good," to be able to protect different groups and provide justice for them--basically a place where they don't have to worry about those things anymore--he is going to give them a place to live together instead, in a place where no one can prey on them. And then other groups can live together as well with people who are like-minded. I can't imagine that idea played out to its conclusion would be happy for everyone, but I think God is going to make is as perfectly happy as it can possibly be for everyone, limited only by our own choices about what we want and who we have become.
Today, let's think a little bit about the kind of people we want to spend time with in eternity, and what sort of society we want to live in... and then let's work to be that type of person. If we wouldn't want to live with people like ourselves, it is officially time to change. :)
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