"And the Lord said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of Man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first.
And the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and, at that day, many followed after him."
Abraham 3:27-28
Thinking about this today and realizing that I usually think about the premortal existence as sort of vanilla... everyone in harmony, living with God, awesome sauce, but sort of limited on the knowledge side. (I love vanilla, by the way.) But I think that's wrong. This was before the veil, so we likely knew more than we do now, at least on a spiritual level, and perhaps intellectually we understood perfectly what we were getting into, even though we couldn't know physically yet. And also, as we see here, there was emotional difference and disagreement. God's plan apparently seemed like a risky move to some. Great potential for increased knowledge and joy that we couldn't get without bodies, but some of us didn't want the associated risk and temporary pain and hardship that is part of having a body, and they bailed.
I have no idea what to compare it to, but I imagine maybe something like 'failure to launch" ... God had to deal with a LOT of his children who just didn't want to grow anymore, felt they were good enough already, were too afraid of failing, or other reasons for going along with Satan that I can't imagine. I think the core here is that they felt that they knew better than God did.
I have confidence that God was and is a perfect parent, so the problem wasn't with him, but rather the same error that we see in ourselves, over and over again--pride. Even though none of us are intellectual equals with God (or really equal in any other way), we start assuming that our ability to reason and choose makes us experts, most often because we don't have all the information but madly assume we are right anyway. I wonder how it worked in the premortal existence though, because... didn't we have all the information, and some of us chose poorly anyway? Like "Yes, I understand that what you are suggesting is a better way, but I want to do it my way anyway." ... Which actually doesn't seem that bad. Small rebellious kid type stuff, until you realize that what we are really saying is that we reject Christ's gift to us, and we'd rather suffer than allow him to help us. We often forget that we don't get to pick the consequences of our rebellion, and that God's way IS love and joy, and those are the things that we are walking away from.
Today, let's remember this story of the premortal existence, and remember what we are choosing. Let's turn back to God and choose love and life and joy rather than risking empty, humility-challenged rebellion. :)
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