“In the beginning” there was a plan – God’s plan for man. There was a desire in God the Father for all of His children to become like Him and sealed together, as one family, for time and eternity. There was a council of the gods to set this plan in motion. Particulars of the plan were settled. Disagreement and, ultimately, dissension occurred. A Savior was chosen. The rules of mortality for the practical exercise of the plan were established. His children freely chose to accept and adopt His plan or not.
God’s plan for man, like Creation itself, was deliberate. Nothing about the plan, or the lives resulting from it, is the result of unguided “spontaneous order.” Man’s moral agency can create the naive illusion of an “invisible hand,” the vastness of space, time and eternity can create the arrogant illusion of limitless human possibilities, but the true Invisible Hand set a stage upon which life’s screenplay permits each actor’s personal improvisation but not authorship or alteration of the story.
We are free to act and to be acted upon inside God’s plan for man. In nothing else are we free. We are not the authors of Truth. We are not creators of Life. We are not the architects of Mortality, let alone Eternity. We are, as Moses realized after glimpsing the world from beginning to end, nothing outside of God’s plan.
The reality of our nothingness outside of God’s plan is most evident in our need of a Savior. His atoning sacrifice, alone, gives life meaning. In other words, true freedom has a name, even Jesus Christ. True freedom is not simply circumstantial; it is ultimately contextual. To understand God’s plan for man is the first step in understanding true freedom.
Next: The Family: A Proclamation to the World
