"As man now is, God once was..."

This, I think, is the best way to summarize unit 1 "Eternal Truths" in my Family Foundations class.

This unit was all about our eternal nature. Here are some important truths that I learned this week:

1. All of God's children are eternal in nature--we have always existed (first as intelligences, then as spirits, and then here in mortality we gain a body).2. The Plan of Salvation is also eternal--it has no beginning nor end. 3. The Plan of Salvation was a plan created for families.
4. God was once a mortal man like us, and we may in turn someday become immortal, perfected beings like Him.
5. There are two parts to us: our temporal body and our immortal spirit.
6. Truth is not relative, and remains true even if nobody believes it.I think it's really cool that we are as eternal as our Heavenly Father is (though we are not in a perfected, glorified state yet). I also think it's fascinating that God was once as we are and also lived on an earth and went though the trials that we are now going through. It really makes you wonder how many worlds and gods there are and will be. There must be an infinite amount. 

I love this quote by Elder Neal A. Maxwell: "To be too quick to the ways of this world is to be maladjusted for the next." It's a reminder that this world is only temporary and we should not be too influenced by the ways of this world but should remain true to that which is eternal. That also reminds me of something Elder Ballard once said: ""What matters most is what lasts longest. And our families are for eternity."

Finally, there is a fantastic talk on this very subject of our eternal nature by Elder Tad R. Callister called "Our Identity and Destiny." I wholeheartedly recommend it to all Christians (he mostly uses scriptures from the Old and New Testaments to back up his argument, so if you're an atheist or of some other religion I imagine you're not likely to find his talk very impressive).

Click play below to watch it! (His talk starts at about 2:20)

What is truth?

I learned a lot of important things in the first unit of my Family Foundations class at BYU. This unit is on "Eternal Truths" and one of my favorite readings from this unit was a 2013 CES devotional talk by President Uchtdorf called "What is Truth?"

It is long, and there is a lot of good information there, so I encourage you all go watch/read/listen to it for yourself, but if you're short on time here is the "cliffnotes" version of it as well as some of of my thoughts.

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President Uchtdorf begins his talk with a poem based on an ancient parable, "The Blind Men and the Elephant":

"The first verse of the poem speaks about:

Six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

In the poem each of the six travelers takes hold of a different part of the elephant and then describes to the others what he has discovered.

One of the men finds the elephant’s leg and describes it as being round and rough like a tree. Another feels the tusk and describes the elephant as a spear. A third grabs the tail and insists that an elephant is like a rope. A fourth discovers the trunk and insists that the elephant is like a large snake.

Each is describing truth.

And because his truth comes from personal experience, each insists that he knows what he knows.

The poem concludes:
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!1"

I loved this story! I think it is a great analogy for how limited our knowledge and understanding is here in mortality and how easy it therefore is to come to the wrong conclusions based on what little we are able to perceive. When I hear this story I think about all the scientists and philosophers out there speculating about the mysteries of the universe. They have discovered a lot of truth through logic, observation, and experimentation, but our five senses and reasoning abilities can only get us so far. Until the veil is lifted, we are little better off than the blind men in the parable, fumbling with pieces of the truth and often coming to the wrong conclusions.

"We simply don’t know all things—we can’t see everything. What may seem contradictory now may be perfectly understandable as we search for and receive more trustworthy information. Because we see through a glass darkly, we have to trust the Lord, who sees all things clearly." ~President Uchtdorf

Fortunately, however, the Lord has given us the Gift of the Holy Ghost:

"Our Heavenly Father knew how difficult it would be for us to sift through all the competing noise and discover truth during our mortality. He knew we would see only a portion of the truth, and He knew that Satan would try to deceive us. So He gave us the heavenly gift of the Holy Ghost to illuminate our minds, teach us, and testify to us of the truth."

The last thing I really loved and wanted to share from this talk was President Uchtdorf's assurance that there is an absolute truth:

"The thing about truth is that it exists beyond belief. It is true even if nobody believes it.

We can say west is north and north is west all day long and even believe it with all our heart, but if, for example, we want to fly from Quito, Ecuador, to New York City in the United States, there is only one direction that will lead us there, and that is north—west just won’t do."

Click here to read/watch the whole talk by President Uchtdorf