I was reading in a book1 and, in a list about some LDS teachings, the author wrote: “As sinners we cannot be redeemed without Jesus." She wrote this as if it was a bad thing. And I began to think about that. According to a man2 who has seen Jesus in Gethsemane, Jesus suffered two things: He suffered the horrors of those who had hurt others when they finally realized how bad their actions really were, and then he came to peace with God, thus knowing how to lead them back to God. He also suffered the physical and nonphysical pains of the victims, including their resentments and anger, and came to peace with God.
From what I understand, the redemption consists of Jesus teaching us to follow the path he trod with each of us in Gethsemane. Because he lived each of our experiences and found his way to peace with God, he can tell and show us how to do the same thing. It has nothing to do with harming us or making us subservient to any organized (or even unorganized) religion or to taking away our freedoms to choose.
(I would recommend reading Luna’s book. Honestly, though, I don’t think it’s worth owning. She has a lot of truth in there, but she also has a lot of misunderstandings about God. Like the organized churches, she conflates their doctrine with God’s. For example, we should be obedient to God, but that equates to obeying the leaders. In fact, obeying him often puts one at variance with organized religions and their prideful (and often greedy for money and power) leaders.
The point of this post, though, is that the redemption is not there to limit our freedoms, but to teach us to come to peace, in ourselves, with God. The thing she does not understand is that God loves us an incredible amount. If we listen to him and not to men, we will get farther. Yes, he does send messengers when the people as a whole have gone astray. At the same time, true messengers will teach that we need to connect with God. Also, true messengers are human and can screw up. Because of that we each need our own connection with heaven, and, like I said in an earlier post, all of us have that connection because Christ literally stepped out of time and walked our paths with us. Also, him being "in and through all things", and by him "all things were created," means that we also have that connection with him. We can ignore it. We can refuse to follow it, but it is there.
To follow our own soul’s connection to God is not slavery, but freedom.
1 Recovering Agency – Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control, by Luna Lindsey, an epub book.
2 Denver Snuffer Jr.
