You don't have to be good. You don't have to do what God wants you to do, even though God helped you get here. The price of taking God's help to get to mortality in the first place is that you will ultimately be judged and assigned an eternal reward. Although you don't remember this now, you accepted this deal in the past before your mortal birth and bought into what God offers. You will be judged by your actions relative to what God sees as good and his decisions will stick, period. God controls “salvation” and “exaltation” - deal with it.

God will decide if you merit exaltation

I mean it is sad that you might not be interested in Godhood, but it is up to you what you really care about. You won't get exaltation by just chance or wishing for it - it requires some work, like anything else worthwhile.

God doesn't give the big rewards just because he "loves" you.

Face it, God loves everyone, which means that his love can't really be leveraged to get us salvation or exaltation.

I always knew that love was a poor motivator. People who focus on God's love are depending on the hope that God won't be firm with them and their doings, which is wrong.

This is why the Bible and other scripture go on and on about keeping commandments and being a good person. Those are the things that God says will sway his ultimate decision on your eternal disposition, not the fact that he loves you - you already have the promises that come with love in your ability to do what you please and to have not only opportunity for better things but the perks of natural positive consequences for doing good things, among so many more things like cost-free oxygen.

Dennis Prager said this so well - the fact that God judges us will elicit better behavior than the idea that God loves us.

The warrior-prophet Moroni encapsulates the idea that you need to be far more worried about your ultimate reward than just hoping that God's love will see you through (as if the Lord ever said that would work).

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/morm/9?lang=eng&id=p27-p28#p27

27 O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.

28 Be wise in the days of your probation; strip yourselves of all uncleanness; ask not, that ye may consume it on your lusts, but ask with a firmness unshaken, that ye will yield to no temptation, but that ye will serve the true and living God.

-- JasonNemrow - 07 Apr 2024