Do we lose our free will when we die?

[Spicy McHaggis]

The church tells us that a key component of their doctrine is the concept of free will. Supposedly it is one of the first lessons we learned in the pre-existence. We are taught that we have free will on earth but if we make a poor choice we will most likely be punished forever. From what I can tell the worst punishment is that we can't see our family again or maybe we can't see the other TBMs from the ward.

Let's say I live a near perfect TBM life, a Peter Priesthood who gets the 2nd anointing with my calling & election made sure. The problem is that my kids decide to reject the myth, lore and superstition of bronze aged humans and therefor they reject church teachings. Because of their lack of faith I'll be separated from my kids forever.

Now, if I have free will, why can't I reject that separation and spend time with my heretic children? If I'm not able to see them, am I being punished even though I've earned all promised blessings, or have I lost my free will?

[w2mz]

Good question. Supposedly we had agency in the pre-mortal life to choose Jesus' plan or Satan's plan, and we have agency here to choose to do everything the brethren say or else. You'd think we would have agency in the next life too. I mean, if I choose not to show up to change bed sheets in the CK since I'm a servant, what are they going to do, fire me?

Fine by me. I'll go explore the vast reaches of the solar system with other like minded souls.

Honestly, while it would be cool to see my family every once in a while, I'd love to meet new people, go places, and be forever doing new things.

Mormon heaven of having, raising, and killing my billions of kids over and over and over seems more like hell to me.

[Ghost]

I was taught in Sunday School that people in higher kingdoms could visit those in lower ones, but the opposite was not true. But isn't there also something about God never having sin in His presence? So, if you become like God, does that limit such visitation?

And if you manage to become like God, can you no longer do anything that's less-than-perfect at risk of ceasing to be (like) God? That sounds like a limitation on freedom. I guess the answer might be that you simply no longer have any desire to make wrong choices, so you're still free. But does that mean that the ceasing to be God thing simply rhetorical and it's somehow impossible to backslide after reaching that state? That also seems limiting.

You'd think it would be difficult to discipline or constrain a being that has attained celestial glory and then turned bad. Or is it a matter of the elements no longer obeying that being due to unrighteousness, so that the power is no longer there? The being would still have a celestial body, for what that's worth.

When I taught a youth class, one of the kids asked one day what would happen if two exalted/omnipotent beings disagreed about something. That was a more interesting question than the ones presented in the manual.

[wtfluff]

Well, according to at least one current "apostle" we give up our free will when we choose to be baptized.

So... Many of us "chose" to give up our free will at 8 years old. (When we had absolutely no clue what we were getting into.)

ETA: Man I'm glad that it's all made up...

[RubinHighlander]

It is fun to play around with all those doctrines and find the corners they paint you in to; all the quandaries and conundrums. The temple really bugged me with the celestial kingdom picture it painted. All those big marble floors and white curtains; boring! It was serious cogdis for me as a TBM to think about living in a big palace with all those eternal kids, now responsible to go and make other worlds and deal with all the pain this made up Heavenly Father had to go through with us. After raising kids here...honestly I'm done with that stage in my life and have no desire to repeat it.

I would often think selfishly about how much more fun it is to live here and do things like snowboarding. Seriously, the best zen and feeling of freedom I have ever experienced was surfing fresh pow on my board down a virgin slope, jumping out of an airplane and free falling to the ground or hanging high on a cliff in the mountains. So much more exhilarating and awesome than anything I would ever experience at church. So I would try to relegate myself, do the mental gymnastics and think "Maybe I won't care about snowboarding in super VIP heaven, if I make it, because it will be so much more awesome to make eternal kids and planets." That thought just made me sad inside.

Then I thought that we have eternity right? So, if I make a world with really killer mountains and the best snow ever, I'll get to do the ultimate ride down them...but honestly, what God, according to the bible, gets a vacation like that? Is he just so sober and serious that things like that are trivial and uninteresting child's play? Well, I for one, still enjoy jumping on a trampoline or doing other kid things. Then I thought about all the music I wouldn't have because it was Satan's music; Hendrix, The Who, The Foo and what about Miles Davis and a thousand other awesome musicians? Honestly, I'd rather be partying with those guys.

It was so much weight off my shoulders to give all that dogmatic crap back to the unevolved humans that created it and the deevolved humans that maintain it. Now I'm at so much more at peace with death and the chance there is no life after death. I like the idea that our elements just go back to the earth and universe that gave them to us, which is why I'm going for cremation. Your time here is precious and if there is nothing else, then you won't care because you won't exist. If there is some existence after this mortality, then I look forward to discovering it and I don't think if there is a creator, he would fault me for using my brain as much as possible to learn as much as I could and appreciate as much as I could my about my existence. This in contrast to be locked in a mind numbing matrix dogma death march toward a non-existent fantasy land after this life, wasting your entire life on it. No thanks!