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Let’s start with the assumption that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, Joseph Smith Jr was a true prophet, the BOM is true, etc (and I personally believe these things to be true): Even assuming this, there is one thing, one terrorizing possibility that I don’t see that even the restored gospel has a good answer for. What if there is a truth or a fundamental reality which will ruin even the joy of exaltation? And please, don’t tune out yet….my concern is REAL and let me explain with one possible scenario that concerns me: Imagine you are the parent of a family with 10 kids. The parents do the best they can but only 1 of those kids really does his best to live an excellent life and achieve his potential. 3 or 4 are of the most evil, wicked rebellious sort and commit crimes so heinous that all of them are condemned to a sentence worse than death: life in an awful prison where they are tortured every day and only kept alive so that they can continue to be tortured. The other 5 or 6 children are not real bad or real good, but disappointingly mediocre. When you as a mother or father reflect on your children….are you going to feel good or feel bad? If it was me, I would feel distraught ALL the time….especially to think of the 3 or 4 being tortured. This scenario seems reflective of our Heavenly Parents situation. How do they not feel a constant, inescapable depression (or at least, how could they ever feel a FULNESS of joy) to know that a third of their children are in a constant state of torment worse than the worse hell that even Dante could fathom? Or, is there a way, once a child of God is irreversibly lost as a child of perdition for the parent to cut those heart strings….I mean, what good does it do to love them at that point?! Anyway, this is one of many real possible scenarios of why heaven and even exaltation may not be the happiness we imagine. Some others include: - Perhaps God does lie. I know the scripture tell us that He doesn’t. But God inspired the scriptures…I don’t quite see how we can independently know if God is telling the truth. Not only that, D&C 19 actually seems to imply that God does intentionally deceive us, though perhaps His intentions are benevolent. The following thought is extremely repulsive to me because I have had many experiences where I felt the Spirit and I cherish those experiences....but what if The Spirit is lying to us? How could we ever know? - What if heaven is boring? The typical Christian conception of Heaven sounds as boring as…well, Hell (pardon my literalism). But perhaps after so many billions of years, even exaltation brings an unfathomable boredom. Exaltation and the man-god doctrine of eternal increase address this concern much better than any other religion I’ve studied….but I’m not certain they completely eliminate the possibility of eternal boredom. - What if God is actually evil and delights in tormenting us? Now, I think this scenario is unlikely, but the one thought that gives me pause is the following: it would seem that the most awful torment includes false hope…to raise someone up to believe something wonderful and beautiful and then drop them…the higher you lift them up, the farther they can fall. There is a Twilight Zone (or was it Alfred Hitchcock episode?) that captures this: This guy is betrayed by his girlfriend and ends up spending years in prison. When he finally gets out she is terrified he is going to get vengeance, but instead he shows up and pretends to forgive her and even gives her money to set up a business, etc. And just when things are going wonderful for her, he shows up and tells her it was a set up so that he could make her feel the way she had made him feel before her betrayal….and then he kills her. But I really haven’t explain my concern fully. I am going to attempt another way of saying this, but this is so hard for me to put in words…here goes: It seems clear that there are laws that that even God cannot break….a reality that even God cannot change. That said, there doesn’t seem to me that there is any reason to assume that reality and reality’s “superstructure” has to be benevolent toward humanity. While I believe the restored gospel has the best argument and evidence for a benevolent God, I don’t think we can necessarily assume that reality is benevolent towards humans. It would seem to me that God must operate in the structure of a reality that predates hims (by predate I don’t necessarily mean chronology but prior in order). What I am trying to say is that we know from the scriptures that there are rules that even God cannot break…how did those rules get there?….and in a sense then God is not totally omnipotent. He is bound by these rules. So, what if there is a law or a fundamental fact of reality that results in an inescapable misery and doom for all. And perhaps we are here in mortality for a period…and the veil’s purpose is actually to temporarily screen out this terrible fact from our consciousness….if only temporarily. Perhaps God plugged us into this matrix called mortality to temporarily hide us from a hellish truth. But this bubble of parental protection can not protect us indefinitely from this chilling reality. One of the things that makes me think there is something going on that God is not telling us is the following: If we lived in an eternal premortal state before coming to earth and we will live for all eternity after, what i the probability that we would currently live in mortality? Well, any number divided by infinity is zero...how improbable that we currently find ourselves in mortality!....so, is there something else going on here that God isn't telling us about? Is it possible we are caught in an infinite loop? In some ways, the non-LDS doctrine of reincarnation seems to address this problem better. It is not my intention to be sacrilegious. But I believe in freedom of thought…and it does seem to me there are some scary possibilities out there. I understand if what I said above doesn’t make sense…I really have a hard time explaining my concern. In the end, though, my concerns don’t result in any change in my behavior or faith…because I have no control of the structure of reality. I will continue to live my life with the assumption that all the things the church teaches are true and that doom is escapable by obeying God and relying on the merits of our Savior. I suppose the truth of all things will come out after mortal death. But I am curious: Does anyone have an answer for my dilemma? If there is a flaw in my thinking or something I’m missing, please point it out. This has been haunting me for more than a decade.