MAN CUT OFF FROM GOD?

The other day I received an email from a good friend who was talking to another friend about our religion—The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, to many). He wanted my opinion, along with others, about a question that arose in his mind. The subject of his question brought to my mind a flurry of thoughts, and I responded. It occurred to me that it would be a nice change of pace from my recent historical vignettes to touch on the subject in a blog on my religious beliefs. The following represents our email exchange.
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I am talking about the church with a friend. She realized that due to our belief in the Godhead...Jesus is a God as well as Heavenly Father. I was kinda explaining and then I came upon a question myself.

Why are we cut off from Heavenly Father? I was thinking that if Jesus is a God as well, then why are we not cut off from him as well? I realize that I really don't know why we are cut off. I thought it was because a God could not be in the presence of fallen beings. But I'm not sure that is right. There are several instances of Heavenly Father and Jesus appearing to man. So that leaves me thinking...what is the reason? I always thought that after the fall that man's dealings were only with Jehovah.

Anyway...what do you guys think?
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My understanding is just that: The fall separated us from the Father. To live with him, we would need to be like Him, to gain Godlike attributes. We would not be able to be as he is without learning to live by faith. The separation of Man from God was the plan before our mortality began. Adam fell from grace so that we might be born into mortality to be tested and proved worthy by faithfully seeking after our Creator, perfecting ourselves and returning to his presence through Christ (1st Corinthians, 15:22). It seems to me that choosing rightly with free agency is the mark of a perfecting person. Being subject to the Father or being in his presence would not, in my opinion, allow us to be perfected by free choice. But, with free choice comes the obvious fact that we sin and must repent. We are promised, however, by Scripture that if we repent we will be forgiven and allowed access to Heaven. However, repentance is not enough when justice is considered. And if we believe the Scriptures in regards to the nature of God, God is anything but unjust. I think balance in the universe requires justice to be upheld, that the laws of the universe must be followed. It seems logical to me that, if God decided to do other than his purported nature required, He would cease to be God. And, since, as Scripture indicates, that no unclean thing can share the same place as God or enter the Kingdom of God, it would seem to be an injustice to allow even a repentant sinner access to God’s presence.

It seems logical to me then that an equal injustice on the other side of the scales of justice would be needed to offset the obvious injustice of a sinful, yet repentant, man or woman being admitted into God's presence. An atonement would be required. This atonement, or rebalancing of the scales of justice, needed to be accomplished by a perfect individual suffering unjustly. The Father was unable to redeem us Himself—He could not take on mortality again, as we believe he was already in a perfected physical state—so he allowed his only begotten Son in the flesh, who had not yet taken on mortality with the necessary body of flesh and blood, to provide the necessary perfect sacrifice for all.

This is in fact what most of mainstream Christianity believe happened, except they believe that the Father and the Son are, somehow, literally one and the same person, though the scriptures are really very clear that The Father and The Son are separate individuals. Christ prayed to His Father in Heaven, The voice of the Father declared “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” Was Christ a ventriloquist? To Mary Magdalene He said, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father in Heaven.” Again, someone who was perfect, who had yet to take on immortality would be needed to suffer the atonement, who could physically suffer and do so through free will. By doing so Christ earned the right as the Savior of mankind to be the emissary of the Father to us. I think it all comes down to the fact that an atonement had to be performed, and a resurrected being was unable to suffer in the right way—he would need to be subject to our same earthly existence and be on our level of feeling.

I believe the crucial thing in understanding the need for a Christ figure is the idea that we would have the opportunity, as we of our faith believe, to be as God is. In essence, most of Christianity rejects the idea that we will be as God is, despite scriptural testimony to the contrary—we will receive all that our Father in Heaven has. They, like Muslims, believe that the righteous will be lesser creatures in the hereafter, simply worshipping God through eternity. Interestingly, Islam rejects the need for an atonement and a Savior, because Allah is all powerful and can forgive anyone he wants. In this, it seems to me, they are more logical then most Christians. Without the possibility of obtaining equality with our Heavenly Father and Christ and being more than worshipper for eternity, the logic escapes me for the necessity of the atonement. Here is where our strong argument for a Savior makes sense. Unlike most of mainstream Christianity, we believe that we are literal spirit children of God and that we are his heirs, if we prove ourselves worthy. We hope to be with and as God in the afterlife—Christ himself commanded us to be perfect, even as His Father in Heaven was perfect (Matt. 5:48)—but we understand that He is just. It would not be just to allow anyone into his existence simply because they repented and had become perfect in keeping his commandments, because they would still have been imperfect in total, because of prior imperfection. We also believe that the universe is governed by law and law would be usurped unless a penalty is paid—enter Christ and the Atonement. For all intents, a repentant person is perfect except for past deeds, which justice is unable to ignore. Christ himself withholds his presence from us until we are ready to receive him, even in the flesh. I also think what makes him more accessible to us is our common nature as the offspring of the Father. It is crucial to remember, or understand, that we lived with our Father in Heaven before coming here and we understood the plan and the need for the fall, and the potential of physical and spiritual death. Free choice and the need to live by faith were from before the creation. If we had no choice in being born or participating in this existence, there could be no justice in God’s commands to us or in His judgments in regards to us. And it would clearly have no logical bearing on any separation between man and God.

When I was about ten or eleven years of age, I asked my pastor, “what happens to people who live on the earth and do not come to know of Christ?” His answer to me was that they would necessarily go to Hell and that that was why it was so important to do missionary work in non-Christian lands. Even at that young age, this did not compute. How could a just God condemn his creation, if not His spirit children, to Hell when they had no choice of when and where they were to be born? The answer is, of course, he could not. Later, I learned the principles mentioned above, that God loves us as a true Heavenly Father and will provide for us to have every opportunity to return to Him and be His heirs. As Peter tells us in his general epistles (1st Peter, 3: 18-29 and 4: 6), if we do not have the opportunity in this life to accept the atonement of Christ, we will be taught the Gospel in the Spirit world and be judged in the spirit as men are in the flesh. The Christians at the time of Paul baptized living people for their dead ancestors (1st Corinthians, 15: 29); just as we Mormons do in our temples today. Our separation from our Father in Heaven need only be for a time, and our Savior and our spirit brother, Jesus Christ, is our ticket home. Though our separation from God is needed for us to live by faith, to overcome the natural man and perfect ourselves through Christ’s atonement, the length of our separation depends on us.

That's my understanding.
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I guess where I get confused is that if we are cut off from God because he is God, then how are we not cut off from Jesus, who is a God as well. The fact that they are Gods does not seem to be the reason then.
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I believe that that is correct—the fact that the Father and the Son are Gods does not, in itself, cut us off from Them. What cuts us off from God, at least in his willingness to appear to us through a quickening of our bodies to withstand his presence, is our own unpreparedness (ie. unrighteousness), lack of faith, and the necessity of having such an experience to create the faith needed to become as He is. Faith is the crucial element, as I see it. We need to live by faith and perfect our faith, to be faithful or full of faith, obedient to God’s will, to become perfect, to become as God is. When we increase in faith to a degree that an appearance by God to us would not then condemn us--if we were to sin against a perfect knowledge—God the Father and The Son are available to us, as with the demonstration by the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon. The Lord (Jesus, in his spirit form in this case) was unable to prevent the brother of Jared from seeing him because of his great faith. Just as the Aaronic Priesthood allows us the right of Angelic administrations, The Mechisedec Priesthood allows us the right of personal administration from the Godhead, if we are worthy and we desire it, and if it would be to our benefit. As I understand it, the Second Endowment, mentioned in Church writings, is having your calling and election made sure, which is revelation from the Savior Himself in the flesh. That is my understanding.

Randy