As I've been thinking about the three degrees of glory in contrast to the traditional heaven/hell dichotomy, it occurred to me that the three degrees of glory is like using letter grades, while the heaven/hell dichotomy is more like a pass/fail grading system.
Letter grades have an advantage over pass/fail systems in that they allow for grater nuance. With three or four possible "grades," people have a clearer idea of where they stand than they would get if they were merely told whether they passed or failed.
In fact, given that the Celestial and Telestial Kingdoms are canonically said to have multiple degrees within them (and, given that precedent, I would expect that the Terrestrial Kingdom has degrees too), one can get a very precise idea of their grade. Those in the Celestial Kingdom all get As, for example, but the different degrees might tell you whether you got 91 percent, 95 percent, or 100 percent. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those in the Telestial Kingdom all get Fs or maybe Ds, but the precise degree they land in could tell them exactly how close they came to failing or exactly how much they failed by. (And I imagine that those with middling scores get opportunities to learn precisely how well or poorly they did as well.)
These more precise measurements can give us clearer feedback on our Earthly performance and tell us more about ourselves than whether we are binarily good or bad. I'm grateful that there are more than two degrees of glory and that there are degrees within degrees, so we can all ultimately know exactly where we stand.
Naturally, I'm not exactly looking forward to getting my test graded, but I am grateful that my final grade will tell me more than merely whether I pass or fail.
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