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Here is the dilemma. A. You are told to pray for guidance and if you pray sincerely you will get an answer. Knock and ye shall receive and all of that
B. You get a very definite answer to your prayer. You feel inspired and move forward with this new direction
C. Soon after events do not turn out anything like you were told in your answer. You are baffled and confused
Since this scenario has happened to me more than once in my life on very major even life and death situations I pose the following conclusions.
1. I did not get an answer but made it all up in my head
2. God is a trickster and likes to mess with me
3. It is part of some bizarre testing that God puts us through to test us, just like he supposedly did with Abraham
4. I am a knuckle head and misinterpreted the answer. Sort of like the sun is shinning but I mistook it for the moon.
The only rational answer I can conclude is #1 I made up the answer I wanted to get. I accept my folly in assuming God answers prayers in the manner I thought or was taught. The ironic thing is if things would have transpired as I truly believed they would I would be super TBM to this day and I would have never been sent on a journey to find answers out of the church. So maybe God was really sending me on a journey, na I just made it up in my head. The easiest answer is generally the correct one.
So now I am more NOM than TBM, More agnostic than spiritual, but still go to church and all of that. I have little faith in the doctrine or ordinances or any of the official stuff. I just like being a Mormon becasue that is where I fit in and all my friends are Mormon and it still feels like home to me. I hope they will still accept me in the long run.
There are, of course, other possibilities, such as … 5) There is no god.
Ultimately, that’s what your 1-4 boil down to for me when I ponder this question. #5 is, of course, a viable conclusion and basis for a way of life for many happy and fulfilled people. Because of my particular circumstances, it’s not a viable option for me at this point in time, so I am forced to accept the following:
6) I have no idea how the hell any of this works, and little hope that I ever will. Nevertheless, my life has intrinsic meaning.
Now that’s something I can sink my teeth into, since it meshes so nicely with many other aspects of my life (well, at least the first part does). This, coupled with a hope — a belief perhaps — that there is a caring God, and I can live with the paradox that while I and mine seem to have little ability to ‘discern the spirit’, others seemingly have more access to the divine.
In an effort to see life experience as positive, I personally take the position that we receive “answers” and guidance, but they aren’t necessarily going to fulfill our pre-conceptions (our expectations). It seems to me, from observation, that God isn’t in the business of manipulating the details of life so it turns out the way people want. This being either set the universe in motion and walked away, or is still directly involved but doesn’t have the goal of forcing life to be easy and free of suffering for everyone.
So when I receive an “answer” to take a course of action, I now interpret that as God saying “Sure whatever, give that a try and see how it turns out for you. That would probably be a good experience either way.” Some of the best experiences I have had were times when I failed at something or suffered. Not that it was pleasant by any means, but it was enlightening.
I prefer #7 …all of the above. Of course that would require changing the wording of #5 to: “the nature of God may not be as anyone has imagined.” Then #6 becomes obvious and redundant – yet the most profound of all.
Brian Johnston wrote:“Sure whatever, give that a try and see how it turns out for you. That would probably be a good experience either way.”
This really feels true for me. I just don’t think we have the perspective God does and so we think there is right/wrong when really he’s probably saying, it’s good either way. NOT very helpful though.
😆 I don’t think all of those can all be correct, because some seem to conflict with each other or what I accept as truth (I don’t think God just messes with me because He is a trickster or has a sick sense of humor…that is not in line with my belief of His nature). But I do think different experiences I’ve had lead me to think there can be multiple reasons. For the most part, I believe things are going to happen, but sometimes there are spiritual manifestations to help me prepare for them, or to learn a lesson…not necessarily that God will change what will happen, just helping me deal with it and be at peace despite it.
So I have experienced these things:
1) I made it up in my head, and the more I keep asking God to approve it, eventually, He’ll allow it to happen in a Lost 116 page kind of way. What is going to happen is going to happen, but I make it up in my head thinking I’m being told something that I’m not really being told. (I think this happens more often than I like to realize).
2) God tests me, and lets me grow by not answering me, and letting me figure it out for myself, even if I stumble…the learning is more important than getting the right answer on the test. This is evidence of His love.
3) I’m a knuckle head and totally got the message wrong…the message was sent correctly but received incorrectly. Without seeing an angel, but just having spiritual promptings, I’m left to interpret them and sometimes I interpret wrong. My bad.
4) Sure whatever…it should be ok either way, it just depends on how I handle it.
5) I can’t understand the answer in my current state…I need to start moving in a direction for the answer to become clearer from a different perspective. Kind of like, I don’t know why I should take a new job in Colorado and move my family and then get fired from it…except that now that I’m in Colorado, there is a new opportunity open to me I would not have seen before I moved here.
#5 kind of explains my recent spiritual journey…I see things from a new perspective now.
Cadence wrote:Here is the dilemma.
A. You are told to pray for guidance and if you pray sincerely you will get an answer. Knock and ye shall receive and all of that
B. You get a very definite answer to your prayer. You feel inspired and move forward with this new direction
C. Soon after events do not turn out anything like you were told in your answer. You are baffled and confused
…The only rational answer I can conclude is #1 I made up the answer I wanted to get. I accept my folly in assuming God answers prayers in the manner I thought or was taught. The ironic thing is if things would have transpired as I truly believed they would I would be super TBM to this day and I would have never been sent on a journey to find answers out of the church…So now I am more NOM than TBM, More agnostic than spiritual…
I think it’s hard to interpret the real meaning of experiences like this sometimes. Some of them could just be emotions or a figment of the subconscious mind triggered by wishful thinking, stress, fear, etc. My situation is almost the exact opposite of yours because for a long time I interpreted some unusual experiences of a few people I know (especially some that look like legitimate “precognition” to me) as a positive confirmation that the LDS Church was 100% true and divinely approved but later on I found out that many non-Mormons have reported similar experiences as well.
Of course hard-core skeptics can always claim that this kind of thing could just be a coincidence and that people will remember and embellish any lucky guesses and forget about all the times that their dreams or premonitions turned out to be wrong. I hesitate to read too much into this kind of thing either way anymore but personally I don’t believe that scientists really understand what some of these experiences mean or how they work at this point. I guess what I’m trying to say is that even if your own experiences were misleading or easy to misinterpret it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone else’s experiences that look similar on the surface all automatically belong in the same category that can always be easily dismissed.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Of course hard-core skeptics can always claim that this kind of thing could just be a coincidence and that people will remember and embellish any lucky guesses and forget about all the times that their dreams or premonitions turned out to be wrong. …
I guess what I’m trying to say is that even if your own experiences were misleading or easy to misinterpret it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone else’s experiences that look similar on the surface all automatically belong in the same category that can always be easily dismissed.
Well said.
It makes it interesting, because it becomes a personal thing and a personal decision on how to look at it and accept it without some hard proof one way or another.
Perhaps “proof” is in the results of how choosing to believe it or not leads to future beneficial results or quality of life. The individual experiences may be difficult to pin down exactly, but the collective experiences and the person that makes you for giving meaning to them does prove to be beneficial?
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