Does God try us?

Sounds like the road I have walked the last two years, which ironically lead to my disaffection. My short answer is no God does not send trials to test us, things just happen. I think that is just the human condition trying to make sense out of an other wise difficult situation. We say, surely there must be meaning to this problem I must endure. When things get difficult to the point of seeming no escape we start to rely on anything that will rescue us from our situation. We strain to listen to any whispering of the spirt to bring some kind of relief. Generally it never comes to any degree to actually relieve us.

It does not jive in my mind to have a loving God that would purposely cause us sometimes extreme pain and anguish to teach us a lesson. I would never do that to my children, because I know there are better ways to teach them than through inflicted pain. IMHO God simply is not that involved in our day to day lives. He just lets things happen. So for all the talk about trials of faith, I think it is just what we call life or existence.

My best guess is that although God may send trials our way we still can grow and learn from them. We can become more resilient and better able to cope with difficult situations. So in a way God uses everything our whole existence to lets us grow, not just one particular difficult situation.

Do you think God really sends trials our way, specifically testing our strengths and weaknesses and sets up events to try our faith? Or do most of you think there are plenty of trials available, there doesn’t need to be any personalization, eventually we all get our share?

What’s the difference? I just don’t see any.

I think that is just the human condition trying to make sense out of an other wise difficult situation. We say, surely there must be meaning to this problem I must endure.

This seems to be the most logical, but sometimes through spiritual experiences/feelings or “coincidences”, I wonder

What’s the difference? I just don’t see any.

If I understand your point/question right, Doug, you are saying we will have trials…it doesn’t make a difference whether they are random or designed…they are still trials…well, I guess I think the difference is the degree in which I believe God is involved in my life.

Take the story of Abraham, asked to sacrifice his son, only to be sent an angel stopping him, and sending a ram out of the thicket to replace the son, so that Abraham could prove his willingness. Those aren’t random events, and the scriptures seem to stress the point that life is not random (as SD pointed out)…God is involved as we go through trials.

I personally like this idea:

“Be patient in afflictions, for thou shalt have many; but endure them, for, lo, I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days” (D&C 24:.

This seems to teach that God is there to help us through trials, and is aware of our trials, but not necessarily causing them to happen in a specially designed gift box for Heber13.

The God of the Old Testament seems to try specific people with specific things (Job, Abraham, Moses, etc), so it seems unclear to me.

Do you think God really sends trials our way, specifically testing our strengths and weaknesses and sets up events to try our faith?…I wonder if this trial is specific to me or just normal life events everyone takes turns going through?

Personally I think God can intervene in special cases if he really wants to but that most of the time he will just let things play out in a random way. Maybe everything happens for a reason but unfortunately in many cases it looks like the main reason is simply that people aren’t very nice sometimes or they make mistakes and it looks like God is just not going to control them all like a puppet along with the weather and other natural processes to try to make everything happy for everyone that thinks they deserve it. Why an all powerful and benevolent God would allow so much suffering and injustice is pure speculation but personally I think it’s just part of the intended experience of life that there is some randomness and struggle involved by design. If something bad happens I would rather just chalk it off as bad luck and deal with it the best I can rather than trying to blame God or assume that he is trying to punish me or test me directly somehow when there are billions of other people out there.

Specifically? I’m sorry, no, I just can’t see it. A specifically designed test implemented for our personal response would in most cases deny someone’s agency somewhere along the way to act differently. Even an illness, the divine requirement of a body to harbor an ailment is just not consistent with my idea of what agency is.

I think that Orson stated it very well. I think that a lot of trials come from choices that we make so that would make the trial more of a consequence.

I have had an ailment since I was 12 years old (just over 20 years 😮 ). When I was a kid and wasn’t able to run and jump and do all the other things that kids my age were doing I was pretty upset about it. My father gave me a blessing and in it he told me something along the lines of having this trial in my life so that I would learn empathy and learn from these experiences. And that it was also so I wouldn’t forget who was in charge and that I would to be humble and pray to the Lord during these times.

I dealt with this for a long time and I did my best at staying positive through it and I think I did really well because people would always ask me how I stayed happy during all of this.

The reason that I bring this up is because for 20 years I wondered what I wasn’t learning that the Lord thought I needed to learn. I have had numerous surgeries and was/am a guinea pig for the docs. I did this always thinking about what I could learn, who I could help through their trials. I wasn’t angry with it because I had so much faith that once I learned what the Lord was trying to teach me that I would be healed.

Then my faith/world crashed down on me and I figured out that priesthood blessing don’t work, IMHO. They are more for comfort. And then I realized that I am just the medical anomaly and although I have learned some very valuable things I no longer think that God is responsible or holding the reigns on this anymore. This is just me being the genetic make up that I am. This was actually a relief to me and a great sorrow. A sorrow because this is something that I have to deal with for the rest of my life with a slim chance of curing. A relief because I am not always wondering what it is that I have done that the Lord feels I need to learn more or that I am not being humble enough so he caused my knees to swell.

Do you think God really sends trials our way, specifically testing our strengths and weaknesses and sets up events to try our faith?

Yes. I think God does this. But my understanding of God has changed a lot. I think God creates situations that test us, but this is almost entirely all coming from within us.

To me, faith in an all-powerful God and the idea of random events are incompatible. To say that such-and-such happened randomly implies that God had no idea of its happening, or perhaps that he saw it coming but that it wasn’t his original intent, neither of which makes much sense to me. To say that God is all-powerful but that some things, no matter how seemingly insignificant, are out of his control also doesn’t seem to make sense. If we choose to see God as being involved in our lives, then I think we have to see him as being involved completely, and that there is no difference between trials occurring ‘just because’ and trials occurring because God willed them to happen. I can’t distinguish between God consciously making something happen and that same thing happening as a result of a long sequence of events that was originally put into motion by God.

I have sometimes said (though not at church) that I don’t believe in an interventionist God. I also don’t believe in an Omni God for some of the reasons Heber13 just mentioned. Another major component in my belief comes from the article “The Weeping God of Mormonism.” (feel free to provide a link, nice administrator)

It boils down to this, why would God cry if he can just change whatever is making him sad. In Ether, He is weeping for the suffering of his children. It would seem that he cannot eliminate our suffering, that God is constrained by our sacrosanct agency, or the pure testing experience needed in this mortal life, or by things we cannot imagine.

This has changed but also empowered my faith. I do not expect God to change the elements of my life but I do expect him to care and to listen, to view my heart and to see that I am doing the best that I can.

So no, I do not think that God actively tries us but the does not preclude the possibility that life is both trial and experience all rolled up in a jumbled mess. Perhaps randomness and lack of clarity (on how this whole thing works and what it is we are supposed to be learning, etc) is a necessary part of it. Perhaps it allows us to choose for ourselves what direction we are to grow and who we might ultimately become, not right and wrong, just different and beautiful.

P.S. Butters, thank you for sharing your personal experience. For me the principles come most alive when they are applied by real people in real situations. I feel like the “test and trail for your learning” principle could have been helpful to you for a time (comfort) and then later it became an impediment and you moved on. Keep what you have gained, grow in new directions that bring new and greater meanings to your life, and share in a spirit of love with those important to you.