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In reading the stories of the disaffected and the disenfranchised, and in listening to my own thoughts and writings, I see many common threads. But one that I see that is rarely discussed is this: we all feel like God or the Church has not kept their end of the deal in some way; we feel that God or the Church has broken their “contract” or “covenant” with us. For some, it’s the mysterious check in the mail that was supposed to come after paying tithing that never came. For others, it’s the attractive spouse that never showed up after years of obedience and service in the Church. For others, it’s the promotion at work that was given to someone else who was much less deserving and much less worthy. The D&C teaches us that whenever we get a blessing, it is because of obedience to the law on which that blessing is predicated. It stands to reason, then, that when we obey, we should get the promised blessing. I call this the “obedience-blessing contract.” We make covenants where we agree to do certain things and God agrees to do certain things. People become understandably disaffected when God doesn’t seem to hold up his end of the covenants.
On my mission, I tore my ACL while playing basketball with the other missionaries. I was wearing my garments and keeping all the rules and had no history of athletic injuries. I feel that I had a contract with God: I had given up some of the prime years of my life to serve God, and in return, God would protect me from harm. That seems to be a reasonable agreement that any Sunday School teacher would approve of. But apparently,
God never agreed to any such thing.Either God broke his part of the agreement, or protection from harm was never part of the contract. Nor has God ever agreed to provide a check in the mail for paying tithing, nor has he agreed to provide an attractive spouse as a reward for obedience and service in the Church. So it seems that these agreements, though perfectly reasonable by Sunday School standards, are not part of the “obedience-blessing contract.” So if a check in the mail or protection from harm are not part of the obedience-blessing contract, then what exactly did God promise in exchange for our obedience? We know what our obligations to God are, but what are God’s obligations
to usin the contract-covenant we made at baptism? What exactly can we depend on God 100% to do?I know what you’re saying applies to many personal situations. For me it was more a matter of shattered expectations. I had in my mind an image of what “the true church on earth” and its leaders would & wouldn’t be, and would & wouldn’t do. In the end my personal expectations proved to be way out of line with reality, that is what caused the catastrophic failure of my worldview. God didn’t actually promise the things that I expected, but my whole concept of the church rested on it none the less. Years ago, I saw a card that said “Blessed is he who expects nothing on his birthday for he shall not be disappointed”. I believe in looking at the church and even God that way. Also by relying on Alexander Pope’s (?) statement that “virtue is its own reward”. Be honest for its own sake the peace that comes from knowing you have character. Let that be your reward.
Believing that all these external blessings will come by living church commandments is a recipe for disappointment. Having low expectations is a wise move, and realizing that God lets so much just happen to us….with no dependence on righteousness or obedience. I don’t think that LDS people are necessarily any more blessed than other people either. In fact, I find they tend to be less well off on the beginning years as they pay tithing, have no home they own etcetera.
Quote:What exactly can we depend on God 100% to do?
Help us become like Him. The details don’t matter.
Beyond that? Whatever He chooses to do.
God isn’t a vending machine. I wish we would stop talking about God in that way and simply realize we have FAR less control over the details than we want so desperately – but, conversely, SO much more control over who we are and become than we realize.
I believe deeply in the power of covenants, but I just see that power very differently than many people. Thanks for the responses so far. I could take the position of feeling like I’ve been in a bad one-sided relationship with God for a long time, where I did a whole bunch of stuff for God and he didn’t do anything for me, but I’ll forego that approach for the moment and take a different approach. If I have a good friend, I might say something like, “I can always count to Jason to _________,” and I can fill in the blank with whatever positive thing applies to that relationship. The blank might contain a phrase like “give me a ride to the airport when I need it,” or “tell me a good joke when I’m in a bad mood.” So if you were to say, “I can always count on God to ___________,” what would you put in the blank?
If it were a given, everyone would do it and we wouldn’t need doctors or dating websites. When people do not win the cosmic lottery as planned, they may feel guilt or lose their faith. If there is a promise on God’s end at all, the reward would likely be in the next life. The results are too inconsistent in this life to be more than confirmation bias in my opinion. Maybe others have had better luck. Bless me spiritually. I’ve learned throughout my life that physical lessons can be much more complicated than spiritual blessings. Physical blessings as physical protection doesn’t always happen. Spiritual blessings always happens. It just happens in the Lord’s own time. Love me. InquiringMind wrote:we all feel like God or the Church has not kept their end of the deal in some way; we feel that God or the Church has broken their “contract” or “covenant” with us.
This was exactly what happened to me. My daughter died in the womb a few days from the scheduled delivery date. This was shattering on many levels and I felt that God should have given us or the doctors a clue. She was full term and could have been delivered any time.
This for me was my crisis. The Q12 could dance the Macarena for conference every 6 months or (insert weird historical fact here) for all that I cared. As long as the church remained the conduit through which I could call down the blessings of heaven upon my family that was all that I needed. The church was my divine insurance plan. Yes, my expectations were way out of line but I feel that I had a lot of help getting them there.
So, things fell apart and I began to examine Gods end of the bargain and discovered that … He hadn’t made one. All the things I thought that He owed me were disavowed in the small print – either the blessings were deferrable perpetually (until the next life) or perhaps I didn’t obey perfectly enough or perhaps it was God’s will or perhaps the promised blessing were spiritual only or perhaps the trial is meant to be a blessing in disguise by teaching me an important lesson (like patience or endurance) ….you get the picture.
I was looking at the following causation: Obedience = Gaining God’s love/favor = Manifested by greater “blessings”
After much soul-searching I had what might be called a personal revelation – that God loves me. Pretty earth shattering right? Well for me it was. God loved me independent of my obedience and regardless of the relative blessings or trials of my life. He loved me unconditionally. There was no equation – just love.
So, I might phrase my own answer as “I can always count on God to ___love me___.”
It is not a broken promise that his caused me to become disenfranchised. I always figured that God wouldn’t necessary promise any thing other than happiness. You may still suffer, you’ll just be happy while you’re doing it. Fore me the problem is the fact that the Church has lied about it’s history and is clearly not what it professes to be. It leads to one of three possible positions:
1) Religion is bogus. Period.
2) Still believe in God but the LDS Church is definitely not the true/only way to get there
3) LDS Church is not what it claims to be but is still the best way to GOD (maybe it started out legit and ended up get derailed earlier on, etc)
I tend to fall in the first camp but I’m here to see others’ perspectives before I make up my mind.
Hercules wrote:Fore me the problem is the fact that the Church has lied about it’s history and is clearly not what it professes to be.
Hercules I know you’re new here and I’m looking forward to hearing more about your experiences. I hope you can take this with a sense of humor but sometimes I see the comments of new posters very similar to some of the things teenagers might say. You know the saying “why don’t you leave home and conquer the world while you still know everything.”
Granted we all know there are elements of church history that are not as widely known as the rest, but I don’t think we can agree on what the church really professes to be in fine detail, let alone begin to “prove” definitively whether it is that thing or not.
To me it’s more a matter of “the church is not everything that I always thought it was.” Nobody can argue with my personal expectations, and what it takes to authentically shatter them.
Hercules wrote:It leads to one of three possible positions:
1) Religion is bogus. Period.
2) Still believe in God but the LDS Church is definitely not the true/only way to get there
3) LDS Church is not what it claims to be but is still the best way to GOD (maybe it started out legit and ended up get derailed earlier on, etc)
I tend to fall in the first camp but I’m here to see others’ perspectives before I make up my mind.
I’ll give you huge props if you are authentic in seeking out other perspectives before setting your ideas in concrete, that to me shows a sincere desire to discover truth. While I may agree that some particular framings of religion may be bogus, to say all religion is bogus makes as much sense to me as saying all schools of thought are bogus. That is because my definition of religion is too broad to toss into one bucket.
Numbers 2 and 3 fit to a degree but I would prefer to say “Still enjoy contemplating concepts of God, and see the LDS church as more than a perfectly valid way to get there; it is the most interesting and challenging way that I know anything about.
My mind still gets twisted around “the church” claiming anything about itself. I understand that statement to say “the church
membership” makes claims about what the church is — and different people will claim a whole variety of things about what it is. Don’t take me wrong I understand the general idea is about things the majority of active membership will say, I’m just pointing out how such a broad comment is open to being wrong from several different angles. Orson wrote:Hercules I know you’re new here and I’m looking forward to hearing more about your experiences. I hope you can take this with a sense of humor but sometimes I see the comments of new posters very similar to some of the things teenagers might say. You know the saying “why don’t you leave home and conquer the world while you still know everything.”
Granted we all know there are elements of church history that are not as widely known as the rest, but I don’t think we can agree on what the church really professes to be in fine detail, let alone begin to “prove” definitively whether it is that thing or not.
To me it’s more a matter of “the church is not everything that I always thought it was.” Nobody can argue with my personal expectations, and what it takes to authentically shatter them.
Well, obviously a church can’t think, talk or profess itself to be anything. However, it’s leaders can and have. That’s what I mean when I say “what the church professes to be”. Of course we can just conclude that the leaders were wrong, but then we are just throwing out one of the most central aspects of the Church: modern day revelation. I don’t think inspired leaders could have been wrong so often.
I don’t profess to know. You misunderstand me. I am challenging what people say on these forums. I am not trying to convince anybody of anything. I am trying to see if anyone can come up with a good counter-argument. Hey, if they do I might just go with it.
Orson wrote:I’ll give you huge props if you are authentic in seeking out other perspectives before setting your ideas in concrete, that to me shows a sincere desire to discover truth. While I may agree that some particular framings of religion may be bogus, to say all religion is bogus makes as much sense to me as saying all schools of thought are bogus. That is because my definition of religion is too broad to toss into one bucket.
Numbers 2 and 3 fit to a degree but I would prefer to say “Still enjoy contemplating concepts of God, and see the LDS church as more than a perfectly valid way to get there; it is the most interesting and challenging way that I know anything about.
My mind still gets twisted around “the church” claiming anything about itself. I understand that statement to say “the church
membership” makes claims about what the church is — and different people will claim a whole variety of things about what it is. Don’t take me wrong I understand the general idea is about things the majority of active membership will say, I’m just pointing out how such a broad comment is open to being wrong from several different angles. I am seeking truth. However, I am starting to fear that I will never find it.
Again, I think you have to seriously think about what claims our inspired leaders have made and what they have taught over the years. I really think it is a cop out to take the position that the ideas proven to be wrong were just assumption made by members.
Cheers
Hercules, I’m going to be very direct in this comment. We aren’t about counter-arguments and convincing others through apologetics here at this site. We are about sharing how we have come to see things personally – and, frankly, I couldn’t care less if I convince anyone else to see things the way I do. I care FAR more about helping people with black-and-white views see that reaonsable, intelligent, sincere people can disagree with each other without all who disagree being unintelligent tools.
All-encompassing, absolute, universal assertions rarely are as simple as they present things to be – and disagreement or differing opinion does not mean one person is smarter or sees things more clearly than the other.
That’s incredibly important to understand and acknowledge, imo. Anyone can believe whatever they come to believe – but disparaging the views of others and insisting that they convince someone who simply sees things differently is unrealistic. It can’t happen.
Again, we aren’t an apologetic site bent on convincing others to see things the way we do. We are a support site trying to help people see that there are lots of ways to see things – and that, ultimately, each person has to reach their own conclusions and live by the dictates of their own consciences. We are about helping people “stay LDS”.
If people can support that mission, they are welcome here. If they can’t support that mission, participating here probably will lead to nothing but frustration and conflict.
So, to the question of the title of this post, this is my opinion:
How can we know? God hasn’t talked directly with us and told us – or we wouldn’t be here, I think. We can try to understand what other people believe God promised them, and we can share what we think God has promised us, but that’s all we can do objectively. Seriously, we can’t know, so all we can do is our best to understand the unknowable.
Yes, InquirngMind, you know you and I have had the same troubles here. It can’t be just us. I was born and raised in a TBM family. I grew up every single Sunday listening to feel-good anecdotes where time after time God tested someone but always came through in the end. A magic check, a spontaneous healing, a miraculous healing etc etc. Still as an adult, every single sacrament meeting without fail preaches them. Every single testimony meeting is full of nothing but them. The Ensign articles, our home and visiting teachers, and our missionaries. The story is always the same. You may go through some stuff that seems to suck at first. But at the last minute God will save you if you follow the rules. There are blessings in disguise. God won’t let your children starve. God will keep you baby from dying. God will be there for you and physically affect this world to make sure that everything you go through is something you can handle and you will be better for it. I never thought blessings/consequences would be a 100% cause and effect, as it wouldn’t take humans long to figure out the pattern and pretty soon people would be doing the right thing for the immediate pay-off and to avoid the immediate punishment. We would be essentially forced to do the right thing. That was Satan’s plan and if God allowed that it would remove our agency and God would cease to be God. But I did believe that over all, tests would come and go but there would be sweet reprieve now and then as God tempered the good with the bad, and would be there to call off the wolves if we had already done everything we could do and could stand no more. And especially in my case, when I was holding on so much to specific blessings I had been given through the years through father’s blessings, priesthood leaders and my patriarchal blessing. And they turned out to be all false. I even made terrible choices based on these blessings that cost me so dearly. I knew there was “fine print” in blessings, but my conscience is clean- I know I did my best. And the blessings were so clearly NOT meant for the next life, and the wordings were too specific that I “interpreted wrong.”
What do you do when you realize that all these stories were just fairy tales? All of the blessings that ever were and could be given to you with revelation on a personal level could be nothing more than spoken wishes? It is a terrifying place to land. You realize you really are alone in the universe and the cosmic safety net you thought was there does not exist. You feel how suddenly helpless you are against all of the evils out there that can tear you apart. You realize how little you are in the grand scheme of things. You see that the dreams you dreamed about what your life would hold may never come true, because you know with your mortal limitations, only some things depend on you, and the doors you thought He would open after you did all you could would now only open by chance, if at all. There is no divinity watching out for you, protecting you from the dangers you can’t see and helping you when you really can’t take another step. It’s just you. Alone. And people are given stuff they can’t handle all the time. And many break. Why even listen in sacrament or read the Ensign anymore? MOST of what we hear in church are the happy anecdotes of divine intervention. There is very little other ‘Gospel” taught there… it’s mostly the stories!
So when you get to that point, you think: The people at the top MUST know that it does not work like this. They HAVE to know that sacrament meetings are full of the teaching of untrue concepts in this way, They HAVE TO know that most priesthood blessings with personal revelation are not accurate. Why don’t they stop it? But wait… the GAs themselves perpetuate these things in General Conference all the time. And the church is the one who is printing these articles in the Ensign. And they DO know what is being passed down to missionaries who then teach to new members. How can they not know what this does to people? And if they know how can they not put out an official proclamation for us to STOP? I think that these “blessings”, either the ones we were directly promised like I was, or the ones we thought we were supposed to receive
because that is what we were led to believehave probably broken way too many hearts and destroyed way too many testimonies. I can’t be so alone in thinking this. I don’t have an answer right now. I think the church must let the fallacy continue because there are too many people who need to think the consequences are more immediate because if they don’t think that, they won’t do the right thing. Just like 3 year olds. But then does that mean the end justifies the means? The church should continue to teach a false principle because doing the right thing for the wrong reason is better than nothing?
I just know that I am alone now, and I am very scared. I don’t like this at all. For me, I have always tried to do the right thing because it was the right thing, not for a reward or fear of a punishment. I will continue to do that and teach my kids the same. But I never wanted to be so alone here. I needed to think that after I had done all I could do, that God would open doors for me that I could not, and that there were going to be certain temporal blessings that I could look forward to. I needed to believe the things that were told to me in my blessings. I needed those things in my blessings. They were all righteous and good things. How can I be OK knowing now that they were never really meant for me?
and how can we reconcile the apparent fact that there really are some blessings given amid others not being given? I can’t understand that disconnect and never have been able to do so. I don’t get it intellectually in any way other than to turn to the unacceptable answer to others that I just don’t know but still believe that blessings are given – largely because there have been a small number of experiences in my own life that I can’t count as anything accept divine blessings.
I just can’t see them in any other way, so all that is left for me is:
I don’t know. I have no freaking clue. However, I do believe in God and that God blesses us – at least sometimes in some ways.
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