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I have been wondering a lot about adversity and consequences of sin. People often encounter situations where they are exposed to extreme, protracted trials. These trials deny them the normal experiences that people without those trials have. Often, they turn to sin to simply quell the angst from their adverse experiences.
I will give an example. I saw a TV show about a brother and sister who were fathered on conjugal visits between their mother and their father who was in prison, and a hardened criminal. The daughter was sexually abused over and over again by a string of boyfriends her mother entertained for years, was physically harmed, and the son had similar experiences. They had a terrible upbringing, lived in poverty, and no real positive role models. And from the report, they hurt inside — badly. They had very little hope, and as teenagers, their situation seemed to have little chance of changing.
They turned to drugs. This led to addiction, and eventually violence to someone when a drug deal went wrong.
I often wonder what level of compassion God will show to people who turn to sin (such as drugs in this case) as a coping mechanism.
I say this because recently, I had a traumatic experience in my work. At about that time, I contracted a chest infection. Because I had pneumonia a few years ago, I wanted to nip it in the bud. The doctor gave me an antibiotic, and samples of some cough medicine. One night, I took the cough medicine, and two hours later, my whole body was buzzing. I was essentially “high” with some kind of narcotic based medicine the doctor gave me and my spirit stopped hurting. The spiritual pain was gone. During this time, the trauma of the work experience had left me and I have relief. I felt bliss, I felt relief from my trial, and looked forward to the next dose of the medicine as it provided me with an escape from the ongoing pain I was feeling.
At that point, I had pure empathy for people who have trials like the brother and sister I mentioned earlier. I can only imagine the depth of their pain at what must have been a spiritually destructive home environment, and how drugs would have simply given them relief.
How do you believe God judges people who turn to sin in order to help them cope with protracted adversity?
I think He won’t count it as sin. That’s one of my favorite aspects of Mormon theology, and I think most of us (including I) don’t understand how deep and broadly that aspect runs. I believe in the concept and principle of accountability, but I believe we think we collectively are more accountable for more things than we actually are. In other words, I think we control less than we think we do.
The Book of Mormon says that we are “judged according to our knowledge” however. Doesn’t this imply that as soon as we know something is wrong, we are judged based on that knowledge, not our circumstances? I’m not debating here, just wondering how you might respond to that. I like the interpretation you have, however. Notice how your own interpretation would tend to temper the judgmentalism of the average member if they also saw sin the same way you do?
I can accept completely that we are judged according to our knowledge – as long as that includes our knowledge of ourselves and others (and our knowledge of how to change our actions), which, I believe, is FAR weaker than we tend to believe. As i have struggled with some addiction problems, I can tell you how I feel. I have little or no doctrinal basis for my belief. It is just a feeling. I feel as though we are all saved regardless. One of the things I felt strongly as i tried to recover and failed is that it is okay. It is almost as if the savior had told me it is okay. I felt he was saying to just keep trying. ( the doctrinal part is that I felt him saying he took care of it and to quit worrying about it). In my view the sins are not that big of a deal. It is the consequence of our sin that is the big deal. For instance, the act of adultery(sex) is not bad. However, the damage it does to your spouse and family is what will be held in judgement. The true sin is that you have hurt someone else. Even victimless sin hurts others sometimes.
Does anybody else see it as I do? This religion stuff really confuses me sometimes.
common twit wrote:As i have struggled with some addiction problems, I can tell you how I feel. I have little or no doctrinal basis for my belief. It is just a feeling. I feel as though we are all saved regardless. One of the things I felt strongly as i tried to recover and failed is that it is okay. It is almost as if the savior had told me it is okay. I felt he was saying to just keep trying. ( the doctrinal part is that I felt him saying he took care of it and to quit worrying about it).
In my view the sins are not that big of a deal.
It is the consequence of our sin that is the big deal. For instance, the act of adultery(sex) is not bad. However, the damage it does to your spouse and family is what will be held in judgement. The true sin is that you have hurt someone else.Even victimless sin hurts others sometimes. Does anybody else see it as I do? This religion stuff really confuses me sometimes.
I think my opinion is somewhat similar to yours. I like how you feel that everyone is saved. I don’t know if I believe that but I really have a hard time with the concept of eternal punishment for sin. I just have such a hard time understanding the thought of someone being condemned for sinning, even if it was intentionally hurting other people, because rarely do I think a person would’ve made that decision if it were not for external factors. Having been through abuse, and watching my family split up due to adultery, I do harbor resentment and classify these actions as “sin.” Yet, at the same time, I have a hard time assigning blame. Why do people hurt others? We can’t discount genetics, learned behavior that often goes back generations, and damaged emotional and mental state. I always tell my TBM friends I’m so glad that God gets to sort out judgement, when really, I have a hard time fathoming God condemning people for eternity when I feel like so much of our mistakes are made because of our flawed mortal experiences and biology. This isn’t to say I haven’t experienced severe anger at people, I’m still trying to forgive others, I just struggle with the agency-with-punishment concept when so much of who were are is shaped by uncontrollable forces. It’s hard for me to talk about what qualifies as “sin” when most of the time, I see sin as just mistakes people make due to the life experiences they’ve had to shape them into who they are.
I think God always responds with love. My view is earth life is primarily about our own personal growth. Maybe we give up some of our opportunities to grow when we make less than ideal choices, maybe we still learn valuable lessons from them in the end.
That growing in experience and wisdom, maturing, “becoming”, learning to love and help the world grow into a more perfected sphere is what it’s all about in my mind.
Q: How do I change the world?
Start by looking at the man in the mirror.
The love and hope can become powerful. The disappointment in some of my brothers’ choices can also be powerful – that’s when we rinse and repeat.
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