Calvin and Hobbes and Deism

Suppose God could not intervene for the fear of unintended consequences. What happens when a being that exists outside of time itself dips his big toe into the time continuum? Could have devastating consequences for us all.

I used to be mad at people who believed in a God like this. It was offensive of me to believe in an impotent God that couldn’t do anything or an uncaring God that wouldn’t. How is a wimpy dad standing there helpless while his kid gets beat up or laying there drunk on the couch watching TV all day while his kids starve better than no father at all?

As a fundamentalistic believing Mormon, I believed in a hands-on God. A God who is talking to prophets, leading the church, inspiring GA’s to give missionary calls, inspiring stake patriarchs, inspiring bishops to make callings, inspiring each person to lead them in the right direction for their life and answers prayers.

Then, as I went through faith crisis and studying church history and scripture formation in closer detail, I came to believe that God couldn’t have been involved as closely as I thought. It just didn’t make sense to me that God would be very intimately involved in one instance and then in another instance just let his prophet stumble through making mistakes on his own. Apologists point to a hands-off God, dealing with human imperfection, to explain away weird stuff about BOM translation, Book of Abraham, polygamy stuff, etc. But if God isn’t hands-on in those moments, when is he ever hands-on? I finally came to believe that God is most likely never involved closely with the formation and management of religion. If he is involved at all, it is in maybe “nudging” a human in the right direction at certain points.

So, I’ve kind of evolved into a bit of a Mormon Deist position (http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/parable-of-christ-mormon-deism/), but i have to admit it’s out of weakness not preference. There are many times i wished i could believe in a more intimate, involved God. I prefer a God that works this way, but my faith falters me and I don’t see how that is possible when I look at how the world works. I wrote this to help me find some comfort in that kind of belief http://www.churchistrue.com/parable-of-iris-the-crying-toddler/.

The Mormon church leaders during the “priesthood ban” did not have the luxury of starting with a blank canvas and determining who should receive the priesthood and why. They started from the way things were – that Black church members in good standing did not hold the priesthood and they came up with rationalizations, justifications, and reasons why the current state of affairs was exactly as it was supposed to be.

Similarly, we as humans do not get to start at the drawing board with God and plan out how this whole earth life experience is supposed to work. We find ourselves in the world where pain and suffering exist. We observe that “life isn’t fair!” The crooked and dishonest so often are rewarded. We, similar to the LDS church leaders of before, are left to come up with rationalizations, justifications, and reasons why the current state of affairs are exactly as it was supposed to be.