A Spiritual Ponzi Scheme

Does it ever feel like it’s all just a big spiritual ponzi scheme to any of you?

To me the gospel that I sometimes hear at church is akin to an insurance policy. This is perhaps a different form of the prosperity gospel. Instead of wealth and success raining down from heaven, the Mormon prosperity Gospel is more often about mitigating potential disasters. Thus, I feel the comparison to the insurance policy is appropriate.

It was when a tragedy struck my family and I was shocked and reeling that I tried to take a closer look at my own proverbial policy. What had gone wrong? Did the lord fail me or did I fail the lord? Between personal study and discussion with local church leaders I discovered that the “small print” gives so much wiggle room and prevarication as to make the entire contract entirely unenforceable.

I now believe that there are many advantages that Mormon lifestyles that can serve to help mitigate personal and family disasters. Lives of thrift, self reliance, food storage, emergency funds, and communal banding together can be huge lifesavers. I also believe that the state of believing that God had my back helped my younger self to be more bold, determined, and confident than I otherwise would have been. These are traits that can usually help individuals go farther and accomplish more than they otherwise would have. However, there are no guarantees. Life and misfortune happen to all.

For every conference talk that reaffirms how difficult life can and will be, there seem to be 10 more conference talks that tell “faith-promoting” stories of how obedience kept people safe and spared them unnecessary suffering. I’m confused and not sure what to make of it.

It bothers me that we seem so hyper-focused on faith promoting success stories. I believe that it tends to squeeze out those of us that cannot interpret our life narrative into a faith promoting story. Unfortunately, when this happens it just leaves the remainder of more and more people whose lives tend to fit the mold. Those people move into leadership and they can testify from honest personal experience of the blessings of a lifetime of faithful church centered service.

P.S. I believe that MLM’s tend to flourish among LDS because 1) there are a higher than normal percentage of stay at home mom’s looking to “work from home” 2) Mormons have a social network that they can leverage (at least initially) to make some sales 3) Mormons are probably more gulible than average.

mfree,

I look at it this way: Whether we believe in God or not, part of the spiritual strength that we can bring to bear on any given problem is going to come from inside of us, not from a remote being in yonder heavens. As we find our spiritual strength, we are naturally able to weather more storms.

The teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, which we just covered in Sunday School, are the most clear expression of this idea in the Scriptures. Matthew 7: “Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.” Notice in the passage that Jesus’ SAYINGS are the only divine aspect of this allegory. The rest is the house that the wise man built for himself and its ability to stand against the storm.

With all this in mind, my suggestion is to look at all the good things you have done as having increased your own spirituality, apart from the Church. You have it within you to do good and to find strength. If there is a God and he/she reaches down to help you out once-in-a-while, count that as a bonus.

I (try to) wear many hats. I’m going to put on my atheist hat, sideways, for this post.

I remember sitting in a typical PH lesson years ago. I think the lesson was on meeting the missionary goals of the ward, I’m not 100% sure of the subject, but I remember the takeaway. We were talking about all the things we needed to do for heavenly father to bless us. As we went down the exhaustive list a thought popped in my head, “If we do all that we won’t even need the lord anymore.”

There it was. Out in the open.

Now, switching gears a bit… what made Jesus the Son of God? Just being born to the parents he was born to, or something more?

And I, John, saw that he received not of the fulness at the first, but received grace for grace; And he received not of the fulness at first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness; And thus he was called the Son of God, because he received not of the fulness at the first.

Jesus continued from grace to grace, and a part of Jesus’ journey included him uttering the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Even Jesus felt abandoned and alone at points along his journey and it strikes me that this feeling of abandonment by God must have been something that ultimately contributed toward Jesus’ perfection. Something that helped him and spurred him on towards becoming the Son of God.

Journeys aren’t linear, I want to front-load with that idea. One aspect of Mormon doctrine is that our “probationary state” is meant to help us learn to become as god is. Perhaps discovering that a piggy bank is empty is god’s way of spurring us on to grow in ways that a full piggy bank would not allow. To rise to a new challenge and in so doing reduce our reliance on god, push us towards becoming a Son of God.

I don’t mean to trivialize challenges anyone is going though. Feeling abandoned by god hurts more than anything. For what it’s worth, the scriptures do teach that Jesus took upon him all our infirmities…that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. I found it was an interesting exercise to think that Jesus had to have felt equally abandoned, even during a time when I felt personally abandoned by Jesus.

Having a hard time saying “no” probably also factors in.

P.S. I believe that MLM’s tend to flourish among LDS because 1) there are a higher than normal percentage of stay at home mom’s looking to “work from home” 2) Mormons have a social network that they can leverage (at least initially) to make some sales 3) Mormons are probably more gulible than average.

I was seeing other connections. Specific similarities I can think of include:

-Testimony meetings

-Claims of miracles

-The prosperity gospel / plant your seed of faith (your fault if it doesn’t bare fruit)

-Requiring large investments of time and money.

-A focus on agency (be your own boss!), yet with an insistance on strict obedience

-Perfectionism. You aren’t doing enough, and should be doing more

-Focus on prosyltizing

-Regarding opposing evidence as an evil conspiracy and blatant falsehoods

-No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry

-Conferences, with charasmatic leaders who promise blessings

-No real financial disclosure. Offers intentionally misleading statistics.

-Reliance and trust in feelings/emotion over logic

Ok, I think the biggest one is that last point. But in sharing similar models, while being co-compatible, is very seductive for the LDS, especially LDS Stay-at-home moms, where having only a single income to support a family is becoming more and more a real challenge, and where outward “blessings” are seen as a sign of God’s favor. And yet MLMs come along, and make extravagant promises it really can’t keep… yet points to miracles and success stories as if it were the norm. Which is what many churches do.

I think the fundamental misunderstanding here is that the gospel is not in any way a spiritual Ponzi scheme. Others have alluded to the idea that very similar experiences led to their own faith crises. I’m a member of that club, although like Mom says not necessarily the piggy bank part – but I get that point of view and I wasn’t that far removed from it because of the whole idea of “works” (vs. grace I suppose). Like Mom, I did expect that everything would be taken care of, all I had to do was continue to obey. But everything wasn’t OK and didn’t turn out OK. I did learn though, and one of the things I learned was that the church, and teachings of the church, and teachings of members of the church (which would include church leaders) are all somewhat different from each other but all those very different from the simple truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Only then did I understand. There is no Ponzi and there is no piggy bank.

…a part of Jesus’ journey included him uttering the words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Even Jesus felt abandoned and alone at points along his journey…

I’ve thought a lot lately about the fact that Jesus was left alone for a time and seemingly saddened (or at least affected in some way) by it as well. I believe that I have learned more in the past three years than I learned in the previous 30+ years from church, seminary, BYU, general conferences, leaders, bishops, apostles and prophets. It seems that life is doing a much more effective job at teaching me about God (and being a better person in general) than church ever did.

I think the confusion I mentioned in my original post stems more from the dissonance I am experiencing between the things I am now learning about God and the things I once “knew” about Him previously.

I think a big part of this journey, rebuilding our faith, transitioning our faith, or whatever you want to call it is that we have to unlearn what we thought we knew.

If you buy into the idea that Jesus suffered for all of our sins and that he descended below all things, Jesus must have had times when he felt alone/abandoned by God and/or the Spirit (as at least some of us have felt). The idea that he was is illustrated in the scripture quoted by Nibbler. I have chosen to believe that Christ did descend beneath all and does understand our pains and anguishes because he experienced them in some way I don’t understand.