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Roy, I always hated that tithing was taught as “fire insurance”. And it’s not just the LDS church that does it… As far as bad thing happening to good people, I have a view I will try to explain:
It really goes back to the council in heaven. I don’t believe that a literal 1/3 didn’t come or whatever but I do think that we were presented with different plans. I think that we were told how horrible and miserable this existence would be and that since it was a time for us to figure things out without our Father there to fix everything for us, that he was going to have to sit back and watch. I think those that chose not to come just didn’t believe that all of the horrible things that happen in this world would be worth it in order to obtain the blessings at the end. Their “rebellion” wasn’t so much that they supported another plan as that they just lacked the faith to even try the one that was presented by our father.
So here we are in this horrible, mixed-up, cruel world. Tragedies happen all the time. I used to believe that God just must not value human life like we do but I don’t believe that anymore. It’s something I think I picked up from The God Who Weeps but I think God is pained by every horrible thing that happens here. He just can’t do anything about it. This is a time for us to learn to choose between good and evil on our own. If he was meddling around all the time it would be like the proctor for a test coming in and giving us answers half the time… or changing grades. When the scriptures talk about justice, I think that that’s it. God can’t do anything to stop the suffering because it would violate the very purpose of our test and frustrate the progress on our path of eternal progression we were supposed to make here. After this life I think we will truly understand mercy. I believe God will very clearly understand exactly how hard each of our trials here were and will be far more understanding and forgiving than we can now comprehend.
So in this sense I don’t see a benevolent God being in conflict with our horrible earth. Ultimately his duty is to see us progress. So he must painfully watch as we learn lessons on our own. It’s not that he’s powerless to stop it, it’s that if he did stop it He would be damning us all.
I still haven’t reconciled how hands-off I feel God is with all of the miracles in the scriptures. But I feel that my understanding helps me. Maybe something else helps others.
As far as prayer, I see it as us bringing ourselves into harmony with God’s thoughts. I don’t believe in asking for blessings over and over in a hope to prove to God how much I want it. I do think that prayer is important for us to give thanks for things we have and to ponder things we need. I mainly see it as a way of temporarily pulling ourselves our of this temporal existence and communing with eternal truth. It can help us in so many other ways… I talked a lot more about prayer in my introduction thread.
Anyways, that’s my $.02.
Thanks Wuwei! I appreciate your perspective. I especially appreciated how you said, “I still haven’t reconciled how hands-off I feel God is with all of the miracles in the scriptures. But I feel that my understanding helps me. Maybe something else helps others.”
That statement resonates with me deeply.
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