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I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had personal revelation, in the celestial room of the temple, that God doesn’t love me. (It’s okay that you don’t believe me. My husband doesn’t believe me, either. But I know what I experienced and I can’t deny it.) Well, last Friday God saw fit to take my husband’s job away. Again. For the fifth time (so far) since 2008. Despite us paying a full tithe this entire time. Despite every member of my family, including innocent children, praying for this exact thing NOT to happen.
This goes beyond God merely being indifferent. One layoff, you can chalk up to the bad economy. Two is supremely bad luck. But five? This sure feels a lot like God ACTIVELY HATING me and my family.
I find that I simply can’t pray anymore. I have nothing more to say to Him. It feels a lot like prayer is how we tell God what He should take away from us next. (For the last several years, my children’s prayers have also included the phrase ‘please bless that our house won’t catch fire.’ I fully expect that God will burn our house down any day now, just to teach me a lesson.)
This also puts all of the Church’s many many demands into perspective. They don’t come out and say it, but it’s at least IMPLIED that if you pay tithing/wear ugly underwear/serve in callings whether you like it or not/sit through boring meeting after boring , God will at least like you better than if you DON’T do those things. But I’ve found that there is nothing I can do to earn the least bit of favor in His eyes, so what the heck is my motivation for doing all these things?
I did tell my husband that I’m not praying anymore and to be fair, he hasn’t asked me to say the dinner prayers or anything. (But I’m fully prepared to make a hypocrite of myself, to avoid making a scene in front of the kids.) But I somehow have to go through the rest of my life like this and I’ve probably got forty years left.
One more thing that really galls me? God took away my husband’s job, despite hundreds of prayers to the contrary – yet He demands that we pay tithing on our unemployment checks. Ugh.
👿 I’m so sorry, Joni. If I could sit in the ashes with you to mourn, I would. I hear you Joni. My situation is surprisingly similar. Losing a job had a significant part in my faith crisis, despite all the faith and belief I had that it was a test, that God could fix it,that we’d be OK in the end. All of these years and it’s still not fixed and I’m not OK. I have since been unemployed several times, and in fact I am currently unemployed. I also gave up on prayer long ago, and interestingly I have also thought frequently about our house burning down. Part of the problem is that many in the church believe and preach the prosperity gospel. It just isn’t true. Giving up that idea helped me. Also a recognition that God rarely if ever intervenes in our lives has also helped – and that’s scripturally sound despite all the testimonies that are going to be borne across pulpits this Sunday about the God of the Lost Car Keys.
When I speak of the pain and grief of a faith crisis this is the pain that I refer to – that God (the Father) is not what I had believed He was. I thought I had given up being angry at God but I was recently shown that I have not.
Honestly I have not always believed that God told you he doesn’t love you. I do believe you because I don’t really believe God loves any of us personally. At the same time, I don’t believe God gives the kind of revelation that gives us direction or anything similar.
I will mourn with you while you mourn.
I apologize in advance for the following ramble. Maybe you can treat it like a koan… Joni wrote:This also puts all of the Church’s many many demands into perspective. They don’t come out and say it, but it’s at least IMPLIED that if you pay tithing/wear ugly underwear/serve in callings whether you like it or not/sit through boring meeting after boring , God will at least like you better than if you DON’T do those things. But I’ve found that there is nothing I can do to earn the least bit of favor in His eyes, so
what the heck is my motivation for doing all these things?That’s a really, really good question. One of the greatest things to come out of my faith crisis, in which I lost belief in God altogether, is being forced to answer that same question honestly. When I could no longer think of myself as a battered child seeking gifts from an unpredictable father figure, or as a mercenary in God’s employ, I had to do some soul-searching to figure out why I do anything at all. (Seriously: “Why don’t I kill people?” actually came up, and thankfully I had a good answer.) I own my moral compass now. My reasons are mine, not those of people I thought knew better than I do.
I got to that point partly by trying to follow the demanding formulas you bring up. They all have the same form: “if A, then Z.” The most maddening ones look like “if A and B and C and D and E and if it’s God’s will, then Z, eventually, maybe even after you die.” I started to see all those extra conditions and qualifiers as excuses for God’s inaction. Before I knew where those thoughts and my anger would lead, my subconscious mind had chucked belief in both the formulas and God. It was terrifying at first.
Recently, I’ve started to see all those extra conditions and qualifiers as excuses for the failure of the formulas themselves. I think most of the formulas were just made up by fallible humans desperately trying to bring order to life’s chaos and give believers reasons to remain faithful. They were then expanded with more conditions and qualifiers when they obviously failed.
The time-tested formulas seem to work the best: “if you forgive others, then you will have more peace.” Some are plain nonsense: “if you wear garments, then God might stop a bullet for you.” Some harm people who try to meet the conditions: “if you stay faithful, then your mixed-orientation marriage will work.” Some cause judgment and self-blame when they fail: “if you ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, then God will give you answers.”
The second best part of chucking the formulas (after owning my own moral compass) is not having to justify them anymore. I don’t feel like I know what life is about anymore, and that can be frightening. But that’s been more than made up for by not having to jump through mental hoops all the time to defend the failures of what someone told me is The Law of Heaven. (Others find the trade-off to be worse, though.)
I sometimes miss believing there’s a being out there that cares for me. I do think it’s possible, but I can’t bring myself to worship it or devote myself to it. If it exists and is intervening in my life, it’s guiding me toward more love, respect and understanding, and away from believing in universal formulas that crush as easily as they lift.
I wonder sometimes if there was a path that would have led me to the same beliefs about the formulas but still believing in God, the atonement, and the restoration. Some people seem to follow a path like that.
Joni, I too understand how you feel. I’ve been there. It’s not a pleasant place to be. In my situation, I knew that we can’t always be protected by the bad things that happen to us. I wanted the feeling that God knew & understood what I was going through. All I seemed to get was silence. I would go to church & feel depressed afterwards.
Members could bear their testimony about losing car keys & God seemed to help them find them. I wanted to feel that He at least knew me & understood what I was going
through. All I seemed to get in return was silence, darkness & depression. It took along thing to work through it.
I recently saw an old movie called: Oh God. With George Burns (God) & John Denver (an ordinary man). The premise of the movie is that God appears to an ordinary man to deliver
a message to the rest of the world. At the end of the movie the ordinary man is saying goodbye to God & asks when will I see you again. How will we talk again?
God answers by saying “you talk & I’ll listen”. That is basically my philosophy of my relationship with God. It isn’t always personal. So, I develop relationships with people I trust.
We talk & I sometimes get answers. Sometimes I give them answers in return. Most of the time I listen & wait.
I feel God’s presence is some of the most ordinary situations. Talking with my children. They are adults, out of school, married & raising children of their own. Sometimes it is a
warm summer afternoon, walking with my dog in the woods. Sometimes it’s playing with my grandchildren. Sometimes it’s doing family history & getting to know my ancestors.
It is rare that God personally intervenes. It is more the natural things that occur around me & I give God credit. I don’t take the silence as personally anymore.
For what it’s worth: This whole life of ours is a personal journey. I wish you the best on yours. If we can help, contact us.
Reuben wrote:Recently, I’ve started to see all those extra conditions and qualifiers as excuses for the failure of the formulas themselves. I think most of the formulas were just made up by fallible humans desperately trying to bring order to life’s chaos and give believers reasons to remain faithful. They were then expanded with more conditions and qualifiers when they obviously failed.
I have come to a similar conclusion myself and likewise have chucked the formulas. For me there is freedom and peace in doing so.
One of the worst things that Joseph Smith came up with is the “there is a law irrevocably decreed…” (D&C 130:20-21). What I’ve come to believe is a hindu proverb that Lowell Bennion liked, “to action only do you have a right but not to the results thereof”. I’m sorry for your trouble and I’m sorry that we’re in a church that teaches that if we can just figure out the cost, we can get what we want and if we can’t, it’s our own damn fault. Sorry, Joni. There is a time and place for an angry phase. Then you can move on to bargaining on your way to acceptance of the way God and the universe runs.
I only offer that as a vision…that the future can be better. It is survivable.
Right now…however…we sit with you. For many things in life, there is no answer to “why did this happen”. It simply does, and we find ways to survive. And it defines us.
Sitting with you, too. Hang in there. It seems to me that if we believe in an interventionist God, that’s problematic. And if we believe in one who doesn’t intervene, that’s problematic. No matter which perspective we have on God, it’s going to cause problems down the line.
Joni – I’m really sorry. I wish I had anything better to say and more I could do to really help. Especially coming from the conviction that God doesn’t love you at all, it’s hard to know…. All I can say about a temple experience like that is that I’ve had one in my whole life and it went sideways. I’ve had to consider that I got my wires completely crossed in that celestial room. Reuben wrote:I sometimes miss believing there’s a being out there that cares for me. I do think it’s possible, but I can’t bring myself to worship it or devote myself to it.
If it exists and is intervening in my life, it’s guiding me toward more love, respect and understanding, and away from believing in universal formulas that crush as easily as they lift..Fighting a war, running a county, making medical protocols, etc., organizations play the odds and weigh risks and benefits. The sad thing for me is to see that the church does it, too. And whenever I sense that’s what’s going on, I’m not on board. It’s a lot of the time. We hold up success stories, happy endings, and we really don’t want to see the rest. I think about 90% of what we talk about at church should go in the current wisdom/best practices/prosperity gospel pile, leaving very little for the eternal truth pile.
Joni, I hope we can be a support to you now.
I have had a strong answer to a prayer in the temple that was wrong, in that I felt strongly that two specific things would happen by two specific dates, and they both didn’t happen. So just wanted to add that from my own experience, even strong prayer answers in the temple can be wrong. However, I know that since you experienced it, and you’ve had a lot of things go wrong too, that for you it is real that God hates you. And I am so sorry. I can’t even imagine what that is like. I hope someday you will be able to find some form of peace, but for now, we are all here for you and thinking of you. Joni wrote:I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had personal revelation, in the celestial room of the temple, that God doesn’t love me. (It’s okay that you don’t believe me. My husband doesn’t believe me, either. But I know what I experienced and I can’t deny it.)
I find that I simply can’t pray anymore. I have nothing more to say to Him. It feels a lot like prayer is how we tell God what He should take away from us next. (For the last several years, my children’s prayers have also included the phrase ‘please bless that our house won’t catch fire.’ I fully expect that God will burn our house down any day now, just to teach me a lesson.)
This also puts all of the Church’s many many demands into perspective. They don’t come out and say it, but it’s at least IMPLIED that if you pay tithing/wear ugly underwear/serve in callings whether you like it or not/sit through boring meeting after boring , God will at least like you better than if you DON’T do those things. But I’ve found that there is nothing I can do to earn the least bit of favor in His eyes, so what the heck is my motivation for doing all these things?
I am so sorry you’re dealing with this. How insanely stressful. I can absolutely relate to the feeling of certainty about an experience that seems to contradict what the Gospel teaches, and having people disbelieve and discredit it. I believe you that you did have the revelation you say you had, and I think you’re doing the right thing by being honest and not denying your experience.
I think you’re perfectly justified in not praying for as long as you want or need. When you say it feels like prayer is how you tell God what He should take away from us next, it reminds me of the “Law of Attraction” that I have heard some people talk about. Have you heard of this? There was a movie called “The Secret.” It is kind of like a religion. I have no idea if there’s any legitimacy to it, but I kind of tend to give everything the benefit of the doubt unless I know for sure it’s garbage. One of the aspects of it is that you presumably shouldn’t state the things you want in the negative, like, “Bless our house not to burn down,” or “Bless my husband not to lose his job.” Instead you should say, “Bless our house to be strong and safe,” and, “Bless my husband’s employment status to remain stable,” or something along those lines. Again, I’m just throwing it out there as something to potentially try if you ever feel like praying again. I’m not saying you’ve been praying wrong all this time, or that if you’d prayed differently that all the horrible stuff wouldn’t happen. I have NO IDEA if there’s anything to that Law of Attraction stuff.
Significant medical issues were the thing that threw me into a faith crisis, and I felt the same as you’re feeling about commitments the Church asks us to make: garments, tithing, callings. It was very much like, “Why am I doing all of this, devoting energy I don’t have, making myself sicker, so that you can NOT help me heal or even show any evidence that you are THERE AT ALL?” So I stopped. I don’t wear my garments. My temple recommend is expired. We don’t pay tithing to the church anymore. We were paying it to various charitable causes and friends and family who were in need, and now we’re just paying off the $31,000 loan we had to take out for my brain surgery four months ago and not tithing at all. But I feel 100% okay…at peace… I don’t have any nagging feeling like I really should be paying tithing to the Church, or I really should wear my garments again, even though I’m very guilt-prone usually. On the other hand, I also don’t have any feeling that I’ll NEVER pay tithing or wear garments again. I strongly believe that what is right for one person at one time in her life may or may not be what’s right for another person or for the same person six months or six years later. I think it’s okay to let that stuff go. Of course, things become more complicated when your significant other wants to keep doing all of it while you do not. That presents its own extra challenge.
I wonder if the implication that by doing x, y, and z, you will receive certain blessings isn’t partly a result of a Gospel culture that attributes anything good that happens to God and anything bad that happens to various sources other than God. I wonder if the more Jewish tradition of readily attributing both good
andbad things that happen to God wouldn’t be healthier for us to adopt. I wonder if that wouldn’t help us to stop acting like being more righteous makes people less likely to be unemployed, less likely to have our houses burn down, etc. Because it’s damaging, you know? It sets people up to believe that it’s their own fault somehow when things go badly, when they’re innocent. It sets people up to judge others for whom things go badly: “Oh, well, he keeps losing his job because of x thing he did wrong, or y thing he failed to do…” Maybe the moody, erratic, impulsive, but still very personal God of the Old Testament isn’t such a bad one to believe in, after all?! Sometimes he’s just in a horrible mood and He lets it out on whomever happens to be around, just like if I’m stressed or in a bad mood I might snap at one of my kids for doing basically nothing. I’m sorry my reply is so long. I just hope you know you’re not alone in what you’re feeling right now. I get it. And I’m so sorry you’re going through this.
My heart goes out to you Joni. I could go into some details, but Reuben’s comments are fairly close to mine. I too no longer pray (except in family prayer/meal time prayer). I have gotten to where I can express feelings and desires and not get upset about having to say a prayer.
But personally I gave up over 5 years ago. I prayed basically for 30 years for an issue in my life, including “please just change ME so this isn’t an issue” and the last 7 years of “I don’t even know what to pray about” prayers. Never once did I feel any response. I generally felt it was a problem with me, but once friends were getting old enough to die it made me think, “why wouldn’t God help me in any way for the majority of my life?” It was what really primed my shelf to break once I came into contact with the critical Mormon groups that ask the tough questions and I immediately thought “YES YES – that is a good question…”
I hope this does not come between you and your husband and I certainly hope your husband it able to return to work soon. I can tell you it isn’t “just him”. I am so tired of the hire/layoff cycle in my industry. Zero loyalty from the company to good employees. The only ones that are SOMEWHAT safe are those that are climbing the ladder.
At some point, I will be willing to pray again, specifically to ask God how to appease Him. I feel like there has got to be some sacrifice large and horrible enough that I can get on His good side again. Does he want me to tithe 20 percent? Attend the temple once a week even though I’m deeply troubled by the sexism? Give up sewing (which is both a hobby and a business for me)? Have another baby? I think, after another few months of unemployment, I’ll be ready to give God whatever He wants. But I’m not quite there yet.
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