A few months ago I posted a rant on facebook (usually a cause for regret) that actually turned into an interesting, respectful discussion (until my cousin showed up near the end) about how much God micromanages our lives. I had expressed my thought that I felt it was God’s will for me to not have more children, yet several smart wonderful friends shared thoughts along these lines:
OK, actually now I’m going to disagree with Kristine. I don’t think whether or not you have kids is God’s will. I think it’s biology in almost 100% of the cases. Otherwise, let’s be real here, God actually WANTED every teen mother, rape victim, incest victim, abusive person, etc., to have babies. He WANTED it. He WILLED it. And that’s a bag full of bogus.
It continued for a while back and forth along these lines:
I’m kind of a deist, transhumanist Mormon. I think God set up the world, gave us agency, and in almost all cases he just lets us go with it, for better or worse. I think he intervenes rarely and particularly.
Each child comes to earth when they are supposed to. I believe it’s 100% Gods will and intervention when you came to earth. He works with imperfect people so sometimes the child comes thru less than desirable circumstances. If children were just born willy nilly than how could he have an individual plan for each of us?
I love the idea that children are in their families because of God’s will and when I look around my safe, affluent, Midwestern community it feels that way. But when I read and learn about the billion people in India, Asia and Africa that are living in poverty and worse, I can’t believe that is God’s will.
I do believe each person comes when they are supposed to. Not on exact days but I believe I was born to earth now for a reason, and not in the Middle Ages. I do believe God has an individual plan for me, because I am His daughter. God knows what we are going to do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to make the choices. As to the people who are born in terrible circumstances or places, I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t doubt that God loves them but I don’t understand why.
[that thinking] disincetivizes those who should be doing good to help and serve. If someone was born into poverty or abuse that God WILLED, then who are we to set it “right”? It was right already…right?
And here is where the miracle happens: I was actually convinced to change my perspective based on something someone posted on facebook! Well, in reality I was given new perspectives that still have me questioning what I really believe.
I thought the subject was over until a family member who had taken a “God manages everything” side of the discussion brought it up with me later, and over the last several months we’ve talked a lot about her testimony of God knowing and being in control.
I asked her how she manages to reconcile the abused and downtrodden, the 7 year old girls who are caught in sex trafficking rings, etc. She agrees that those situations are caused by the free agency of others; but firmly believes that the reason she’s been so blessed and was born into the church and has such a strong testimony now is because she was so valiant in the premortal realm.
On one hand I get why she thinks that way:
- She was raised during a time that her Church leaders frequently taught people are favored in this life because of their valiance in the premortal realm
- There’s Abraham 3:22-23: “and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones….these will I make my rulers”
- Our own Gospel Topics–Foreordination: “foreordination came as a result of righteousness in the premortal existence”
But on the other hand I had a visceral negative reaction to that explanation, and I think it’s because it’s just a little bit too close to the reasons we gave for withholding priesthood and temple blessings from black men and women.
Personally I think I just hit the privilege jackpot: I’m white, I live in a 1st world country, I enjoy (comparatively) economic riches, I have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life, etc. I don’t know exactly why I was given these privileges, but I think it’s pretty random; and because of that I am under much more responsibility than everyone else to see and relieve their suffering. I believe I’ll be judged much more harshly for my choices because I had so much more opportunity. I know that where much is given much is required; but that doesn’t answer the “valiance” question, does it?
What if the poor, oppressed masses were actually more valiant? I believe those who still need to accept the Gospel will do so (spirit prison yall) and many of these people will easily reach exaltation; especially with such humble hearts.
Does God answer prayers to help find keys or stop me from having more children because it’s His will? I still believe God sent me here to do certain things that only I can accomplish (foreordination). Can I believe God has an individual plan for me when so many other people’s plans include horrific abuses I would never survive intact? Are plans assigned randomly or are they a result of our prior valiance? I don’t think I can believe the valiance bit without also believing the least among us deserve it – and I just can’t make that leap.
What do you think?
A heavy subject for a holiday weekend!
But still, a good posting. I can see both sides, and both truth and error on both sides. I see through a glass darkly, I suppose, and sometimes I feel both ways. I really don’t know. But in all that, I do believe that my faith in my Savior, and my loyalty to Him and willingly following of His example, are of supreme importance to me. And then I learn as I see and live, here a little and there a little, and so forth.
The idea that God dictates every aspect (or even most) of our lives is ridiculous. As you’ve pointed out, that means it is his will that a teenage girl gets pregnant when she is raped, or a faithful woman is unable to have any children. It makes God the cause of all evil in the world, as many athiest love to point out. It’s not consistant with agency or a loving father. It’s much easier to see a God that has set the world in motion, wants the best for his children but cannot stop or change the natural progression of things as it is built upon the agency and decisions of our ancestors. While that God isn’t omnipotent, what father is? Just as our mortal fathers, this view allows us to love and honor our eternal father without blaming him for the bad in our lives and the world.
I had several things happen that really changed my perspective.
First, a friend started writing about time dilation. In her 80s Christmas seemed to come once a month compared to when she was four and they seemed to take forever. I’d been trying to design cultures where people lived 20k years or more. Suddenly this life seemed more like a theme park visit in duration.
Then I visited Versailles and realized my overall standard of living was better. An NPR story of an anthropologist who was in the Amazon eating grubs on Thanksgiving. His guide remarked “I know, my village has better grubs too” — compared to heaven, we are wearing mud, eating grubs.
There is more, but I reject bro Calvinism.
I reject Calvanism, too. But I’m wondering if we sometimes misinterpret what foreordination is and how it fits into all of this.
If God set the world in motion and stepped back, then are we all he has to do his will?
I think our current leaders teach us that God is involved in the details of our lives . . .
Ugh, sometimes I think I believe both; but they don’t make sense together.
Valiance still gets a mention in patriarchal blessings…
I don’t know what to think either.
#4 Kristine–Of course we aren’t the only things that do his will. “even the dust of the earth obeys him” does it not? but the atonement and even repentance do not reset what has happened, only how we approach it. For example, if a damn breaks it’s not his will that does it; it’s poor engineering. But his will is that we are humbled and brought before him, which losing everything can do. The waters obeyed his will by following the laws of nature. The sins of man shaped how his humbling would happen, but both follow his will.
Flyingmouseman: is another way to say it “God doesn’t will horrible things to happen, but it is His will that we find Him amongst the broken pieces?”
Hedgehog: that makes me feel better, I guess it took me 30+ years to notice the contradictory nature of it all.
Valiance does seem like a real self-congratulatory thing, a way to say you deserve anything good that comes to you (and then of course that means that those who get bad things deserved that too). It gets you off the hook from helping the less fortunate, and that makes it a bad idea.
I think pre-mortal valiance comes in with the foreordained tasks we are set, not the circumstances we were born into. You still have to be valiant in a upper middle class US suburb sexual abuse situation as much as in a loving, secure family of subsistence farmers in Africa. Privilege can be a negative as much as a boon. God is always with us, just sometimes he intervenes with we least expect it but need it most.
I’m with Sara and Stephen. I absolutely believe that valiance has something to do with our circumstances here on earth, but rarely could you conclude anything from that. It may very well be that the most valiant are given some of the most difficult circumstances. Life is SO unfair that we bend over backwards trying to find a way to convince ourselves that God is actually just, and misusing the foreordination doctrine is one of those ways. If one really must have something, I think it’s far better to have Stephen’s perspective that life is a mere blip in God’s grand plan, and God’s justice would be apparent if we had anywhere near his long-term perspective.
I remember being taught the whole “valiance” notion in Sunday school when I was 16. I think that was one of the first times where I really, vehemently disagreed with something my Sunday teacher was teaching. I remember talking with her and going the rounds, thinking about starving children across the globe, discussing with my mom this idea that almost comes across as entitlement, and I could not, could not reconcile it. I ultimately have just had to reject it and move on. I do remember my mom quoting a mission president who was responding to a missionary’s query about this similar argument about why we are born where and what circumstance we are. Essentially his response was you were born here instead of in Africa because you probably couldn’t have handled it. Essentially, you are born where you will prove to be most valiant. Not because of any valuable before.
What if we are blessed, not from our own pre-pre-existant righteousness, but from the righteousness of our parents, ancestors, and culture?
The blessings we enjoy are the result of the convergence of three forces over several thousand years: Hellenism (Greek and Roman Learning), Judeo-Christianity, and Barbarianism (European tribalism and nationalism). These forces, which include centuries of bloodshed, slavery, and imperialism, have literally created everything about the world we currently enjoy, including all the blessings we sometimes attribute to “God in the details.”
Without this incredible cultural endowment, we would all be like starving African children or worse, as our Barbarian ancestors were, killing each other on the hills of Europe. We are blessed, not by our righteousness, but by our culture. And that culture took millennia to develop. You can’t claim its blessings simply by having lived one righteous life (or one righteous pre-existence.)
Take away that culture, and everything goes to hell, no matter how righteous you are. This happened to the handcart companies crossing the plains. There was no people more righteous and faithful than they. But when they left the comfort of their homes and cultural safety nets, they suffered and died like animals, not as some kind of “trial of faith,” but because that’s just how normal life is without culture.
I was talking about this with my husband and think we can apply the parable of the talents; except we can equate talents to circumstances and privileges born with in this life. In the parable many find the master unjust as well (why didn’t we distribute talents evenly?). But it takes an eternal view I don’t have to comprehend the purposes of God.
I have no respect for anyone who “firmly believes that the reason she’s been so blessed and was born into the church and has such a strong testimony now is because she was so valiant in the premortal realm.”
Doesn’t believing that one has been blessed in this life because of valiance in the premortal life logically mean you believe that those who aren’t blessed in this life weren’t valiant in the premortal life?
And isn’t that similar to believing that a beggar brought the misery upon himself, as taught in Mosiah? And couldn’t that way of thinking lead one to be less sympathetic to others? I think so.
17 Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—
18 But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.
To believe your life is blessed because of stuff no one remembers is a height of arrogance I can’t even imagine.
I remember being taught in Book of Mormon at BYU that positive circumstances in life (generally being a white American, although that was mostly subtext if you didn’t know that the quotation had originally been used to justify the priesthood/temple ban) were based on valiance in the pre-existence. For about a minute I felt pretty good about my supposed valiance, and then realized that it didn’t make any sense. Even setting aside the strong racist/imperialist undercurrent, if God loves all his children, why would he put all the valiant ones in a big group and leave the “lesser” to struggle on their own? He needs good people everywhere, in all circumstances. (This goes along with my peevishness at the popular belief that people who serve foreign missions are somehow better than those who serve stateside.)
As for your initial query about children and God’s will. I don’t know. I don’t think that God cares where your keys are, or that he is behind every teen pregnancy, but I also believe very strongly that he was involved in the timing of my son’s birth. (Conception was statistically very unlikely for me at the time.) I don’t know, maybe it’s God’s Will when it happens to you, and science when it happens to everyone else.
Why do you think God has an individual plan for each of us? What brought you to that conclusion? As far as I know and believe, we are all part of a great master plan and we each play a part of that plan and each have individual responsibilities but I’ve never heard of billions of individual plans. The more God micromanages our lives, the less we manage our own lives; thus, we have less agency and less progression which is counter to the plan of salvation. I simply do not believe in divine micromanagement.
DB- the idea of an individual, divinely appointed plan in central to LDS doctrine. We teach that children are born into specific families at specific times and places for very specific purposes. We have patriarchal blessings whose entire purpose is to reveal the details of God’s will for our lives on an individual basis. We teach foreordination, which is entirely individual not collective. We tell our children to pray to know God’s will for their lives at every major crossroads: which school to attend, whether to serve missions, who to date, who to marry, where to live and work etc… Frankly, I don’t understand how one could grow up in the Church and NOT view God as an interventionist on a micro, individual scale. Whether that is the correct view of our Heavenly Father is another question entirely, but we simply cannot deny that we teach and repeatedly reinforce the notion of an interventionist God who is interested in the most minute details of our lives.
Eliza-
I agree, I grew up being taught those things, but eventually I shifted my belief away from those patterns, and I have come to view them as cultural/folk doctrine. I can understand how it might be comfortable to believe in a micromanaging/interventionist deity, but at the same time it removes personal accountability, while encouraging “Checklist Mormonism”. It seems to contradict the concept of agency, which is also central to our doctrine.
Eliza is right. Whether God actually micromanages or not is a separate issue. But the church clearly teaches that He IS an interventionist. This is without question. Alma 34 teaches to pray constantly and for everything. Countless scriptures say, knock and ye shall find, ask and it shall be answered, etc. The New Testament says: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10:29-31). Further, countless General Conference talks describe how God knows the details of each individual’s lives, and will answer the prayers of each individual who prays with faith, etc.
Eliza is right. The church clearly teaches that God is a micromanaging interventionist.
Now, whether that is true or not, like she said, is a whole separate question. But that is the doctrine of the church. It is not cultural or folk doctrine.
And I don’t want to hear that the “hairs are numbered” scripture only applies to the Apostles. Either way, if God knows the happenings of the little sparrows and the hairs of each apostle, he knows the individual struggles of each of his children and is willing to answer prayers in their behalf. The doctrine (standard works and countless revelations from the apostles and prophets) support this view.
***Knock and it shall be opened unto you.
***Seek and ye shall find.
Eliza et al,
The discussion is about whether God micromanages, not whether God intervenes. Micromanaging and intervening are completely different. I didn’t deny that God intervenes in our lives, I denied that He micromanages.
The idea of an individual, divine plan is NOT central to LDS doctrine in any form. We are all part of a single great plan, and we play our role in that plan, but the scriptues, the prophets, and the church do not teach individual plans. It’s the Plan of Salvation, not the Plans of Salvation. Individuals within the church may teach and believe that, but it’s not part of the doctrine.