One of the most puzzling questions I have struggled with for a long time is: How much does God intervene in our lives? And more specifically, “Does God call people home (back to His presence)? As we contemplate this anniversary of 9/11 and as my family approaches the first anniversary of my daughter’s passing, I can’t seem to get my arms around this question.
We had a friend involved in a major traffic accident this week and he barely survived. Many people tried to comfort the family by saying things like: “I guess it wasn’t his time,” or “God didn’t call Him home yet,” or “I guess he has more to do on this earth.” Which lead me to the question would God really “call someone home” by putting them through a horrendous and painful event like an automobile accident when He could just have them not wake up from a night’s sleep?
I admit I do not have an answer to this one.
There is a huge difference between doing something that leads to one’s own death, like purposefully taking your life (BTW, that happened to a family friend this week as well) or engaging in behavior that can be fatal (like using drugs or some risky activity like ice climbing). But it is quite another to be minding one’s own business, like sitting on an airplane that someone flies into a building, or driving down the road and getting t-boned by a careless or drunk driver.
We’ve heard countless stories from 9/11 about people that were supposed to be in the World Trade Center buildings or on one of those planes and were delayed for one reason or another. Coincidence or divine providence?
I can see an elderly person finally able to free himself or herself from this earthly life after a long life and a tired body and die a peaceful death. But why do some people have to linger in pain or forget who they are? What of God’s purpose does that really serve?
Yes, Yes, I know. It is to give us experience and to help us endure this earth life. But, really?
So, I leave it in your hands to try to explain it to me. Because I just don’t know.
Wheat & Tares 
I think we underestimate just how far this life falls beneath celestial standards.
We read of indigenous peoples wearing mud and eating grubs but don’t really believe Paul when he writes that we are naked and in terrible fallen conditions.
I think we often over estimate the length of this life and the duration of pain.
This is one of the times of year I think about this a lot as I associate me daughter Robin’s death with Labor Day.
I don’t have answers but I have thoughts.
Err, typo. “my” daughter Robin rather than “me”.
Thank you, Stephen. I know you have questions that probably start with why? I do as well.
I have no answers to this question.
How do I explain a YW leader bearing testimony that God is in the details bc he made sure there were enough special journals for them at camp when she knew she didn’t buy enough; yet people end up unjustly injured/improsoned/dead?
I have no answers.
Recently another parent found this talk of mine (which I had forgotten) and tagged me on Facebook.
I read through it and it still has a lot to say to me.
http://www.adrr.com/living/ss_1.htm
I have struggled with this as well. I remember reading an Ensign article about a pair of lost glasses that someone was certain they had been led to find, and yet we all know of children kidnapped who were not found until it was too late.
I have resigned myself to the belief that many things happen that are not God’s will. My own comfort comes from trusting that God will make sense of it some day.
The rain falls on the just and the unjust.
We love the stripling warrior story, but in Vietnam and WWII, Mormon soldiers died along with the immoral, drug-addicted reprobates they served with. The same is true of accidents, kidnappings, rapes, and so forth.
I cringe when a lesson, talk, or testimony includes a story where someone was protected by virtue of their righteousness, because the audience usually includes someone whose loved one in a similar situation who was not spared.
“There, but for the grace of God, go I”
I was thinking the other day about my Great Grandma, whom i’ve never met.She did herself a mischief in 1934. She grew up on the frontier, her husband (my Great Grandpa) was arguing politics and dropped dead in 1925. She had two adult children die before she did. She just led a rough life, like most others at that time. I highly doubt she ever met missionaries or even know about the Church. We had her work done. Yet, I know a girl here in the Church and she was born into wealth. When she won 16 she was $250,000 in a Ford World Modeling contest. When she was a little older she married some guy from Utah who was a millionaire and not even 30. She has TWO vacation houses, one is her dad’s and one is her husband’s or theirs. I see on FB them going on trips and they have nice kids, clothes, restaurants and all this stuff, I can’t see her wanting for nothing.There are obviously people who are far wealthier than she is and people who had it far worse then my Great Grandma. I don’t get why would God place people in these situations were it’s like the lap of luxury and another person their life just got worse and worse and worse until they just “rusted out” and just gave up. Suicide is a bad thing but I don’t know if I blame my relative for doing it, honestly, given her circumstances. Why would God place people in these situations given he knows the end from the beginning and therefore everything in between, to me means he knew she would do herself in.
Jeff my strength has never been in written communication. So my apologies for this not come out as smooth as you or the other readers deserve. I too at this time of year look at the picture of my five children on my desk and think why, when there are some in my larger family who do not have the same earthly pleasure.
You end your blog by saying “So, I leave it in your hands to try to explain it to me.” Well, “I admit I do not have an answer to this one.” There may be some who for a specific instance are given that knowledge but I do not feel it is right or appropriate to generalize it.
What I am comforted by is the belief that every blessing which we are worthy of in this earth life will not be denied us in the eternities. That does not mean I think this will solve everyone’s sleepless nights or the nightmares which linger into the daylight hours or ever answer the question of why. However in my life when I have made a conscious effort to have a believing heart and believe in the goodness of God I have felt comforted.
Yup. I think that venturing explanations about a young person’s time being “up” is hubris of the highest level.
My 13-year-old neighbor recently passed away in a tragic boating accident, and (thankfully!) I rarely heard anyone try to explain it away, but I did hear one person suggest that “she had accomplished all that God had set out for her in life.”
Are you kidding me?! Her life was cut short, inexplicably, unfairly, and tragically. If someone personally finds comfort in some theological explanation or another, may they keep it to themselves.
I have been a carer for sick family members whose quality of life is dreadful, for nearly twenty years.I has been a dreadful generally comfortless experience, and goes from bad to worse. I try to offer help and love, I can’t offer anything else.
But it was ever thus. I appreciate the Saviour’s healing of the sick who he encountered. It seems to me that he was as concerned with healing bodies as he was souls. Other than that, I believe that God set the world turning, and most of the rest is up to us to ameliorate as we can. Miracles happen when there is no other way of achieving his purposes-mostly in the developing world since there are few other ways in those circumstances. Our job is in acceptance and compassion.Fairly cheerless I’m afraid, but real life.
I have come to the conclusion that God muat have set the course of human race in motion and then remains mostly uninvolved. He can aid us with spiritual strength, resilience or faith but otherwise we are left to the random acts of mortality. Given the briefness of our lives in the eternal scheme of things, and our equal worthiness to the Lord, I don’t believe we are called home. We all just end up there eventually.
Jeff, I was just pondering this question myself. It is hard for me to see all the suffering in the world-particularly that of innocent children–and believe in an “interventionist” God. But then, I still find myself at times, praying for intervention, and looking at a few rare moments in my life where I believed there was perhaps divine intervention and find myself not willing to re-classify them as “coincidence.”
I don’t know the answer. I won’t/can’t offer platitudes such as “it was/wasn’t his time” or God must’ve had a different purpose or whatever. I won’t ever pray for material goods. I can’t believe in a God that would guide me to find a pearl ring and allow a child to die for lack of food.
Thanks for all the thoughtful responses.
Let me say that I do have faith that God could and does intervene sometimes, but it is less obvious to us, I think. I feel bad for those who get mad at God when he doesn’t appear to intervene as we wish Him to.
It’s not to say that He didn’t….
I have no answers, but I do believe in an interventionist God, because I’m convinced He’s intervened on my behalf on multiple occasions, especially as a child when I was most trusting and vulnerable. So why he doesn’t intervene on behalf of other children facing much more horrific things than I faced, I cannot explain.
I’ve come to believe that God doesn’t intervene simply to relieve suffering, but rather to accomplish some other purpose (eg., demonstrate His existence, fortify our faith, etc.) Suffering is part of life. I just don’t think He’s nearly as concerned about it as we think He ought to be. While He no doubt feels our pain and cries with us, from His perspective it is a small moment and He won’t relieve it unless it accomplishes some other purpose.
With questions like this I have found the best answer to be “it is in God’s hands”.
I do believe in an interventionist God, but I think the miraculous interventions are very rare. Some of the more common daily mercies might be the results of individuals in the spirit realm rather than the creator of the universe, but I don’t know. What I do know is that people die for stupid reasons, people are born with defective bodies for stupid reasons, and people have horrible things happen to them for stupid reasons. However, every individual on this earth, whether they live for hours or a century, affects the lives of those around them. That’s gotta count for something.
My view of what God was in control of, or what he decides to instigate or prevent, drastically changed when I went through my faith transition. It used to seem so purposeful, but now quite often seems meaningless and even sometimes questioning why God would allow it.
I don’t know answers to all your questions. Actually I don’t know answers to any of your questions really.
I was in NYC on 911. If my normal train had not been delayed I would have been in the towers when the first plane hit. Instead I was diverted to midtown. I saw so many miracles that day and in the weeks that followed.
I think that choosing to see the Lord’s hand in all things, both in our joys and in our sorrows, is just that–a choice. The Lord wants us to choose to see His hand. Once we make this choice and start looking for it, we see Him everywhere. And perhaps more importantly, we find ourselves in a state where the Lord can begin to work with us to become His hands in ministering to others.
My sense is that we misunderstand the concept of “God’s will”. What I believe is that our Father is all-knowing and all-wise and all-good and all-love and all righteous action. He is also creator and, with the Holy Ghost, all-advisor and comforter. With Christ he can be (in the long run) all-healer, all-mercy and all-justice.
When we encounter knowledge, wisdom, goodness, love, justice, creation, guidance, comfort, righteous action, healing, mercy and righteous justice we encounter part of who our Father is. We often interpret that as “God’s intervention”, ie: what God specifically arranged to happen right then. But I think that, rather, it is more likely that we have experienced an encounter with light and truth, the essence of what God embodies in all God is and does.
When we encounter ignorance, stupidity, evil, hate, injustice, destruction and violence, guile, distress, suffering, implacability or injustice it is natural to feel not only how antithetical that is to God, but also the wrongness of it all. We feel how opposite that is to what God is.
I petition God for the things I desire: specific things that I feel will increase the knowledge, wisdom, goodness, love, justice, creation, guidance, comfort, healing, mercy and righteous justice in the lives of those I am concerned about. And I seek to make my work in life also increase knowledge, wisdom, goodness, love, justice, creation, guidance, comfort, healing, mercy and righteous justice in the world.
I believe that when my petitions, actions and desires to promote those things peacefully sync with God and who God is, then I “feel his hand in my life”. And I think that “in sync” is what many people are feeling when they say they feel God’s intervention in, say, finding missing keys or physical healing against the odds.
Life on earth, by it’s very nature, hands some really horrible things to us. And, as we connect to those qualities that are of God, we feel more keenly the horror or grief of those things not only in our lives, but also in the lives of others.
If we see the role of God as “fixer of problems” to those who follow him, or to those his followers reach out to in compassion, we miss the point. Earth life is not a process that has a goal of making everything all better. Life is a process of recognizing more clearly than ever before what is light and truth and goodness and what is not; aligning ourselves better and with greater commitment to knowledge, wisdom, goodness, love, justice, creation, guidance, comfort, righteous action, healing, mercy and righteous justice, and then acting, with God’s grace, to further those things no matter how horrific the circumstances we go through.
Earth life is a time to understand, profoundly, the eternal value of what God embraces and be a part of his work to further those things because we recognize more fully than ever before the essentialness of God’s nature and seek to become a part of that.
God doesn’t “allow” bad or tragic things in this life. Bad and tragic things just ARE. So I don’t think that God specifically gave my sweet, thoughtful niece a terrifically difficult handicap that cut her life short or caused or “allowed” my grandmothers to live long years unable to recognize their children who cared for them, or stood aside and “let” another family member go through the horror of rape. But I do see the power of God in the lives of members of my family who have suffered through those experiences either directly or indirectly as they have allowed themselves to connect to what God is. And I have seen others, who are also connected to God, move to help heal in powerful ways.
The power of God is not in making things all better in this life, but rather is found in who we become and how we respond as we encounter and recognize and become more allied with the essential nature of God and seek work to with God, tapping into all that God, more powerfully than we can imagine, IS.
I think that becoming and responding and recognizing and allying ourselves to God and God’s powerful, essential nature is what Jesus was talking about in his intercessory prayer: that his disciples would be one with each other, with him and the Father in powerfully transforming ways as Jesus was one with the Father. (John 17)
The biggest problem I have is that God does intervene, and it isn’t so much why he did intervene in this or that case as the so many times I see no intervention.
On the other hand, I think of the story of Alma and Amulek. They wanted to save people whom God was receiving to himself in glory.
Odds are that looking back, the people were pleased not to have been saved.
“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” http://biblehub.com/revelation/3-17.htm
Even the richest, by an eternal standard are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. Just think where our quality of life sits compared to 5-6 thousand years ago. Imagine if heaven were only 5-6 thousand years ahead of us.
Anyway, that is not consolation, for we remain within time and within the world, and God acknowledges that we should mourn. But it makes me think.
As at least one comment said, we are prone to see God’s hand in everything. I think that this is usually a very positive belief. Psychologically it is highly beneficial, though it has to often be coupled with “we can’t understand the mysteries of and God’s plan”–especially in the case of apparently senseless tragedies. In that sense, even though it might not be the truth such a belief is faith-“promoting.” And that is always a plus, RIGHT?
However, IMO, my working theory of the truth is that God never, or almost never intervenes. There is no specific plan for each of us–we only need to follow his will to discover it, etc.
Logically, if God intervenes to “take someone home” or otherwise cause some good or bad thing to happen, He has introduced a change in people’s lives. The drunk driver that hits and kills someone had to be manipulated, to some degree, to be at the right place, at the right time, and in his/her drunken state. Beyond the manipulation (a delay of some sort, a thought to leave sooner or later, etc) involved prior to the “event,” such an event changes all who are involved. The loved ones, the drunk, all have a life-changing event. Their interactions with others augur to make changes in those others, and so on. Like throwing a pebble into a calm lake, and then another, the ripples propagate and interact producing changes in the course of the water…in the course of people’s lives. Some interventions are seen as positive, as miracles (a delayed train saving someone’s life). Some are seen as tragedies (all the folks whose trains weren’t delayed).
If He is intervening and causing various events, trials and tribulations custom-designed for each of us (as we are so very often taught) God is not only extremely busy with all these manipulations, and the interactions between them, He has changed the course of our lives and, often, key events that shape us.
Therefore, does not God bear responsibility for some of what these events do to us? Without the salve of a firm belief that this is God’s plan–therefore we should gain strength, not bitterness, many are devastated, or over-joyed, long-term. Their change affects others, which affects others–and so on ad infinitum–regarding the kinds of changes that are introduced into thousands of lives that could be traced back to just one of God’s interventions.
This raises questions about our freedom of action, our free will, our agency–because we are, supposedly judged by our actions, our responses to these “changes.” Logically, it also raises questions about a God, supposedly omnipotent and omniscient, that couldn’t devise a system that required less hands-on attention.
It’s great to sit and philosophize about the greatness and wonder of god as he adoringly guides our eternal lives in our comfortable surroundings typing on our iPhones and laptops. I wonder just what the topic of conversation would be today if we lived in a third world country stressing over where the next meal (maybe the first one since Thursday) for our starving child would be.
I recently read someone who said they need no more than the Holocaust to not believe in an interventionist god. I’m sure if the black plague happened today and killed 75 million (at least) as it did in Europe, there would be still be those in testimony meetings convinced god helped them find their keys and saved them for some unknown need of his.
The answer that makes the most sense out of the senseless (to me) is that there is no god watching and helping us in our daily wanderings. “Stuff happens” made a lot more sense once I ended my wishful thinking of some unknown, unseen being from another planet. It all was up to me. And I’m okay with that.
On 9/11 I was forced to walk uptown. Just below Central Park I found myself alone which was strange given the throngs of people I had been with at Madison Square Garden. After noting the relative silence, I saw a coworker walking a block away. We were miles from our office building, but there she was. She was distraught having witnessed people throw themselves out of the tower windows and then watching as the towers fall. In a city of 8 million people, the odds of the two of us crossing paths miles from our office building were exceedingly small. Some would call it chance, but I choose to see God’s hand, putting us together so we could reassure each other that things would work out in the end.
I don’t know why God seems to intervene sometimes but not others. But I am a witness to God’s ability to bring forth light from even the darkest events. The outpouring of love, compassion, and solidarity that New Yorkers felt on 9/11 was amazing.
I heard something that made sense to me: That God does not often interfere with the big things because it interferes with agency. Little things — finding keys — do not. I’ve seen enough movies like The Butterfly Effect, The Adjustment Bureau and Sliding Doors to appreciate the difficulty of intervening just so to create a universal optimal outcome. This idea, coupled with my belief that God’s power is great but finite, allows to me to appreciate lost key stories.
I think God gave man the means to solve many of our own problems, but we don’t. We keep creating them, hoarding our wealth, living selfishly, and wondering why God is so unfair as to not help the sick and impoverished. This is an oversimplified way of thinking, I know.
I tend to think we give God more credit than He needs and Satan more credit than he deserves.
I guess it’s possible that god intervenes to help some children and doesn’t intervene with others, letting horrible suffering befall them, simply for the purpose of demonstrating his existence or growing one’s faith. I just think any being who operates in such way is not deserving of respect, let alone worship. I’ve always found it interesting that we’re supposed to see the human family as a type for our eternal family, when there isn’t a parent on earth that would acknowledge knowingly subjecting his or her children to a fraction of the games and manipulations god apparently inflicts upon his children for some supposedly mysterious purpose. We all know fairly intuitively that we should be loving, attentive, teaching and nurturing parents, because we love our children and they need our guidance. But we’re supposed to worship a churlish, capricious, absentee god who comes and goes without a modicum of consistency or predictability? If god were a human parent living in the world today, he’d be in prison for the way he treats his children.
Life in this world isn’t fair, and I’ve often wondered why we expect it to be. This I do know: God has intervened many times in my life, occasionally in astonishing ways. Other times I’ve been crushed by grief and pain that I’m left to endure without relief. I’ve come to accept that I won’t understand much of what happens on this side of the veil. Yet, I trust that God does understand, and my hope is that one day He’ll allow me to understand as well.
Twice in my lifetime, at least as a civilian, I’ve had narrow escapes from ‘having my ticket punched’. In 2000, I was in a terrible rollover accident (the car actually flipped arse-over-teakettle twice and landed hard on its roof, which was crushed, the survival in fairly good shape of myself and my 14 y.o. son was considered a miracle), and just a week ago, my home burned down completely, with me narrowly escaping in my pajamas. In either case, was it my ‘time’? I’d say no, since I’m still alive and kicking (myself mostly for leaving my wallet and cell phone behind to get barbecued), though thanks to, in either case, the idiocy of others, I could have easily been bumped off.
Methinks it’s best to not worry about what might get you before your ‘time’. As LCDR Worf put it in the Star Trek NG episode, “The Royale”, upon seeing the desiccated remains of USAF Lt. Col. Steven Richey in his hotel bed, after Data assesses that the long-missed officer had died of old age in his sleep, muses, “What a TERRIBLE way to die..” All a matter of perspective, I guess.