Most religions, ancient and modern, have a tendency to attribute things that happen to God’s will, whether those things are positive (blessings/wealth/power/success in war) or negative (cursings/bad weather/poverty/disability). These outcomes are seen as “God’s will,” but human effort can drive God toward more desirable outcomes.
For example, about 15 years ago I was in Tunisia, anciently known as Carthage, and even more anciently, a Phoenician settlement. While there we visited an ancient cemetery where the bodies of children (and later pets which elicited a horrified gasp from our fellow tourists) that were burned as sacrifices to Ba’al were buried. It was some straight up Old Testament stuff! They did this to avoid famine or weather-related disasters. If they experienced famine or weather-related disasters, it was seen as the fault of those who hadn’t made these sacrifices. The community would then ratchet up the number of children (or pets) sacrificed to get God back on their side. Eventually this practice died down, but it was a big thing for centuries.
In 2011, we visited a family friend in Bali, where locals currently spend a significant portion of each day making small offerings for the gods out of fruits and flowers which are then left out in the street. If a neighborhood family does not make enough of these and something bad happens, they are blamed. Neighbors shun them and don’t want to be friendly toward them. They are seen as not doing their duty to the community. When the terrorist attack in 2002 happened in Kuta, killing 202 and injuring another 209, the entire island redoubled their efforts to appease the demons who had so clearly targeted their community.
I recently attended the funeral of someone who died of Covid in which a eulogy included the statement that the deceased died because it was God’s will, not because of the virus. It’s understandable that grief pushes us to find reasons for things that have harmed us, whether we live in modern or ancient times. Our actions have consequences, but too often religious thinking substitutes unrelated action for things we can do that actually drive better outcomes. This sentiment has been expressed at most funerals I’ve attended, that God took the deceased home because he or she had important work to do. I’ve also heard many say that this idea is not comforting to them because it puts God in the role of causing pain to humans. It also exonerates us of our responsibilities, in this situation, to vaccinate, to follow masking and other safety guidelines, and to believe in science and follow community health and safety guidelines to prevent contagion. I know of others whose deaths have occurred as a result of poor life decisions who acknowledged this and cautioned others to make better choices, to avoid their mistakes. To me, this feels like a more responsible approach. A fatalistic view of God means that nothing we do in life really matters; only God’s will matters. Only God’s will drives results. In such a system, we don’t have to reflect on the consequences of our actions, on cause and effect relationships.
Consider another familiar scenario. Missionaries are often told that if they obey rules, they will baptize more converts. This is a logical fallacy. While it’s potentially true that disobeying rules can decrease effectiveness, that does not mean that obeying the rules has a direct effect on how many people a person will teach who convert and are baptized. There are many other factors at work, including the investigator’s free agency to choose and the missionary’s social and communication skills (or lack thereof), just to name two obvious ones. There are many, many more factors than this at play. Some of these are things a missionary has more control over, and many are things a missionary cannot control at all. Yet, it’s taught over and over that this is the way to achieve baptisms, to the point that I have become skeptical that convert baptisms are the goal at all. Perhaps the real goal is to instill self-righteousness in missionaries and a willingness to follow rules whether they make sense or not. Perhaps the goal is to create followers, not leaders.
This thinking is also at play when we talk about physical protection from harm for individuals who are wearing garments or financial blessings from paying tithing or other “righteous” efforts. While these may be worthwhile activities, tying them to an unrelated reward feels like folly. If you need money, get a better job, improve your education and skills, go to your boss and talk about a raise. If you need physical protection, drive safely, eat healthy food, exercise regularly, don’t pick fights, be vigilant for danger. These are directly related to the outcome being sought. Of course, anyone can do these with or without a religion telling them.
Mortality is not in our control, and the good and bad things that happen to us–even death–aren’t a direct reflection of our “righteousness.” Jesus taught this very clearly in the Beatitudes:
[H]e maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Matthew 5:45
There’s a joke somebody told once (can’t remember who) that people believe in Creationism rather than evolution because reading a children’s story is easier than learning actual science. Now that’s perhaps a bit harsh (I believe this was a critique of Evangelicalism, not Mormonism), but there’s something truthy at the core of it. I remember a time in my mission when there was a rule created that was just having terrible impacts to us as missionaries, and I prayed for the president to get rid of this rule. In the meantime, I kept following the rule (I literally had no alternative; it was strictly enforced by the district leaders). After praying for months that this rule would be eliminated, I switched tactics. I wrote directly to the president, explaining the impacts this rule was having to me, to my new trainee, and to the local branch. And you know what? The rule got changed. I don’t have proof that my letter was the cause of the change since we pretty much all loathed this rule, and I couldn’t have been the only one who raised the problems, but the direct approach from me or someone else prompted the change that me praying could not.[1]
What’s your take?
- Do people ascribe negative outcomes to God’s will as a way to avoid personal responsibility for their actions?
- Do people prefer to do unrelated religious things because they are easier than doing something more direct to get a better outcome?
- Why is so much weight given to unrelated actions in religion rather than encouraging people to make direct changes that would alter outcomes?
- Can you think of other examples of this phenomenon?
Discuss.
[1] Obligatory book plug: https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Hermana-Plunge-Angela-Clayton-ebook/dp/B07NQ4CXFB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=legend+of+hermana+plunge&qid=1634085409&sr=8-1
Wheat & Tares 
While I have seen several clear instances of divine intervention over the course of my 69 years (I am sure skeptics would disagree, but I am what I call a “believing skeptic,” myself), I believe that we as a people are far too prone to chalk things up to God’s will.
My wife, who was older than I am, died at the relatively early age of 69. Although her death was caused by many problems, the single biggest factor was a terrible middle-of-thr-night fall she suffered in the bathroom, six years ago. It is hard to ascribe that to God’s will, and is a bit offensive. It gets a little too close to the mindset of God being responsible for the death of 6 million Jews. Fortunately, no one has tried to tell me my wife’s death was God’s will. I think I would whang them upside the head with a Book of Mormon. It is okay to say my wife is in a better place, minus pain and once again in her right mind, but that is very different.
As to missionaries being told that if they want to succeed, they have to obey the rules.
I served my mission in Taiwan, where proselyting success has varied widely over 50-plus years. On a macro level, the single biggest factor has been the overall external political climate. I don’t think God caused the goodness or badness of the political environment, but the Church was either helped or hurt by changing politics.
On an individual level, the biggest determinant is whether the missionary has self-confidence that he or she can pleasantly convey to other people. One of the laziest missionaries I ever worked with tracted out and baptized a whole family (rare in Taiwan), in which the man later became a Bishop. This missionary was a genuine charmer who made people feel good.
We had a Taiwanese sister who was given the nickname Jiang the Baptist because she was so successful in helping people join the Church. And then I saw good, kind, hard-working missionaries who lacked self-confidence, who had a difficult time finding people.
It is not God’s will that people suffer and die. Concluding that it is God’s will is an attempt to absolve humans of responsibility for their horrendous choices.
If a man throws a rock at a window and says it was God’s will that the window broke, that is absurdity. The same goes for a man who spends his life drinking and carousing and dies of disease—claiming that it was God’s will that he died early.
There are consequences for a life spent in drunkenness, gluttony, and wanton sexuality. Those consequences include suffering and early death. An attempt to attribute that suffering and death to God is the ultimate blasphemy.
I think the modern LDS version of God has been largely treated and described as a transactional being. Like a spiritual vending machine where we place currency (obedience or sacrifice) into the system and out comes a blessing (sooner or later). Our leaders even talk about blessings delayed into the next life, but the transaction will still be completed and accounted for. I think this causes a lot of what we wrestle with concerning “God’s will.” Did I provide the right amount? Was it the right time to ask for this?
Our D&C further exacerbates this problem by stating, “ There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” So there’s a formula for each and every blessing we desire? Or is it that all blessings have a “master law” which governs? The verse can be read both ways. But either promotes the need to figure out the formula for the transactional blessing.
I think this way of approaching God and seeking desired blessings can really mess things up. It becomes the genesis of a lot of guilt (I am not worthy or righteous enough), a lot of disappointment (why do others seem to have more than me), a lot of self-righteousness (I must be really favored and loved by God), a wasted life (I will just accept my sad status in life because it’s what God wants), and even doing good things for the wrong or selfish reason.
To quickly answer another of Angela’s OP questions, I have observed God being used by many to avoid personal responsibility, ascribing his will to a lot of poor decisions or justifying their station in life. Not only that, some folks will also cite Satan and his influence in their lives as being the cause of many problems (the devil made me do it, I was deceived/tempted by Satan, etc.). Why, it’s almost as if we have no agency at all?
But, that’s our religious heritage and we are stuck with it unless we are willing to break free, risking the wrath of a transactional God.
Great post and hugely important issue IMO.
The first time I saw this as *really* being a problem in absolving people *and institutions* of personal responsibility (as opposed to a relatively harmless, if not necessarily accurate, comfort to people) was, as you’ve alluded to, during Covid. When there are relatively simply things people can do to prevent the spread of an infectious disease, like masks and vaccines, attributing Covid-related deaths to God’s will is incredibly frustrating to me. It’s one thing to say that someone who died from something like cancer – after they did all they could to prevent and treat it – went when it was “their time.” Maybe that’s really not actually true, but cancer can seem so random and senseless so I can see how that is comforting to some people (although I agree you should never say that to someone else, only use it to comfort yourself if it’s helpful). But I think it’s quite a dangerous line of thinking with preventable diseases and problems.
Specifically, I have a friend (an advisor to me in YW) who is very high risk for Covid complications (severe asthma and lung damage, cancer survivor, immunocompromised, low kidney function, over 60, the works). She’s been very cautious during the pandemic, but she and her husband are temple workers and the minute that they were called back into the temple of course they were there because they are the type that believe that (1) they would only be asked to be there if a priesthood leader was absolutely inspired to ask them to be there, (2) they will be protected by God if they are there on the Lord’s errand, and (3) if they do get Covid from being there, and they die, then it’s because it’s their time to go. This really infuriates me. She’s someone who has taken a ton of precautions in her ordinary life but when it comes to the Church asking her to do something, she is totally at the mercy of local Church leaders doing the right things and while she privately expressed to me that she was uncomfortable in their sessions because people were not wearing masks, of course she still went and did her duty. She would never say no if the Church asked her to do something. (I flat out told her not to come to YW activities and she agreed, but only because I told her not to come.)
So not only does this attitude put my friend’s life at risk, it also absolves the Church as an institution and local leaders as decision-makers from responsibility / accountability for poor decisions because it’s all chalked up to “God’s will” when in reality they are making decisions that are putting members in harm’s way.
Another great example of the dangers of this line of thinking was in the book “Educated”. Tara Westover’s dad basically constantly put his family in dangerous, reckless situations. He claimed it was because he had so much faith that (1) they’d be protected and (2) if they weren’t, it was God’s will. Many of them suffered serious injuries as a result of his recklessness. But he wasn’t being faithful. He was absconding his duty as a parent to care for his family. He was being lazy. I think that book presented a great example of how harmful the extreme version of this attitude can be, and if an attitude in the extreme is that harmful, I think you have to question the attitude itself.
Another example that I’ve seen with a few people in my life – couples close to me who struggle with infertility. That *really* messed with their heads with them thinking that if they were righteous enough and prayed hard enough and did all the right things God would bless them with kids. It was honestly really traumatizing for them. I know a lot of people who left the Church because that version of a God who blesses righteous people was too painful for them and they couldn’t find a suitable replacement within chapel walls.
Final example and then I’ll stop – things like women getting the priesthood where so many have the attitude of “when it’s the right time, the prophet will be inspired” but don’t bother asking for anything ever because of course we can’t “murmur.” Lots of issues like that similar to your mission letter example.
You explained that most religions attribute both good and bad to God as his will. But I think I see something different among the LDS. I’m not sure this is doctrinal. I suspect it’s cultural.
What I see is a tendency to give God/The Lord credit for the good things that happen but just kind of ignoring the bad things. If someone gets sick and is healed, we express gratitude that the Lord allowed the person to be healed. But wouldn’t it have been better if they weren’t sick in the first place? If the person is not healed, we kind of dismiss that as chance, not the Lord’s doing (note to Bednar: we know some of us need the faith NOT to be healed).
I’ve noticed in testimony meeting that a lot of gratitude is expressed and that is a good thing generally. Healthy people are grateful. But there seems to be a blind spot explaining why bad things happen to good people.
I think attributing things to God’s will can be both absconding from responsibility or a desperate attempt to control the uncontrollable. It can be the same reason people often blame rape victims for being raped. If SHE caused herself to get raped, then I won’t do what she did so I will be safe. This is really a desperate attempt to stay safe from what can actually be very random. So, under the desperate attempt to control “blessings” people will think first of all that God controls blessings, and that their righteousness or sacrifice can control God. So, if I control God, then I get blessings. Whoooppppy! Controlling God is what the prosperity gospel is all about. Controlling God is some people’s purpose in fasting. For many people, both Mormon and other Christian religions, they view baptism and other covenants as controlling how God treats us. Would a loving God really keep people who love each other apart because they were not sealed in the temple? If you say yes, then you see the temple ceremony as controlling God. The very idea of a covenant is forcing God to make promises to you. Think about it. Does God come to us and say, “I will do X if you do Y.” Well, he did with Abraham, so now we all demand the same offer from God.
Great article. I have 3 things to add:
1. The idea that God intervenes to choose when people die is problematic. If he can do that, why doesn’t God choose for murderers or rapists to die before they can commit their crimes? A typical LDS answer would say that this would violate their agency, but if that’s true then wouldn’t God violate agency every time he makes someone die? My conclusion is that we really don’t know why God allows bad people to do bad things, and that church members and leaders don’t have a consistent understanding of what agency is.
2. The idea that someone’s salvation is dependent on another person following the right rules is problematic. It’s like if a child was drowning but God had to let them drown because the nearest person was listening to music with too much swearing and couldn’t hear the spirit. With missionaries not getting baptisms because of disobedience, at least you can say that everyone will get to hear the gospel in the next life, but it gets worse. I once heard a bishop share a story about how a family decided to pay tithing despite being close to losing their house. They eventually lost their house and questioned whether they should have paid tithing, but decided that by paying tithing God blessed them so that all of their children would stay in the church. This faith-promoting story has horrifying implications: God could damn someone for all eternity just because they didn’t have tithing-paying parents. The same goes for promises that wayward children can still be saved if they are sealed to their parents.
3. Something else relating to point 2: group fasts don’t make any sense. Does God have a quota of how many people need to fast before healing someone or stopping the pandemic? Maybe not enough fasted last year and that’s why the pandemic is still going on. If not, why even have a group fast? I suppose fasting could just be a way to promote unity in a community, but church leaders always promise more than this.
I saw “The Last Duel” this past weekend. In the film (and I don’t think this is a spoiler because they talk about this in the trailer), a case of sexual assault is presented to the French court in the 1300s and is decided by combat. The medieval thinking was, apparently, that whoever won the duel was telling the truth because, you know, God. That line of reasoning may seem ridiculous by today’s standards but is it really so different than many of the examples listed in this thread? We still try to resolve life’s ambiguities (or in the case of the Last Duel and covid, painfully obvious realities) by trying to yield our control to God when we’re really just leaving things to chance.
On a macro level, the biggest example I can think of is climate change. Let’s see how far God will let us go in destroying our biosphere before we realize it’s up to us, collectively, to stop it.
The LDS view is really schizophrenic. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday an LDS person might preach that you have your moral agency and you are free to Choose The Right When A Choice Is Placed Before You. It’s God’s gift to you as a human. But on Tuesday, Thursday, and the weekend they’ll proclaim (with equal fervor) that God is deeply involved in events here on Earth. God is pulling all the strings. Things happen for a (divine) reason. If someone dies, it’s because God called them home. If something bad happens to a person — well, there must be a reason. Things don’t just happen randomly. If God won’t put his thumb on the scales fairly regularly on behalf of His Chosen People or particular True Disciples, what’s the point?
It’s worth pointing out that this is not just an LDS or even a religious problem. Philosophers and scientists struggle with more or less the same problem when disputing over determinism versus free will. It sure seems like we have the ability to make free choices, even arbitrary choices, and that a lot of what happens in the future is uncertain and open to a variety of outcomes. Yet the underlying physics shows a chain of events and causes that just seems to roll along in a very regular (f not always 100% predictable) fashion. All events have causes. There are no uncaused events. So the LDS habit of trying to have it both ways with God’s sovereignty and free agency or moral agency is just the LDS version of the general problem (determinism versus free will) that seems to be an inescapable feature of the human condition.
The phrase “thoughts and prayers” comes to mind. It usually comes from politicians after national tragedies occur (especially man-made tragedies, like mass shootings, ironically). Younger generations see it for what it is–a cop-out for religious hypocrites to evade moral responsibility to take any meaningful action. This is why they turn “thoughts and prayers” into memes and are increasingly turned off by organized religion.
I imagine for many people, the idea of a literal, omnipotent, interventionist God is comfortable precisely because it gets us mortals off the hook for everything that happens in the world, good and bad. From there, its easy to extrapolate a belief framework in which some people are deserving of “blessings” while others aren’t, and that’s just the way it is. Though this approach is intellectually lazy, it is supported by LDS doctrine and culture.
@kamron, agree on group fasts and they sort of rub me the wrong way because they seem like popularity contests – like people with more friends are more likely for their sick children to be healed? Btw that also favors more attractive families. I’m all for coming together as a community to fast and pray for someone as a way to mourn with them, comfort them, and think of ways we can actually *do* things to help them – but not as a way to petition for divine intervention.
Reminds me of a recent experience. A family member reached out frantically asking me to put someone on the electronic temple prayer roll because she couldn’t do so. I was going to (I don’t put stock in it anymore but would have out of respect for this person) but hadn’t been able to do so by the time the thing she was concerned about had been favorably resolved (it was literally happening at that moment). I didn’t tell her that and she of course thanked me and believes the happy resolution was due in part to the prayer roll. I think it more likely to have resulted from the competent professionals involved in the situation.
If God exercises his will on us, he does so capriciously.
500 million deaths from war in the past 3400 years, ~30% of all people who have ever lived were slaves, which is still very alive today, 400,000 murders/year, 9% of the current world population living on less than $1.90/day, misogyny, racism, 45% of people dying from infectious diseases up until the discovery of penicillin, natural disasters that kill tens of thousands and leave hundreds of thousands living in disease and poverty, and simply the genetic roulette of being born.
And at a personal level, my 14-year old’s childhood friend having a sudden heart attack and passing away earlier this year and my best friend being hit and killed by a motorcycle when out for a run (who also has a special needs daughter that definitely needed him more than God did).
Hobbes was right, “Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
So if this is God’s will and there is an afterlife, then a reckoning is coming where the 108 billion people who have lived on this planet (minus the fortunate few who God blessed to find their car keys – which I actually heard from a high councilor speaker in sacrament four months ago) are going to be the judges.
The joke referenced at the end the OP has a much stronger iteration in Stephen Dunn’s poem, “At the Smithville Methodist Church.” If you type in the name of the poem in Google, the entire, remarkable poem is online. (I just didn’t know if I could embed a link or copy the whole poem there). Believe me, it’s worth a read.
At the risk of some people not looking up the poem, here’s an excerpt:
“Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can’t say to your child
“Evolution loves you.” The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries.”
Seriously, check out the entire poem.
The “obedient missionary” dilemma mentioned in the post is real and was amplified by a book distributed by mission presidents in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Grant von Harrison’s “Drawing on the Powers of Heaven.” Is was a destructive and evil thing to do to missionaries. The grass doesn’t grow where I spit when I am thinking about that book and the arm-twisting and goal-setting connected with it.
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
― Epicurus
@Old Man – couldn’t have said it better. That book is pure evil. Required reading on my mission, from which I came home early due to depression. Traumatizing.
I don’t want to start and blasphemous rumors…
… ANY blasphemous rumors…
Curse you autocomplete!
I don’t have any close relationships with Jewish people, but I get the impression that contemporary Jews aren’t concerned with what God can/cannot, will/will not do. The focus is on being “a light unto the nations,” working to improve lives, creating and contributing. Sometimes I think we overwork the idea that we can know God in detail or that he can direct us in every instance and answer our every prayer, or that everything happens for a reason.
I don’t believe that God is stirring the pot. My God is very standoffish. Instead of praying for rain, be prepared for drought (or flooding). Instead of praying for the earth to cool, do something about global warming now.
I don’t believe that God caused the death of Jews, Armenians, Rwandans, Cambodians, etc. He didn’t starts the current wars in South Sudan, Venezuela, Syria, Ethiopia, etc. Neither did the devil.
I don’t believe that the poor should accept their fate, because they will be rewarded in the next life. Perhaps, Marx was right: religion is the opiate of the masses.
To spend the kind of money the Church spends on new temples is difficult to justify. Work for dead is a hobby. Help for the poor is a Christian mission. Prez Monson understood this. Why can’t our current Church leadership? Temples are legacy items.
I’m drawing on my understanding of Karen Armstrong and the way the psychology of religion has evolved here, because I think it’s closely connected. I promise I’ll bring it back to the OP in a second. Historically, gods were a way to conceptualize forces of nature. Thunder was the sound of Thor’s hammer, or drought would happen when Hadad went to a different country. People realized they couldn’t control something, so they would make up a symbolic character and a story to accept their powerlessness. At first there was no pretense of controlling these forces. It was just a convenient way to talk about them. Over time, people told stories about legendary ancestors who had special deals or relationships with gods, so people started sacrificing, ascribing rules to be followed, and building up religious institutions (as opposed to earlier shared belief systems that aren’t institutionalized). Religious institutions are always political parties, regardless of the correctness of their truth claims—they’re groups of people with a shared belief who are working together to spread that belief, encourage others to follow it, and write a CD its practices into law. That’s a political party.
There’s some evidence that even a lot more recently (up until the last couple thousand years), the gods were still seen as symbolic, fictional characters, and not as actual entities who really exist. But along with that understanding was a belief that somehow the religious practices were effective in a symbolic way at affecting those uncontrollable forces.
Fasting “for” is an almost uniquely Mormon thing. For most religious people, fasting is fasting. It’s not about asking for something, it’s about submitting to the divine. You fast to worship, not to beg.
So, to bring it back, yes people use the claim of God’s will to avoid responsibility sometimes. We also use it to feel empowered, though. Either way, we are responsible for our own actions.
This year someone close to me was refusing to get vaccinated against COVID. Partly they were listening to unreliable sources of information. But more importantly, they justified their choice by saying “I already got COVID and I’m fine. If you get it, whatever happens is God’s plan.” This didn’t account for how they had already spread COVID to most of their family (kids and grandkids), and the out-of-town branch of the family were asking for COVID safety ahead of a visit. Needless to say, it caused some intense family conflict.
God’s will is one of my least favorite cop-outs for reckless behavior.
*write its practices into law.
Don’t know where “a CD” came from there.
JCS – “It is not God’s will that people suffer and die.”
I would hate to think that God deliberately gave my sweet 14-yr old son with Down syndrome the excruciatingly painful cancer that killed him.
I would find it difficult to worship a God that thought it was a necessary learning/growth experience for his mother.
I would revolt at the notion the ordeal was a consequence of family members not having sufficient faith and righteousness.
Yet all of these concepts have been preached from our pulpits in some form or another. At ward buildings and in the conference center.
If the “Hand of God” is limited to creating the system, this game of life, in which people suffer and die in arbitrary accidents of birth and world events, what does it say about the Designer?
“God moves in mysterious ways and His ways are higher than our ways and we’ll understand in the next life” are hollow platitudes that describe a pitiful, capricious, and cruel God. One whose rewards and punishments defy logic and scale – and can, thus, can never be earned or deserved.
We have a very, very limited understanding of how God works. Religionists through all recorded history preach a transactional God. They claim to have the rule book and direct access to his will, when they really just have their hand out to profit from the control they seek to exercise by deluding their followers that they have answers to the vagaries of life.
I have an innate desire to have a relationship with God. I think I do have something. But I reject the cartoon god that is a mass of contradictions – perhaps most especially the Mormon god.
Been There, what a marvelous soul you are to still be talking to God…
John Charity Spring
Is your comment any different than this?:
“And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Such thought processes apply to even more than birth defects. I am coming to a recognition that things going wrong (of all sorts, floods and earthquakes, addictions and not bringing an umbrella, judgement errors and results caused by bad actors, simple mistakes…) are not the exception, but the norm. They are going to happen to someone, and something will happen to everyone.
They are part of life.
I recently had a change in my view of “God’s will.” I previously viewed God’s Will as doing church things (reading scriptures, serving in callings, going to temple, etc…). I have since changed the question to “What is God’s will FOR ME?” What are the outcomes that God wants in my life? The answers I’ve come up with include – A good relationship with my wife/kids, to do good at work, to help others, to have fun and enjoy myself sometimes, and also to serve in the church.
In the past I’ve tried doing “God’s Will” by overserving in the church and I wasn’t happier, just burned out. Now, I feel like I’m doing “God’s will” as I spend time with my family and friends, as I work hard at work, and just try to live a good life. And I’ve been much happier.