(I believe in God about 80% of the time. Right now, I’m in the 20% and these thoughts are the result of me wondering what kind of God I would be willing to worship. I’m not proposing a new theology, but I do value the input of the W&T community and I want to hear your thoughts.)
The prosperity gospel views God as a vending machine. Obedient behavior goes in; designated blessings come out. It’s a transactional relationship and it’s predictable. God expects obedience and gives blessings – that’s all we need to know.
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. D&C 130:20-21.
In my experience, God is not a vending machine. The prosperity gospel is false doctrine. Or it is for me, because I was super obedient and didn’t get the blessings I picked out. Other people may have a testimony of the prosperity gospel because it worked for them (or at least it has worked for them so far).
Is it wrong to expect God to be a vending machine?
From the point of view of a baby, parents exist to feed you and change your diapers and hold you when life gets overwhelming and you cry. Consistency is so very important to a baby. Eventually the relationship becomes more complex than that, but that early life consistency forms the foundation of the more complex adult relationship. Neglecting a baby has a long-term impact on that baby’s development. Babies who are neglected, or cared for inconsistently, have severe trust issues and may not ever be able to form a deep and healthy relationship. For the baby’s own good, parents MUST be vending machines.
My father was Godlike, in that we never knew how he was going to react. Sometimes he was kind and loving. Sometimes he hit small children. Sometimes he brought everyone a gift or surprised us all with a camping trip. Sometimes he muttered cuss words under his breath, stomped around and got red in the face with restrained fury and we would hide from him. Sometimes he would have a normal conversation and say he loved us. You could NEVER ask him about these inconsistencies because that was the one area in which he was completely predictable and it was pretty awful.
What about your work? Do you expect work to act like a vending machine? I do. My work goes in and a paycheck comes out. My paycheck doesn’t depend on someone’s mood. Nor is anyone going to withhold my paycheck to try and find out if I’m doing my job out of unconditional love or out of expectation for reward.
Imagine a boss who helps you find your lost keys, but ignores the manufacturing equipment that kills someone at random once in a while.
Think of the people you have close relationships with. Do you rely on consistency from them? Say that you forgot to do something they asked you to do. Do you apologize, correct the problem, and all is well? Do they scream and throw things and give you the silent treatment for a week? What if they could have either response and you never know what’s coming until you’re in the middle of it?
Can you have a relationship with someone whose reactions you can’t predict? Yes, but it means eliminating trust and respect. Here are the options for having a relationship with someone who is unpredictable:
- Blame yourself and assume you actually control the other person. If he’s angry, it’s your fault. If he’s helping you, you’re being blessed for obedience. If he’s distant, assume it’s your responsibility to draw nearer to him. You are completely responsible for the health of your relationship; he has no obligation to explain himself or communicate with you. You make do with what he’s willing to give.
- Keep a safe distance. Deal with your problems without asking for help. It’s easier to never ask for help then deal with the see-saw of “will he help or hurt?”
- Conclude that the inconsistent person actually is consistent. The problem is that you just don’t understand. Nephi explained, “I know that God loves me, even if I don’t understand everything” (1 Nephi 11:17) (paraphrased). Put your questions on the shelf and trust that they’ll be answered later.
What I’m getting at is that it’s fine to expect consistency from people. Every healthy relationship that we have here on earth requires a certain amount of consistency and predictability [fn 1]. When Church leaders teach that God loves us like a father loves us, they’re drawing on earthly relationships to establish the foundations of heavenly relationships. And there IS a vending machine quality to good relationships.
I’ve been in close relationships with people who are not vending machines, i.e., who are inconsistent. Sometimes wonderful things happened. Sometimes awful things happened. Sometimes nothing happened at all. And I never knew what was coming. Instead of thriving in those relationships, I ended up coping. I developed ways to deal with the fear and inconsistency.
Anyway. My conclusion is that expecting God to be a vending machine was actually a healthy expectation. It showed that I was learning that trusting, loving relationships require predictability and consistency [fn 2]. I still find it strange that we are commanded to love, honor, respect, obey and worship God, and also make excuses for him.
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[fn 1] No, I’m not talking about handing your kid $100 every time he asks for it. I’m talking about not being wildly unpredictable. For example, if your kid asks you for $100, will you:
- Have a calm discussion about why he needs the money and then discuss whether it’s better to get $100 by earning it or by gift?
- Or will you give your kid the silent treatment until he repents for asking?
- Or will you hit your kid for being so presumptuous?
- Or will you yell at your kid and tell him the reason he’s not getting $100 is because he’s such a rotten, disobedient loser and you won’t help him until he repents?
- Or will you hand him $100 just to make him go away?
- Or any one of the above depending on how you feel that day?
[fn 2] In rereading this, I realize that this post will probably resonate the most with those who have survived emotional abuse or other chaotic childhood circumstances.
Questions:
- Does God as a vending machine hold any appeal for you? Do you wish God worked like a vending machine?
- Are there areas in your life where you trust God? Where you don’t trust God?
- Think of what I said about babies needing parental vending machines — what do you think of that?
- Do you try to be a vending machine to your children? Meaning, in what ways do you try to be consistent for your children?
- In what ways are you unpredictable and uncommunicative with your children?
- If you parented your children the way God has parented you, what do you think your relationship with them would be like?
Wheat & Tares 
None of this really answers a related of question of “can’t” (not “won’t”).
In the months after giving birth as the pregnancy hormones subside, a woman can’t regulate her emotions to the same degree as she can other times due to post-partum hormones.
Teenagers are similarly hormonally limited in their emotional reactions. Their body is using the brainstem as a filter, sorter, and everything else while the main part of their brain is under renovations. They can’t respond in ways beyond that brainstem capacity.
For some individuals there are biological impairments to “being consistent/consistent in a standardized, acceptable way” – primarily ADHD and ASD. The degree of “won’t” be consistent/meet expectations is determined by the degree of security they are in their environment, their upbringing/background, information they have, and the coping tools they have harnessed.
Atheists/Agnostics run into the situation where if God doesn’t exist, sometimes exists, exists under specific “deist” circumstances, so God “can’t” be relied on and makes the conversation of “won’t” and related personal obligations moot.
CAVEATS:
– The woman is biologically less capable of doing so – and completing a white-knuckled “won’t” doesn’t mitigate that (only supports can that mitigate any external stressors).
– The teenager can’t “over-react”, and those that do are actually doing so by “shutting down” entirely. Teenagers who “won’t” over-react are either in need of decreasing stimulation so they don’t shut down and/or supports that co-regulate their experience so that they can prevent some the consequences of that “over-reacting” spiral.
While we need people “who are their role”, we lose a lot of conversation, connection, and creativity (that ties into accommodations and sustainability) when we limit individuals their role.
Once I separated God from the church and its leaders, a God slowly emerged for me th
The prosperity gospel views God as a specific type of vending machine – one that dispenses material goods. Do we feel differently about a vending machine God that reliably dispenses peace, contentment, wisdom and marital bliss than one that dispenses promotions and new cars?
Babies do not have a vending machine relationship with parents. They may have consistent expectations, but they don’t provide any repeatable inputs. We don’t refuse to feed babies because they haven’t been sufficiently cute today. We specifically see their behavior as having no impact at all on what they are entitled to receive. This is decidedly not how vending machines work.
As a parent, I try to readily acknowledge to my kids that I am not a vending machine. No human is, nor can be. Personally, I like the *idea* of a vending machine relationship with people, because those are predictable and safe. But I’m moody sometimes, for reasons that aren’t easily apparent to anyone interacting with me, or even to myself. And unfortunately for all of you, I am one vending machine, but everyone gets to insert demands and press my buttons, and those all impact each other. So if I’m a vending machine, I’m extremely complex to the point of being unpredictable, which pretty much ruins the point of a cold, efficient and simple device. With my kids, I try to help them see that I am just a person. I mess up, I make bad decisions, I say things I regret. I apologize to them far more often than I remember my father apologizing to me.
As for God, perhaps He is capable of being a vending machine. But if so, he’s clearly too complex for me to understand. I guess I’m in good company with Nephi? Human brains seem to have an incredible desire to find patterns in the world around us, and yet we don’t seem to find too many patterns in religion we can agree on. There are some basics about the desirability to be kind and do good to others. The Golden Rule shows up in pretty much all the religions. But we can’t seem to find any reliable enough patterns about prayer (to whom? how often? in what manner?) or church attendance (what day of the week?) or dietary laws (kosher? WoW?) to reach many conclusions. Even within denominations, we don’t find consistent enough results to decide if Mormons should tithe on gross or net, or vote R or D, or a hundred other things. With a sample size of just my life, I can’t make heads or tails of my “righteousness” in relationship to “blessings”, let alone reconcile it with everyone else’s life. (I know some pretty successful, happy, “wicked” people.)
My life experiences have shown me that while I can control my actions (to a reasonable degree), I can’t control the economy, my health and myriad other things, and I can’t find evidence that God is controlling these things either, at least not according to any rules I can rely on. Which leaves me with either rejecting God completely, or accepting a God that neither finds car keys, nor cures cancer. For the time being, I’m settled with the latter. I believe in a God that can teach people how to be better than they are, but then leaves it to all of us to make that happen. Maybe I’m letting God off the hook here, or living far below my privileges, but I’m also much less frustrated by God this way. (And maybe I’m wrong about all of this – which, by the way, is one of my current disappointments about Mormonism, our complete lack of humility that we might be wrong about a lot of stuff.)
Thank you for writing and sharing this — it was a lot heavier than I expected, a lot more vulnerable, and it made me feel tremendously sad. I am a nonbeliever 100% of the time, but I am really interested conceptually in the concept of “grace”. I can’t say I have experienced it in a divine context, but I am grateful and fortunate to have experienced something that I think is analogous to what believers who believe in grace might be talking about in many of my mortal relationships. The thing that strikes me about this post is how this vision of grace I’m thinking about feels almost entirely lacking from the discussion and it makes it very sad that people don’t have this lived experience to have that be one of the options.
Basically, I don’t think God or parents should be vending machines.
This is because I think they should be *more*. A vending machine gives you something based on what you put in. It is transactional. Vending machines are like karma — you get what you deserve, what you have earned, what you pay for.
Grace is a *gift*. The adjacent “gratuitous” has the same sense and etymological background. Grace is unearned, undeserved, unmerited.
If we use the vending machine example, the vending machine is like putting in a dollar and getting a snack you paid for. Grace is like getting an abundance of snacks at no price, no cost.
A baby does nothing to “earn” the care of her parents. And by that same token, nothing a baby does should result in a loss of care. The care should be freely given, gratuitous, abundant, unconditional.
There is a very different mentality with grace and gifts. One does not think about how to “earn” a gift. Rather, the discussion is more: what does “gratitude” look like? What does being “grateful” for a gift look like? Its not about whether one has earned the gift or whether one deserves the gift, but there is still a psychic and social difference to someone who accepts a gift gratefully and one who does not. When we are grateful, we care for what is given to us. We appreciate the giver.
I think it’s illustrative when people mess up, make mistakes. Karma/Vending machine mentality requires punishment or retribution. Someone did something bad, they need to pay for that. That is what someone “deserves”. That’s what they have “earned.”
But in grace, you can give someone more than what they deserve. You can forgive them. You can give them a gift anyway.
Using the work example, let’s say you mess up on the job. Should you be fired? Should your pay be docked? That’s what you have “earned” through your actions…but I think an ideal work environment cultivates “psychological safety,” a sense that there are some actions you can take, some opinions you can express, some avenues you can travel, that carry RISK (of failure) without fear of repercussions. You will still be OK. You will still be accepted.
I think that the “fear” or “concern” about grace is…because people do not earn gifts, there is no way to “police” an ungrateful response to a gift. If someone squanders a gift, or does not take the appropriate care or perspective w/r/t the gift, this “misses the mark”, but it must be allowed through grace. Not all humans are prepared to infinitely extend grace. But one would hope that one could envision that God would be infinitely able to extend grace.
(The implications, I think, are that hell is self chosen. It’s a self chosen rejection of the gift God is freely giving. God can’t force someone to accept it, and that’s the only way someone would not have it — if they rejected the gift.)
Two things you said really hit me and my struggle to understand God. 1) “My father was Godlike, in that we never knew how he was going to react.” and 2) “Can you have a relationship with someone whose reactions you can’t predict? Yes, but it means eliminating trust and respect.”
I’ve often thought about the Jesus/god we read about in 3rd Nephi. One day, he’s tenderly calling little children to come to him. The day before, he’s killing these children’s friends by the thousands because their parents weren’t doing what they were supposed to. Or the God of the Old Testament who loved David so much that he’ll cause a famine to get his attention, but doesn’t love everyone else enough to not use their deaths as David’s object lesson. I’ve always been so confused about which God I am speaking to when I kneel down and say my prayers.
That word you used – unpredictable – really resonates with me. I’ve often thought of God as a vending machine, but always felt uncomfortable with whose request is granted and whose isn’t. Over the last couple years I’ve simply stopped asking for things when I pray and, instead, just using prayer as a moment to speak aloud what I’m grateful for like a form of gratitude journal.
Taking the vending machine out of the equation hasn’t solved everything, but it has helped me feel a bit more faith about my relationship (or lack there of) with the unseen.
Janey, your posts are always gems, and this is a gem among gems. I particularly like your starkly honest opening sentence, and this one: “Imagine a boss who helps you find your lost keys, but ignores the manufacturing equipment that kills someone at random once in a while.”
One thing I find interesting is the Church’s doctrinal inconsistency with regards to God’s consistency. On the one hand, we have “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say,” and on the other hand we have Elder Christofferson telling us that we ought not think of God’s plan as a cosmic vending machine. We also have President Nelson saying that paying tithing will break the cycles of poverty, but then his later talk that attributes his professional opportunities to his paying of tithing has a disclaimer in the footnote: “This is not to imply a cause-and-effect relationship.” Our leaders are constantly making promises regarding what God will and will not do, as if He’s predictable, but then remind us that God said, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.”
So, regardless of whether God is consistent, our leaders are certainly not.
Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of a Cathedral because the Catholic Church at the time was treating salvation like a vending machine with the sale of indulgences. Are we any better if we do the same thing with tithing and temple attendance? If we treat God as a vending machine it just shows our short-sightedness concerning our relationship with God should be. Imagine the difference in the church or maybe even the world if we looked at what we could do for God instead of what he could do for us. How many things do we let slip by because we’ve paid our money to God, the great vending machine in the sky hence we don’t have to worry now about our neighbors because they should do the same as us. Looking at God as a vending machine makes it much easier to justify ourselves and blame others for the world’s problems.
According to the light the world campaign, everything can be reduced to the vending machine (including humans interacting with other humans in a humanitarian way). Everything is a vending machine. Don’t get me started.
Interesting that the OP and comments think vending machines are predictable. My experience is that they are actually not. Ever put a $1 in a vending machine and the machine refuses to accept it? Ever had a vending machine take your dollar and not give you a Twix? (ie the thing doesn’t rotate enough to spit it out, it spits it out on top of the door where you can’t reach it, etc). My work computer certainly gets tired, just like I do, won’t open Excel despite me telling it to 10 times. Machines are actually not all that predictable.
To Janey’s question above, the church teaches that families are #1. Yet it’s when I became a parent that Mormon diety didn’t work for me anymore. As a parent I try to love my kids because they are flawed, not in spite of it. I suffer from anxiety attacks and unfortunately they have been more frequent recently. Yet my wife and kids love me, anxiety attacks notwithstanding. They don’t withhold their love on the days the anxiety takes over. A God that only loves me when I can manage to keep the anxiety at bay is not worth the effort. Likewise, I’m fiercely loyal to those I love on their good days and bad days. I love them because they exist, not because of what I get from them. That’s love.
I also second DaveW’s comment.
Excellent post and remarks.
I’m an non-believer and have been to some degree for over a decade. My non-belief started with the typical things. Book of Mormon historicity, LGBTQ and gender issues, polygamy, the character of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, etc. I used to regard those as crux issues around which Mormon belief hinged. Now I don’t. I believe the predominant beliefs of Mormonism aren’t even a historical Book of Mormon or the prophethood of Joseph Smith. Those are important, no doubt. But the members just take those sorts of beliefs as givens. They don’t actually try to defend them or root their lives in them. They just have faith in these teachings and avoid conversations that question their validity. The main belief in Mormonism is in blessings. That if you are religious in the way that the leaders tell you be, go to church every week, wear your garments, keep the Sabbath, pay tithing, dress modestly, say your prayers, serve in your calling, read the scriptures (even if just in some rote non-analytical way), that God will bless you and keep your life free from major challenges, and that you will be happy. That is what people want the most out of religion. They want a sense of order, inclusion, and happiness. The sense of disorder and uncertainly in life (inevitably so) often leads people to cling more to the church hoping that religiosity will help make the disorder less. They keep thinking that even if they haven’t received a noteworthy blessing from their being religious, that either they’re not recognizing small blessings and being ungrateful, or that that big blessing is coming, they just have to persevere. It is one big ol’ game of confirmation bias.
People worry about doubting the historicity of the Book of Mormon, not because they actually care about history. Most Mormons do not know the slightest thing about what archaeologists and historians have revealed about the ancient Americas. They worry about doubting historicity, because that would lead to doubting other things and eventually doubting themselves. The church has ingrained in believers the idea that doubt in abstract historical claims maintained by the church is akin to self-doubt. And that doesn’t make one bit of sense. Because of new evidence that has emerged, I now doubt that Pluto is a planet or should be considered a planet. That doesn’t imply that I have low self-esteem and doubt myself. It works the other way around. Having faith in one’s abilities to overcome adversity is a good thing. But having faith in the idea that Joseph Smith had prophetic powers is a completely different thing which has nothing to do with faith in one’s own self. But the church conflates the two different kinds of faith, claiming that they are the same.
What I now consider my most ostensible issue with church teachings is now not so much the traditional things that ex-Mormons often cite, which you would find in the CES Letter. My main issue is with the idea that religiosity in the LDS church will inherently lead to wealth, security, and overall happiness. I simply see no correlation between religious living and prosperity and general happiness. In fact, around the world the most educated and wealthy places are the least religious! Some places ranked the happiest on the planet are similarly non-religious. Happiness can have various sources and I don’t doubt that religiosity can be a source of happiness. But there is overwhelming evidence that happiness and good fortune can occur without religiosity.
In sum, I think the general belief in the church is:
If bad things happen to you and you’re active in the church, God is testing you, just persevere in the church and things will turn around.
If good things happen to you and you’re active in the church, that’s God’s blessings.
If bad things happen to you and you’re not faithful in the church, God is punishing you.
If good things happen to you and you’re not faithful in the church, just you wait, your punishment is coming, and I as an active person will make sure to rub it in your face when that bad thing happens.
This belief system is complete and utter nonsense.
Answers to questions:
1. The idea of God as a vending machine doesn’t really appeal to me. Although, I’m open to being persuaded if God will just bless me with a few million dollars 😉.
2. I trust that if I try to be a good person and use my best judgement in earnest, that God is smart enough to realize that I’m trying my best. If there’s a God worth being associated with, I can’t imagine they’ll be more concerned with a covenant checklist more than with genuinely trying to do good in the world.
3. I think that consistency is an important part of parenting, especially when kids are young. We’re also all human and make mistakes. I’ve for sure lost my temper or acted in a way that may not have felt unpredictable to my kids, but when that happens I do always try to correct it, apologize when necessary, and do better in the future. I think that it’s just as important for kids to see adults making corrections and adjustments as it is for consistency – we can be consistently trying to be better people.
This is a great topic. The idea of the prosperity gospel and God as a vending machine is so interesting. It starts when Luther starts teaching that God is pleased by a person faithfully performing their worldly duties (as opposed to withdrawing like monks). Then we’ve got Calvin teaching predestination and that only a small subset of people will be saved.
This gives a sort of one-two punch of salvation anxiety as people freak out about whether they’re saved or damned, and want to figure out how to see which side they’re on. It leads to this sort of “transitive property of religion:” God only blesses the saved; God is pleased by the industrious; therefore, if I work hard AND I’m saved, then God will bless me with prosperity and I’ll have proof (whereas if I don’t prosper, I’m either not saved or not working hard enough).
So now we’ve got a recipe of industry+frugality+puritanical discipline+motivation…a pretty great combo for generating wealth and power. The whole history of it is pretty fascinating, and it has permeated all sorts of corners of society over time.
I’ve heard Mormons argue that the prosperity formula works for other religions because they are true principles from God no matter who uses them…and they’re being blessed obedience whether they know it or not. This logic really doesn’t hold up IMO, but I’ve heard this quite a bit.
Answers to questions:
—1. The idea of God as a vending machine doesn’t really appeal to me. Although, I’m open to being persuaded if God will just bless me with a few million dollars 😉.
—2. I trust that if I try to be a good person and use my best judgement in earnest, that God is smart enough to realize that I’m trying my best. If there’s a God worth being associated with, I can’t imagine they’ll be more concerned with a covenant checklist more than with genuinely trying to do good in the world.
—3. I think that consistency is an important part of parenting, especially when kids are young. We’re also all human and make mistakes. I’ve for sure lost my temper or acted in a way that may not have felt unpredictable to my kids, but when that happens I do always try to correct it, apologize when necessary, and do better in the future. I think that it’s just as important for kids to see adults making corrections and adjustments as it is for consistency – we can be consistently trying to be better people.
This is a great topic. The idea of the prosperity gospel and God as a vending machine is so interesting. It starts when Luther starts teaching that God is pleased by a person faithfully performing their worldly duties (as opposed to withdrawing like monks). Then we’ve got Calvin teaching predestination and that only a small subset of people will be saved.
This gives a sort of one-two punch of salvation anxiety as people freak out about whether they’re saved or damned, and want to figure out how to see which side they’re on. It leads to this sort of “transitive property of religion:” God only blesses the saved; God is pleased by the industrious; therefore, if I work hard AND I’m saved, then God will bless me with prosperity and I’ll have proof (whereas if I don’t prosper, I’m either not saved or not working hard enough).
So now we’ve got a recipe of industry+frugality+puritanical discipline+motivation…a pretty great combo for generating wealth and power. The whole history of it is pretty fascinating, and it has permeated all sorts of corners of society over time.
I’ve heard Mormons argue that the prosperity formula works for other religions because they are true principles from God no matter who uses them…and they’re being blessed by obedience whether they know it or not. This logic doesn’t necessarily hold up IMO, although I’ve heard this quite a bit in Mormonism about various topics.
I have no idea what the “Mormon God” is really like. The analogy I always used to think is that it was like our Heavenly Parents are away at the theater or on a trip, and there are babysitters in charge, and the babysitters are ruling the house the way babysitters do. Some of them are friendly and chummy and want to know where the ice cream is kept. Others are dictators, laying down the law and issuing threats of what will happen when your parents get back. They literally know your parents less than you do, so you can usually see through the bluster. As with babysitters, you recognize that they aren’t the real authorities. They can make your life hell until your parents get back, especially if they are authoritarian bullies, but their pretended authority is just that. Like John Mulaney says, it’s a slightly larger child in charge of a slightly smaller child, like putting a horse in charge of a dog.
This is a great question.
Like many others, as a parent I do my best, and sometimes I fail. I used to feel really guilty about it. Then a friend pointed out that parents have feelings too, and too often kids don’t ever learn their parents have feelings because they are, in the words of the post, too consistent.
I also don’t really ask for things in prayers either, except for the ability to recognize the Spirit, and help being kind to those around me. I really struggle with the scripture “ask and you shall receive.” There’s a lot of mental gymnastics about that scripture. And it’s not true. I prayed for a righteous desire for ten years and that prayer was never answered.
I just can’t believe in a God that will send rain if enough people fast and pray for it. If one person doesn’t, and as a group we haven’t reached the threshold, so no rain for you? Really? The same thing applies to fasting and praying for the sick. I no longer believe that having the whole ward pray for you is better/more powerful than just having your family pray. I think that maybe fasting and praying as a ward can help us feel like we are a community, but it’s not going to change what happens. I’ve heard people wonder if maybe they had had more faith, more prayers, their lives one would be healed instead of passing away. I can’t believe in a God like that.
I can’t believe in a God that lets the one mom die in a car accident just because she didn’t pray and saves another mom in car accident because she prayed for safety. The same thing for events like earthquakes, etc. They happen because we live in a world of scientific laws. I can’t believe that God would send an earthquake to Turkey but not to me because of prayer.
I think we can find peace and strength from prayer, but I don’t think we change the outcome.
Albert Einstein said that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. Them that understands it, earns it; them that dont’ pay it. If you want to create prosperity and wealth, you have to understand basic economics. Industry, savings, and thrift are the solution that anyone can apply to become better off.
Let’s say you start saving $100 a month at age 20. You earn an average of 4% annually, compounded monthly across 40 years. You earn $151,550 by age 65. Your principal investment was just $54,100.
Calling a parent/young child relationship a “vending machine” seemed a little weird, because, like Dave W said above, the young child can’t (and shouldn’t have to) put in coins to get care, love, and food. Shepherd/sheep seems like a better comparison, although even the the shepherd eventually expects to profit from the sheep.
That being said, I think I understand the point, and I’ve recently been frustrated by life situations that seem to show the divine as either wildly inconsistent or non-existent.
There’s a part of the Hunger Games books where Katniss is walking through the through the arena and feels the she will soon die of thirst. She wonders why her sponsor doesn’t send her some water, because she knows he knows her plight, and she knows he has the power to do so. Eventually, she realizes that he must be waiting because she’s very close to a water source, that he can see but she can’t, and he’s conserving their resources. With that hope, she charges on, and soon finds water. It’s nice to think that maybe God exists and maybe she’s helping even if we can’t see it.
TBH I’m about 80/20 the other way, though, only occasionally feeling some hope that there’s something else out there.
@kww your point about groups of people fasting and praying is interesting. I wonder if the power in this idea has more to do with focusing a community’s attention & resources on a particular purpose or problem than anything else. I’m not sure about the case of the weather, but an entire community focusing its collective attention onto a single ailing person can be a very powerful thing for both the recipient and the community.
It might not always change the course of an illness, but that feeling of support and care could certainly be a huge source of support for the person in need. Having help with that burden could for sure have a real impact in someone’s health and wellbeing. I think this is where the real power of a church can lie – God doesn’t really need us to wander around knocking on doors, but we for sure need other people.
My whole family got COVID a few weeks ago. It wasn’t a huge deal – we were just sorta miserable for a few days. But a few caring friends found out – they checked in, brought over a quick meal, and offered to help in other ways. It was small acts of kindness that made those sick days much brighter and more bearable.
One of the reasons I left is that I cannot tell at all what the Mormon God is like. JS seemed to often paint a picture of a loving father but sometimes his god was a real prick (you know flaming swords and all that). My wife worships a god who seems to be super nice and will ultimately welcome most of us back home. But RMN’s god is a vending machine. If I can’t trust my own official prophet what’s the point. I don’t want to worship a vending machine and I’d rather not see him again, let alone live with him forever, if that’s what it’s going to be like.
I used to want a scientist god but a detached, stoic god kind of sucks too. Or maybe a cookie baking grandmother god who kindly suggests ways to improve and then says I’m a nice boy and gives me a warm cookie and lets me figure it out. The problem with that god is that nature doesn’t seem to operate that way. Nature is ruthless and cruel, sometimes beautiful, and doesnt care two bits if I’m happy. If we model god after nature, he or she is rather unpredictable and rewards whatever behavior allows you to live one more day.
Great post. While reading it, I kept thinking of George Carlin’s bit where he said had gotten more or less the same results praying to God as he had praying to the sun until he finally settled on praying to Joe Pesci because he seems like he could get “stuff” done.
I don’t even think the scriptures have any clue about the true nature or disposition of God. Sometimes God is jealous and vindictive, sometimes loving and merciful. Sometimes God is a man walking around, changing his mind and not knowing everything. Sometimes God is a nebulous yet omnipresent providential force in control of everything. Sometimes God is Spirit, sometimes God has a body of flesh and bone. Sometimes God is more like us, sometimes God is something we might aspire to be… sigh… perhaps Neitzche (is that how you spell it?) was right.
Or maybe who ever wrote these passages had no idea how to describe what the cosmic center of the universe might be like and so most of them employed poetic language to attempt to say the unsayable. I have no problem with not knowing, but I have learned to be leary of authority figures who claim absolute certainty on such things. I’m pretty certain that the vending machine model of God is incorrect though. Maybe George Carlin is right. Maybe we all should just give Joe Pesci a try.
What you are actually talking about is the positive reinforcement quadrant of operant conditioning. (BF Skinner’s mice: push a lever, get a treat, push a lever, get another treat).
It’s an interesting topic because positive reinforcement has really moved the animal training world in a very good direction. Think dogs and clickers, dolphins and whistles. All of which is WAY better for the animals than the old-school ‘dominance’ way of training.
In positive reinforcement, the predictability is the whole point. Predictability leads to building cues that instigate behavior. The cues/behaviors become a form of communication between the animal and trainer. It’s a really amazing thing to experience, completely changed my relationship to my animals. Suddenly we had a way to understand each other.
Can this be true of God too? Is God using a Vending Machine model to teach us little humans, to build a common language between us and God? That is both appealing to me and also not so much.
Because…
What’s interesting in positive reinforcement today is that some animal trainers are building off of it to look for more whole-brained methodologies. (Positive reinforcement relies heavily on the ‘seeking’ part of the brain. The learner has to be constantly ‘seeking’ the treat (approval of God) and that can become an exhausting, negative place to be stuck mentally.) A more whole-brain training encompasses seeking while also using the entire emotional experience of the animal (human). I’m just beginning to explore this, so can’t liken it much to human-to-God, but I think that the movement in positive reinforcement toward whole-brain (rather than just operant conditioning) shows that more is possible than just the vending-machine model.
Or another way to put it all: Vending machines are great if you want to exchange a dollar for a high-frutrose-corn-syrup, low-quality, no-health-benefit sugary snack. Vending Machines don’t satisfy if you are looking for a fulfilling meal that correctly balances your dietary needs, calories, and dining pleasure. If you try to live off of vending machines alone, you’ll end up malnourished.
What a great conversation, and one that I wish we could have in Sunday school, but alas, I find myself and W&T to fill my need for some critical thinking and where Christianity looks more like questions seeking answers, rather than answers that can’t be questioned.
Pirate & KWW – Your above points are particularly salient to me. If there is a single fatal flaw in the formation of Christianity and how we have crafted the systematic narrative, it is the telling of the story through the lens of “Original sin”. And although, we Latter day saints, profess to reject original sin, we have inherited ALL of the core doctrinal ideas from 15th century credal Christianity. We are holding a telescope, a useful tool, but we are looking through it from the wrong end. Everything that is implicit about the prosperity gospel is formed from a false premise that, mortality is a summative test, where we prove our acceptability to God. This premise is backwards, and has zero chance of ever producing, what we might call, Godly people, because it is obsessed with “self”, preoccupied with my own image, shackled with fear, shame, guilt, and scarcity. If the gospel of Jesus Christ is really “Good news”, then it is not about being accepted by God, but instead accepting the participatory role within our cosmic reality. The gospel is not about eliminating sin and suffering, but the way to respond to it. Accepting God to me looks like;
Accepting the reality that I am NOT in control
Accepting that suffering is baked into reality, and learn to respond to it instead of excape it.
Accepting that simple binary carrot and stick systems will eventually break down, because they have to break down.
Accept that human development is not a map to be followed, but a journey to be traveled.
Accept that I am both good and bad, light and darkness, pleasure and pain, and that truth is found in the proving of contraries.
Accept that life is risky, faith is not certainty, and trust that the structure of reality, however stupid it may seem, has value.
Accept that life is unpredictable.
Accept that the major point is to learn to give a damn, to stop using people for my own glory, and realize that “Grace” IS Salvation, not some loophole to my heavenly reward.
I teach Gospel doctrine in my northern Utah county ward, and I frequently use the phrase, God doesn’t bless me because I’m good, God blesses me because he is good. It’s my way to poke a hole in the prosperity gospel without calling specific attention to it. (not that that would be bad). The concept of the prosperity gospel is a narrative born of our insatiable need for control and certainty. The vending machine God is a God created in our image, he / she is more an idol than someone to commune with.
Elder Anderson’s conference talk, Tithing, opening the windows of heaven, from this past conference began with the story about a family in Venezuela and how their bakery was mercifully preserved during a power blackout. The story concludes with this quote, “My oldest son, Rogelio, only 12 years old, said, ‘Papa! I know why our store was protected. You and Mama always pay your tithes.’ If you assert that God was persuaded to single out your store because you paid tithing, then you must also accept the judgmental baggage that comes with that claim, namely that, the businesses that were ransacked were not protected because they were not “obedient”. This is not only false, but steering members towards beliefs that are “missing the mark”. The only fulfillment of the law in this story would be if the son said, Papa, we are so fortunate today to have had our store saved, how can we help those people who were not so fortunate. As Adam Miller has so poignantly suggests, “Love is a law, not a reward”. God wants us to love as he loves, he commanded us “to love”, not make ourselves perfectly lovable. There is no law anywhere in scriptures, spoken by Jesus himself that commanded us to make ourselves lovable, only to respond to sin and suffering with the requisite mercy and grace needed to heal the brokenhearted. Please, please, can we take the prosperity gospel out behind the barn and allow it to rest in peace.
I want to add my witness that the prosperity gospel paradigm is wrong, evil and antiChrist. It is a version of what Korihor taught and was bound up and questioned by Alma for. When he would not stop preaching it he was struck dumb, and went begging door to door and was trodden under foot.
See Alma 30:17
“And many more such things did he (Korihor) say unto them … every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature, therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength… ”
I believe in the God in Matthew 5:45 ” He maketh his sun to shine upon the evil and on the good and sendeth rain on the just and unjust. ”
I know that every man does NOT fare according to his own management. He does NOT fare according to the way he keeps the commandments, except possibly by the peace he feels in his heart from doing so (and then only if he doesn’t suffer mental illness).
A person fares according to the blessings of God, which rain equally on everyone without distinction or control according to their actions. The blessings of God are the fundamental pieces of how this world works and they are composed of cells and wind and rocks and dirt and all parts of the natural world which work naturally together the way God planned them to do, without morals or shame or particular benefit or distinction for individuals. Instead such blessings and trials are for all, and we none of us have any basis to consider ourselves better than anyone.
I know that these scriptures conflict with yours Janey. Since they don’t match each other I have to pick which ones I believe in if any. These are the ones I believe. I believe anyone who tells you their actions brought them blessings, and your actions brought you tribulations, is preaching Korihor’s antiChrist doctrine. That’s the prosperity gospel; Korihor’s gospel.
God is not like a vending machine, because with a vending machine you get to choose what you want. But with God, he may bless you, but you don’t get to pick what blessing. More like a grab bag. You are getting something, but it may be peace of mind. It may be comfort in hard times. Or like in the BoM, God just may make you stronger so you can stand the hardships better.
But I am pretty sure it is NOT material wealth. That isn’t in the grab bags.
There s a law irrevocably decreed….and when you get blessings, it is by obedience to that law. That law is called consequences. If I abuse my kids, they are scared of me and when they grow up they move far away and never call. That is the law. Not if you attend church, God will make you rich. The law n getting rich reads differently. That law says if you are born to rich parents or work hard and/or get very very lucky you will get rich.
For a long time, I was angry at God for not protecting me from abusive parents when I prayed and prayed for protection. But taking away someone’s agency also isn’t in a God Grab bag. What kind of answer did God send instead. It didn’t come till years later, but God has more than made up for any lack of physical protection.
Protecting us from death? Not in the grab bag. Protecting us from war, earthquakes, sickness? Not in the grab bag.
God is not the God over material things, those are governed by laws like physics, gravity, and often they are so random they are not governable. As for the stories of Jesus calming the waves, ….well, I don’t know. Maybe he *can* but *won’t* 99.9% of the time.
God is the God of our hearts. So, he will comfort you, strengthen you, stuff like that. Not very important, unless you don’t have it.
He also sometimes will tell us stuff. Not often. I could probably count on one hand how many times it has happened to me in 70 years. And, I could share some of the stuff he has told me, but then y’all will know that I am crazy. So, I will tell you a story a friend shared. She was disabled and money was really tight. She wanted a carrying case for her scriptures, like they sell for a quad combination. This story is from back before all our scriptures were on our phones. But she could not figure out how to do the zipper. She prayed, telling God that she knows he doesn’t care about little stuff like that, but she would appreciate some help. So, the next day, she was busy and not thinking about the scripture case at all, and the words came to her, “turn it inside out.” It was so distinct and out of the blue, and it took her a half hour to figure out that it might be about her scripture case. So, she turned it inside out, studied it for a few minutes and could see how to do it.
Joseph Smith believed that God was bound by natural laws. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t usually put much stock in what Joseph believed, but that is one thing I do believe.
Thank you Anna
Excellents throughout. I believe the story of Job also yields much understanding regarding concepts like the “God of lost keys”.
Andrew S – Thank you for your very insightful and heartfelt post. Leave it to a professed non-believer to provide a deeper understanding of “Grace” than 99% of orthodox believers. If I’m correct, I believe you participated in a Mormon Matters podcast years ago with Dan Witherspoon discussing “Atonement”. Was that you?
If more members and Christians understood Grace the way you do, we would stop having the pointless and frustrating debates over whether we are saved by Grace or Works. I think both Jesus and Paul were right, Grace is original and salvation, whatever that means to people, is 100% the effect of Grace, full stop. Asserting that grace is the divine force which brings about salvation, in no way, undermines or dismisses the concept of works, it just reorders the universe into God’s terms instead of human concoctions. It’s not a matter of whether grace and works coexist, but merely a matter of identifying which one is the cause and which one is the effect.
This is entirely in keeping with the problematic issues of the prosperity gospel, which places God’s care as the effect derived from our good works (obedience). In the beautiful words penned by William Shakespeare, “Love is not love which alters, when it alteration finds”. In other words, Grace, like Andrew said, is a gift, freely given, because that is what love is, and any precondition established for its existence renders it something other than “love”. Love or Grace or Mercy or Charity are not something we can get, something we can earn or deserve, they are only things we can join, give, share and participate in. We often hear grace described as an “Enabling power”, but the prosperity gospel frames it as an “Enabled power”, one that gets its life by our first enabling it. I hope people can see the problem with this way of thinking about it. We are NOT saved by works, we are saved by Grace, and works become the manifestation that Grace has proven it is, in fact, sufficient.
The gospel as preached by Jesus himself, is indeed “Good news”, perhaps the very best news, giving mankind a completely new way to view the world. Nadia Boles Webber writes, “Grace is the only place of true rest, because every other thing in this bankrupt world is about worthiness.” If our daily lives begin with the burden of proving my worth, it becomes a fear laden task of staring into my blackness, and if I spend most of my time attempting to clear out my own darkness, what’s preventing me from focusing on the darkness in others as well. My favorite Christmas anthem, Oh Holy Night, poignantly illustrates God’s grace, through Jesus, in the opening verse, “Long lay the world in sin and error pining, til he appeared, and the soul felt its worth.’ Think on that for a minute. He came to prove us worthy, not the other way around. He came to liberate us from the heavy yoke of using life to prove we are spectacular, worthy, and superior. Those are all zero-sum games that, in the end, leave everyone losers.
Paul uses the phrase “In Christ” over 150 times in his epistles, it’s his description of humanities collective union, and what today, we call community. To be alive IN Christ is loving one another as he loved us, sharing the weaknesses, failings, and sins that are too heavy for one soul to bare, and that keep imposing themselves as a grace. They are grace because that’s what grace does, it sees everything as an occasion to care, it sees need as the bonding agent we call sealed, it sees weakness as the very impetus to finding our greatest strength.
We are saved by grace because as soon as we experience deep love that we absolutely did not earn or deserve, we, in turn, begin to see the world through the lens of grace instead of fear and scarcity. Grace greets the mess of life with compassion, and rather than trying to clean up the mess, it leans into it and allows it to tighten the loving connection for which we have been looking, and the mess cleans itself up. Grace is not the thing we receive to give us strength to climb the mountain, to finally get the reward we long for, no, Grace IS the reward, Grace IS our heavenly home, the place where we can bring our whole selves without fear of judgement or condemnation. Grace is what is born and lives “In” us that causes us to see the mountain, not as something to endure, but as something to love.
We are, in fact, saved by Grace, transformed by it and into it, leaving behind the regrets of our past and anxieties about the future, exchanging them for the rest and peace that only exists by being fully present to what’s right in front of me. The question is not whether I am worthy of God’s blessings, but whether God’s blessed nature is flowing through me, in a way that, I see the worthiness in all things. His “Grace” is sufficient.
When I went to India I had to declare my religion on my visa application and I wrote that “I am a disillusioned Christian that grew up Mormon and on some days an atheist” I got my visa and I have no idea if some beaurocrat chuckled at my answer or not.
I recently have been rethinking that answer. I don’t believe in the God of my Mormon youth that was closer to the God in the Simpson’s or some kind of Heavenly Father with a white beard and robe. I am thinking that if there is a god she isn’t like that at all.
My current thought is that the universe is a big and beautiful place. It didn’t have to be like this. It could have been cold and boring with very little interesting and complex bits if simple things had differed during the formation of the universe. So my current thought is that this complexity and beauty is the point. The universe wants to be complex and interesting. We are part of that but so are bacteria and giant viruses and worms and plants but so are the acid storms on Venus and the gas clouds and underwater volcanos on frozen moons of Saturn or Jupiter.
God isn’t a vending machine because if the universe is God it isn’t a transactional relationship. We aren’t the special creations that this is all for. We are just part of it. If we want to play along we can do like the universe and try to make the world a little more beautiful or complex and be the best humans we can be. But I am not sure there is a heaven or a hell, unless hell is the surface of Venus and even that has its own deadly beauty. The universe isn’t rooting for me to find my keys or win the lottery or get over that disease. The disease and the old age are part of the complex reality of now.
Somehow that is inspiring for me right now. Even if that means I don’t really believe in the Jesus or God of the Bible that seems really absent to me right now.
For me, it is hard to conceive of a God that helps us find our lost keys or rings—but doesn’t respond to the prayers of children who die of starvation every year.
It leads me to believe God must be more “hands off” than “hands on” in this earthly world.
I have learned more about grace from the comments on this thread than I had in the aggregate of my 45 years of active church membership. A stark counter to the admonition to “never take counsel of those who don’t believe” (realizing of course the the community at W&T crosses the spectrum). Thank you for helping me to understand grace like I never did before.
toddsmithson:
Yes, wow, that was a long enough time ago now that I kinda want to re-listen to see what I can re-learn, how my position has changed, etc.,
*reads the comments in the discussion on the podcast episode*
i wrote so much more “intellectual”-like back then.
Your comment is giving me a lot to think about though. Will definitely be sitting with it for a while, especially this line:
Yes, Jade I agree. The comments on grace have left so much for me to ponder on. Thank you Andrew and toddsmithson for sharing your insights.
Happy New Year. Hey Yea the God JeZeus the Roman Protocols of the Elders of Zion new testament counterfeit Av-tumah Reptilian – dead. Just like the false prophet Muhammad – together with Allah. Happy Joyous New Year! Goyim rejoice! You no longer have to waste your time praying to dead Gods. Happy New Year, free at last, Free at last. LOL. These latest new Gods gone the way of the Gods of Mt. Olympus. Drinks on the House! לחיים. Freedom! Now that these new Gods – dead – both Heaven and Hell cease to exist.