In my last post, I wrote about ways we can decipher between harmful delusions and the voice of God. Since writing that post, I’ve thought more about ways that these spiritual delusions can cause harm, specifically when they give us a false sense of control over our life circumstances.
We’ve all heard the stories. A woman who feels like her family is incomplete with her 5 girls, gets pregnant again because she has a prompting that the next will be a boy, all to find out the 6th is also a girl. A sick family member is blessed that she will be healed through the power of the priesthood but she still dies. A family moves across the country because they are prompted they will find a good job there but they never do and end up moving back.
These are the kinds of stories shared in general conference addresses and sacrament meeting talks framed not as failures of faith or misguided spiritual promptings, but as the opposite- an opportunity for humility and learning. And while that might be the case (I’m sure the people in these stories had to have humility to follow through with these promptings), I worry that we jump too quickly to the “make it make sense” stage and forget that there is real grief and real hardship when promptings don’t work out how we expected.
The idea of a “spiritual prompting” adds weight to any given decision we might make. If I said to myself, “I’m headed to the donut shop because I’m craving a chocolate donut with sprinkles” but it turned out the donut shop was out of sprinkles, I’d shrug my shoulders and say “oh well.” and move on with my day. But if I said to myself “I’m headed to the donut shop because the spirit told me to eat a chocolate donut with sprinkles”- now I have to reconcile the fact that the donut shop is out of sprinkles with the “prompting” I received. It adds an entire extra level of mental energy and processing- and grief. Because not only do I not get to eat a donut, now I have to figure out why God told me to get a donut when He must’ve known they didn’t have the sprinkles.
There is grief and difficulty in the added loss of control promptings can bring. We can logically accept that we don’t control the gender of our baby or whether someone is healed, but when we believe that God has told us through the Spirit that things will turn out a specific way, it’s that much harder when they don’t. We are left to question “Did I interpret my prompting incorrectly?” or “Was there something else God needed me to learn from this?” or “Did I not have enough faith?” or “How will this situation be perceived by others that know about this prompting?” Having these kinds of questions on top of the grief and hardship we are already experiencing drains the mental energy we have available to cope with it all.
My proposal to combat the added emotional weight that comes with unfulfilled promptings is to stop making life decisions based on what you believe God is telling you to do. This might seem like a radical take, but hear me out. Instead of making the decision based on the prompting and putting the weight of the decision on God, use the Spirit to help you take ownership over your own choice. Let the Spirit guide you to be confident, do your research, access your resources, and then make the well-informed, peace-driven choice and accept the consequences as they come. Take ownership of the choice as yours, an imperfect human, and use God and the Spirit as your supports to help you get through it. If the baby turns out to be a boy when you hoped for a girl, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you made the choice based on what felt best for you- God didn’t make that choice. If the job doesn’t work out, you can know that God still has your back regardless.
When we allow for the choice to be ours and not Gods’, we expand the Spirit’s opportunity to speak to us and help us through it. When we place the weight of the decision on the Spirit’s promptings, we set ourselves up for complicated questions, doubt, and difficult feelings about something that was never in our control to begin with.
11 Responses
Your comment about how we jump to the “make it make sense” phase just made me think of the episode in Parks & Rec about the end of the world and how it’s definitely happening tonight! And then it doesn’t, but it’s OK because the Reasonablist just misread it, so it’s actually six months from now. But there’s an ice cream social in the park that night so … it’s actually the next day! (Also, this happens in real life. I think the world was supposed to end twice in 2012. But it’s less amusing without Leslie Knope.)
Because something can’t just be wrong. A prompting can’t be wrong. Something I thought was a prompting can be wrong. That chocolate donut can’t just be me wanting a chocolate donut with sprinkles and feeling the need to justify it.
Thanks for these ideas, Callan. I’m thinking a lot about them now.
Beautiful article.
As someone who lives in a significant church historic site town , I see this over and over. New people and families move here, often without employment or housing “because God told them to.” This is an area that has little housing or local employment options. It is sad to see them struggling and frustrated because housing and/or employment does not materialize in the way they hoped. We have several families in town struggling with this situation right now. I find it so strange that they don’t do their homework ahead of time about what is available here and just expect it to all work out. It must be soul crushing when it doesn’t. And in the meantime, they are taxing those that live here with their dire situations. I am not unsympathetic, but it happens over and over. I have come to the conclusion that people say “God told me to” so no one can challenge their decisions.
“Instead of making the decision based on the prompting and putting the weight of the decision on God, use the Spirit to help you take ownership over your own choice. Let the Spirit guide you to be confident, do your research, access your resources, and then make the well-informed, peace-driven choice and accept the consequences as they come. Take ownership of the choice as yours, an imperfect human, and use God and the Spirit as your supports to help you get through it.” Yes!! Thank you.
I like this viewpoint. Even better than the idea that if you followed a prompting and it came to nothing, you learned to obey the prompting and maybe next time it won’t just be for “practice”.
In a related vein, I would be rich if had a dollar for every young woman I knew at BYU or in YSA wards over the years who said, “I really WANTED to serve a mission, but I prayed about it and the Spirit said NO” (these women were also some of the most asamant that they would never consider dating a man who hadn’t served a mission). I tend to belief that “if you have a desire to serve you are called to the work”; after all, if you are worthy and healthy and you fill out mission papers you’re not going to get a letter from Salt Lake telling you “no thanks, the Lord doesn’t need you.” I think there are many women who just don’t want to serve (nothing wrong with that!) but instead of saying that out loud and risking others’ judgment they put the blame on God because “he said no.”
*adamant, pardon my typo
Kimberly, I think you are onto something, especially with younger women. People have a tendency to get either the answer they want or the answer they expect to get. For instance, my generation was taught that God didn’t want us on missions, that he wanted us home making babies. So, for my generation, praying about it and getting “the answer” we were taught we would get was different. Then we would obediently marry the next guy who showed interest because that was what we were taught God wanted. And by 21, missionary age for women, you were an unwanted old maid and might as well make your worthless hide useful. And when you got home at 23 you were a confirmed old maid. Younger generations had an older “expected” and average age for marriage AND a younger possible age to go on a mission, so the picture has really changed with a mission as quite possible before marriage. So, there really is an expectation to go.
This post and the comments have been really good. I have long thought that 90% of Mormons needed to take more responsibility for their choices and stop attributing all the illogical want decisions on inspiration from God. No, you just wanted something that didn’t make sense and so blamed it on God. Then choose to be mad at God for not making your bad choice into a good choice. So, I really like the idea of taking responsibility for the choice. Even if there might be inspiration, it is STILL your choice and you are still responsible for the choice.
Let me repeat and explain that statement. Even when there is inspiration, we still make a choice. And we are still responsible for that choice. Obeying God does not take away our responsibility for the choice. We are responsible to make sure, sure, sure it is what God wants. For example, there are good people who think Abraham flunked his test. He thought for sure he was told to sacrifice his son. But that was NOT what God really wanted, proved when God stopped it. What if God wanted him to learn not to follow blindly, or really learn that there are laws even God is subject to by figuring out that no loving God would order that and telling the “prompting” that if “god” orders murder of a child, then he is not good and therefore not a god I would worship. If I was Nephi, I would have shouted to the sky, “God if you really want him dead, then you do it.” And I would back up an let God zap him or not. If not, then I would pour more booze down his throat, take his unbloody clothing, tie him up and ditch him till he comes to. I would not have murdered him. Because my God won’t ever order me to do something against my morals. This is where this idea really ties into the previous discussion of thinking God told me to do it.
Thanks for writing this, Callan. It is great to be exposed to new ideas and thoughtful application of the standard Mormon Sunday school lessons.
This is an excellent example. I think it sad that any of us need excuses for our spiritual choices. I served a mission because I thought if I didn’t, I wasn’t putting the Lord first. I never really prayed or gave deep thoughts about it. I assumed there no way it could be a wrong choice. While I did have some amazing experiences, overall it was a terrible choice for me. I spent 18 months chronically unhappy and developed clinical depression. I felt such unhappiness could only be a result of my failures. It took over a decade for my mental health to recover and the effect on my life was personally and financially devastating. Years later my father told me he had very strong promptings to stop me from serving and he really regrets he didn’t act on them. I take responsibility for listening to cultural influence but not asking for myself. It was a good lesson, I’ll never again assume that because something is “spiritual” that it’s good for me. And I’ll never question decisions that others thoughtfully make.
Thank you for such a vulnerable story. I too have had experiences where I chose an action, even big commitments, because I had just sort of assumed it was the thing I was being asked to do by god. I do think there is true tension here. I had a Mormon therapist that told me that anytime I hear some invitation to do something in church or even from the prophet, I should assume it’s for me necessarily. This made a lot of sense to me, and it seems almost silly the way I thought of it before. Because even though grains are the staff of life or whatever, if I eat wheat my body doesn’t really digest it and it triggers IBS like symptoms. So I just think that’s a “not for me” thing. Sometimes I volunteer at this food kitchen that gets a lot of male missionaries that “had to be sent home.” It makes you wonder if they should have gone in the first place.
I really love this. This is taking responsibility and accountability for the choices we make. God is not responsible for our choices; we are. I think reframing it in the way you described helps us be partners with our Heavenly parents, instead of robots just executing the will of God.