Trying to Answer: Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen (part 3 of a 3 part series)

I'm trying to answer these questions for no one but myself, but if you are interested in reading my first two essays, you can find them here and here.

In the middle of our infertility issues, I remember wondering which of all the terrible things I had ever done had caused this to happen, for surely this was some kind of punishment.  After all, I believe in a God of miracles.  I know that He and His Son can cure any affliction.  Clearly, I was unworthy of such a blessing.  Or maybe I was just so stubborn that God had to teach me the hard way.  Or maybe I just didn't have the kind of faith necessary to call forth such a miracle.  Whatever it was, whether in my past or present, obviously the problem was due to some deficiency in me, and God was just going to have to punish it out of me.  That was the conversation in my head on the bad days, even though I knew better. 

I don't, in fact, believe in a wrathful, angry, vengeful God, but when things go wrong, it's only human nature to find a reason for it, and sometimes when there is no good explanation, the one we grasp at is that our suffering must be a sign of God's displeasure.  Suddenly, God no longer resembles a loving father, but looks more like Zeus, grabbing that lightening bolt of his in rage and pointing it right at my back.  And so it was that in my late 20's I began to question the nature of God, His plan, His purposes, and my place within all of it.  Who was He, really?  And who was I to Him?  Once so sure of the answers--at least when the questions were much more simple--I was now floundering in deeper waters.

Then one day, as I turned to John, I read, "And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.  And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?  Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:1-3).  Never before had this particular passage spoken to personally to me.  It looked like I was asking an age old question, and there was peace in Christ's answer...but there were more questions, too.  Like, what exactly are the works of God?  And how, exactly, were they going to be made manifest in our infertility?  I still didn't have the whole answers for those.

As I have come to believe, the true answer, I think, begins in the lesson of the third of the host of heaven who in their premortal existence followed Satan and his plan for forced salvation.  Elder Robert D. Hales taught that, "Those who followed Satan lost the opportunity to receive a mortal body, live on Earth, and progress.  Because of the way they used their agency, they lost their agency."  What I find fascinating in that teaching is the connection between progress and agency.  Because they do not have the opportunity to experience mortal life, in all it's imperfection, they can not progress.  There is a direct correlation there, and it hints, I believe, at what the works of God actually entail.

His goal does not seem to be to provide a perfect life for each of us, but rather to give us life so that we might become perfected.  He doesn't seem to be so interested in clearing our path but far moreso in clarifying our hearts.  Like a good parent, He knows that what is best for us isn't that we are always just happy.  If that were the case He would give us everything we want the very minute we want it.  He would protect us from natural consequences.  He would shield us from pain.  Every real life parent knows how well that would turn out, right?  Though we want our children to be happy, we know that focusing primarily on giving them only happiness will actually end in misery.  God knows that real happiness--progression, salvation, and eternal life--come with certain costs.  Costs that seem necessary in some larger way.  In making those payments we have to opportunity to reap gread dividends, but He also knows that it is how we manage those payments that will make all the difference.

Our use of agency in responding to pain determines the outcome.  Pain does not have to embitter us.  Pain does not have to ruin us.  I absolutely know that there is a way to encounter pain so that it can be our best teacher.

(to be continued...because although I have deep thoughts, I have a life that gets in the way of writing them down.)

Trying to Answer: Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen? (part 1 of a 3 part series)

Let me first say:  On the scale from 1-10 of "The Most Horrible Things that Could Happen" I live at a one.  Really.  I haven't known a lot of horror, lucky me.  I've had a few bummers to deal with.  All of us do.  And sometimes circumstances lead us to wonder, "Why does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?"  If he truly is God--all-powerful, all-knowing, omniscient Alpha and Omega--then why?  Why allow the innocent to suffer?  Or evil to go unpunished?  Why the needless destruction and misery?  Why, dear God, is life so unfair?

It's not a new question.  I'm not the first and will certainly not not be the last to wonder what exactly is going on up there in the heavens.  ("Hello, up there...Anybody home?")  It's a fundamental question of anyone of faith.  My own religious faith is so much a part of my guiding voice that I can not examine these questions without referring to it.

As a part of my faith, I believe that we lived with God before ever coming to earth, and I believe the answer begins there in this premortal existence.  There we were first given and exercised our agency--the ability to act according to the moral agency which God gives us and to be accountable for those choices. 

We lived with a loving Father, whose goal was and is to see us progress in light, understanding, and knowledge, so that we could become like Him and live with Him forever.  To do this we needed experience.  And Father set forth a plan where we would come to earth, receive a body, choose to act between good and evil, and progress.  Our agency was central to that plan.

The Book of Mormon 2 Nephi chapter 2 is an outstanding lesson on the gift of agency, and I'll borrow from it liberally to explain.  If we had not been given the ability to choose "we would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for we would know no misery.  Doing no good, for we would know no sin."  And so God--knowing we would hurt, loved us enough to want us to grow and allowed us to act for ourselves, which would be impossible except that we be enticed by the one or the other.  Therefore, it needs be that there is an opposition in all things.  Righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.  And so it needs be that all of these things--both the light and the dark--should be part of this existence.  Without this opposition there would be no choice, and without choice no agency, and without agency no progress.  And then the whole point of our existence here would be frustrated; we and the earth would be been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation.  It would have destroyed the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes as well as His power, and mercy, and justice.

This world was put in place to be the best learning lab for each of us. Yes, it is imperfect, and unjust, and unfair, but in all of that it is the perfect place for us to learn discernment, to practice choice, and to determine our responses to circumstances not of our choosing. I am not convinced that God "sends" any hardship into our lives, but I know that he created a place where they would certainly be encountered.


This opportunity we have been given to face opposition may be the most meaningful expression of God's belief in us.  Marion D. Hanks said that "He loves us and believes in us and has done and will do anything He can to help us, but He will not impose on our agency.  God so loved that He would not shield us from the perils of freedom, from the right and responsibility to choose.  So deep is His love and so precious that principle the He, who was conscious of the consequences required that we choose...freedom is precarious, difficult, but we had learned that the alternatives to love and freedom of choice cannot provide the climate for growth and creative capacity that can eventually lead us to a a stewardship like our Father's."

Why does God allow bad things to happen? Because he loves us. He knew we would hurt. That sometimes we would fail. That we would lose those we loved. He could keep us safe, but he loves us enough to let us go, to let us live, to let us learn, to let us grow.

(to be continuted...)

Giving Up the Driver's Seat: Where Feminists Got it Wrong

May I begin by saying that I believe the women's movement was originally inspired. Anyone who knows me (and my mouth) would have no trouble envisioning me at the head of the suffragette movement.

I believe women are equal to men. I just don't believe we are the same as men, nor should we be; but sadly, somewhere along the line, our movement was hijacked by those who do. More ironic is the fact that these same women seem to despise men, blaming them for the ills and subordination of our sex; however, when it comes to asserting our rights they seem to think that requires giving up our feminine nature and playing the "men's game."

They insist that we are not only equal to the opposite sex, but, in fact, we are the same. Just look at a 1996 issue of Elle magazine that "urges us to 'deconstruct the stereotypes of gender,' reminding us that ''femininity is a social construct' and that 'men have defined femininity since its inception.' Since men have defined femininity since its inception, there is only one thing left for the liberated woman to do: become masculine, of course" (Shalit, 107).

This outrageous lie was made worse when combined with the sexual revolution. Now women are "free" from sexual mores of the past. Not only can we jump in and out of bed with whomever we choose, keeping score with notches on our own bedposts, but we are expected to. There must be "something wrong" with the "prudes" who insist on saving themselves for something special. As early as the late 1800's, early feminist Madame Celine Renooz called "sexual modesty 'an outrage to [the female] sex,' really just 'masculine shame attributed to woman'" (Shalit, 111).

Lucky for us we have shaken off those hideous shackels of sexual modesty! See, to be feminine and powerful in the culture of today means that we are instructed by Cosmo on the "203 Ways to Drive a Man Wild in Bed." We are taught how to "accept and love" our bodies by shortening our skirts and showing more skin ala Jennifer Lopez and even given guides on oral-sex how-tos at student health offices on college campuses. Oh, yes. We can be just as casual as men about sex. So casual, in fact that we require nothing of them and give them exactly what they want. We hook-up, split the check, and have sex with no strings attached. Tell me: Who's in the driver's seat now?

*Works Cited: Shalit, Wendy. A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue. Touchstone, 1999.

(Nope. Not done yet. Oh, what I wouldn't give for uninterrupted thinking time. But it's Griffin's turn on the computer apparently.)

What Are We Telling Our Girls?

Yesterday I read this article on msnbc. I know I'm supposed to find the results shocking. Sadly, I really do not. But I am shocked at the disconnect I see in the adult "professional" perspective on it. Can you see what I mean in the following excerpt?

By Laura T. Coffey
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 7:04 a.m. MT, Fri., Nov. 14, 2008

On “The Tyra Banks Show” airing Friday, eight girls ranging in age from 14 to 17 discuss the survey findings and share their own personal experiences. Seven of the eight say they are sexually active; of those seven, just one says she uses protection when having sex.

“A lot of the guys, if I didn’t have unprotected sex with them, they would get mad at me and I still wanted that closeness with them,” one girl says during the show. “I was afraid if I didn’t do what they wanted, they wouldn’t be my friend.”
The same girl talks about how she tested positive for chlamydia twice and also contracted genital herpes.

“I’m ashamed that I have it, but it’s something I want other people to be aware of,” she says.

Another girl, a 17-year-old mother of a 7-month-old boy, says she lost her virginity on a school lunch break and deliberately planned her pregnancy by monitoring her menstrual cycle.

“I had helped teach a sex-ed class to a class of freshmen my sophomore year,” she explains. “We taught how … there’s a week [in] the month you are more likely to get pregnant than any other time of the month. I had calculated that out and I decided on two days I was most likely to get pregnant.”

Girls on the show also talk about experimenting with the drugs salvia and Ecstasy and getting into violent fights with other girls.

‘Adolescents need help’
Dr. Elizabeth Schroeder, executive director of Answer, a teen sex education program based at Rutgers University, said the survey results sound plausible and are consistent with other research on teen sexuality.

“This so clearly points to the need for comprehensive sexual education for kids,” Schroeder said. “An adolescent … is supposed to be making poor decisions. Developmentally this is the way they’re supposed to be behaving. They need help ....

“Parents need help talking with their kids about sexuality, and schools need to be talking to kids about sexuality.”

Not surprisingly the only solution, at least as Dr. Schroder sees it, seems to be more sexual education, but wasn't it clear that at least one of these girls not only participated in but taught a course on sex? Am I the only one that gleaned that little nugget from the article?

Now, I am not against educating our kids about sexuality. Let's get that straight right now. However, from where I stand, that is not the solution to the obvious underlying problem. These girls knew about condoms. They knew about menstrual cycles. They had all the pertinent information about sex. What they seem to lack is a sense of self and a sense of moral propriety.

But it is no wonder. Those are not qualities that our society teaches. No, we would rather throw condoms at them.

The truth is much harder to parse out. First we would have to admit that our society has taken some wrong turns that has "left the balance of power markedly tilted against girls," to quote Wendy Shalit, the author of one of my favorite books, A Return to Modesty.

Isn't it amazing, in this liberated age, that a young girl, thoroughly socialized by the feminist movement, would agree to unprotected sex that she didn't want just because the boy would "get mad and me...and wouldn't be my friend?" Shouldn't the women's movement have made girls more powerful than that?

Maybe it would have if it had not only ignored the vital differences between the sexes but emphatically denied that they exist...

(Now, since I do not have time to solve all of our social maladies today--laundry does call--I will have to post more on this topic tomorrow. Until then...Let's dicuss, shall we?)