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I used to think there was. When my faith started to ebb after failed revelation I experimented and found that with the right mental and emotional stimulation I could replicate what I used to call revelatory experiences. So I went looking for continued reasons to press on elsewhere.

I keep returning to this. It squeezes a fundamental question I have often- is there room to be faithful and not expect anything at all from God? In fact for me it seems to be the only way. I find life to be woefully unfair - both in my favor and otherwise. None of it makes any sense and it threatens to erode my faith at times. after life promises do nothing to motivate me. if I can instead trust that God exists and loves me and hears me and loves me and is at the root of all that man chooses to do that is good, then I can enjoy the occasional if not oft glimmer of greatness and beauty I can thoroughly enjoy and recognize that he is at the root of that, if not the cause .

I like the idea that not all events are attributable to a God being. But the idea that he sent us here to be tested while causing us to forget everything I find much more difficult to accept. Yet such tings are so grossly unfair. You and I were born into abundance and thank God for our food. Others, they were born into a place where food may be hard to come by. How is the randomness of fair is God loves all his children eqiually? I think your daed was born into a place where he could easily be a bit flippant about it. And I do not mean that as an insult. Good things if you want to continue to believe in God.

“Seek and expect miracles.” - President Nelson Trying to lower or get rid of expectations is really pushing against the grain of scripture, prophetic counsel, and the whole vibe of church culture and admonitions. I mean, sure, there are the “and if not” admonitions that sometimes you won’t get it but my brain can’t work on this level. How do you fully expect the best and all kinds of miracles and then shift to a kind of resigned stoicism and then go back to optimistic expectations? Wouldn’t just a more moderate realism be more palatable than advocating for a roller coaster ride. I sincerely envy the people I see in Church (and elsewhere) that can seem convinced the best will happen and then it very often doesn’t and then in the next situation they seem to think the best will happen again. HOW DOES THAT BRAND OF OPTIMISM SURVIVE BEING ALMOST PERPETUALLY WRONG?

I used to love this quote. I came to feel differently about it. So my honest, and not taunting question to you is, why? Why would a loving God test and try us, intentionally intentionally, in such a way in order to inherit the celestial glory? Why? It seems cruel to me. Would any of us intentionally inflict such suffering on one of our children?

A few quick thoughts: 1. Agency. Ascribing all events to "God's will" only works in the broadest abstract sense. His will was to have us come to earth to be tested and to learn and to grow, but His will is not that we should sin, injure others, violate covenants, and so on. He gave us the opportunity to sin, apparently because of the "opposition in all things" concept, but He also gave us the means to overcome those sins (the Atonement, repentance). 2. Vicissitudes of Life. The natural, unpredictable ups and downs, shifts in fortune, and alternating phases of good and bad experiences that every person encounters. My dad, when discussing such things, would sometimes conclude with a shrug as "Well, that's all a part of living in a Telestial World." His implication was not fatalism, but rather that we can and will find a better place of peace and rest, but that meanwhile we do our part as best we can, and repent along the way. 3. For my part, I have found help in A) retaining in my memory, and repeating, the attributes of God (He knows us, loves us, our "immortality and eternal life" are His "work and {} glory" (Moses 1:37), B) striving to be grateful, and C) striving to be humble. Remembrance. Gratitude. Humility. These help me cope with difficult times. 4. Back in 2004, Elder Dennis Simmons gave a great talk: "But if not..." Very much worth a read. Thanks, -Smac

Seems like a lop sided relationship.

I wish the scriptures were better at teaching that instead of effusively talking about being blessed in all things both temporal and spiritual or pouring out blessings that there is not room to receive and the regular ‘if then’ statements that obedience leads to prosperity. The prophets should probably have stuck with the “underpromise and overdeliver” bit instead of the opposite.

How do you distinguish this feeling of God's presence from any other emotional response? Is there something that makes what you felt different or special from normal emotional reactions?

Some people take “mourn with those that mourn” to mean explain why the person shouldn’t be mourning and their mourning is wrong and bad.

The following two quotations, the first from the Prophet Joseph Smith and the second from our victorious atoning Lord, who endured infinite and eternal suffering on the way to being crowned with eternal glory and Lordship, provide two very illuminating answers to your question: “You will have all kinds of trials to pass through. And it is quite as necessary for you to be tried as it was for Abraham and other men of God, and ... God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God.” (Joseph Smith} 6 If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb; 7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. 8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? (Doctrine and Covenants 122)

The problem of evil and suffering have caused many thoughtful persons to question their relationship, beliefs and faith that such a being exists. As well as being about to trust such a being. And the comments you shared from this person in Instagram, well I don't find pithy platitudes and comments that somehow the suffering and pain in life is somehow the God's will for us. It is like telling a parent who lost a child prematurely that "they are in a better place" or "God has a mission for your child on the other side of the veil." Such comments poorly timed can be vary hurtful even if well intended. Nobody know what is some divine being's will for us, if such a being exist. The fac that any child is inflicted with cancer seems to beg off that such a thing is God's plan, will or its higher ways. And your last question you pose is one for you to ponder and conclude upon. And nobody else. This is a primary reason that led me I highly doubt a God that is taught in LDS and Christian theology exists.

When I was tracting in England near the start of my mission in 1973, one lady, passionately observed that her late husband had been good and kind his whole life, "and he STILL died!" So part of trusting God is learning better what to expect. If something happens that I did not expect or desire (a not infrequent occurrence in life), I have found that my trust and faith increases when I seriously consider, "What should I expect?" FWIW Kevin Christensen Tooele, UT

That is utterly wrong. I think we need to set aside emotionalisms and mobocratic outrage, uphold the rule of law, let those with training and expertise evaluate the evidence in a clinical and dispassionate way, and pray - both civilly and religiously - that justice is sought and achieved. Thanks, -Smac

Oh, is it? I was going to respond with dirt pie with gummy worms... Yes, I see, a textbook SEO coupon spam post. A harmless question to trick forum moderators while quietly embedding brand mention for a coupon aggregation site.

Reminds me of one of my pillars of faith in God. I know I believe in justice and will never not believe in it, justice will always be a worthy goal to me, but I know often justice is not found on earth. If I'm to proceed to have any hope that justice could be served, I must have faith there is some other force in the universe that will deliver that justice. Like Karma or God. The Just-World Fallacy is looking at present suffering, authority, or legal outcomes and working backward to assume, "They must have done something to deserve this," or "The system got it right because the system exists." The just-world bias actively protects injustice by sanctifying whatever outcome currently exists. It mistakes the status quo for right. If you believe in justice too, we should keep striving for what should be, rather than blindly accepting what is.

I didn’t say it did Me: I am curious if the "needed to consider" element of this goes both ways. Everyone was blotto from booze and Special K. Everyone knew everyone else was blotto, it seems. If so, did Jane Doe need to consider that the young men "might not be able to articulate 'no'" if they changed their minds? You: Do you seriously need an anatomy lesson in order to see how very unlikely that equivalence is? Me: I did not say the men were morally equivalent to her. I asked whether incapacity, as a principle, is a one-way rule. Those are different claims. Calling the question misogynistic does not answer it. ... Courts do not treat that response as consent. The incapacity point is about whether a person could understand and agree, not about whose body reacted. If everyone was too impaired to agree, anatomy does not answer which of them had to stop. You: I didn’t say it did. I think you may have a partial point here. Per Jane Doe's voluntary and sworn statement in 2024 as quoted in the statement from the DA, she describes a mixed room, not a uniformly incapacitated one. Some of the men were far gone. Male Number 1 passed out during the night, woke later, and said he wanted sex again as "redemption for passing out." Sex continued beside him while he was out. The same account has some of the men struggling to stay conscious and dry-heaving so they would not vomit, while the group was snorting ketamine off one another and drinking. Others were, per her account, functional. Male Number 2 was participating next to the passed-out Male 1 (we don't really know his level of inebriation). Male Number 7 insulted her, apologized, grabbed her face, and kissed her (again, level of inebriation is not clear from her statement). She backed away and stopped him. Another man then came in and shut the scene down. When she later said she was tired, the two men still with her stopped. So the DA's excerpts provisionally support a "some blotto, some less so" assessment. We don't really know, though. They do not say all seven were blacked out, and they do not say the men were sober. The office's charging conclusion was about her 2024 statement: voluntary, conscious, and consensual, and not a claim that she was unconscious and helpless. Sexual assault without "force" happens all the time, particularly in the context of a person with diminished capacity due to alcohol or drugs. Further, nobody has suggested that "she forced herself on them." Rather, from her 2024 statement, the DA concluded: "Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual." She did not allege force against her in 2024 (except perhaps some conduct by "Male Number 2," with whom she - according to her own statement - thereafter participated in a group sex session). Not sure what any of this has to to with lack of consent due to voluntary intoxication. Again, without more, voluntary intoxication does not establish a lack of consent. Again, if Jane Doe's intoxication rendered her incapable of consent, then why can't the same be said about the men (or some of them), who were also blotto? This seems to be an implicit "men cannot be sexually assaulted" proposition. If so, I respectfully disagree with it. Man can be sexually assaulted due to lack of consent. From one of the resources I provided earlier: I think this needs to be addressed. I am glad we clarified this point. You are begging the question here. You reference "assailants" (the men) and "victim" (Jane Doe) as if culpability has been established. You do not address Jane Doe's 2024 statement, which "described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual." You also do not address the New York law regarding "voluntary intoxication." You also do not address the point I have raised, namely, that if we are going with a "Jane Doe was incapable of consenting to sexual contact because she was blotto" position, then it seems that same line of reasoning can be applied to some of the men involved, who were also blotto. All the more reason to set aside emotionalisms and reflexive mobocratic outrage and give the process some time to go through the evidence in a clinical and dispassionate and lawful way. A notable excerpt, at the :12 mark: "According to a lawsuit filed last month in New York state court..." I previously said this to SU: My sense is that, for you, an allegation of sexual assault is, alone, definitive proof for itself. A woman said it. It must be so. Any questions = "defending the rapists" and "defending... rape culture." It seems like you have the same sentiment. Jane Doe said X in her civil lawsuit, ergo X is necessarily and indisputably true and correct, and anyone who questions that is, as SU put it, "defending the rapists" and "defending... rape culture." I don't think that is a reasonable position. I am curious how you view her lawsuit relative to her voluntary sworn statement from 2024. Also, the video fudges quite about about the timeline: "Hours later {after the alleged assault} the campus was gossiping about a potential gang rape at a frat house. The woman went to the ER. She reported the attack to the university police. She sat for two days of interviews with the campus cops." This makes it sounds like Jane Doe went to the ER and police "hours" after the alleged October 19 attack. She went to the ER on October 22 for a UTI, which she says told them had occurred in "a traumatic way." She went to an ER on November 7 and asked for a rape kit (two weeks after the incident), and reported the issue to police weeks later on November 8, and she reported the issue to Cornell's Title IX office on January 14, nearly three months later. At 1:05, the video says the prosecutor "admitted that he had never read the transcript of her interview with police," and also that "if what is circulating online is true, those fraternity members would be in prison right now." As to the second point, he is stating something that is axiomatic. "If what is circulating online is true..." "If." We get rid of the "if" by examining the evidence. Clinically and dispassionately and fairly, and not emotionally and mobocratically. As to the first point, the video characterizes the DA has not having "read" the transcripts, as if they had been made available to him but he simply hadn't bothered to read them. Per this article: More here: The video is apparently playing fast and loose with the facts. Thanks, -Smac

No, that is how magic works in some fiction. It is not how ritual magic was supposed to work historically and even that varied from culture to culture. A lot of Jewish and Christian ritual magic involved being morally pure and upright before God and not being in that condition meant that it wouldn’t work or (in extreme cases) it would drive you insane or even kill you. Being contingent on obeidence is not unique to ‘approved’ religious ordinances. I don’t believe that the reason clergy was professionalized was due to the complexity of ordinances. Even if it was the whole of the Torah suggests that complex ritual ordinances are not something God despises. Our temple ordinances are not exactly simple and quick. Not all forms of ritual magic require some perfect language. This was a thing in Jewish magical practice for a while especially when they were convinced the Hebrew language was divine and many believed it was a key to understanding how God created everything. I think it is more a resistance to change. People generally don’t like change. I’m a pretty bad Latter-Day Saint by most standards at this point. As I said Ritual magic is often much more involved than the . If you like horror movies the movie “Dark Song” is about two people doing an extended Abramelin ritual, a Kabbalistic magic meant to summon your guardian angel to grant a request. It is reportedly very dangerous…hence why it is a horror movie. Another form of magic or possibly a religious rite that has strange parallels to some LDS rites is the practice of Jewish Merkabah mysticism. Based on Ezekiel’s chariot throne visions it is an attempt to descend and reach the throne of God. You have to pass a bunch of guardian angels and these angels are not the loving kind. They are the “kill all humans” kind. It requires all kinds of ritual purifications and learning secret signals and passwords you have to use to get there. If you fail you might be expelled, might be driven insane, or might die. Even if you succeed you might be wounded. If you succeed you approach the throne and can measure the form of God…possibly inspired by how Ezekiel had exact measurements of things in his writings and the Book of Revelation does the same thing with its space station sized city of New Jerusalem. Some scholars have pointed out that Paul’s being caught up to the third heaven thing sounds a bit like a Merkabah trek through heaven. This could mean the thorn in his side might even refer to being metaphysically wounded by a guardian angel. You were also not supposed to share Merkabah experiences with non-initiates which might explain why Paul was so cagey about relating the experience. He starts out talking in the third person and then admits it was him and he seems to have only done so to prove his legitimacy. Earlier in the letter we read of “super apostles” coming after Paul and teaching some other stuff. Did Paul break his silence in order to hold on to the congregation? We know Paul had an ecstatic experience in the Book of Acts that led to a lot more Gentile proselyting. Was that the same experience? So is Merkabah a religious rite? A magical ritual? Something in between?

That’s such a great wondering and can be very painful too. Do you think when something bad happens that it’s Gods will? Is everything Gods will? Maybe if everything is Gods will the trick becomes radical acceptance, a willingness to accept the ride. Letting go of your own expectations can require some grief, no?

I prefer the term, Faith.

D&C 132:19-20 "Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting... Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject unto them." D&C 132:37 "they have entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit upon thrones, and are not angels, but are gods." The Bible says Christians become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), given "glory" (1 Corinthians 15:43), made "like" God (1 John 3:2). Sitting on God's throne (Revelation 3:21) and exercising dominion over angels (1 Corinthians 6:3). LDS scripture, including the Bible, is not exclusive in its definition of all beings called gods. We clearly believe Jesus was God before he became human, therefore logically an exalted human cannot be the exclusive definition of a god. A godhood status existed in pre-mortal entities. Ether 3 and John 1:1 says Jesus is pre-mortally "God", which is divine investiture. He carried the Father’s title and authority. D&C 93:12-14 says Jesus "received not of the fulness at the first, but continued from grace to grace, until he received a fulness". His ultimate exaltation was only completed through his mortal embodiment and physical resurrection. Philippians 2:5-11, Jesus had a pre-mortal title of "God" but "he emptied himself [ekenosen], by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death... Therefore God super-exalted him [hyperypsosen]" and so is still an exalted embodied human today as all Christians are promised to be also. Abraham 3:22–24 says human spirits were in the council of gods at creation, "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was [human spirits]; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones [nobles even as human spirits]... And there stood one among them that was like unto God [Jesus], and he said unto those who were with him: We [Jesus and human spirits] will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these [other human spirits] may dwell." Human spirits were present in the council of the god before the earth was framed. Abraham 4:1, 26 "And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth." The Creation is explicitly carried out by "the gods" (elohim), a council with noble humans operating under the direction of the Father and the Lord, including premortal spirit beings acting as agents. Job 15:7-8 "Are you the first man ever born [Adam]? Were you brought forth before the hills [before Creation]? Have you listened in the council of God [sod Elohim]?" Job 38:4-7 "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth [at Creation]?... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God [bene Elohim] shouted for joy?"

That could easily be a very codependent relationship I am reminded of this old blog post I saved:

Fun Fact*: Jane Doe has been doxxed online and is receiving regular death threats and threatening phone calls in general. On Tuesday she was swatted. Someone called in a false 911 call about her family’s home reporting that shots had been fired. The clear intent was that someone would get injured or killed. Police approached with weapons drawn scaring everyone and the family is now blocking out their windows and increasing security. A nice warning from all the rapists and rapist supporters that women should not try to hold men accountable for their crimes. We sure do love our misogyny don’t we? And some people say rape culture isn’t real. What clowns they must be. *Fact is actually not fun at all

Maybe this would require unconditional love and trust in God.

Then how do you react when God doesn’t provide a home, clothing, and food and everything necessary? Or they weren’t and/or aren’t being cared for in a loving environment? If you put God in front of a family court to testify about how He trusted his children to mortal parents he knew were abusive or would be abusive God would have to say that he did do that. God would be judged an unfit and negligent parent. You can appeal to a larger context where everything will eventually made right or things will be healed but that is cold comfort to those enduring pain now. And then God is going to have to send those children to spirit prison/hell to ‘fix’ their unbelief in this loving God that put them in that situation because they are horrible sinners by virtue of having been born. It is a pretty screwed up way to run things.