I just read a facebook friend's comment on her own post about how God watches over us and protects us from so many things that we don't even notice until after the fact. On one hand, sure, it sounds all nice and happy to think that Heavenly Father helps us find our lost car keys when we pray, and helps keep little Johnny from slicing his fingers off when he's playing in the kitchen drawer unnoticed because Mom is too busy with her zoo of kids to notice. On the other hand, though, it is also extremely arrogant. I wonder if people who talk about how great Heavenly Father is because he does all of those little things for us realize how many horrible and unspeakable things their God does not save others from. What makes their families worthy of God stepping in to stop their toddlers from being seriously hurt by a misplaced knife while other children are not worthy of being protected from the horrors they experience?

Our guardian angels protect us, under the supervision of christ of course.

Some angels are better at it than others.

Temple paperwork makes all the difference.

Knowing his track record, I wouldn't trust him to drive my car.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2014 07:39PM by donbagley.

Yeah, God strikes me as an angry, bipolar alcoholic. It's the only thing that makes sense.

Yep, where was God when the woman who was being raped called for him?

where was God when a mother asked him for a way to feed her children who have not eaten for a week.

where was God when the militants ravaged an innocent village?

These people all begged for God, I guess they were just unworthy because they didn't pay their tithing. Who knows.

I have heard similar garbage in testimony meeting about prayer leading to the finding of car keys, glasses etc etc.

Hey he was distracted. There was some a-hole in Utah that kept harassing him about some stupid missing car keys, and he couldn't focus on that other stuff.

. . . as a nice guy who managed to find your car keys.

I, personally, have found my car keys every single time.

Gawd has never found my car keys.



Breedum~100%

Gawd~0%

You can believe what you want but a prayer to God helped me find the information I needed to know the church was a fraud and I have a lot of other prayers answered. I fully realize finding God in the Mo church was almost impossible. As long as prayer, faith and God work for me I could care less what other exmos that never found God say --- it is your life. Please take this challenge. If you want to know IF there is a God ---- pray and ask Him to reveal Himself to you, so that you will know if He exists, IF He exists ---- it probably will not be in person but see if you get an answer! Try to pray this everyday for a week before going to bed or in the morning ---- what do you have to lose taking a minute out of your life for 7 days? If there is a God hopefully you will find that out or have an excuse when you die to say I tried to find You by praying for a week and You didn't answer one of my prayers. If there is no God you have only lost 7 minutes of your life and you can justify you are finished looking for a God (could be thousands of hours) because you already tried.

rainwriter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...other children are not
> worthy of being protected from the horrors they
> experience?


There's your answer right there: not worthy. One of the great perks of Mormonism is getting to believe God loves and cares about you more than anyone else, and that all the unlucky people just get what they deserve for not belonging to the One True Corporation.

My mission president seriously believed that any bad thing that happened to us missionaries was the result of our unworthiness. I learned this after our car was broadsided by a guy who ran a stop sign. "But, President, we were on the way to teach a discussion. We were doing the right thing."

"You must have been doing something wrong."

"You mean, if it had been night and we were asleep in our apartment after a long hard day of missionary work, and our car was legally parked, and a plane fell out of the sky and smashed it, it would have been our fault?"

"Yes. The Lord protects the righteous and withdraws his protection from those who sin."

It's such a handy way of thinking. It let's you blame victims without feeling the least bit sorry for them.

Like I told my daughter tonight (tongue in cheek), God doesn't like Africans. He likes to spend his time here helping Prozac infused women find their car keys.

I don't think it's arrogant to think that. Unlikely, but not arrogant. I think it's much, much more likely that praying calms people down enough that their subconscious spits out where the keys were dropped or what could have logically happened to them. Or, if you believe in an afterlife, maybe someone on the other side with a lot more time than God helped out.

I think it's a lot more arrogant to think you know how a God thinks, why he would help in some situations and not in others, or that because we don't understand how things work, we are smart enough to reject the whole concept of God. But then, I've become very mistrustful of "certainty" since I left Mormonism, having been burned tremendously by people who "know" for sure about God. Or even, nowadays, are that sure about a lack of a God. Same coin, different side.

That being said, I think our subconscious and our personal effort are always a safer bet.

Always find this type of stuff dumb. How many Christians and religious people have gone through hellish situations on Earth and not been helped? Yet God is right there to make sure you remembered you left your car keys under the couch pillow!

Oh, yeah. Heavenly Father helped my friend during the ice storm an awful lot. He made sure that the tree didn't hit her house. He made sure that three different people took her in during the holidays. Ya sure don't give them credit, no siree. It's Heavenly Father who did it all.

He made sure that her pipes didn't burst. Yep. He did it all.

Where was the protection for those machine gunned in MiLai massacre in VietNam? A 'good' BYU mormon boy was one of those involved. You would think he would have been prompted to transfer out befor it happened.

Just heard someone testifying about the key-finding power of god three days ago. I had to stifle a snort of derision.