My wife and I parked at a movie theater the other night and as we started to get out of the car I got a text message from work. Simultaneously she started to ask: do you consider all of the positive things that have happened to you-- then I cut her off to say just one sec as I was responding (pretty horrible attention span so I feel bad when people ask waste a breath asking me something I'll need repeated).

After the text I said, pardon me? To which she again stated the first part, then interjected herself and said never mind. I pressed once but it was obvious she had changed her mind about asking whatever it was.

I assume (probably incorrectly) that she was about to ask me if I considered the positive things that have emerged in my life since my leaving the church as confirmations to me that I was doing the right thing.

The reason for the assumption is because I have had some REALLY good things happen since then-- I was accepted to 3 med schools, I was made the captain of the BYU rugby team (never shared this before because I was still at BYU), I got an incredible promotion at work (the reason why I'm in California), and everything else has just been peachy.

Now that perspective is different than something my folks questioned me about in front of my DW, last we chatted, which was "why would God support you leaving the church if it causes this much heartache and strain for your marriage?"

She may have been talking about something completely different, and I don't want to try to over analyze a conversation that didn't happen.

What I am curious about is the "fruit" card. We all tend to do that a little. When something good happens we tend to attribute it to something we did right before the good thing happened. When something bad happens we try to blame something bad that we did.

Why do we do that? Why is it so prevalent among TBM's? How does one move beyond this primitive mentality? I do not mean to offend, but I have read studies where even mice or pigeons develop superstitions similarly, hence calling it primitive. Thoughts?

Bell Shaped Curve, i.e., ghawd causes it to rain on both the just and the unjust...

Which raises an appropriate follow up question: Why bother being just?

ETA a correction, and to state that my temple bride was ever faithful and died a shitty death after a mildly shitty life, while I, the proverbial 'grasshopper' (in the story about the grasshopper and the ants) am swimming in rather nice life, with a woman whose caliber is so high that I never imagined the possibility. Okay, I did, cuz I have a great imagination, but I never thought it would come to pass...

...Bell Shaped Curve...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2018 06:52PM by elderolddog.

The rain, it falleth on the just and on the unjust, fellah.
But mainly on the just, 'cos the unjust pinched the just's umbrella.

When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras (unless you are in Africa, but you are not.)

The point being, the good things happened to you for the exact same reasons that they happen to anybody else. You have talent, good people skills, you worked your butt off, and throw in a dash of good luck.

Summer, true, true, especially true (about the good luck). I'm not really asking why good things do and don't happen to good/bad people.

Just curious for the origins of that mentality? Where does that come from? The need to classify a cause/effect relationship on everything we do-- where does THAT come from?

Why is it multiplied in TBM's (and maybe the religious in general)?

Cause and effect. To the orderly mind, and the minds seeking to be orderly, every effect had a cause.

Imagine a young male human heading out from the cave to go fishing. He happens to find a 'pretty' stone and puts it in his loin cloth. He has a good day fishing. It's easy to make the jump to "I had a good day fishing because the stone I found made it happen!"

If the fishing continues to be good, it's the stone: effect's cause is ID'd! And then leap to answering the question as to why the pretty stone has that power: ghawd.

Since early humans had multiple needs, multiple ghawds sprang up. Without these 'causes', early humans were without a handy explanation re why the effects they recognized had happened. With ghawds, causes were established. And obviously when the 'power' of the pretty stone was absent (bad fishing day), it was because the ghawd was angered, or sad, or whatever the best accepted explanation happened to be, which created the need for people to interpret what the ghawds were saying, feeling and wanting.

We love, love, love cause and effect, and love to think we can influence it.

The idea that God rewards and punishes according to virtue/compliance or lack thereof seems uniquely Mormon to me. This is probably causing a fair amount of cognitive dissonance in your wife. The Catholics that I grew up with understand perfectly well that crappy things can happen to good people and vice-versa.

Humans have evolved to find patterns in life. It's part of our instinct. That said, I think it will help your situation with DW that you are out of Provo and around people with a different slant on life. The concentrated dogma at BYU can be daunting. I don't know where she was raised but she cannot help but notice that plenty of good people live successful lives w/o Mormonism dictating every life decision. Maybe she's the one thinking "Why is God blessing DH so often when he is going so astray?" Or maybe her thinking is, "Why isn't God punishing DH with failures since he's gone astray? Why am I the only one enduring the suffering?"

I think that notion that you have to earn your good fortune in mormonism goes back to the "salvation principles" They don't believe you are saved by grace and that your life experience is random. They believe it's your works that save you and bring you good favor from god. If you aren't being favored, then you must be a sinful creature.

What's interesting about that statement is that I've brought it up to my TBM friends and family and they swear they agree that bad things can happen to good people and vice versa.

They say it a lot, but I don't think they internalize it. I sure as hell didn't...

I know they realize that bad things happen to good people. They've seen countless examples. But that's not really what they believe. Fundamentally they believe that they have to control their performance relationship with god or they risk bad things happening to THEM.

Buff, we've had so many stories shared on this board of people (or their family members) who got sick and then were blamed by church members for their illness. Or who were raped or sexually abused (sometimes as children) and were given church discipline for that, as if it were their fault.

Blaming people for bad things that happen to them or their families is a horrible thing to do. Yet so many people do it reflexively. Whenever I hear it, I think “This person just has no intrinsic empathy for others.”

That is the flip side of crediting one's righteousness for good things occurring in their life. Good things happen to truly horrible people and bad things happen to really decent people. Anyone who has lived long enough has seen it or read about it.

just from living my life. No matter who I was, I certainly didn't "deserve" what happened to my life and neither did my husband or my kids. My life is one of those that people use as an example of how you don't want to end up. I KNOW for a fact that mormons look at me and think I did something horribly wrong and sometimes that really can mess with my head. And like others have said, they say that bad things happen to good people, but they definitely really don't believe it. I live it every day. When my husband left, I wanted to stand on the roof and scream, "It wasn't my fault." I had people tell me that he chose to be gay after we went inactive.

My life has gone along a lot better since I dropped mormonism. I never in a million years thought that the ONE GUY that I wished I had married would ever come back into my life. I mean, he had been married 26 years. Not likely they would divorce. Everyone was shocked. They still are after 13 years.

I've just learned that life happens while we're making plans.

I hate the statement that things happen for a reason. I call bullshit on that idea.

Buff
When I was in ward bishopric there was a common belief that poverty equaled unrighteousness. Annoying and diffuse belief throughout a well off ward...some of it stems from the “golden family” concept missionaries had years ago...this type of potential member is still sought after. Visitors or missionary contacts for that ward were scrutinized in the similar manner...one year the stake reorganized ward boundaries and the quite well off were assigned the downtown ward that shared a street with the housing projects and section 8 duplexes....some refused to go and believe it or not some moved....I have not heard of a similar belief in any other church...you seem to have a business acumen..some docs also get MBA degrees eventually and strengthen their careers in administration... no one and I mean no one I know sees private health care ten years from now..

Gatorman