Things I No Longer Believe

There are some things I used to subconsciously believe. They were never taught as doctrine, but I don’t think I am the only teenager who developed a dangerous kind of faith. In a nutshell, I believed something like this: If I follow God, the really, really bad things can’t happen to me.

What qualifies as “really, really bad” is probably not the same for everyone. In my case, it would be things like rape, divorce, or a child committing suicide. I think having to come home early from a mission was on that list at one point for me, too.

There were some fundamental flaws in my thinking, but they are so subtle it’s hard to see. Because God does protect us from things. Because the truly worst things really cannot happen if we follow God. But there’s a heck of a lot of room for suffering before it reaches that point. He doesn’t promise that things won’t happen. He just promises that he’ll be able to heal us. He promises that if something truly horrific happens it won’t rob us of our exaltation, of our opportunity to endure to the end.

And I think that’s my problem. I subconsciously categorized some things into being beyond healing. Like rape and divorce. For me, the opportunity to give my virginity to my eternal companion is essential. Rape or divorce would take that away. And regardless of how much emotional healing Christ gives, I would not be physically restored. Granted, I couldn’t be physically restored from amputation either, and the thought of any permanent physical damage bothers me a lot. But somehow that doesn’t seem quite as bad to me. Maybe it’s because I could see how a missing hand would be restored in the resurrection, but I somehow exempted other forms of physical restoration from that miracle.

Whatever the reason, there are certain things I believed God would protect me from. He would warn me not to go to a party, or not to date/marry someone, or to check on my child, or not to do the thing that would cause the injury that would send me home from a mission. And the thing is, I still believe God does that frequently. And I believe that sometimes really, really bad things happen because promptings are ignored. I have ignored promptings and had bad things happen. And when that happens, it is important for me to accept that and learn from it.

But what if there are times when you are following God and the bad things happen anyway? What if you hide Jews during the holocaust and the end result is that you end up in a concentration camp where you’re sexually abused? What if God is the one who told you to hide Jews in the first place? What if it’s not that obvious? I think it would be a lot easier to come home from a mission because you got hit by a bus while saving a child than because you developed severe depression as a missionary. But what if God needed you for six months and you never fully realize how that changed lives? What if a battle with depression was the inevitable result of your service (just as permanent health problems and an early death were an inevitable result for three young men who carried a handcart company through the icy Sweetwater River)? What if you’re Job?

I think, in the course of discipleship, everyone will eventually come up against something “really, really bad.” That doesn’t mean it will be something exactly from your list. It may not be something you realized would be that hard. After all, I think that list is mostly subconscious. But there will come a point when you ask “God, why didn’t you show me how to avoid this? Did I miss something? How could this be right? Why didn’t you warn me?”

When that happens there are a few possible answers. One is “I did warn you, but I let you choose. And now, stick with me, and I will heal you and turn your suffering to glory.” That answer takes a lot of humility to receive and time to sort through.

Another answer is “I won’t protect you from everything. That’s part of mortal life.” Or, even, “There was no righteous way to avoid this.” And that can be faith-shattering. It can challenge foundations of belief. It can mean discovering that God is not who we thought he was, or at least that we misunderstood our relationship with Him. It doesn’t mean that God wanted it to happen. He never wants something like rape. That only happens through sin and God hates sin.

I get that the drunk driver has to have the agency to drive drunk, but I want God to tell me not to drive down that road with my family that night. Sure, I’m willing to die to follow Christ. But am I willing to suffer other forms of abuse and still follow Him? Am I willing to watch loved ones suffer or die and still follow Him? These are questions I once conveniently ignored.

In the last few years, I’ve grown a lot more comfortable considering these questions. The following things have helped:

•  I’ve gained a deeper testimony and understanding of the atonement. Part of this is seeing the atonement in my own life. Part of this is seeing the atonement in other people’s lives. I’ve seen people go through terrible trials and come through battered, wounded, but eternally OK

•  I’ve had bad things happen to me. Not really, really bad things. But I have asked God “Why? Why didn’t you protect me?” and He’s told me “I won’t protect you from everything. But, let me show you how I already prepared everything to allow you to heal completely.”

•  I have followed the Spirit and experienced results I didn’t expect. I have asked “Why? Why did you tell me to do that if it was going to have this result?” I’ve had him respond with “trust me” and found that I really do.

I think the most important thing is that I’m better at believing that who I become is more important than a sum of events that happen to me. For example, I genuinely see sexual purity as being about whether I am filled with pure Christ-like love for myself and those around me, whether I see everyone as a child of God and not an object, whether I have control of my passions, whether I have the ability to give myself completely to a spouse and be entirely faithful. That is, in fact, what the doctrine teaches. It’s just hard to wrap your head around it as a teenager in Sunday School.