This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
“There are many members who share their testimonies that the Spirit told them that they were to marry this person or go to this school or move to this location or startup this business in this investment. They rely on the Spirit in making critical life decisions. When the decision turns out to be not only incorrect but disastrous, the fault lies on the individual and never the Spirit.”
(CES Letter)
God Does Not Make Our Decisions For Us
Our decisions often lead to failure because they are our decisions and God does not make them for us, even if the decisions were influenced by promptings of the Holy Ghost. How would it help us grow if God made critical decisions for us and just told us what to do all the time? So, I don’t know why someone would rely entirely upon the Holy Ghost for critical life decision. Do people do that? That would be a foolish thing to do. That is not what Mormons do and that is not what I have heard Mormon leaders teach. Mormons believe in self-improvement and personal development to make ourselves capable of making our own decisions, and then if we fall short we can ask the Holy Ghost for help. We do not believe in dumping our problems on the Holy Ghost or relinquishing responsibility for our decisions.
So what is the purpose of prayer then? The scriptures tells us to “Pray always, that you may come off conqueror.” We pray to be strengthened and inspired so that we can avoid evil, not to have God make all of our decisions for us. The Book of Mormon likewise tells us to be “drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.” Specifically, pray for forgiveness, for our homes to be protected, for our business to prosper, and to conquer Satan. I don’t find anything in the scriptures or from modern prophets telling us to pray for what decisions to make.
Pray For Help Making Decisions When You Need It – If you are lost in the woods and you pray with faith to find help, I believe the Lord will listen to your prayer, because this is a situation where your capability to decide is not enough. There are plenty of instances when the Holy Ghost does inspire our decisions. Missionaries pray for help to find people who are receptive to hearing the gospel. Missionaries are unable to read peoples minds so they require divine help to find converts, and this prayer is therefore appropriate. But when a guy prays about which girls to ask out and then doesn’t bother to talk to girls or get to know them? God does not inspire people who don’t first put in the work.
So when it comes to who we should marry, or where we should go to school, or business decisions–decisions we are perfectly capable of making ourselves–I don’t see why God would tell us what to do. It would not be helpful to our faith for the Spirit of God to just answer all questions and solve all of our problems for us the moment we ask. I also don’t think God tells us what we already ought to know. Does a good father do his son’s homework for him? Does a school tutor just give all the answers? The purpose of life is to pursue excellence by the sweat of our brow and to develop faith, and this does not happen when someone else is telling us what to do. We learn by self-discovery, and maybe we can get some tutoring and help along the way, if we ask sincerely. But if we fail a test, it is not fair to blame the tutor.
One big exception to this is what we call the “tender mercies of the Lord.” When I was a little kid, I couldn’t find my favorite watch, and after an hour of searching everywhere I could think of, I prayed. Immediately, it came to my mind where to look, and there it was. Most people have a story like this. It wasn’t important for me to find some watch. I would have found it if I had spent another hour searching. But God takes the prayer of a child very seriously, and much more valuable than finding a watch was this witness in my life that I have a Heavenly Father looking after my smallest care. I didn’t take this experience to mean I should expect an answer every time I lose something, even for things much more important than a watch. It was a tender mercy.
Subjective Choices – What makes a decisions about how to start up a business, school, marriage, or business are “correct” or “incorrect”? Some decisions are more effective than others for whatever we want to achieve, but these are subjective issues that do not have a binary “correct” or “incorrect.” There is no one spouse or one school that we must pick or else we failed. We are not fated to attend a certain college or marry a certain person. I think it is good to ask, “Can You please let me know if I’m doing something wrong here.”
Why Inspired Decisions Lead To Failure
If you do get clear inspiration on a decision and it turns out to be bad:
- Pain Builds Character – The consequences are unpleasant but it is what is best for you, because it makes you grow as a person. This can apply to business, education, and even failed relationships. The lessons you learn can make you more successful in the future. Or maybe the results are in some other way good even if you don’t like them.
- No Good Possible Answer – The decision was the best of two bad options. If someone aboard the Titanic prayed about which cabin to stay in, how could God give a positive reply? We need to widen our perspective, get out of our tunnel vision, and allow for more possibilities to choose from. If that is not possible, then we must admit that we got the best answer we could.
- Bad Question – Maybe it was a ridiculous request, like praying to get a sports car for Christmas, or which college to apply for when you are not qualified for any of them. Sometimes we forget in our prayers that we are praying to the Grand Creator of the Universe and that a sportscar or 2% drop in our AT&T stocks don’t matter.
- Heard What You Wanted To Hear – This happens a lot, like a kid who thinks he got permission from his parents to do something that they clearly do not want him doing. It is human nature, and it is a very difficult thing to look at the situation objectively and be as receptive to answers we don’t like as to answers we do. Maybe we keep asking even after we got an answer. Even the prophet Joseph Smith lost the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon because he didn’t like the answers God gave to his prayers.
- Listened To A Wrong Voice – God isn’t the only spirit answering your prayers, after all. For example, we can’t just dump every issue and relinquish our responsibilities for our own problems. Who would be interested in answer that kind of prayer? That is the perfect prayer for Satan. The Plan of Satan is all about asking about which stock investments to make, which shoes to wear for the day, and which person to ask out on a date, and then giving Satan all the glory when those decisions turn out to be good. These are prayers that Satan would be very eager to answer. Careful how you ask and careful how you listen.
- Didn’t Listen Closely Enough – The Holy Ghost speaks with a still small voice. It requires fasting, meditation, and some degree of exomology to hear the answer, often over the course of years. It takes humility to listen for an answer that we do not want to hear. We develop self-control by being forced to listen closely for the right answer instead of having it handed to us right away. It dismantles our pride and makes the answer truly change us into better people.
- Didn’t Do Enough To Solve The Problem Yourself – A father will give his son advice about which friends to choose at school, but a good father will not tell him what to do, even if he is picking bad friends. Would you ask your father about every single friend you hang out with or girl you date? Likewise, the Holy Ghost will help you take responsibility for your life but won’t live your life for you.
- Unworthy For An Answer – I know, that sounds harsh. Nobody wants to think they are unworthy of the Holy Ghost’s voice, but it happens. Every missionary knows how it feels to talk to an investigator who just wants to argue or rationalize their sins. How do you think the Holy Ghost feels when you argue and rationalize to Him? It is good to approach God in prayer when you have sinned, but you must be humble and seek forgiveness or the conversation won’t go anywhere. Why do you want your business to succeed? To feed your family or to make yourself look good? Do you want to find your spouse to start a good family or because you want to have sexual relations?
- Be Patient – Maybe the answer just hasn’t come yet, even if it looks like the opportunity window for an answer has passed. When I was growing up, I asked my bishop about the scripture in the New Testament where Jesus says angels in heaven are not married or given to marriage. “What about eternal marriage?” I asked. My bishop did not have an answer, but he urged me to research and find an answer for myself. So I did. I read everything I could and looked at everything I could find. It wasn’t until eight years later that I hit upon the answer as I read through the apocryphal Book of Enoch and a light bulb went on in my head.
Discerning Between Emotion & Promptings – It can be difficult to tell the difference between promptings of the Holy Ghost and our own emotions, especially when it comes to romantic relationships or answers we don’t want to hear. The Spirit of God is like a volcano and our emotions are like a flock of birds that reacts to the volcano erupting. We can see the flock birds flying quickly away from the eruption even if we don’t see the eruption itself. But can’t other things cause the flock of birds to fly? Sure. That’s why we can’t be sure based on emotion alone whether we are experiencing the Spirit of God or something else. We need to go through the faith process of experimentation to prove good or bad results.
So if God won’t make our decisions for us, then why do we need any inspiration at all? We need help because we are never going to get a 100% on the test and we must have a 100% to get into heaven. It’s as simple as that. We need tutoring, we need help studying, and we need someone to atone for our mistakes. The challenge, of course, is finding the help.
Inspiration affects our emotions but it is not the same thing as emotion. A person who equates emotion with the Holy Ghost will always just go with whichever choice they want more. That’s a given. So when the choice leads to failure, it takes introspection to determine if they were following emotion or the Spirit of God. Enlightenment helps us with our emotions and intellect but does not make them infallible. We could be inspired and still make the wrong decision because of the way we handled it. Or the emotion we feel when it comes to things like marriage can easily overbalance our intellectual input, and camouflage as divine inspiration.
Both emotion and intellect are vital components of any decision, and it is foolish to try to pretend like they don’t influence us. But great wisdom is in the ability to truly objectively consider how each influence our bias, and look for divine inspiration and enlightenment deeper inside. If there were some easy trick to doing this, it would be nice. It takes humility, hard work, personal responsibility, and faith.
CES Letter Logical Fallacies
| Falsehood | Mormons do not rely on the Holy Ghost in making critical life decisions. They certainly ask for help but they also accept responsibility for themselves. CES Letter says, “if individuals can be so convinced that they’re being led by the Spirit of God but yet be so wrong about what the Spirit tells them, how can they be sure of the reliability of this exact same process in telling them Mormonism is true?” Who said inspiration about whether Mormonism is true is the exact same process as help about school or business? Those are very different issues and handled by the Spirit in very different ways. Now let’s think, who else claimed that he was only doing the “exact same” thing as what has been done in other cases…? It is foolish, and frankly prideful post-rationalization, to say you should have gotten the same result in a totally different circumstance. |
| Non Sequitur | A teacher, tutor, or parent could tell you something is true and yet refuse to make your decisions for you. They are allowed to do that. Why would the Spirit’s eagerness to confirm the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, yet refusal to make your decision about which stocks to buy, make Him untrustworthy? |
| Subjective Fallacy | Just because one person had emotions that they mistook for inspiration–perhaps they married someone that did not fit well with their personality–does not mean this happens all the time for the rest of us. We all have our own problems in our struggle to hear the voice of the Spirit of God. One person might hear what they want to hear and another person might not do enough for themselves. |
| False Dilemna | So much of this argument stuffs the issue into an incorrect “black” or “white” frame. Decisions about education or relationships are not either totally “correct” or “incorrect.” You don’t either get inspired about exactly which choice to make or receive no inspiration at all. You don’t either rely on the Spirit of God completely in everything or not ask for help at all. An individual does not even bear all the responsibility for the consequences of bad decisions. The scriptures tell us that with sinners “Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom.” Satan is responsibile for inspiration that leads to doom the same way God is responsible for inspiration that leads to success. |
| Strawman Fallacy | Skeptics often compare the Holy Ghost to a vending machine that we go to for blessings, or a Magic Eight Ball that we go to for answers. But Mormons go to the Spirit of God for support and help, not for free handouts. |
| Confirmation Bias | Everybody remembers that time they prayed to find their lost wallet and it didn’t happen. Psychologists have proven that people remember negatives much more than positives. But isn’t just one case of answered prayer proof of God’s existence? |
| Ambiguity Fallacy | It bugs me that CES Letter refers to the Holy Ghost simply as “the Spirit,” as if we are some ancient civilization talking about the “Spirit” of the earth or something. But “spirit” refers to a lot of things; there’s all kinds of spirits. It is the Spirit of God, or the Holy Ghost. |
Rationalizing Whether A Prayer Was Answered – Why doesn’t CES Letter give examples? A personal example of what they are talking about? We all have them. From what I have observed, people often go apostate because they think a prayer wasn’t answered, especially about relationships. Or perhaps they were promised something in answer to a prayer and then it didn’t happen. The interesting thing is that with almost every case I hear about, the miracle did occur and it is obvious to me, but apparently not obvious to them.
“Well, you just are rationalizing anything that happens as an answer to your prayer,” they would respond. Perhaps that happens. I’ll admit it. Maybe bad consequences just happen and they were never meant to “build you up as a stronger person”–maybe they were just bad things that happened. Maybe it was coincidence that I thought of where to look for my watch. Okay, but there are certain miracles that can’t be coincidence. It is foolish, and frankly evil, to discount these inexplicable miracles and undeniable experiences of enlightenment just because you lost your wallet once and didn’t find it even though you prayed. No, it is not “the same exact process.”
CES Letter is setting the expectation that spiritual communication should be a magical oracle or genie that gives us whatever we want. Even if people take personal responsibility for things, then the problem of human fallibility continues, doesn’t it? Satan’s solution is to force people to make all the right choices, or at least make the right choice plainly obvious. If we have to get a perfect 100% score on our test, how can we possibly excel if we are not carried there by someone perfect? CES Letter‘s expectation perpetuates Satan’s solution where all our decisions are made for us and salvation is universal. The essence of Satan’s plan is universal salvation.
Chance Of Failure Or Universal Salvation: Take Your Pick – The essence of Satan’s inspiration is that we are fated to make choices. Your choice is either correct or incorrect, and if you don’t make the right choice you are a failure. This may sound counter-intuitive considering how skeptics so often talk about “shades of grey” and moral relativism. But just look at any of the social issues that Mormons get attacked for in the church, from racism, to sexism, to homophobia. Skeptics are always telling us there is one prescribed path to follow for all of these issues, while we recognize issues are complex and require individual tailored care. CES Letter talks about the “individual” in this argument, but paint a broad stroke that must cover every individual case. Mormons recognize that the gate is narrow and the path strait, but we don’t say that there is always one prescribed solution for everything to cover each individual. People are not robots that react the same to each condition. This is why God sends out individual missionaries to talk to people one-on-one while Satan broadcasts programs on TV and messages in the media to millions of people at a time. It is the fate of machines to receive the same programming as if every other machine is built the same way. But we are not machines. We are men and women, and the Holy Ghost talks to us individually on a case by case basis, and most of the time there is not one single “correct” choice that we must make.
The godly way is to not always hand out the answer that God would choose but to help us improve ourselves so that we can excel as men and women. This is the process of repentance, and it should constantly be working when it comes to all personal issues, big and small. We work to change whatever inside ourselves is holding us back, and we get help and assurance that our mistakes are no longer remembered. The best thing the Holy Ghost can do is act as Comforter and tell us that we are children of God with a divine purpose and we deserve to love ourselves. We need that assurance to build confidence and take the leap of faith.
Fruits Of Faith Are Good – Faith precedes the miracle, and a demonstration of good behavior precedes the revelation, as tests make us more confident in our abilities. We can be sure of the Spirit of God’s witness of Mormon doctrine because it aligns with our good works, works that consistently lead to final success, and it continues to enlighten and improve our lives. Then, we know it came from a good source. Bad fruit will never be given to us by God, even if someone decides to ruin things for us later along the way. It is also important to remember that bad fruit is not from our own doing, or an indication that we are cursed to be failures. Our stumbles despite our own weakness are the work of Satan and they can be overcome. If someone exercises their agency to cause us pain, that is on them.
It is painful to watch skeptics spiral in a hole of hopelessness and self-pity. They beat themselves up over wrong choices, events outside of their control, and times people hurt them. They haven’t gotten over experiences as little kids, and they refuse to let go and accept people are free to make bad decisions, or that Satan is the source of temptation and doom. They are stuck in this cycle that leads to same problems when they get older, and will likely lead to the same thing for their kids. They build this confined box in their minds where, in the example of a divorce, their parents had to make this choice, where they had either married the “right” or the “wrong” person.
I sense an incredible amount of torture behind the claim: “The individual didn’t have the discernment or it was the individual’s hormones talking… this poses a profound flaw and dilemma.” I sense the tragedy behind this–maybe the most raw and real part of CES Letter. Yes, we are profoundly flawed! That’s what makes us human! But the dilemma they pose is a false dilemma. Maybe the person mistook their hormones talking for inspiration, yes, but there are plenty of other possibilities. Maybe they even married the best possible person in the world and it was the best marriage that ever happened like in The Princess Bride but the two people simply drifted apart over time. That happens. There are countless possibilities for what went wrong, and the knee-jerk reaction to place the problem into the same box and try to make it fit for everyone is not productive. God does not work this way. Lehi’s advice for Laman and Lemuel was to not think about the gloomy place you are now but to focus one the direction you are headed and be firm in faith on the source that guides you. This is ultimately how prayer and the Holy Ghost delivers us from the problem of human flaws. We improve day by day as the Holy Ghost tutors us and we gain mastery over our intellect, emotion, and spirit. It can happen, and it can be as small and simple as a child praying to find a toy that he lost the previous day.Complete answers to CES Letter questions about Mormons: