{"id":31796,"date":"2014-10-13T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T13:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=31796"},"modified":"2014-10-13T08:49:58","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T13:49:58","slug":"our-prayers-and-gods-messy-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2014\/10\/our-prayers-and-gods-messy-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Prayers and God’s Messy Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The Council of Gods, Giovanni Lanfranco (From Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I taught lesson 35 today, which covers Amos and Joel. As usual, I benefitted a great deal from Ben Spackman\u2019s Patheos posts<\/a>, and in particular his discussion of Amos 3:6 and Amos 3:7. The latter, of course, is the famous scripture we all learn in seminary: \u201cSurely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.\u201d Ben included a short paper about the meaning of the word \u201csod\u201d (\u201csecret\u201d) and its relation to the idea of a divine council. The word refers to both private discussion and the product of such discussions. The Old Testament is certainly rife with examples of the Lord involving mere mortals\u00a0in His planning process and accepting their input.<\/p>\n

30 Then he said, \u201cMay the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?\u201d He answered, \u201cI will not do it if I find thirty there.\u201d
\n31 Abraham said, \u201cNow that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?\u201d He said, \u201cFor the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.\u201d
\n32 Then he said, \u201cMay the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?\u201d He answered, \u201cFor the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.\u201d \u2013 Genesis 18:30-32 (NIV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This idea of a God who involves us not only in the unfolding of some inexorable plan, but in the decision-making process is perfectly commensurate with His status in Mormonism as an embodied, personal deity. As someone<\/em> rather than just something<\/em>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the idea of a wise, powerful, and benevolent\u00a0God changing His course as a result of our input can be disconcerting. Doesn’t He know what He’s doing? Wouldn’t it be impertinent to suppose that we could tell God anything?\u00a0This concerns leads to a tendency to fix scriptural depictions of God\u2019s interactions with humans. Interactions which,\u00a0if they are taken at face value, pretty clearly state that God actually does change course as a result of human input.<\/p>\n

4 Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and, behold, the Lord God called to contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part.
\n5 Then said I, O Lord God, cease, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small.
\n6 The Lord repented for this: This also shall not be, saith the Lord God. \u2013 Amos 3:7 (NIV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The strongest version of this attempt to rescue God’s perfect autonomy holds that prayer not only cannot change God’s will at all, but that it shouldn’t even presume to try. Prayer becomes about reconciling our will to His. We change. He does not. Weaker forms posit that there are certain, pre-designated blessings that God may hold in reserve until we think to ask for them. In either case His will is ultimately impervious to human input, but His actions in the latter case are to some extent contingent.<\/p>\n

The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. \u2013Bible Dictionary (Prayer)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are sterile, formal, stilted, hollow versions of the rich, emotional give-and-take common between God and His children in the scriptures. People are angry with God. They accuse God. They challenge God. They question God. They plead with God. They beg and petition God. Not all of these interactions are perfect, of course, but the important thing is that they are interactions. God reacts. He is affected by us. Sometimes He recants and changes course, even apparently in 180-degree turns. And even when He doesn’t\u2014as with Job or with Jonah\u2014He is still in an important sense reacting to the actions of His children. Jonah wants God to destroy Ninevah. God reuses, but he reacts to the request by teaching Jonah a parable. Job wants God to show up and defend Himself. God shows up, not to defend himself but to question Job, but he shows up. These examples show God is not merely acting out a script He wrote himself, following steps in His plan and checking off one item after the next. He is responding.<\/p>\n

Amos 3:6, the verse that comes right before the famous one, is not as well known. Following a sequence of cause-and-effect pairs beginning in verse 3, it reads in the KJV: \u201cShall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Joseph Smith Translation alters verse 6, reading \u201cShall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not known<\/strong> it?\u201d Ben pointed out in his podcast that when we examine a Joseph Smith Translation it’s sometimes more illuminating to consider that Joseph Smith was reacting against rather than to simply take the JST version as a standalone utterance. I think this makes sense, and fits with the interactive, iterative, and even dialogic approach evident in Joseph Smith\u2019s revelatory process.<\/p>\n

In that case, it seems apparent that what Joseph Smith was reacting to when he changed “done” to “known” in Amos 3:6 was the problem that God would actually engage in evil. But the Lord doesn’t do evil things. Changing from “done” to known” fixes the problem. And yet there’s another approach: one could note that the word “evil” is translated ambiguously in the KJV (“misfortune” is an alternate translation that captures the negative impact on human life without implying immorality). So it’s possible that the JST\u2014while entirely correct in what it enacted\u2014was resolving a problem that needn’t have existed in the first place if Joseph Smith had had a better text with which to start. Similarly, the intuition behind creating a theology of prayer that neutralizes the capacity for true interaction with the divine may be a valid solution to a malformed problem.<\/p>\n

Consider how the problems that seem to arise with changing God’s mind evaporates if part of God’s will includes His own desire to interact with us. Instead of picturing God\u2019s will as a static and comprehensive blueprint, we could view it as an algebraic formula with some of the variables left unassigned. We can, within certain parameters, determine what should go there. Even if our answers are inferior to God\u2019s wisdom.<\/p>\n

Part of God’s plan is for us to have a role in shaping our future\u2014individually, collectively, and interdependently\u2014so there is no contradiction between due reverence for God’s wisdom, power, and benevolence and the apparently undue influence we confused, prejudiced, blinkered, sacred mortals have on those plans.<\/p>\n

The family analogy works as it so often does: God knows what is best in the short run (independently of what we might think is a good idea), but in the long run what is best entails allowing us to lend our childish contributions as the price of being actively involved. Of learning. Of growing up. Of becoming like Him.<\/p>\n

I suspect God\u2019s plan is much more organic and resilient than any narrow conception of perfection would allow. His plan is perfect in the way our homes are, in those rare sublime moments, perfect. It\u2019s a statement of relationships between individuals being in harmony, not a question of whether or not the house is clean or the homework is all done.<\/p>\n

I suspect there are blank spaces in God’s pan\u2014perhaps entire pages\u2014where we are meant to fill in. God may even have His own provisional (short term) plans for those sections, but He allows us to override as part of the (long term) Plan of Happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I taught lesson 35 today, which covers Amos and Joel. As usual, I benefitted a great deal from Ben Spackman\u2019s Patheos posts, and in particular his discussion of Amos 3:6 and Amos 3:7. The latter, of course, is the famous scripture we all learn in seminary: \u201cSurely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.\u201d Ben included a short paper about the meaning of the word \u201csod\u201d (\u201csecret\u201d) and its relation to the idea of a divine council. The word refers to both private discussion and the product of such discussions. The Old Testament is certainly rife with examples of the Lord involving mere mortals\u00a0in His planning process and accepting their input. 30 Then he said, \u201cMay the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?\u201d He answered, \u201cI will not do it if I find thirty there.\u201d 31 Abraham said, \u201cNow that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?\u201d He said, \u201cFor the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.\u201d 32 Then he said, \u201cMay the Lord not be angry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1156,"featured_media":31797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/2014-10-13-Divine-Council-Smaller.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31796"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31800,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31796\/revisions\/31800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}