Let me explain the title of this podcast "My Life Has Never Been Spared" by telling you about three experiences in my life… that could have ended my life. I almost died as a child because I did a childish thing. I almost died as a missionary for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I almost died as an adult, because of one moment of distraction. But I realize that, throughout history, many 10-year-olds, some of them much more promising than I, have died while exploring a mountain. Better missionaries than I have been killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many adult men and women, just as beloved by their families as I am by mine, have died in terrible car accidents. Out of respect for the lives of those people who did die, I do not believe that my life was “spared” by the Lord. I am simply not that special. I was lucky.
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S1E28 – My Life Has Never Been Spared
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures, Season 1, Episode 28, or “My Life Has Never Been Spared”.
Hello again. This Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures.In the last episode, we discussed the new rules of offering help to people who need it. Some of those people may have had a tragedy of some kind happen in their lives and thus require help today. But there are things to think about as we offer that help.
Like normal Emergency Preparedness, we should be as ready as possible for the emergency of a tragedy in our lives. Because it is so misunderstood, tragedy has caused countless numbers of faithful church members to fall away from their beliefs. We need to understand tragedy mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so we can be prepared to handle it when it happens to us.
The purpose of this podcast is to explore and understand the interface between our physical lives and our spiritual selves. Sometimes, when we get wrapped up in jobs, home life, and life’s challenges, we forget our spiritual selves. Pursuing spirituality is neither a priority nor a burden. But when faithful church members suffer a tragedy in their lives, they either embrace their spiritual side… or they push it away in anger and despair. Often such tragedy comes in the death of a loved one… and we may wonder how God could let such a thing happen. It is a confusing time for everyone. Even those who try to console you after such a loss will often say the strangest things.
Many of you may strongly disagree with me on this podcast. But please hear me out and consider the evidence. We want to be able to handle our grief… or to help someone else handle theirs. To begin, let explain the title of this podcast My Life Has Never Been Spared by telling you about three experiences in my life… that could have ended my life.
The first occurred when I was about 10 years old when my family and I took a family trip into the mountains. I was raised in Colorado, so such trips were pretty common. We stopped at a rest area and I went off by myself to explore. I was soon climbing up along the crest of a steep mountain. Suddenly, I slipped and started to slide down a steep rock wall. After sliding about ten feet, my feet hit a shelf of rock that stuck out from the wall about six inches, and I stopped my descent. Plastered with my back against the rock wall, I looked down its steep face. There were no more outcroppings or shelves below me. The rock face just got steeper until it was a vertical drop. If this single shelf had not caught me, I would have plummeted to my death.
My second experience occurred when I was a missionary in Mexico City. I was in a rougher, downtown area where we rode bicycles. One evening it was almost dark and we were biking home. A souped-up muscle car came screaming around the corner in front of us, fishtailing, and heading straight towards me. It was going to be close. I turned my bike so sharply that it came out from under me. On my hands and knees, I rolled into the gutter, fully expecting the front bumper of the speeding car to hit me in the back of the head. I was surprised when it didn’t.
Lastly, a few years ago, I was driving through Idaho on I-15 to return home after a business trip to Idaho Falls. I had just eaten lunch and it was a warm afternoon. For two seconds, I went to sleep – something I had never done before or since. I awoke to blazing car horns as I started to drift into the next lane over. I corrected the car and then tried to recover from the adrenaline shot and the horror of what might have happened.
So, there you have the three times in my life (of which I am aware) that I almost lost my life. I almost died as a child because I did a childish thing. I almost died as a missionary for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.I almost died as an adult, because of one moment of distraction. I want my listeners to know that… in none of these experiences do I believe that my life was “spared”. I don’t believe that there were angels or heavenly power at work that kept me alive and safe. In short, I was lucky.
Many of you are probably thinking that I am very unappreciative. I’m not unappreciative. I have had a wonderful life and I thank the Lord for it every day.I appreciate the fact that I didn’t die those three times when I easily could have.
But I realize that, throughout history, many 10-year-olds, some of them much more promising than I, have died while exploring a mountain. Better missionaries than I have been killed by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many adult men and women, just as beloved by their families as I am by mine, have died in terrible car accidents. Out of respect for the lives of those people who did die, I do not believe that my life was “spared” by the Lord. I am simply not that special. I was lucky.
There is a randomness to life that is difficult for many church members to accept. They want to believe that the Lord controls every moment of our lives. While that is a comforting thought perhaps, it does not stand up under the vast amounts of evidence against it. Faithful church members who are vital to the success and happiness of their families, who have done everything in their lives “right”, have died in terrible, unforeseeable tragedies. If we believe that everything is orchestrated by the Lord, then we are left to explain such tragedies by believing that the Lord had some mystical, unfathomable reasoning for taking the lives of such wonderful servants. In fact, the Lord has billions of servants in the afterlife; He doesn’t have to fast-track the deaths people here on earth to get more help.
I can’t look at these… thousands and thousands of fatal events and believe that they are anything but random. Such randomness is a big part of the challenge of earth life. The idea that the righteous are blessed and the unrighteous cursed has been disproven millions of times since the book of Job, including the book of Job.
Men and women have even tried to outguess the randomness of their futures for centuries. We have visited soothsayers, fortune tellers, and clairvoyants. Many of us have prayed for God to tell us our futures, not understanding that such revelations would break one of the rules of Earth Life. But the future is not to be known. Such is earth life.
Exceptions to the Rule
Now, you may be thinking of examples in the scriptures and church history when God did intervene to save the life of one of His servants. In Alma chapter 14 of the Book of Mormon, Alma and Amulek are preaching to the people of Ammonihah. We are at the point in the narration where anyone who believed in the word of God was being cast into a fire. Amulek, understandably, wants to (and I quote) “stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames.” Alma is constrained by the Spirit to not do this, an event that we will discuss later in this podcast. Amulek suggests another possibility. In Alma, chapter 14, we read,
“Now Amulek said unto Alma: Behold, perhaps they will burn us also. And Alma said: Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not.”
We read later in the same book of scripture that the Lord did indeed need Alma and Amulek for very specific missionary tasks in the future. Alma was correct. Their work was not finished and they were not burned.
The Lord also preserved Paul in his missionary travels. In Acts 27, Paul’s ship strikes rocks and is sunk, but Paul is preserved. In the very next chapter, Paul is bitten by a poisonous snake and is not affected. But we need to realize that Paul was also a very exceptional case as well. Paul led the work to establish the church in distant parts of the known civilized world. He helped to organize the church of Jesus Christ in Rome, a critically important accomplishment to the future of the Church.
But legend has it that both Paul and Peter were finally executed in Rome. They, and the other faithful apostles, had chosen dangerous paths to spread the word of God. We don’t know most of their stories. But it is believed that all the original apostles, except John, were martyred, their work done.
The Two Thousand Stripling Warriors
There are other examples of the Lord sparing His servants in the scriptures. Please note though that such interference always had a critical reason behind it.
For example, during one of the worst of the Nephite – Lamanite wars, a select group of 2000 young men were spared by the Lord for a time. As you will remember, the people of Ammon had taken an oath to NOT fight any longer, fearing such violence would return them to their earlier evil ways. But two thousand of the sons of this people had NOT made such a covenant and wanted to help in the war against the Lamanites. From Alma chapter 53, we learn
“And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.”
Helaman becomes the leader of this group of raw recruits and marches them into war. In their first battle, near the city of Antiparah, the 2000 stripling warriors fight extremely well. When the battle is over, Helaman does a head count. The results, explained in Alma 56, were startling.
“But behold, to my great joy, there had not one soul of them fallen to the earth; yea, and they had fought as if with the strength of God; yea, never were men known to have fought with such miraculous strength.”
At this point is a devastating war, the Nephite nation needed a group of valiant soldiers to defend their nation and to remind them that the Lord was on their side. The Lord had a purpose for this army – and they passed the requirements of faith and righteousness to receive the blessings of this purpose. But the incidence of the 2000 stripling warriors is a one-in-a-million example. In the same battle, many very faithful, righteous, older, and more experienced Nephite soldiers died. After Alma chapter 57, we hear no more about the stripling warriors. Many probably stayed in the army – which still had battles to fight. Many of those who stayed in the army probably died in those later battles. God can only interrupt the random flow of life in very special circumstances.
Tragedy
The human brain is programmed to look for meaning behind events. Looking for meaning is a very helpful attribute and can save our lives.
What is the meaning behind a disease? Just a few hundred years ago, doctors attributed disease to bad vapors in the body. If you could replace those bad vapors with good vapors, it was thought the afflicted person could be healed. But the treatment didn’t work. Doctors kept searching. Who would have thought that disease was caused by bacteria and viruses that can only be seen under a microscope? How bizarre.
This drive to look for meaning behind events help us to survive threats to our individual lives as well. Why do I smell natural gas? Why are my children being so quiet? Why am I feeling this pain in my chest? Over the years we have learned it is essential to follow our drive to understand the meaning behind events. NOT understanding the causes behind an event can drive us crazy, as the mind often refuses to stop mulling over the problem.
Thus, when a loved one gets very sick, is involved in a debilitating accident, or dies, we look for reasons behind the event. Mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually, tragedies are such huge events in our lives that we know there must be a reason behind it.We dismiss the thought that events are often random.
My cousin lost her young adult daughter because that daughter drove into an intersection at the same exact moment as a drunk driver did. Of course, my cousin looked for the meaning behind her daughter’s death. The reason behind such a tragedy can really only be one of two explanations. The accident could have been completely random. It was such a low probability that my cousin’s daughter entered that intersection at the same time as a drunk driver. But low probabilities do occur. The only other explanation is that… God arranged the accident. After all, only He would have the power to orchestrate such an event. Or, did God choose to NOT prevent the accident? Couldn’t He have delayed my cousin’s daughter just a few seconds, so that her entry into the intersection might have been only a close call and not a collision? Such thinking gives God a full-time job orchestrating billions of moments in the lives of billions of people. Even God’s extraordinary ability to multitask would make such oversight difficult... or impossible.
This idea goes against the history of God’s other creations. For example, the solar system works without the need for attention or interruption. Planets orbit the sun, moons orbit planets. It does not need God’s attention. Earth life was organized to NOT require God’s constant attention. Our precious planet is not just a lump of dirt on which to live out our lives. Earth life was carefully crafted to give us the challenges we need to grow and learn faith, righteousness, and responsibility. Life was designed so that God did not have to insert Himself into our lives each and every minute. He can of course, which is why we pray. But Earth life was meant to be different than the Pre-existence. In Earth life, God does not hover over our shoulder, giving us advice. It would actually be counterproductive for God to interfere with the stream of events of our natural lives.
Let me give you an example, from a scripture mentioned earlier in this podcast. Remember in Alma 14, when Alma and Amulek are in Ammonihah? Those who believed in the word of God were being cast into a fire. Since this is one of the saddest and most painful stories in the Book of Mormon, I think we can agree that Amulek’s suggestion to stop the executions is a great idea. From Alma chapter 14, we read,
“And when Amulek saw the pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire, he also was pained; and he said unto Alma: How can we witness this awful scene? Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames.
But Alma said unto him: The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.”
What was the Lord thinking by not interfering in this travesty? I believe there are actually many reasons that the Lord does not interfere with the occurrence of tragedies. One of them is given here in Alma. If a tragedy is brought about by the selfish actions of an unrighteous person, one of the reasons to let the tragedy occur is so that the unrighteous person will have to answer for his crimes in the Final Judgement. People will be judged by their actions and their effects on other people. They will not be judged on what might have happened. If the mayor of Ammonihah and his henchmen throw righteous people into a fire, but the Lord saves them, then technically the mayor has not killed anyone. He cannot be found guilty of murder, though that was certainly his intention. Events such as this must be allowed to occur to assure that the Final Judgement is just. Evil people can be held accountable for their evil actions.
There are other reasons the natural flow of earth life should not be interrupted. We can all look back on bad times in our lives and think, “I learned so much from that difficulty,” which is exactly what earth life was designed to do. What if God had stepped in and removed that difficulty from your life? You would learn nothing.
Let me give you an example. One of the first words my small children learned was the adjective “HOT”. Whenever my wife Cheri brought a sizzling dish to the dinner table, she would emphasize the word to them. But it seems that every small child must suffer a burn at some point in their early lives. All of my young children reached out and touched a hot dish at some point. Burns are painful and, sure enough, my children cried even as we soaked their fingers in ice water and asked them why they did that. But only after their experiment did my children come to really understand what the word “HOT” means. If God saved us all from that first burn of childhood, would we ever learn what HOT really means?
What other pains would you save your child from, if you could? Would you save your son from the embarrassments of his first social interactions at school? Would you save your daughter from her first heartbreak in dating and courtship? Would you make college easier for them? Each pain you eliminate denies your children another learning experience. Thus the Lord wisely only interrupts the flow of earth life in the most exceptional of circumstances.
There is a last reason that God does not interrupt the normal flow of our physical world. The physical world must follow the rules of Personal Responsibility. Often, we have to track the consequences of our personal responsibility over years of our lives. We have to remember what we were thinking when we lost patience with our spouse or yelled at our child. What were the results of that interaction? Or… what are the results of always arriving late at work? What are the results of aggressively defending your radical political views into discussions with friends? Cause is followed by Effect. Burns are immediately painful. But sometimes it takes time for us to recognize other, longer-term Effects. The results of how you treat people can take time to manifest. Whenever you cause offense or hurt, there will be an effect. Sometimes, you must look back on your history with a friend or family member to correctly identify the beneficial or destructive effects that you have had on your relationship.
If God smoothed over with the effects of your bad behavior, would you ever learn from them? That is one of the reasons for the institution of Marriage. Marriage is a huge undertaking. You are now united to a person whose feelings and love for you must be cared for over several decades. It is also a great learning opportunity. You and your spouse must learn to care for each other’s feelings. If your spouse can’t learn to do that – you must decide if you want to charter a new course for yourself. If God magically resolved the hurt feelings of a bad marriage – then the marriage would continue to be bad and nothing will have been learned by anyone. Therefor, until you resolve them, God must allow the consequences of bad decisions to continue to mount up in your life. Continuous consequences are the most painful, but they are often required to make the hardest decisions in our lives. God does not want to interfere with that learning process, however painful it might be.
I realize that many church members announce in their testimonies that God has spared them from a life-threatening situation. I’m not going to argue with their interpretation of events, but rarely do we actually know if God has had a hand in sparing us. He might have saved us… but there are more near-miss accidents than accidents themselves. How can we tell?
The problem that I see with believing that God has spared me from death is that, with it, comes the conclusion that I am somehow more special than the people He has allowed to die. That is a problematic path that I will not go down.
So, that is all I have for you today. Thanks for listening. I hope this podcast caused you to think about tragedy and its spiritual implications. As I stated, this podcast is designed to help you consider aspects of how the Gospel is applied to earth life. I’ll not try to make you angry (and I hope you are not), but I will endeavor to make you think. If you think someone could be helped by the discussion, please share it with them. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast “Science and Scriptures”. Have a great week and take care.