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S2E38 · Prosperity Theology Part 1
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 38 · 1:06:18

Prosperity Theology Part 1

In 1742 an English preacher argued that if Africans weren't meant to be enslaved, God wouldn't have let it happen, the same logic that says the poor and suffering must deserve it.

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The question ·
If we are having a hard time and not feeling blessed, don't have money, health, prosperity, etc. Then we must be sinful or being punished by God. Where does that idea come from? Is that a Calvinistic world view?
Marlene (listener)

After a mailbag full of Missouri pronunciation jokes and two listeners named Ari, Richard reads Marlene's email: she was taught that righteousness brings money, health and success, so struggles must mean sin, and on her mission in Germany "faithfulness plus hard work equals baptisms." Gerrit traces that idea from the ancient world and the Old Testament through Calvinism, where everything that happens is God's will, and reads a 1742 sermon that used it to justify slavery. He counters with Abinadi, Mercy Fielding, Joseph and Emma's losses and Jesus himself. He ends with a personal thought experiment about a car crash on the way to Taco Bell to show that most suffering has nothing to do with the sufferer's righteousness.

Who comes upJames BateJobHamAbinadiAlmaAmulekMercy Fielding ThompsonJoseph SmithEmma SmithDon Carlos SmithJohn CalvinJesus Christ
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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, we received an email from a listener that is going to be able to kind of spark the discussion that we're going to have. But first, I wanted to read, we received lots of emails from our listeners.
Gerrit And again, we have a rule.
Richard That we only read the ones that are very positive and glowing.
Gerrit Right, we receive thousands upon thousands of emails.
Richard Like I've used the example before, that it's the scene from Miracle on 34th Street, and we're the judge, put them here on my desk.
Gerrit And then there's no room on this desk.
Richard That's right, just bags and bags of letters.
Gerrit And like Miracle on 34th Street, our listeners are unable to tell whether or not you're Santa Claus.
Richard That's right. So I wanted to read, and I have to say that some of these emails, the majority of them, are just absolutely hilarious, and that either they're just generally really funny people or that they spend a lot of time. Either way, the emails are of the highest quality.
Gerrit Very good.
Richard All right, so here we have, hello, Dr. Dirkmaat and Professor LeDuc. I just wanted to write in and thank you for the amazing job you do on the podcast every week. Aw, shucks.
Gerrit That was very nice.
Richard That's very nice. I thoroughly enjoy listening to the episodes, and I love the variety of topics you guys discuss. Today, I have downloaded and listened to every episode twice, and I'm currently cycling through them for the third time.
Gerrit Wow. So the 12 downloads we get, he's actually, he's doing it twice. We're only gonna get 10. He's just doing it twice. Thank you for upping the numbers.
Richard Well, and we found, we've actually done the focus groups and the studies. It's the 12th or 13th listen.
Gerrit Yeah, that's what we find. That you listen to it one time, you hate it. You listen to it the second time, you hate it more. Third time, you're annoyed. Fourth time, you hate it. Fifth time, you start to soften a little. Sixth time, you go back to hating it. Seventh time, then you start to come around. That's what I've found.
Richard This is, yeah.
Gerrit That's what my wife tells me as well.
Richard That's what the science tells us. Let's see. You'll be happy to know that I still find them fascinating and haven't fallen asleep once. In my opinion, they are the perfect blend of well-researched historical facts, comedic entertainment and spirit-filled testimony. And I don't even mind learning about townships, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the former failed presidential campaign slogans.
Gerrit Oh, he got, those are our three big ones.
Richard He's playing, he missed Japanese rice tariffs, but other than that, he nailed it.
Gerrit Yeah, it's because we've never actually covered that one, but we did cover Rumsey Dumsey, Rumsey Dumsey.
Richard Colonel Johnson shot Tecumseh. That's right.
Gerrit That's a lot.
Richard For, as for suggestions for upcoming episodes, I don't really have anything to recommend. Although a few weeks ago, a listener wrote in, and I think we're about to start a war here, Gerrit.
Gerrit Well, it's gonna be between Utah and Missouri.
Richard That's right. A few weeks ago, a listener wrote in and complained about the way that Richard said the word Missouri, claiming that because they, the listener, were from Missouri, they know how to pronounce their own name or the state's name. Well, that's interesting to me because every time I turn on ESPN and see the University of Missouri playing anybody, it doesn't seem like they know their state's name. All I see are signs and T-shirts everywhere saying Mizzou, which isn't even close to Missouri. In all seriousness, thanks again for the wonderful podcast. Thursdays are now a bright spot in my week, and I'm hoping for at least 38 seasons. That's when you'll get to polygamy, right? So in the last, in a previous podcast, we did say 18 seasons we'll get to polygamy. So 20 seasons ahead of that.
Gerrit No, I want to keep.
Richard They've been pushed out to 38.
Gerrit This email was so good. We're pushing polygamy to season 38.
Richard That's pretty good.
Gerrit On his recommendation.
Richard So him bringing up my my pronunciation of Missouri, um, I mean, we're, we're making, they're teasing a little bit on legacy, right? Which is, which is where we, where we get this and he's referencing an email from Ari, who is, uh, who is from Missouri now lives in Utah.
Gerrit And feared that we were confusing him with, uh, rednecks of other unnamed states that he did not want to be lumped in with.
Richard That's correct. Well, so, so we, we received an email from Ari this week and it was, it was very, very funny and very well written. And, um, and very long and very long.
Gerrit Uh, we're not going to read the whole thing here.
Richard Well, so, well, so what we will read is that, uh, I responded to that email and said, dear sir.
Gerrit What did you just say? Ari, what are you, are you applying for a job? Are you asking him to disconnect your cable? Why would you say dear sir?
Richard I don't know. I don't know. Uh, dear sir, given my obviously limited grasp of the English language, it is not possible for me to properly communicate how much I loved your email below. That was my response to his, his just hilarious email about, uh, how much of an idiot I am for not thinking of the answer.
Gerrit I like the fact that you take it in stride.
Richard Oh, it was just, but it's a rule on the show that we only write, we only read the positive words.
Gerrit Yeah, well, he noted that. He said, I have to make this sound positive because otherwise you won't read it. You know what?
Richard You didn't make it sound positive enough. How about that? So, um, anyway, so then in response to my dear sir email, he said, you might love it a little more if you knew that there are exactly two ARIs in the same ward that listened to your podcast. When you read the email on that first episode, he came up to me and accused me of being the sender, which I, which is obviously true. So you may receive literally dozens of emails, but there are literally two of us. He is not as picky as I am though. So you've won over exactly 50% of your ARI listener base in Utah. That's great.
Gerrit So first of all, I, I'm surprised there's anyone in Missouri named ARI and then doubly surprised that there's two ARIs in the same ward and that somehow both of them are listening to the podcast. My guess is that maybe ARI just has a split personality.
Richard Well, so it's, it's great. I mean, like, like I've said several times, I mean, half of my family is, is Jewish. And so like, I've got like 30 cousins named ARI. So it's, it just feels like I'm back home. But so the, the, the email that we is going to kind of spark the discussion comes to us from a listener named Marlene. And it's actually full of all kinds of good stuff. We're going to pull out one particular thing. Dear Professor LeDuc and Dr. Dirkmaat, I really appreciate, by the way, that she led with me on that. I think that's important.
Gerrit I think that we're going to start calling it the Standard of Truth podcast with Professor Richard LeDuc and sometimes accompanied by statistician Gerrit Dirkmaat.
Richard I love that. I think that's good. I think the things that I bring to this, all the research, all of the things that I've done. Dear Professor LeDuc and Dr. Gerrit, my name is Martley and I'm a new listener to your podcast. And just in the past few, and just this past weekend, I finished listening to everything. I wanted you to know that I appreciate your work and enjoy listening. Since I have a daughter named Rachel, I appreciate the call out of appreciation in nearly every episode to Rachel's mom. It's nice to be noticed.
Gerrit It's funny how many people think that they know who the Rachel is, who's Rachel's mom.
Richard Well, in this case, it's Marlene.
Gerrit Well, right.
Richard That's who we were always talking about.
Gerrit We're going to start. We'll start saying Marlene occasionally now.
Richard Just throw it in.
Gerrit Yeah, just throw that in there. But there's actually quite a few people who are named Rachel. And so there's actually quite a few people. They're like, Oh, is it so-and-so's mom?
Richard I have liked all of your discussions about Calvinism. Oh, so you're the one. And how early saints have had a hard time with some of the revelations because they didn't fit into accepted prominent view of God or heaven, etc. In listening to your Zion podcast, one thing you didn't say was that the saints were to blame for being persecuted and killed. Not that I think that, but hasn't that been a prominent view in the church? At least I think it has been in my time growing up. I know I have learned that if we are righteous, we are blessed with money, health, prosperity, etc. So then the reverse must be true. If we are having a hard time and not feeling blessed, don't have money, health, prosperity, etc. Then we must be sinful or being punished by God. Where does that idea come from? Is that a Calvinistic world view? On my mission in Germany eons ago, I learned that A plus B equals C, or that faithfulness plus working hard equals baptisms.
Richard Since it was Germany, there was not a lot of success. So I figured then that something was wrong with my A or B in the equation. Since then, I have been trying to reframe my ideas of what blessings are and how I know I am worthy of blessings. Anyway, if any of the above makes sense, and you'd like to talk about it sometime, I'd eagerly listen. Well, Marlene, so this is something that is both, something that Gerrit and I are actually both passionate about as it relates to your question. And so Gerrit's going to be able to dive in to a little bit of kind of where this idea comes from, and then hopefully we'll be able to provide some even modern day, latter day teachings from apostles and prophets on kind of the counter to that way of thinking.
Gerrit I mean, this is a great question in part because we don't always have questions about purported Joseph Smith revelations that are recorded 30 years later.
Richard Not always?
Gerrit I would assume that there's at least 98% of our listener base who didn't know that WW Phelps letter existed.
Richard Yes.
Gerrit And that's normal. That would be a fine thing to not know. Now, I'm sure one of the ARIs did.
Richard Yeah, the one that likes us.
Gerrit Yeah, the other ARI who thinks that you don't know how to talk right. Well, he's right about it. Well, you don't talk good. But I mean, so it's a great question because it's universal. It's actually the question of every person who believes in any type of higher power, period. And when you ask where the origin of that idea comes from, obviously, there are multiple places in the Bible in which the way that cataclysms are framed is because of wickedness, right? The children of Israel are destroyed in the Kingdom of Israel. They lost ten tribes because of their wickedness. The Kingdom of Judah eventually falls both in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible, and is carried away captive into Babylon. Why? Well, because of their wickedness. And so it is certainly a Biblical way of looking at suffering to say that, sometimes this is called the classical view, that suffering is because of a punishment from God.
Gerrit You see this in multiple places in the Old Testament. And part of the issue surrounding that is the world in which the Old Testament is written in. The world of the Old Testament is a world of multiple gods. And it's a world in which the idea of a righteous God, the idea of an all-powerful God who is also all-good, doesn't actually exist. Right? So Zeus is, I guess, technically all-powerful, but he's also someone who's guilty of multiple sexual assaults and murder. So you don't worship Zeus because Zeus is good. You don't worship Zeus because he's going to prepare for you a wonderful place in the heavens and the afterlife. In fact, in the ancient West, in the ancient world, most people view the afterlife as being manifestly worse than this life, certainly in Greek theologies.
Gerrit And so you don't worship Zeus because you're going to go to heaven because you don't believe in heaven. You don't worship Zeus because Zeus is good and you love Zeus. You actually probably hate Zeus because he's a total jerk. He's everything that every bully on earth is, only he has the power to carry all of his horrific schemes into play and put them into practice. You worship Zeus because he's powerful. The worship of gods in the ancient world, as I've said before on some podcasts in the past that we don't index and we don't have a transcript of, so we don't know when it was, but trust me, I'm sure it was amazing. If you just go through it, listen to all of them three or four times, you'll eventually find the one you're looking for. Or we'll get to it in season 37. The point of worshiping gods in the ancient world is so foreign to many Latter-day Saints and other Christians today.
Gerrit The gods were not good. That was the whole explanation for evil in the world. Why did my crops all fail? Because Athena hates me and destroyed all my crops. Why does she hate me? I didn't sacrifice a goat to her the way I should have last October, and she's still holding a grudge. Now that did not provide a whole lot of closure in the sense of an explanation of how you could fix it, but it certainly provided explanations for why things are the way they are. Why did my son die in that battle against the Parthians? Well, because Mercury was angry with my failure to venerate him and his shrine. So the polytheistic world, gods were worshiped not because you loved them and not because you were seeking an afterlife.
Gerrit Gods were worshiped because they were powerful. And gods could do things that you couldn't do. If I send my son off to war, I can't keep my son from being killed in the battle. But you know who can? Zeus can. And if Zeus doesn't, even though I offered sacrifice and even though I prayed to Zeus, well, I must not have venerated Zeus enough for him to not have that happen. Or, since gods are competing with one another, it's entirely possible that while I sacrificed a calf to Zeus, the opposing, you know, parent on the other side with their son, they sacrificed five entire bullocks to, you know, to Baal or whoever they're worshipping, right? The idea of this is really upended by Christianity. Christianity transforms this, not only in the fact that you go from having countless numbers of essentially regional gods who are over different areas.
Gerrit Here's the god of Egypt. Here's the god of Europe. To a single god. But that single god creates a real problem. If there's only one god, and we want to say that that god is also good, and we want to say that that god is also all-powerful, well then, how now do I explain bad things? Before, I had a ready explanation. There were either mischievous other gods who were meddling in the affairs of men, or I myself hadn't properly venerated these mischievous gods, and that's why they were harming me. But ultimately, I had an explanation for evil. Christians lose the polytheistic explanation for evil because now there's no other gods.
Gerrit And even though we try to shovel a lot of the blame off onto Satan, he makes for a good fall guy. The reality is, as we've talked about before, God created Satan. So the moment you say God's all-powerful, then of course God already knew when he created Satan that Satan was going to become a fallen angel, which is what they believe. We, of course, believe he's spirit, children of father, but no one believes that back then. Just FYI on this side, no one believes what we believe when it comes to Adam and Eve. But God knew already when he created him, because again, this is how Christian would look at this. God created Satan out of nothing. God created everything out of nothing, which means an all-powerful God already knew that when he was forming the Satan molecules, which sounds like a drink at a biker bar, but when he was forming the Satan molecules, he knew in that moment that Satan was going to fall and terrorize mankind.
Gerrit And so it actually makes the ultimate question of evil far harder to explain. Why does God allow Satan to do so much evil in the world? Why doesn't he restrict him? If we're blaming everything on Satan, can't God stop it? If you say he can't, well, we've got a problem, because now God's not all-powerful. And if you say he can and he just doesn't, well, now we've also got a problem. This concept is only mitigated by what you have in Job, right? In Job, you have a very righteous man who is absolutely suffering, but it's not because of his evil. Still, though, Job is in the classical sense of the understanding of suffering because who is inflicting the suffering on Job, right?
Gerrit It's, you know, Satan and God have a conversation, at least in the way it's presented in Job. And, you know, an outside force is allowed to inflict these punishments on Job, even though he's done nothing wrong. And then, of course, his friends help out by saying, I'm pretty sure it's your fault, dude. No, no, we all know it's your fault. Just confess, say that it's your fault. You know, even his wife, you know, curse God and die is what she says, which, I mean, that's how I'm usually greeted when I get home from work. But in both cases, the suffering comes directly from God. I mean, well, in Job's case, God allows Satan to do those evil things, but still God allowed it. But in Job's case, it wasn't because he was wicked. So the Bible, the Old Testament does establish the idea that an incredibly righteous person can suffer incredibly.
Gerrit But also often what you have is that the wicked people are slain and the righteous people survive. Now, if we leap forward into the future to get kind of closer to Marlene's question, because right now she's like, I'm, I don't, I did not ask that question.
Richard Yeah, whatever you just talked about.
Gerrit Well, I was about to start talking about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but we'll move it back. When you get to the Protestant Reformation, one of the, one of the things that's most fundamental to Martin Luther and to John Calvin is the absolute sovereignty of God. Meaning, look, if you think you're doing something to quote, unquote, save yourself, you're not. God chose to save you. God does whatever God wants to do. When the question is asked, you know, well, why doesn't God do X or why doesn't God do Y? The answer is always, it's none of your business because God does whatever God wants to do. Are you saying that God willed this earthquake to happen in Portugal and kill everyone? Well, of course, because nothing can happen outside of the will of God.
Gerrit They carried that forward to salvation as well. And again, we talked about Calvinism, but part of the appeal to it is it's logically consistent. What is more likely that an all-powerful God who created this world out of nothing and decided exactly how horrible it would be that that God desperately wants there to be no suffering in this world, but he just can't figure out how to stop the suffering. He's all-powerful, he creates universes, but he can't figure out how to get the Knicks a winning team. I mean, he's all-powerful, except he just can't do the only thing that he wants to do. Well, that kind of bad logic is just laughable to the reformers like Luther and Calvin. How can you claim that God isn't doing exactly what God wants to do? We've read from Jonathan Edwards before, and with Jonathan Edwards, even as he told people, you better get ready for the barbecue because you're going to go to hell and you deserve to go there.
Gerrit Why should I be righteous if God's going to send me to hell tomorrow anyway? Well, because God should have sent you today. You could start that endless torment and suffering a lot earlier. So if you are profligately wicked, then you'll be sent to hell even sooner. So the idea was very easily correlated, not only in Europe, but in early colonial America. If God is in charge of everything, and if God only chose to save certain people, then if so-and-so happens to have a goodly amount of money and his farm is nice and big and full, well, you have to say that that is God's will. How could you not say that it's God's will? God is the only sovereign power in the universe. Remember, Calvinists are arguing that we don't even have free will, that the only will, quote-unquote, that you have is how you might sin.
Gerrit But that you're a sinner, that you're unrepentant, that you're unregenerate is outside of the will. You are a sinner who deserves to burn in hell. Period. End of story. If it seemed that you had no money, that all of your business ventures that you attempted to do failed, well, who else could you blame that on? I suppose you could blame it on yourself, in which case the reason why your business didn't work out is because you hadn't been worshiping God strongly enough, or you could blame it on God, in which case you're claiming that God did something God shouldn't have done. So it was a pretty natural thing to say, if Bill's crops all die, well, Bill must have fornicated with somebody. That's the reason why.
Richard It's classic Bill.
Gerrit Yeah. Well, Bill, that's what, we probably have a listener named Bill. We haven't heard from him yet.
Richard Well, he knows.
Gerrit Bill, it's time for confession. But anyway, so that mentality was very, it was used to justify what seemed to be the horrific things in the world. Let me give you an example that is, it's probably not the most delicate example. And by probably...
Richard No, it's not at all.
Gerrit It's not.
Richard It's very aggressive. But it actually, it proves the point and goes out to the kind of the logical conclusion that you would come to take into the first place.
Gerrit Once you determine that everything is the will of God, that everything that happens happens because God wills it to happen, well, then things that appear to be horrible in the world, you can easily justify by the fact that God must have willed it. Probably one of the most horrific examples of this in American history, I mean, also European history, but in American history, is the attempt to defend slavery and the subjugation of Africans and their horrific treatment on the basis that Europeans believed that black men and women were descendants of Ham and descendants of Canaan. And all the way back through this cursing, they were cursed with a darker skin, and that darker skin was the mark that they should be servants and slaves to everyone.
Gerrit I want to read to you from a published sermon from 1742. So for those of you doing math, this is more than three decades before the Declaration of Independence. This is at the times of the American Colonies. And this is what this preacher, his name is James Bate, and he's obviously in Anglican ministry. He's giving this sermon in England in 1742, and he's actually giving it, as the published version states, as a way of supporting the king's statement on the expansion of the British Empire, essentially. How do you justify the expansion of the British Empire? So again, 1742. If it is to be asked, where is the justice of God in a judging the whole posterity of Ham to a state of slavery?
Gerrit I ask again, where is the God's justice in making some men either rich and wiser than others or in blessing some nations with free government and a gracious prince, while others are cursed with lawless tyrants. It must be remembered too, that God's justice stands clear of all imputation in this case. So speaking of slavery, first and foremost, one of the things that he wants you to understand is, how dare you call slavery in just, because God is the author of all things. So if God is the author of all things, that means God's also the author of slavery, and if God's the author of slavery, who are you to claim that it's not just? Now, that argument is a pretty bad argument in today's day and age. But that, as you can say, here, I'm reading it. Because it is a notorious truth, now this is great, a justification for slavery, is a notorious truth that Africans live happier lives by far in their state of slavery than at home in liberty.
Gerrit And if their captivity be a means of instructing them in Christianity, they will then have the most ample reason not only to be contended under their burdens, but even to thank God for the advantages they reap from their slavery. Now the charitable instruction of the miserable creatures is the main design of the collection which I now recommend to your favor. So the argument that's being made is that, in fact, slavery is God's will in order to aid these Africans who wouldn't have the instruction of God otherwise. I know that for Latter-day Saints, this is a pretty uncomfortable topic given the fact that in early Latter-day Saint history, Latter-day Saints also accepted this belief. This was a common belief well back into the Middle Ages, let alone in the early Colonial American, early United States history.
Gerrit The belief that Blacks in Africa descended from Ham and Canaan is not a Latter-day Saint belief. Latter-day Saints have that belief because of the culture there around them. Then of course, they try to find ways to structure that in their own revelations in scripture. Such teachings have been totally repudiated by the Church today. And important that we all understand that. But here in 1742, this rector of this Church is giving not only a justification of slavery, but in fact criticizing those who don't accept slavery as not really accepting God's will. He goes on here to say that God has most miraculously enlarged the borders of Japheth, for he has given all America to the European princes, which is one of the finest parts of the world, and five or six times as big as the country allotted to Japheth, which we now call Europe.
Gerrit Tis further said that Japheth or the Europeans shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and accordingly all nations in Europe have numerous settlements in Asia, for the carrying on of their trade. And then it follows that Canaan and the Africans shall be there, and this is all caps there, their servants also. So that when you see he who gave us dominion over the beasts of the field has also given the Europeans and Asiatic nations a right to make use of these African slaves. And God has set a mark upon them in the blackness of their complexion and that we cannot fail of knowing them. The way that Reverend Bate closes this is probably the most disgusting, but also the reason why I'm quoting this hideous document. So wonderfully does everything concur to fulfill the will of God.
Gerrit For this preacher, it's God's will that Africans be enslaved. And if it wasn't God's will, well, then they wouldn't be enslaved. It's God's will that European nations dominate and destroy the Native American peoples of North and South America, because if it wasn't God's will, then it wouldn't happen. You can see the negative underbelly of this Calvinist theology, that once you say every single thing is God's will, you find yourself justifying some things that I really hope aren't God's will. But it doesn't really answer our full question of how those things work. Now, this idea is certainly in play in early America. If someone seems to be a failure at everything, it's pretty hard to argue that they are, you know, just being incredibly blessed by God's will.
Gerrit And so there were certainly preachers and in fact, many critics of early Latter Day Saints pointed to how poor the Latter Day Saints were as proof that they weren't good people and clearly didn't have the favor of God. One visitor to Nauvoo, a European socialist actually, made this commentary to Joseph in 1843 that, well, it sure seems like you have a lot of poor people here. And Joseph's response was, well, you know, we used to have a lot of lands and they were stolen from us in Missouri, which is not only true, but also the reality is as humans, whether we intentionally do it or not, the tendency that we have is to see people in a suffering condition and think they must have done something to deserve this suffering. They must have somehow this must be their fault.
Gerrit Now, back to Marlene's question, I mean, I was going to say, I don't know who our mission president was, but she actually told us, but we edited that out. You know, names have been changed to protect the innocent. Or in fact, in this case, the guilty. But they thought that by teaching the missionaries in your mission, that if only you're righteous and if only you work hard, well, then you will absolutely have baptisms. Well, let's put that to the test, shall we? I can think of a missionary who worked really, really, really hard and was super, super righteous, who didn't give up after failing. His name was Abinadi. How many baptisms did he perform?
Richard I think he performed zero.
Gerrit In fact, even the conversion he gets, that guy baptizes himself for crying out loud.
Richard Well, and then you also have the missionary work of Alma and Amulek. And they did certainly some good.
Gerrit Sure.
Richard And then also they watched members of the church being burned along with their scriptures.
Gerrit I mean, the problem with, the reason why Calvinism was such a powerful ideology is it provided a religious explanation for the will of God and the world. And you know, the confusion that was wrought by monotheism, you know, claiming that there's only one God, and yet you have this world filled with all kinds of horror. Well, in some ways that confusion was mitigated because everything that happens is God's will. And so even horrible things happen. Why do they happen? Well, they happen to teach us something. Now look, Latter-day Saints do believe that mortality is in fact to teach us something. But that's not usually how Christians following this ideology preach it. In America, it's a very common thing to hear this false doctrine. Every single thing that happens, happens for a reason. Unless you are saying that the quote, reason, quote, is because you chose to come to earth, there's actually a myriad of reasons why we suffer.
Gerrit But ultimately, it's because we are here on a fallen earth that we chose to come to.
Richard And that's essentially one of the main points, right, is that this isn't a creation out of nothing. There is no trick to come here. We might not have known the specifics of the circumstances, but we certainly knew at least the general lay of the land, and we chose to come anyway. And so that therefore, things that happen, some of them through the agency of others, and some of them just because of the frailties of mortality, at the end of the day, there's no trick when we chose to come.
Gerrit Right. We chose to come to a fallen world. And yet, although we aren't Protestants, as I've said before, sometimes we desperately wish that we were. We want to have answers to every question. We want there to be a very easy explanation, and sometimes that explanation is just, oh, it's the will of God. But even those answers, as we have, we've traced them in our various podcasts, they fall short. Even if we say things like, well, yeah, you know, that happened, that horrible event happened because now I know better how to help other people. Well, that does give us comfort, I guess. But could not God just give me that information without the horrible trial? And I think that really kind of approaches the subject that we, you know, we have to be careful and tiptoe around because we feel so uncomfortable around it. And that is, is God in the classical sense, truly all-powerful, meaning can he literally do everything that he chooses to do?
Gerrit Could he save us in our sins? Right? Now, we've already talked about this with Doctrine and Covenants, Section 93, in which there is at least one thing that is laid out by the Lord that God doesn't have the power to do, and that's to create intelligence. And again, we have that on God's authority because he's the one saying it. So we have to say, probably. I mean, he's probably right about what he can and can't do. But we live in such a Protestant world, if you live in the United States, that the idea of anything limiting is in and of itself a problem. And so there's a couple of things driving what I would say is a pretty false understanding. And Richard said we're passionate about it. And one of the reasons why we're passionate about it is because of the harm that it causes. If we really believe that as long as we're righteous, as long as I go to the temple, as long as I'm reading my scriptures, as long as I just pray that nothing bad is going to happen to me, that my kids are all going to have strong testimonies, that I won't lose my job, that I will always have the friends I'm looking for, that I won't feel alienated, that I won't have mental illness, that nothing of sickness and poor health will ever affect me.
Gerrit If we actually believe that, well, what happens when any of those things happen to us?
Richard So this is what Marlene says in the email, right? I figured then that something was wrong with my faithfulness or hard work. It had to have been.
Gerrit So ultimately, every problem you have devolves to yourself. I have heard this propagated in Sunday school classes myself. I had a Sunday school teacher who was adamant that every person who just didn't have enough money, it's because they weren't following the gospel and working hard enough. Maybe it was Marlene's mission president for all I know. And it actually got to the point where it was uncomfortable going to his class because every single answer to every problem was just agency. If someone's not happy, they're just not working hard enough. If someone's not happy, then maybe they need to really turn their life to God. Well, that bothered me a great deal in part because when you study church history, one of the things that you come very well acquainted with is just how many incredible women and men suffer inexplicable horrors.
Gerrit And not only do they suffer them, many times they suffer them specifically because they're trying to follow the commandments of God. We've mentioned some of them. We did a whole episode on Mercy Fielding. And her horrible, her family has given up everything to follow the gospel. Her husband is essentially serving Joseph Smith as a private secretary, an unpaid private secretary, and he dies. And in the aftermath, she practices plural marriage, which I'm sure wasn't easy. And then that plural marriage husband, Hyrum Smith, is murdered. And she has to cross the plains by herself. Are we going to say that, you know what, I just wish Mercy Fielding was more faithful. I mean, I know she like helped establish a bunch of the stuff with the Relief Society and raised thousands of dollars to help build temples and did everything she was commanded to do.
Richard But obviously she didn't.
Gerrit But she must not, she must, you know what, she didn't work very hard. That's the way I look at Mercy Fielding. Why didn't she work? That's the number one issue. I mean, obviously I'm being facetious, but it is a cruel and false doctrine that suffering only comes to people who don't work hard and who just aren't righteous enough. And if you meet with enough people like I have, who are going through the throes of agony because of some inexplicable event that has happened in their life, the cruel idea that every single thing that happens is God's will because of your injustice, because of your own suffering. Like I said, it's a false doctrine that's upsetting to me. Even Job ends up not being the best example for us because what happens with Job? The writer of the Book of Job lets us know at the end, hey, don't worry, Job was blessed with more wives and children, and he was even richer after than he was before.
Gerrit As though children were like commodities. Well, don't worry, I lost 12 of them, but I got 13, so I feel like I invested pretty well in my children's real estate scheme or whatever. I mean, the reality is even saying, oh, eventually you'll be temporarily blessed, that's not evident. You can take Joseph Smith's life as a very good example of this. We talked about this early on, but just think about this. Joseph Smith is from an incredibly poor family. He finds these plates that his first impulse, even though the angel has said, don't try to steal the plates, don't try to steal the plates, don't try to steal the plates, don't try to steal the plates, he opens the box, I'm going to steal those plates. I don't know that he says that, but I think he clearly, something happens. He's not able to get the plates even after the angel, you know, telling him not to do it.
Richard Well, he acknowledges.
Gerrit No, no. Oh yeah. I'm not. I mean, the only reason I know that Joseph thought about taking the plates to become rich off of them is because Joseph said it. So, you know, now the, the, that, what does that demonstrate? I mean, it demonstrates that, that Joseph's financial situation for his family is so dire that even with these angelic injunctions, it's still a thought that he has, right? But he does. He repents. He makes himself worthy and he finally gets those plates. And then he has to try to defend them. He has to hide them multiple places. He's assaulted multiple times. People break into his home. They break into his parents' home. They stop him on the street. He's arrested multiple times because people are trying to get those plates. And while he's going through that, while he's going through the struggles of learning to translate, he moves in down on his father-in-law's farm. And if you remember Isaac Hale, not a huge fan of Joseph since Joseph ran off and married his daughter against his will.
Gerrit While they're trying to struggle doing that, translating the Book of Mormon, is when Emma is going to give birth to their first child, and that child dies immediately at birth. Are we going to say that it's because, you know, just shoot? I mean, I guess Joseph and Emma were just so wicked, you know, Emma having essentially abandoned her possibility of having a well-off life because she married Joseph, becoming a hiss and a byword in the community, sacrificing everything as the primary early scribe of the Book of Mormon. I just wish Emma was more righteous. I just feel like if she had worked harder, then she wouldn't have lost her baby. Do you see why I hate the idea so much? I'm not saying that people don't suffer for wicked actions that they do. They do, and when you see it, you're pretty happy about it.
Gerrit All of you have seen things like you're watching on some kind of Facebook reel, and there's a car that tries to run over a person and actually slams themselves into it, like a telephone pole, and the telephone pole crashes down on the car, and all you say to yourself is, well, maybe you shouldn't try to run people over, you murderer, right? And so I think we like to fool ourselves into thinking that the bad things that happen in this world are primarily the result of negative agency, people doing bad things, and then therefore God is going to punish them.
Richard And you're also not saying that God certainly does bless people with riches and success, and that also happens.
Gerrit I mean, the riches of the earth are the Lord's to give, right? He makes that very clear. But it's also Jesus who makes very clear that he causes his reign to fall upon the just and the unjust. He doesn't seem to see riches as proof of righteousness, right? In fact, when the rich young man, you know, says, you know, what good things shall I do that I may obtain eternal life? And Jesus tells him, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor and come and follow me, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven. When that rich young man goes away sorrowful for he had great possessions, Jesus' response is, how hardly shall the rich inherit the kingdom of God, for it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to inherit the kingdom of God. That does not sound like Jesus is saying, you know what, all of the rich people, they're all the ones that are the most righteous.
Gerrit They're the ones that God has blessed the most because of their righteousness. That pronouncement was so troubling that what were the, what was the Apostles reaction? Who then can be saved? Right? Because their worldview was a worldview of, of course, the people that are rich are the ones who are blessed and favored of God, because that's what their culture taught them. Their culture was just wrong. When Jesus said, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, that's the reason why in the Middle Ages, some very bored monk who thought that, well, maybe I've got a little bit too much land, I don't want this to apply to me, came up with the argument that, oh yeah, actually a camel passing through the eye of a needle, there was in Jerusalem, like a really short gate that the camels had to pass through, and they had to get down on their knees and they had to crawl through on their knees, and they had to take all their burdens off of them to get them through, and it was just so hard.
Gerrit But don't worry, you can do it, but it's just like so hard. There's literally no evidence of that being true at all. I realize it's repeated. It's repeated even in some church things, because historians believe that was the case well into the early 20th century, and then they realized that there was no evidence for it at all, and that they traced it back to, you know, to the middle ages where this idea was essentially invented. It was invented. Why? It was invented because they wanted there to still be a connection between God blessing people because they're righteous and their wealth. Now, again, I'm not saying that God doesn't bless people. Of course God does, but it is a pernicious thing to believe that the way God blesses us for the things that we do is with temporal wealth and well-being alone.
Gerrit That if I'm a missionary, the way God blesses me is he takes away the agency from that German that I'm trying to teach and forces him into whatever baptismal font I find there, which they probably didn't even build any, because outside of Elder Uchtdorf, no one was ever baptized. I went to Wisconsin on my mission, which, you know, they were American Germans, and that's how many people were also baptized. But you see the negative effects of that. Marlene is relating them to us. How many times did she say to herself, I just got to pray more. If only I was more righteous, then God would take the agency away from these Germans and force them to be baptized. Remember that Jesus himself, Jesus, the great exemplar, Jesus, the Son of God, Jesus, literally God. Most people don't accept him. Most people don't believe what he's teaching.
Gerrit Most people don't convert and see him as the messiah. And in fact, he is going to be crucified, utterly despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows. That reality should give us pause if we have become conditioned to think that as long as I do what's right, nothing bad will ever happen to me. And there's Emma and Joseph burying their first child. Wouldn't it be great if we could say, oh, that was the only child they lost. But then Emma gets pregnant again and has twins. This time when they first arrive in Kirtland, I've been to the Morley farm in Kirtland where those twin babies who died immediately after birth are buried somewhere on that farm. And so after that, don't worry, they adopt the Murdoch twins. And one of them dies during Joseph's mobbing. But that's got to be the end of their suffering, right? Except later when their toddler son, Don Carlos in 1841, will also die.
Gerrit I just wish Joseph had been more righteous though. I just, I don't understand why Joseph didn't just work harder. If only he had prayed more, if only he knew how to really unlock his potentiality, none of those things would have happened to Joseph. This is the reason why I'm too passionate about this. But because when someone makes the claim, if only you do what I tell you to do, you are going to be healthy, wealthy and wise. Don't worry. Oh, if you're suffering, you know what? You need, it's obviously as you need to go back to God. Now look, some suffering is because you need to turn to God. If you're someone listening who's committed moral transgressions, clearly Bill, who we've called out now as a fornicator. We didn't say an adulterer. He was a fornicator. He wasn't married yet. We don't know Bill yet, but Bill, you know who you are. Then obviously when you're thinking, I don't know why I can't feel close to God, well, because you need to repent of your sins.
Gerrit Some of our suffering is self-inflicted, but I don't even think it's most of it. In fact, I don't even think it's some of it. I think it's a very small portion of it that is directly related to our sinfulness. Look, is it attributed to my sinfulness that I decided not to go to church on Sunday and I decided to drive to Taco Bell to go get some tacos because...
Richard Yeah, of course. What else are you going to do with tacos?
Gerrit Well, yeah, I'm not driving there to ask them to help me with some kind of Pythagorean theorem. I'm going there because I want a bean burrito and I want it now. And I get in a car wreck on the way there. You could see how someone might say, well, that was God punishing you. And maybe it was. Or maybe it was God allowing the natural order of events to take place because was he also punishing the person I ran into? He was punishing them, even though they were on their way to church. You see the problem very quickly. I've said this before, but when we talked about the problem evil, but let me reiterate to kind of talk about the problem of simply ascribing all evil to agency. Let's say after this podcast, because it's, you know, it's been a rough one. Richard's been riding me like crazy, just like, you know, nope, you know, this is bad. You're not doing a good job. I look behind me. All I can see is my wife and his wife doing the cut sign across their neck before they fall asleep, which is always.
Gerrit And so it's been a tough time. So right after we're done, I just said, you know what? I just, I know that there's a Word of Wisdom, but I just got to get a drink. And so I head on down to the state liquor store. I get a bottle of Jack Daniels and I drink half of it. And then I decide to drive. Now, I've made a lot of bad decisions. First, the one that triggered it all is that I was trying to do a podcast at all. That Richard was my friend. Second, right. But even if we were being more serious about it, I went as a Mormon, knowing that alcohol is against what I've covenanted with God, I went and bought it. That's pretty bad. But it's far worse knowing just legally and lawfully the fact that I then decided to drive my car. Well, I drive that car and I wrap it around a telephone pole.
Gerrit Well, there's going to be a lot of suffering involved. I'm going to suffer physically, obviously, because of the damage to me in the crash. I'm going to suffer financially because now of the replacement of the car, my insurance rates are going to skyrocket. And there's actually going to be some innocent suffering there, right? And I'm not talking about the telephone pole, although there may be a tree hugger here like that. That pole died for you. My kids are going to suffer. Not only the shame of me being sent off to jail, but if you think BYU is very keen on employing DUI drivers, they're not in the religion department. So I'm going to get fired. We'll probably lose our house. We will have enormous amounts of long-term suffering. And while you could argue that it's just for me, how just is it for my kids?
Gerrit Did my eight-year-old– yeah, well, God is saying, yeah, you know who we really ought to punish? Annika. This is her fault. Why did she let her dad become a drunk idiot, right? So, already, our argument that everything that happens is simply justice for whatever actions we've done. You can already see how quickly it starts to break down. Yet, I would say most Latter-day Saints would still say, well, in a world of agency, you know, that's– you know, you shouldn't have been drinking and driving. I feel bad for you. I feel bad for your daughter. But, you know, welcome to your new job that you ride your bicycle to at that same Taco Bell because you've been fired from BYU. But now we change the scenario a little bit. And this time, I don't wrap my car around a telephone pole. I wrap my car around someone else's car and I kill three people in it. Now, that family is going to go through unimaginable suffering, suffering that can't be described, suffering that will be with them for the remainder of their life.
Gerrit And they were just on their way to church, right? They didn't do anything wrong. I was 100% culpable for the fact that they died. That's a lot harder for us to take because instead of the kind of in, you know, indirect suffering that my kids have, because I'm an idiot, that we've all essentially just, everyone's come to terms with this, right? Everyone's already, Richard's already come to terms with it. Absolutely. Gerrit's an idiot. So obviously these kids are going to suffer. You know, that's what happens. Now, this is a much more difficult thing because this other family is suffering this permanent loss on the basis of my choice. Still in all, Latter-day Saints and many Christians who believe in free will would, you know, kind of hang their head a little bit and say, yeah, that really is a tough situation. But if you believe in free agency, then you believe that, that people have the ability to do terrible, terrible things to you.
Gerrit Do you think that family that I hit just wasn't righteous enough? Why didn't they pray more? And then God would have sent them a different direction to church. Why didn't they, why didn't an angel intervene and appear to them and say, hey, don't go this way. Drunken Gerrit's headed your way in his car. None of those things happened. So do we attribute the fact that God did not use his all power to intervene to the fact that these people were clearly wicked? I really, really hope we don't do that. Now, I have met some people who do, who simply say, you know what, there's probably some sinfulness in their past that that's the reason why those are our wretched people. I'll tell you that. I hope that's not anyone listening. But you know what? If you are that person listening, please stop listening. We don't need that.
Richard Or you just change the thing that you believe.
Gerrit You're going to keep believing it and also stop listening. But part of the reason why this idea that you'll hear from your testimony meeting pulpit at times, that every single thing that happens is God's will. I know that Protestants believe that, but we don't. We believe that we all chose to come to a world that we knew would be fallen and evil and that there would be the potential of people using agency to hurt us. We chose that. We didn't have to choose it. A third of father's children didn't choose it. We didn't have to choose it, but we did. So why does it make its way so much into what it is that we believe and do? I think first and foremost, it's because of our belief that we can control things.
Gerrit As humans, what do we want more than anything? We want the ability to mitigate our own suffering. That's why we want money. Why do I want money? So I can eat better food. Why? Because there's better tacos out there than Taco Bell. And if I can get them, I want them, right? And so those things, we think we can be more in control in this completely fallen and immoral world. If we just, if I just count the number of steps I take on Sunday, if only I go to the temple three times a week instead of twice a week, then my children won't ever have a testimony issue. If only I, you know, you know, I know that we're not supposed to drink alcohol or smoke or drink coffee or TV. You know what? I'm going to do one better. I'm not even going to eat anything that casts a shadow. I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure. And then I know no one in my family will ever have any health issues.
Gerrit We do those things thinking or hoping that the, as the as the brethren referred to it, the vending machine will give us the blessings we want. But we're not polytheistic people living at the turn of two millennia ago. They worshiped gods because they knew if they sacrificed that goat, that then Zeus should make their crops grow. But we don't worship those false gods. Instead, we believe we chose to come to a fallen world, fully knowing that there would be suffering, that agency would engender some suffering, but there would be lots of suffering, like the millions of people who die from malaria every year, that doesn't involve agency at all. The people who die from cancer, the people who die from car accidents, that are from a spontaneous malfunction of the vehicle, where's the agency in that?
Gerrit The reality is, we think that agency answers every ill, but this world is filled with injustices. I want to spend more time on this, so in our next episode, we're going to talk about specifically some of the reasons why this prosperity gospel is sometimes found inside of Latter-day Saints, where people really believe that as long as you're righteous, you're going to be more wealthy than other people around you. Oh, as long as you're righteous, none of your kids will ever have a testimony issue. It's not true, and we want to talk about the reasons why, so we'll talk about that more next week.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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That you listen to it one time, you hate it. You listen to it the second time, you hate it more.

GerritBanter

You know, even his wife, you know, curse God and die is what she says, which, I mean, that's how I'm usually greeted when I get home from work.

GerritBanter

He's all-powerful, he creates universes, but he can't figure out how to get the Knicks a winning team.

GerritBanter

In fact, even the conversion he gets, that guy baptizes himself for crying out loud.

GerritBanter

We might not have known the specifics of the circumstances, but we certainly knew at least the general lay of the land, and we chose to come anyway.

RichardInsight

I mean, obviously I'm being facetious, but it is a cruel and false doctrine that suffering only comes to people who don't work hard and who just aren't righteous enough.

GerritInsight

That reality should give us pause if we have become conditioned to think that as long as I do what's right, nothing bad will ever happen to me.

GerritInsight

Some of our suffering is self-inflicted, but I don't even think it's most of it.

GerritInsight

We believe that we all chose to come to a world that we knew would be fallen and evil and that there would be the potential of people using agency to hurt us. We chose that.

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More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
If you're righteous enough, you'll be blessed with money, health and success, so suffering means you've sinned.
Everything that happens, happens for a reason, because it's God's will.
Jesus's camel and the eye of the needle referred to a low gate in Jerusalem camels could crawl through.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Abinadi worked hard, never gave up and baptized no one; his one convert baptized himself. Faithfulness isn't measured in results.

Joseph and Emma buried children while doing exactly what God asked of them. Suffering is not proof that someone wasn't righteous enough.

Jesus sends rain on the just and the unjust, and he said it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Wealth is not a righteousness scoreboard.

We chose to come to a fallen world, knowing others' agency and mortality itself would bring suffering. Some suffering is self-inflicted, but most isn't.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Bags and bags of lettersThe mailbag as Miracle on 34th Street, and the rule that only glowing emails get read (1:00, 6:07).
The 12 downloadsA listener on his third time through means the 12 downloads are really 10; hate it on the first listen, come around by the seventh (2:04, 2:24).
Townships, Guadalupe Hidalgo and campaign slogansA listener nails the show's big three, missing only Japanese rice tariffs; Rumsey Dumsey gets a callback (2:42, 3:09, 21:39).
Polygamy in season 38Promised for season 18, now pushed to season 38 on a listener's recommendation (3:38, 4:30).
The two Aris and MizzouThe Missouri pronunciation war continues, Richard answers "Dear sir," and two Aris in one ward split 50-50 (3:38, 5:24, 6:20).
Rachel's momMarlene has a daughter named Rachel, so for once Rachel's mom is identified (8:02, 8:37).
Professor LeDuc and statistician DirkmaatMarlene addresses Richard first, so the show gets renamed (7:16, 7:49).
Bill the fornicatorBill's crops die, so Bill must have sinned; Bill is called to confession (25:00, 26:02, 53:52).
Drunken Gerrit and Taco BellThe hypothetical bean burrito run, Jack Daniels, a telephone pole, and a new job at Taco Bell after BYU fires him (54:54, 56:35, 58:40).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
General ConferenceGeneral Conference talks that cite a scripture read in this episode.

In General Conference

Talks from the latest General Conference that cite a scripture this episode reads or names on air
October 2026 General Conference · cites D&C 93I Am a Child of GodElder Hutch U. FaleElder Fale teaches that every person is a beloved child of heavenly parents, illustrating God's unearned love by showing his children their baby pictures: they did nothing to earn their parents' love and can do nothing to lose it.October 2026 General Conference · cites Mosiah 11Love Like JesusElder Ronald A. RasbandElder Rasband speaks to everyone grieving for loved ones who have turned away from the Lord, acknowledging that lecturing and pressure often widen the rift.October 2026 General Conference · cites Matthew 19:21–25Quick to Help, Slow to JudgeElder Paul H. SinclairElder Sinclair recalls a Primary boy who buttoned his sleeve to his lapel and got stuck, and the little girl who quietly freed him while he himself felt only irritation, a moment that taught him to be quick to help and slow to judge.

Summaries, themes and lessons for every talk are on What Did They Say?

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Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Theodicy across religions: how polytheism, Calvinism and Job each explain suffering (12:45).
James Bate's 1742 sermon and the Curse of Ham in European and American defenses of slavery, which the Church has repudiated (27:44).
The children Joseph and Emma lost, from Harmony to the Morley farm in Kirtland to Don Carlos in 1841 (52:45).
The origin of the 'needle gate' story about camels kneeling to get into Jerusalem (49:35).
SOT Litner · S2E38.