I’m mad at God a lot of the time and He knows it, believe me. For the unfairness in the world. I’m pretty sure that I had a hard time making up my mind about the plan and somewhere in my soul, that spirit that I was is very upset with the Lord and the way things have worked out for a lot of us. Boy, oh boy, are we going to have a long talk.

People who have experiences of divine intervention in their lives are not saying that God is consistent and predictable in doing so. In fact, it’s obvious that he is not. If being a “good person” or an innocent child guaranteed what all would objectively agree were obvious advantages or “blessings” in this life, then, as was said earlier, life would not be a test, and faith would not be required.

Obviously, it’s much more complicated than that and blessings from God are often a very subjective experience, viewed primarily through the prism of faith. I know that makes everything more difficult than if you could prove the existence or non-existence of God by citing a list of dubious statistics culled from anecdotal rumours, but it’s what we’re stuck with.

My sense is he puts us her and asks us to follow commandments and then lets us deal with life.

Yet, there is this strong strain that good things happen to good people. Correspondingly, bad things happen to bad
/less faithful people.

And, both are demonstratively false.

Did the victims of the Holocaust get what they deserved?

Or, how come the rich & corrupt (think Wall Street recently) don’t have a meteorite drop on their head?

How come Utah has high bankruptcy rates and high levels of chemical support?

Why do children ever get cancer, diabetes or suffer from a host of other illnesses?

One could go on and on . .

Rewards are in the here-after not the here.

I was more referring to the blessing because we have already developed the personality of obedience, or the lack of blessings because we have already developed a personality of pride. I think we bring into the world much of who we are already and that can be a blessing or a cursing. Our existence here is to overcome the weaknesses and strengthen the strengths.

I certainly don’t want to imply that if we were a goodie-two-shoes there that we get a great life here.

Plus this whole discussion doesn’t touch on the blessing we get or don’t get because of our pre-mortal life’s experiences.

I don’t personally believe in that, but if you do, I suppose it could help to explain some of the inequities that people are born into in this life. For myself, I just think this life is unfair, and that we were never promised that it would be anything else. If you start believing that some people are blessed here because they were more righteous in the pre-existence, then you are setting yourself up for some seriously abusive beliefs on the part of the oh-so-blessed, like they somehow deserve their situation and the poor/ill/disabled somehow deserve theirs. I don’t think so.

Plus this whole discussion doesn’t touch on the blessing we get or don’t get because of our pre-mortal life’s experiences.

I’m just glad that God is just….and it will all work out in the end….somewhere, sometime.

It’s important to remember that this life is intended as a test. It wouldn’t be much of a test if it were set up in the way you describe. The existence of God would be immediately provable and only the mentally ill would fail to obey all the commandments. The only way that obedience and faith are tested is when we have to trust that blessings come from obedience even when they are not immediately obvious.