189: How Does God Intervene in Our Lives and in the World?

Latter-day Faith

LDS Church teachings about deity suggest that God is very actively engaged in our lives and the world more widely. Many members of the church pray to God for blessings large and small. They try to live in ways that will please God, and avoid those that won't. These notions and actions indicate that they believe in what might be labeled an "interventionist" God.

This sense of things sometimes presents a problem for believers when God doesn't seem to answer their prayers, especially when it comes to who lives and who dies. In the same way that other theists will often do, Latter-day Saints have created "explanations" to comfort themselves or others when things don't go their way, and even more widely when any formula that implies "if I do this, God will do that."

The question at the heart of this podcast episode is whether or not a belief in this type of God is as spiritually healthy for people as understanding God much more broadly, perhaps allowing the notion of God as a "person" to drop away, shifting to a stance that invites them to re-define God more as the creative, animating power of the universe. Listen in as LDF host Dan Wotherspoon and his friend, frequent conversation partner, and driving force behind the podcast, Mark Crego, discuss this topic. Their spiritual experiences lead both of them to find greater peace from opening themselves to this wider view of God without at all dismissing the notion that God is also a person. It may get nerdy at times (or maybe a lot!) but it's an important topic that they try to approach in a pastoral way.