B2AB3CA6-AF22-46B7-A039-9EE1E35A994EEveryone in our ward adored Brother Brown.* His countenance radiated light and goodness; his testimony was firm, sincere, and powerful. He drew us in droves to his gospel doctrine class and then, as a loving priests quorum adviser, he shaped and molded hard-edged teenage boys into men. He was a skilled and busy physician, the father of eight children, a former bishop. A year ago last July, he was diagnosed with ALS and, despite ward fasts and priesthood blessings and seeking all possible treatment, Brother Brown died just before Thanksgiving. His wife, our former YW president, has not been back to our ward since the Sunday before he died, and some of our young women have struggled not only with Brother Brown’s death, but with watching their former beloved YW leader become less active. Just last Sunday in stake conference, a young woman from our ward spoke tearfully about her bruised faith in the wake of Brother Brown’s death. “I couldn’t understand why God would let it happen,” she said. “I was angry; I stopped reading my scriptures and praying.” My own daughter has struggled with similar doubts. “When Brother Brown died,” she recently told me, “I had to rethink all of those happily-ever-after, my-prayers-were-answered stories I heard in primary.”

Our ward was rocked similarly nine years ago when our neighbors’ three-year-old son was found floating face-down in their swimming pool during a Fourth of July barbecue, and despite our fasting and prayers, died two days later; and again, five years later, when another set of neighbors—a young couple—lost their eighteen-month-old son after a utilities worker backed over him in their driveway. In the days, weeks, and months that followed both deaths, as I heard the platitudes—“The Lord must have needed him on the other side,” “He must have been too pure for this world”—and watched two heart-shattered mothers bury their children, I questioned the Lord’s purposes. And as I saw both families suffer their grief’s fallout—sons who rebelled and didn’t go on missions, in the former family’s case; drug addiction, a nervous breakdown, and a bitter divorce in the young couple’s case—I wondered how a family weathers catastrophes with spiritual resiliency and whether we adequately teach this resiliency to our children.

When our children are small, we try to nourish their faith and help them trust in a loving God who answers prayers. Of course we want to keep it simple and focus on the positive. We tell faith-promoting stories about the little girl who miraculously recovered after receiving a priesthood blessing, the co-worker who gave up smoking overnight and got baptized, the lost car keys we found after praying, or the spiritual prompting we had to come inside just before the wind knocked over that tree. And yes, miracles do occur and faith is a real power and the Lord often answers our prayers in marvelous ways. But I wonder if, in our attempts to cultivate faith, we sometimes unwittingly also cultivate an attitude of spiritual entitlement—the idea that if we’re righteous and exercise enough faith and pray hard enough, our prayers will be answered in the way that we wish. A simple formula of goodness + prayer = no bad things will ever happen.

In my last blog post, “rk” (comment #72) said that a friend of hers spent $1200 on vet bills to save her sick cat so that her children’s belief in prayer wouldn’t be undermined. But what happens—and the day will come—when those children pray for something they want fiercely—a cure for their infertility, perhaps, or the recovery of a sick spouse—and the answer is no? I don’t think I’d spend $1200 on a dying cat (a dog, maybe, but not a cat), but I wonder if I manipulate my children’s faith in more subtle ways. In my attempt to protect them from tasting the bitter fruit and facing the harsh realities and complexities of a mortal existence, do I overemphasize the times when my prayers were miraculously answered and downplay those times when they weren’t—when I didn’t find the lost keys or ace the test or recover quickly from that illness?

Because the reality is pets die, people die, God’s ways are not our ways, and we might never understand in this life why some things happen the way they do. And somehow, while we help our children build a solid foundation of faith and confidence in God, we also need to find ways to help them become spiritually resilient—so they can endure those inexplicable, incomprehensible tests of faith inherent in mortality. And I think Brother Brown would cheer us on.

*Name has been changed.

What has helped you weather a crisis of faith? How can we better prepare our children (and ourselves) to endure hard things without losing their/our faith? At what ages is it appropriate to introduce some complexity in our gospel teachings? How can we teach our children that our prayers aren’t always answered in the way that we wish while still nurturing their faith?

Related posts:

  1. Ward Envy – Part II
  2. Testimonies, War, and Cherry Picking
  3. UP CLOSE: Living Single– Titanic Tears and Ministering Angels – Just Another Day Really


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