when did you earn God's love? Apologies to Fluffy

[deacon blues]

This is one of the Sunday School lessons that I never got to give. for the sake of discussion try to answer as a TBM, but if you can't, any response is appreciated.
When did you earn God's love?

[wtfluff]

This is one of the Sunday School lessons that I never got to give. for the sake of discussion try to answer as a TBM, but if you can't, any response is appreciated.
When did you earn God's love?

Apologies? All you gotta say is: When did you earn MORmON god's love.

It's easy to answer when you define which "god" we are referring to.

And the answer for me is: NEVER. It's not possible to earn MORmON god's love. No matter what you do, you're never good enough when it comes to MORmONism.

[alas]

This is one of the Sunday School lessons that I never got to give. for the sake of discussion try to answer as a TBM, but if you can't, any response is appreciated.
When did you earn God's love?

Apologies? All you gotta say is: When did you earn MORmON god's love.

It's easy to answer when you define which "god" we are referring to.

And the answer for me is: NEVER. It's not possible to earn MORmON god's love. No matter what you do, you're never good enough when it comes to MORmONism.

This. Exactly. No matter how hard I tried, I was never good enough. I wasn’t even as good in the church’s eyes as my sexually abusive father. No, his repentance was worth several hours each week for YEARS. My recovery from having been abused was not worth mybishop’s time at all. Because being a woman, I could never be worth much. Only the babies I had were worth anything, mostly the boy. He wasn’t even out of the hospital before some stupid nurse saw on the medical records that we were Mormon, and got all gushy about “our future missionary” and how great it was to have a boy because going on a mission was the most important thing in the world, unless you were female and then God just wanted you married and making babies. She was falling all over herself gushing about “our” future missionary as if the church owns him. Oh, come on. He isn’t 12 hours old yet. Can we wait just a bit to celebrate his mission? I was neauseous and I promise it wasn’t morning sickness. Oh, sure there had been Mormon nurses and or doctors with my previous births and no mention of any expected greatness, or even any mention of religion. Idiot nurse didn’t have any idea if we were active or not and we were in Florida, and with my first child born in Germany the other Obgyn was my branch president. And with my second, half the hospital staff was Mormon because we were near the Mormon corridor. But nobody thought a Mormon girl was anything to congratulate. It was puke worthy that she assumed we might want him on a mission in over 19 years, let alone that the mission was the highlight of his whole life.

[moksha]

Assuming a Loving God, I think we earn this by being born.

Assuming a Mormon God, we earn this by paying our monthly fee and doing everything we are told by Church leaders.

[Random]

I've never earned God's love. I can't, because I'm mortal (screw up a lot). He loves me because he is God.

I wish that was taught: He loves me because he is God, not because I've done anything to merit it.

[nibbler]

It's not possible to earn MORmON god's love. No matter what you do, you're never good enough when it comes to MORmONism.

This was my experience. I'm a convert so pre-mission experience with church culture is limited but this sentiment definitely started during my mission years and would continue with me up until I had a faith crisis.

The mission was seeped in language of being more obedient. Church culture is also wall to wall prosperity gospel. There were a few methods for feeling god's approval. These were the big ones during my mission.

1. Getting a lot of convert baptisms. This one was always fleeting because even though you baptized five people last month you didn't get any this month, so you're not being obedient enough. That or the months were you did get five baptisms you think that had you been more obedient you could have gotten six or more baptisms.
   
   That's the thing about setting goals on "faith" during a mission. Some months a realistic goal is going to be zero baptisms but we're told (and thoroughly believe) that we need to exercise faith. You got five baptisms last month? Great. Because of that, your goal is now eight baptisms this month.
   
   It was like corporate culture. Whatever last quarter's numbers were, this quarter's goals had to be higher. It creates this sense of never arriving.
2. God's approval is also signified by which calling you get. You've got to be worthy to be a senior companion. Worthier still to be district leader. Worthier still to be zone leader. Only the worthiest of the worthy make assistant to the president.
   
   It's a stupid mindset. There are 150 elders in the mission. Of those 150 about four or five will be called to be AP, maybe 15% will make ZL. There are only so many slots to fill. It's just the math. "Worthy" people are excluded and jerks make the cut. The issue is that the mindset of "god finally approves of me" is tied to which callings you receive and the mission culture does NOTHING to dissuade people of this notion. In fact I think church culture goes a long way towards creating that mindset.

I came home with that mission culture. No matter what you were sacrificing for the church, no matter how much you gave, no matter how obedient you were, there was always more you could be doing. This month I gave 10% of my gross income to the church, went on splits with the missionaries twice, fed the missionaries, and did two callings but I didn't visit all my assigned families for home teaching and I now I feel like dog excrement.

That was my orthodox experience. Someone foisted a lot of unrealistic goals on top of me, ones I didn't even choose for myself, then told me god's love was conditional on my abilities to meet said goals. It made for an absolutely miserable spiritual existence.