Is it God or is it just random events?

In the Mormon church we are explicitly warned of the negative consequences that will surely come from disobedience.

If you drink alcohol, you will become an alcoholic and damage your family relationships. Your marriage will suffer and you may beat your wife and/or kids.

If you don't pay your tithing, The Lord will not bless you. You will have no protection against financial struggles. Your job may be put at risk and your overall financial health will dangle on the edge of ruin without an all powerful being there to watch over you.

If you masturbate, it will inevitably lead to sex play with your buddies and then you will be hopelessly gay.

If you have sex outside of marriage, you will suffer the most excruciating emotional sorrow. That act alone will lay waste to the most precious thing you possess, your virtue. Nothing but pain and anguish will come from violating that most sacred commandment.

And most serious of all, if you leave the church you will lose all protection from God. You will not only be completely on your own, but you will also be in the power of the most diabolical and evil being to ever exist. Lucifer will have you in his clutches and you will most definitely suffer.

So that is what we are told. And for my entire life I absolutely accepted these warnings and threats at face value. But then a funny thing happened. I started to look around and observe people. I looked at faithful members of the church. I looked at people who had never been members. And then I looked at those who had left the church.

After a few years of watching all these groups of people, I came to a startling conclusion! I could see no correlation or pattern to suggest any of what I had been taught is actually true!

Faithful members of the church have money trouble at about the same rate as everyone else, even apostates. And ex Mormons get promoted or laid off from work at pretty much the same rate as full tithe paying members. In fact, I personally observed, from collecting the tithing donations, quite a few members who consistently paid their tithing every month and also had to collect welfare and church assistance just to make ends meet. I guess one could say their welfare and church assistance were blessings from God because of their tithing. But I say that if they kept that 10% to pay their rent, that is just that much less they would need to collect from the church and the govt. also, doesn't this scenario kind of fly in the face of the teaching that The Lord will "open the windows of heaven" for tithe payers?

My point is that I see no evidence at all to suggest that being a faithful member of the church offers any added financial or employment or health benefits than your average citizen. Now wait, you may say, what about the Word of Wisdom?? Mormons are healthier. It is true not smoking dramatically increases your chances of being healthy. However, studies have shown occasional coffee and red wine consumption to be beneficial. So, Mormons have part of it right, but certainly not everything.

Another interesting phenomenon I have witnessed goes like this. If a faithful member of the church has something wonderful happen in their life, it is immediately attributed to "the tender mercies" of a loving Heavenly Father. If something difficult or tragic happens to a faithful member, it's "God testing us" for our own benefit and growth. How many times have we heard, "Well, God has a plan and we don't always know what that plan is. We just have to trust him and he will help us through this trial."

And if an apostate has something difficult or tragic happen to them, then it's always a result of their disobedience and lack of faith. Either God is punishing them directly or God is merely standing back and allowing them to be on their own and he is not protecting them. But if something good happens to the apostate, then it's a case of God still loving them even though they have turned their back on him. And he's most likely showing them the blessings they could always have if they would just return to the fold.

Do you see the problem, or the reality, here? It doesn't matter WHAT happens to WHOM, it can always be twisted around so it can be seen as being from the hand of God. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. We as humans constantly look for and focus on any evidence that confirms our pre-existing biases and beliefs. And we throw out or disregard anything that contradicts what we already believe.

So in the cases outlined above, people just engage in mental gymnastics to further confirm their firmly held belief that if you're faithful and obey the brethren, good things will happen to you. And if you're not completely faithful, bad things will happen to you.

Based on my own objective observations, there seems to be no correlation between following the brethren vs leaving the church when it comes to the random and unpredictable events that come to every human being. Life is just life, whether you're in the church or out of it.