by Meagan Kohler
The doctrine of personal revelation is elevating and powerful. When I first joined the church I received profound spiritual witnesses through the Spirit that God was aware of me and loves me, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that modern prophets speak for him. These experiences left me with deep impressions about how God feels about me, his church, and his children. Less dramatic whisperings of the Spirit have guided me to others in need, helped me parent better, and pointed me to things I can do better to draw closer to God.
But sometimes I encounter church members whose relationship to personal revelation is just weird. It’s weird in the sense that something seems off but it’s difficult to describe at first. The way they talk about the Holy Ghost, for example, makes it sound more like an intrusive thought than a sacred witness of truth. We’ve all been in testimony meetings where people chuckle at the mic about how they just had an argument with the Holy Ghost in their head telling them to get up and bear their testimony. I’ve felt the Spirit nudge me to bear my testimony, too, but these jokes make it sound like the gift of the Holy Ghost is akin to having multiple personality disorder. Imagine what it sounds like to someone outside of church culture who hears you say you are arguing with God in your head.
This is an example of being a weirdo that’s basically a harmless cultural quirk, but it seems to invite a casual attitude toward the Holy Ghost that can develop into something weirder. For example, sometimes the Spirit does prompt us to do things we’re hesitant about, and that can initiate a real inner struggle. But some people use this idea of an inner “struggle” with the Holy Ghost to obscure their own desires and motivations–even from themselves. If you only bought that timeshare or joined that MLM because you felt the Spirit pushing you to do it, well, you’re not imprudent, you’re obedient.
This version of the Holy Ghost tells people to keep making purchases even when they end up bankrupt. It tells single women to place their romantic hopes on a man who doesn’t return her feelings. It overlooks tax evasion but prompts you to build a bunker. It wants you to make YouTube videos about yourself, but never urges you to visit the widows.
Not only would such an attitude abdicate responsibility for your choices, it would seriously hinder your ability to learn from them. If your spending habits or impulsive business decisions are sanctioned by the Holy Ghost, then even if things go wrong, it’s not because you’ve done wrong or need to change. If your due diligence only extends as far as getting the Holy Ghost’s stamp of approval, there’s no reason to look seriously at your own habits and desires, or what you are becoming.
When people have a relationship with the Holy Ghost that’s kind of thoughtless to the point that it’s constantly spitting out answers to things of dubious spiritual relevance, it makes me think of a Magic 8 Ball. If you shake a Magic 8 Ball enough, you’ll eventually get the answer you’re looking for. When personal revelation amounts to finding a way to feel good about doing whatever it is you want to do, then how long until you go from being a personal revelation weirdo to a personal revelation whacko? If you are unwilling to engage in the difficult work of learning where your emotions and desires end and divine whisperings begin, then the concept of personal revelation becomes worse than no revelation. It becomes a way to feel good about doing things that your conscience and your personal judgement would otherwise protest.
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction,” wrote Pascal. What’s terrifying about the Jodi Hildebrandts and Chad Daybells of the world is that they believed what they were doing was sanctioned by God. There is no simple answer for why this happens, but we know it didn’t happen overnight. I have wondered whether the “skill” of discerning God’s favor and approval in every feeling and happenstance played a role. Even being arrested was a kind of martyrdom. “The devil’s been after me for years,” Ruby Franke told her husband shortly after being booked for starving and tormenting their children. Perhaps that was true, if not in the way she thought.
My guess is this belief in God’s approval of evil is usually sincere. But when you spend years casually assigning the hand of providence to the silly and the selfish, perhaps you become so adept at making your will into God’s will that you become a victim to your own sleight of hand. You have developed an unbridled certainty in your own judgement because you’ve convinced yourself it’s not your judgement at all. At this point, the degree to which your inspiration diverges from what’s normal becomes a feature rather than a bug–a testament to your uniquely strong faith and penetrating knowledge.
So, how do we avoid this?
The simplest answer is following the leaders of the church–both what they teach and how they live it. This is a simple answer that has many complexities in application, not because the guidelines are complicated, but because there are so many ways to circumvent them without “breaking” them.
President Renlund recently called our attention to some red flags concerning personal revelation. He warned about “improper motives to promote our own agenda or to fulfill our own pleasure,” revelation that is outside of our purview or “within the prerogative of others,” revelation that is not “in harmony with the commandments of God and the covenants we have made with Him,” and seeking revelation about questions God has already answered.
This list of revelation no-nos is probably not exhaustive, but what stands out to me is how these items reveal what’s in our hearts. If we are pestering God about questions he has answered or praying about get-rich quick schemes, then we are not using revelation as a tool to open us to God’s will, we are asking God to place his divine stamp of approval on our will. Claiming revelation outside our purview does something similar in that it seeks to place the divine stamp on our will for other people–people for whom we have no divinely sanctioned responsibilities and whose pains and burdens we do not carry.
Most talks about personal revelation deal with how to obtain it. Relative to the number of talks about all the things God wants to reveal to us, the talks about what he doesn’t are pretty few. Maybe that points to something important but easy to overlook: that one of the best ways to know when you’re not getting real revelation is to be deeply familiar with the real thing. When we have experienced how the Holy Ghost works in our lives–how it changes us, allows us to help others, and points us toward the Savior–then the self-serving “revelation” becomes less convincing and less interesting.
This kind of revelation does not make us weird. It does not make us inscrutable, it does not make our motives or calculations more mysterious, and it does not make us sound mentally ill. It opens us up and connects us more deeply to the people around us. It makes us approachable and helps us relate better to those in need, rather than making us more insular and cult-y. Being in the world but not of the world still implies being in this world, not inhabiting an alternate reality.
In summary, if you’re doing it right, personal revelation should not make you a weirdo.
Meagan Kohler is a Latter-day Saint convert who studied philosophy, French and Latin at BYU. She writes about faith and culture at the Deseret News and lives in Utah with her husband and four sons.
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Outstanding and timely essay. Well done.
Most revelation is getting confirmation on something we have studied out, pondered, and specifically asked for confirmation on. Sometimes, when we need direction on something important that we are not aware we need direction on, the spirit can prompt us with a feeling or thought. Only on very rare occasions is God going to jump into our internal conversation and speak to us that way or give us something more dramatic, and it has to be something really important to justify that level of communication. We are hear to learn and grow, not be ordered around.