Real Revelation Frequently Causes Negative Feelings

A misunderstanding that peace and love are the message from God leads men to reject the sizeable quantity of revelations from God that evoke negative emotions. Deep sorrow, fear, or distress are not signals that the message received is not from God. They are valid responses to real revelation. For example, the response of Lehi’s family upon reading the words on the Liahona:

And it came to pass that when my father beheld the things which were written upon the ball, he did fear and tremble exceedingly, and also my brethren and the sons of Ishmael and our wives. (1 Nephi 16:27.)

Considering peace, love, and joy to always accompany God's messages¹ is damning. Consider the prophets of the scriptures. How many messages did they receive from God that gave them peace, love, and joy? Isaiah described his horror when God revealed to him his nothingness. Moses collapsed in weakness after being in the presence of God. Isaiah certainly did not click his heels in joy when God instructed him to travel naked for three years as a sign to Israel. Hosea was instructed to marry a whore. Peter was shown how he would die ignominiously. Young Hezekiah, who had served God at great travail in a time of abhorrent wickedness, was told he would shortly die. All of these messages were from God, and none conveyed anything close to peace, love, and joy. If these men of God used modern Mormonism’s criteria for revelation, they would have dismissed God’s instructions to them as false revelation. They would have cut themselves off from God through disobedience to his word, being in open rebellion against God.

Negative feelings from revelation can come because God is revealing a difficult assignment to us, like asking Isaiah to go without clothing for three years as a sign to Israel. But it can also come because you are being presented with something that is so radically different to what you currently believe. Interpreting negative emotions as a negative signal from God assures that the most important revelations—those that call us to abandon our false idols and false traditions—will be rejected due to misinterpreting negative feelings as a negative sign from God. These negative feelings can be cognitive dissonance, a well-known and well-studied phenomenon that occurs when one's actions, beliefs, and understanding of truth jolt out of alignment, usually as the result of learning something new. If we believe that the purpose of individual revelation is to teach us the things we currently do not know, or point out the things about which we are mistaken, we ought to expect cognitive dissonance as a regular occurrence and a hallmark of spiritual growth.² An absence of this feeling would indicate a lack of spiritual growth. The solution for it is to bring your actions and beliefs into accord with your newly expanded understanding of truth.

It is not negative feelings, but positive ones, that are a rare commodity among men of God in the scriptures. The Spirit led those men from one tragedy to another, not from one exuberant ecstasy to another. The treasure of these men was in heaven—found in a face-to-face encounter with angels and God himself—not on earth in the form of temporal happiness or worldly peace. Jesus said plainly that the peace he gives is NOT as the world gives. It is to be found in the personal promise of eternal life from him to you, a peace that can remain present even in a deluge of earthly discord consisting of immense personal suffering, insecurity, loneliness, and loss. This is the fruit of the Spirit: the peace that Abinadi felt as he delivered his last sermon, knowing he would be burned at the stake for doing so; the peace Peter felt even after Jesus told him he would be crucified for his ministry; the peace Alma and Amulek felt as they watched their converts burn at the stake and lay on the ground naked, bound for a seemingly interminable time; the peace felt by Paul as he endured several shipwrecks, privations, and trials before potentates, finally facing his death.

Treating negative feelings as a sign of displeasure from God, or assuming it signals the withdrawal of the Spirit, is tantamount to self-inflicted damnation. This is like a plant hiding from the sun—the result will always be a withering away from required nutrients for growth. God warned us against this gross misjudgment:

Woe to those who suppose what is evil to be good and what is good, evil! They put darkness for light and light for darkness; they make bitterness sweet and the sweet bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own view! (Isaiah 5:20-21, Gileadi Translation.)

Although our reaction to God’s revelations frequently includes negative feelings, the fruits of these messages are something very different. They are what occurs when one heeds the message—not the fruit of hearing the message but of doing what the message says. The fruits of heeding even God’s hardest messages causes peace, love, and joy because they cause you to draw closer to God, whose companionship always produces those fruits.

An overfocus on emotion as a substitute for real spiritual experiences is not new. In 1981 the Academic Vice-President of BYU said,

...too much of the literature used, seen, and quoted in the Church today is just sentimental trash which is designed to pull our heart strings or to moisten our eyes—but it is not born of true spiritual experience. The tendency of our youth to use sentimental stories in Church talks creates a culture of spiritual misunderstanding in which thinking and learning are discouraged. Because our youth often respond positively to sentimentalism, there is a danger that we might cater to that in the Church instruction more generally...It [emotional sentimentalism] should never be leaned upon as a substitute for spirituality. Reliance on sentimentality will stunt our own spiritual growth by misleading us and filling our understanding with false experiences. (“Reason and Revelation,” Noel B. Reynolds, BYU, Summer 1981.)

Relying on emotions as revelation is an invitation to be led astray. After all, emotion is a carnal sense, and while the carnal senses, which also include sight and smell, are indispensible tools in our lives, they are channels loaded with deceptive noise from Satan and his followers. Korihor admitted that the devil deceived him by teaching him false doctrines that were pleasing to his carnal senses, and he taught them successfully for the same reason:

But behold, the devil hath deceived me; for he appeared unto me in the form of an angel, and said unto me: Go and reclaim this people, for they have all gone astray after an unknown God. And he said unto me: There is no God; yea, and he taught me that which I should say. And I have taught his words; and I taught them because they were pleasing unto the carnal mind; and I taught them, even until I had much success, insomuch that I verily believed that they were true; and for this cause I withstood the truth, even until I have brought this great curse upon me. (Alma 30:53.)

Thus we see that those who teach doctrine through “pleasing the carnal mind” are operating from the devil's playbook. Unfortunately, for over a century modern Mormonism has plied this tack in venues ranging from the sacred with temple movies to the public with television commercials and public films shown by missionaries and visitors centers. The construction of the Legacy theater in the now Joseph Smith Memorial Building was a pioneering effort in this agenda. President Hinckley instructed the director: “I want them to leave the theater crying.” 69 In fact, Bonneville Communications, one of the church's many businesses, has trademarked the concept of emotionally manipulating people into. They call it “HeartSell.”³ Recipients of appeals to the carnal mind should ask themselves, is it the Spirit or is it “strategic emotional advertising”?

Remember that revelation is the link that attaches us to God and instructs us on how to return to him. It is the most important concept of the gospel to get right, because it is the only thing that prevents us from getting everything else wrong. That is why Joseph said,

...nothing is a greater injury to the children of men than to be under the influence of a false spirit when they think they have the Spirit of God. Thousands have felt the influence of its terrible power and baneful effects. Long pilgrimages have been undertaken, penances endured, and pain, misery and ruin have followed in their train; nations have been convulsed, kingdoms overthrown, provinces laid waste, and blood, carnage and desolation are habiliments in which it has been clothed. (Joseph Smith, TPJS, p. 205.)

Perhaps foreseeing that this ancient tactic emotional misdirection would continue to be used in our day, Paul guided us to hearken to our spiritual— not our fleshy—guidance systems:

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:4-8.)

Note that he says that the carnal mind is enmity against God, or stands in opposition to him. He says the carnal senses cannot be subject to the law of God. This idea is paralleled by Alma who taught that you don't acquire revelatory knowledge through your feelings, but through the Spirit: “And I would not that ye think that I know of myself—not of the temporal but of the spiritual, not of the carnal mind but of God.” (Alma 36:4.)