How to make people suffer and blame God for it

If I were to have an open conversation with my devil and he was willing to share the secrets of his recent marketing successes, I think this is what he would tell me.

There is only one thing I love doing more than making humans miserable – watching them blame God for their misery.

There are many different effective strategies that create confusion in the human heart and mind. Today I am going to describe only one of them. But first, let’s make it clear – my department should not be blamed for confusion. It wasn’t my boss who supported the Father’s Plan with its  key principle of agency. It’s your Master, not mine, who sustained the Plan and now runs the Program, including the confusing Second Estate. It is He who put you in this system of free market where both good and evil, truth and falsehood, honesty and deceit are being offered. My boss tried to make things simple – one product, one price – no need for agency, everybody wins. But your Master decided to follow the Daddy who kindly allows his children make their own choices. So don’t blame us – He started it!

Here is one effective way to confuse people into believing that God should be blamed for evil, misery and suffering:

Step one: PRODUCT

Creating a product that resembles the Competitor’s product and adding a new, desirable feature to it (remember – I am in the detail). Marketers call this strategy “piggy backing”. For example, when your Master offers marriage, I offer casual sex. When He offers love, I offer even greater love.

Step two: ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

Since I own the majority of mass media, this step is easy. Through TV and internet as well as in schools and universities I shout the benefits of my counterfeit product’s advantages over the original. I tell my potential clients that I offer them instant gratification, while the Father expects them to be patient. Or I point out that the love the Father offers is unfair and exclusive. Marriage means rejecting half of the world. I offer inclusion, tolerance, equality. While the Father’s love is sometimes expressed by teaching others his values, encouraging them to behave in accordance with some eternal laws, my love says: I don’t care what your behavior is. It’s like offering people a bread maker that makes bread out of cheap sand. Impossible, I know, but many are willing to pay for it.

Step three: TURN THEM AGAINST THE COMPETITION

This phase is tricky, but I have a lot of experience. I manipulate my clients’ emotions in a way that leads them to the place I want them to end up – the conclusion that God, their families, their Church – hate them. Let’s use the example of love again. When I deal with a client who is sexually attracted to his own gender, I tell him this: If your family really loved you, they would not discourage you from same-gender sex.

If his family does reject him after being shocked with the news about his same sex attraction, my job is really easy. All I have to do is say: See? They do hate you. Their Church tells them to hate you.

But let’s consider a more challenging possibility. Let’s say – his family does love him. They don’t accept his behavior, but they still accept and love him. In other words -  they reject his behavior but not by rejecting him. They simply refuse to say what he wants to hear: “Follow your nature. If you feel like breaking the law of chastity – do it if it makes you happy.” In such a case, my role is to convince my client that my version of love is the true love while the love the Father offers and teaches through his Church is not true love. By means of the internet, television and education I say loud and clear: “If they loved you, they would accept your behavior!” Through movies, song lyrics and from the mouths of all sorts of experts quoted by reporters I  just keep screaming until it sinks in my potential client’s mind and heart: “If they loved you, they would accept you the way you are!”

See, I am in the detail. The fact is that his family does accept him the way he is. But I make him think that his behavior is what he is. I make him forget that he is a spiritual son of God who – like every human – struggles with carnal desires, his physical body’s disposition to do evil instead of good. I make him forget that and put a false label on him – I tell him: you are gay. Or: you are naturally oriented toward men – or in case of females – toward women. This is your true identity. If your Church and your family rejects this identity, they reject you.

Step four: TAKE THEM TO THE WILDERNESS

Once I manage to convince my client that everyone hates him, he feels rejected and lonely. He moves to the desert. Figuratively speaking, of course. People pass him, but in their faces he only sees aversion and rejection. If he doesn’t have real friends and doesn’t turn to the scriptures and prayer for inspiration, he is mine. And I simply follow my nature. I do what every predator does when he is left alone with his prey. In some cases, I even succeed in convincing my client that his life is not worth living and he should end it.

I don’t claim that I should take credit for all murders and suicides. Some people suffer depression and other emotional or mental infirmities – they are not accountable for their actions. I can only tempt when agency is present.

Step five: BLAME GOD AND HIS CHURCH

As you know – the best advertising is organic – word of mouth. When the news about another tragic suicide of a young person spreads, many people start asking the question: Why? That’s not yet a problem. Questions should be asked. Their problem starts when they allow me to provide the answer. So I do: Because your Church endorses the law of chastity. Because the Brethren insist on teaching things that in the world today are unpopular, considered offensive and hurtful.

Those who don’t use their imagination, if they don’t think critically – are likely to believe me. If they don’t consider other possibilities, more logical explanations based on facts – they become my new clients.

In the case of the increase in suicide attempts, they disregard some simple facts. For example, Utah doesn’t have the highest suicide rate. Or this one – only 20% of humans living in Utah are Latter-day Saints. Also -  in the last few decades the Church’s narrative about same sex behavior has become milder (the doctrine hasn’t changed, there is simply more emphasis on the divine nature of all God’s children and the need to love every person regardless his challenges and even sins). But the number of suicide attempts keeps increasing. What has changed in the last few decades? One thing for sure – homosexuality has become an accepted, even a celebrated behavior. My department’s propaganda campaign has succeeded in convincing many humans who are attracted to members of their own gender that their Church and their families hate them. How delightful for me that they don’t see it.

I have noticed this new tendency among the humans: they get a kick out of blaming themselves for many evils in the world. Strangely, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob seem the most inclined to this way of thinking. Taking responsibility for human suffering, injustice and other negative realities somehow makes them feel good, more humble, more progressive. They are willing to sacrifice truth, if necessary to refrain from looking for the roots of problems far from them when evidence suggests that is where they are likely to be found. The world has taught them that even considering taking the investigation somewhere else is just not nice. Looking for flaws in their own history, civilization, culture or religion is a sign of being open-minded, self-critical, modest and humble. This is a topic for another conversation. I am just saying – turning the Saints against God and his Kingdom gets easier every year. Convincing them that my kingdom is a much happier and friendlier place than God’s Kingdom is not the challenge it once was..

Yours truly,

devil