Does God Give Wrong Answers on Purpose...

[ajax]

...in order to give your the right answer? Elder Holland says yes. What are the implications?

Radio Free Mormon discusses:
http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/ ... ong-roads/

[Tree]

...in order to give your the right answer? Elder Holland says yes. What are the implications?

Radio Free Mormon discusses:
http://www.mormondiscussionpodcast.org/ ... ong-roads/

Does feel or sound correct. Sometimes we don't get answers and we are left on our own to choose a path. I believe God is always there but sometimes we must stumble in order to get where we need to go. This always brings others on our journey.
God does not lie He will delay answers for our progression.

[inho]

What is a wrong answer? If an answer leads into you learning a valuable lesson, is it wrong?

Did God give Joseph a wrong answer when he asked about the 116 pages for the third time?

[Tree]

What is a wrong answer? If an answer leads into you learning a valuable lesson, is it wrong?

Did God give Joseph a wrong answer when he asked about the 116 pages for the third time?

Intentionally giving a wrong answer is lying. Does God go this? If He did, He would cease to be God.

Maybe you need to rephrase your initial comment.

[inho]

Intentionally giving a wrong answer is lying.

That depends on the question. Not all questions have one definite correct answer. Sure, if you do as Moroni exhorts and God answers that BoM is false, then he lies. But if you ask if God approves that you take a job offered to you, God might answer 'yes' even though there were a better path for your life. Then he wouldn't be lying.

[Silver Pie]

Does God give wrong answers on purpose in order to give you the right answer?
What do the scriptures tell us about God's ability to lie?

I, the Lord, promise the faithful and cannot lie.

(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 62:6)

which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;

(New Testament | Titus 1:2)

And thus [Satan] flattereth them, and telleth them that it is no sin to lie that they may catch a man in a lie, that they may destroy him.
26 And thus he flattereth them, and leadeth them along until he draggeth their souls down to hell; and thus he causeth them to catch themselves in their own snare.

(Doctrine and Covenants | Section 10:25 - 26)

It kind of looks like lying so that you can accomplish your own purposes is a satanic thing to do.

If God gives us lies when we ask for truth, is it not akin to asking for a fish and getting a serpent, or asking for bread and getting a stone? If we ask God for direction and follow after the random inclinations in our own minds, is God to blame for that? Is it just for Jeffrey Holland to blame God for his own inability to connect with heaven? And thus teach the lie that God will lie to a person to teach them something?

Now, God does not tell us everything. He only tells us what we're open to hear, or ready for. He does not deluge us, for example, with all of our horrendous faults (many of which we probably think are virtues). He does not tell us things that will damn us because we are not able to abide the level of living required to live by those things. But that is not the same as lying to us. That is not the same as telling us, when we are lost, to go down the wrong road. If I prayed and that happened to me, I would need to do some soul-searching to find out what God's voice really sounds like.

[marc]

Jacob 4:14 But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.

Was it the wrong answer because it caused them to stumble?

[Jesef]

Maybe they just both misinterpreted the answer. Or the answer they got wasn't really what they thought. In other words, perhaps they were led down that shorter/dead-end road even though they interpreted it to mean "this is the right road" - maybe it was really "take this road first for peace of mind" - that's what they ended up getting out of it, anyway. Feelings of what we should do are often so ambiguous as to what they definitively, objectively mean.

[oneClimbs]

God cannot lie.

So he doesn't give a wrong answer, but he will give us what we ask for sometimes even if it causes us pain when we expect joy. We're not on vacation and God is not our consierge. He's our father and this is life. We're here to prove ourselves, to know good and evil, pleasure and pain. No one was promised or guaranteed a smooth life and immediate answers to all questions.

It isn't that the answer is wrong, it is sometimes part of something much bigger, something you don't understand until long down the line. I've been there, God has never lied to me. If I went down an unfruitful path on his errand it was because I was too impatient and thought I had things figured out that I didn't. Yet even that mess that I always thought was a failure was part of another plan that I never saw.

[inho]

I am a bit surprised that most of you interpret wrong to mean factually incorrect and focus on the fact that God cannot lie. When you pray, do you usually ask only questions about the truthfulness of a statement?

However, wasn't Ajax' original question this:

Does God Give Wrong Answers on Purpose...
...in order to give you the right answer?

How could God give a factually incorrect answer in order to give you the correct answer?

That is why I asked what one means with wrong.

Also, this is what Elder Holland said in an article linked on the podcast page:

I asked, “Dad, why did we both feel like Heavenly Father told us to go down the road to the left when it was the wrong road?”

...

“The Lord has taught us an important lesson today. Because we were prompted to take the road to the left, we quickly discovered which one was the right one. When we turned around and got on the right road, I was able to travel along its many unfamiliar twists and turnoffs perfectly confident I was headed in the right direction."

...

I understood and have never forgotten the lesson my Heavenly Father and earthly father taught me that afternoon. Sometimes in response to prayers, the Lord may guide us down what seems to be the wrong road—or at least a road we don’t understand—so, in due time, He can get us firmly and without question on the right road. Of course, He would never lead us down a path of sin, but He might lead us down a road of valuable experience. Sometimes in our journey through life we can get from point A to point C only by taking a short side road to point B. We had prayed that we could make it safely home that day, and we did.

[Seek the Truth]

Seems like a word game.

I'm toying with a situation wherein recently I made every mistake in the book in a new venture, and I was specifically looking for guidance. And I screwed up everything. Not sin, just mistakes.

I realized after it was over, I'm pretty sure God let me do it because I am now a master teacher in the subject. In a short period of time I did everything wrong that could be done, but the result is I can speak with surety on the subject and can quickly teach the subject to others, and tell people every pitfall to avoid.

This observation goes against my deeply ingrained personal beliefs. Usually I am against mistakes. In this case the Lord dropped them in my lap and in this instance I begrudge admitting that I am better for it, and more importantly it was for other people's benefit. But it was really irritating.

[Hidingbehindmyhandle]

When ever the truth would cause more harm than the false?
Yes, the scriptures are full of that.
Brigham Young calls these "Hollow Toadstool Stories".
Today, we would call them "Stork Stories".

[harakim]

Seems like a word game.

I'm toying with a situation wherein recently I made every mistake in the book in a new venture, and I was specifically looking for guidance. And I screwed up everything. Not sin, just mistakes.

I realized after it was over, I'm pretty sure God let me do it because I am now a master teacher in the subject. In a short period of time I did everything wrong that could be done, but the result is I can speak with surety on the subject and can quickly teach the subject to others, and tell people every pitfall to avoid.

This observation goes against my deeply ingrained personal beliefs. Usually I am against mistakes. In this case the Lord dropped them in my lap and in this instance I begrudge admitting that I am better for it, and more importantly it was for other people's benefit. But it was really irritating.

Agree. God does not lead people down the wrong path. I think that is an unfortunate choice of words. Holland says he went down the "Wrong" path then got back onto the "right" path. Unless he was on a sinning path, in which case, I wonder where he gets his information, then he was probably just doing stuff that made him temporarily uncomfortable or which would lead him to be beyond his expertise in handling correctly.
That sounds like the right path the whole way to me. Jesus didn't take the comfortable or easy path. We can only bear so much of the more difficult path and have to take breaks, but we don't get off of it. We just pause waiting for more strength to go farther. That is where the growth comes.

(Matthew 7)
7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

If you think God is giving you "wrong" answers, it means you don't know what is right. God always gives you the good gifts