The Vending Machine God
A man walks up to a vending machine. He sets one hand on the machine and leans against it while scratching his chin. The man scans through the items, looking for one in particular he wants. Finally he sees it and pulls out his wallet, dropping a few coins in the slot and stabs at the buttons.
To his surprise, nothing happens. The vending machine doesn’t vend. He kicks it, then double-checks the price and realizes he hasn’t paid enough. Grumbling about how ridiculously-priced the items are, he grudgingly pulls out his wallet. “I guess I can pay a bit more,” he grumpily thinks to himself.
We often treat our Heavenly Father like a vending machine god. We go to Him with a specific blessing we have in mind. Then we try to set a price for Him. “Well, God, I need this blessing. I’ll give you $.25 worth of obedience for it. Oh wait, it costs $.50 of obedience? Well, I guess I can obey a bit more.”
Can you see the flaw with this type of philosophy? Here is another similar yet seemingly completely different philosophy.
A woman walks up to a vending machine. She also stares at what’s inside. Unlike the man, she looks at the prices. “Wow,” she thinks. “$20 trillion dollars for that?” She empties her wallet into the machine then scrounges around looking for change. She comes back every day and empties all of her earnings into the machine. It often dispenses other items but she doesn’t even bother pulling them out of the machine. After all, it wasn’t what she paid for. Every day she walks away frustrated. She tries earning more money but it’s never enough. Finally, she walks away from the vending machine, thinking that it has failed her.
This is my imperfect analogy for spiritual perfectionism. The woman tries to pay all she has for the blessing she wants. Her focus on one blessing in particular blinds her to the blessings she has already received. She empties her whole bank account into the machine, thinking that will help. But it’s no good—no mere man or woman could ever afford or earn any blessing from Heaven.
These two philosophies are interrelated—and they’re both flawed. They operate from the premise that we somehow can earn blessings. One says, “I’ll obey more if I have to.” The other says, “I’m doing my part of the bargain, why isn’t God?” Both philosophies are based on the idea that we set the terms with God and He fulfills them. The truth is, like the second example shows, we could never possibly earn a blessing from heaven, no matter how hard we try.
The sad thing is, when people fail to get what they want, they start to look for other Gods. They turn to weight loss and yoga. They turn to pro sports and zealous patriotism. Or they turn to causes like women’s rights, gun rights, animal rights, fetus rights, gay rights, and every other “manner of ites”. Each of these causes may have a portion of the truth but lack its fullness. None can love you as a Heavenly Father can. None can offer forgiveness or healing.
This may sound blasphemous, but I prefer to think about God as a more-than-full coverage insurance agency. But the monthly premium isn’t a set price of obedience. God asks for our best. As Nephi said, “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). Our obedience becomes a show of gratitude for that which we could never afford.
Another flaw of the vending machine God is that it assumes that we know what’s best for us. Under the divine plan, we don’t choose our blessings at a vending machine. God gives us exactly what we need to help us progress toward becoming more like Him and His Son. We often don’t know the why behind the blessings and experiences he gives us—Heavenly Father often keeps that to Himself. We sometimes are required to pass through the Refiner’s fire while other times we are required to pass through times of ease.
Nevertheless, no matter what our circumstances are, we can feel hope in God’s plan for us and reassurance that He is leading us somewhere better and higher. With Him, we can find joy in the journey as we search for and see His tender mercies in our lives every day.
