Not Lucky, but Blessed

I am not fond of seeing “Blessed” merch – but that is a “me” thing probably.

A) I lean towards a deist/agnostic point of view about God. The “I’m Grateful” vibe to me begs the tongue-in-cheek question, “How do you KNOW that God had anything to do with it?”.

– There is an assumption that God was involved.

– There is an assumption that your personal actions had little to nothing to do with it (also tilts into the Calvinism and “Divinely Fated” narrative).

It is mostly a fad among women (in my experience). I am aware of my “loose cannon” feminism because I can’t “perform gender” properly sustainably. I am careful to “read a room” of women to see what they need me to be to not antagonize them. Even on more generously deist days, it still virtue-signals to me, “I belong to this exclusive club of womenhood and you don’t – neener, neener, neener”.

C) There is also the whole if there is a “Blessed” group, then there is also a “Cursed” group (the gospel principle “Opposition in all things”). I don’t subscribe to either group existing as a category from God. As a parent, I don’t have a “cursed group” of children, nor do I have a “blessed group” of children. My children are themselves, with unique gifts and unique disadvantages.

Even if there are “cursed” traits, I like to think that the “best good” that can come from them is the “who did sin” rebuttal from the blind man and his parents. Jesus taught clearly that “Neither the man [cursed with blindness] nor his parents [who dealt with the ramifications of raising a blind son] were cursed, but the purpose of the experience was to “make manifest the Glory of God” I just don’t see the “glory of God being made manifest” in “Blessed” Merch.

Interestingly, I have seen other apparel that just say “blessed” and it doesn’t bother me.

I feel that the phrase “not lucky, but blessed” posits that someone might see the wearer of the shirt enjoying various privilidge and says something like “Wow. So Lucky.” And it is at this point that the wearer of the T-Shirt corrects the person making the comment, “No I am not lucky, I am blessed.”

This to me feels like a certain amount of entitlement. As if to say that I deserve my privilidge because of my decisions, or actions, or because I belong to a certain group, or because of my personal relationship with Jesus.

Am I reading to much into this?

Seeing shirts like that rub me the wrong way, but for different reasons. In general, I dislike merch with feel good words on them (blessed, abundance, harvest, live laugh love, etc…) :sick: Perhaps this is me reading too much into it as well, but people who I meet who decorate with and wear things with words like that tend to strike me as a bit shallow. But, as much as clothes and decorations like that annoy me, I don’t think they’re a bad thing. It’s not a bad mentality to have. Though, I agree with you that it seems to be lacking humility.

But on to the luck vs blessed topic. I do subscribe to the idea that all good things come from God. I like Uchtdorf’s analogy of blessings being like rainfall and sin being like an umbrella. It’s not ‘doing good = earning a blessing’, but more like living the Gospel creates the conditions to receive more blessings. That’s how I like to think of it anyway.

Now, that’s not to say everyone who lives in Beverly Hills is necessarily blessed by God. Money can very well be a curse for some people. But that’s its own rabbit hole of a discussion.

Would you see a distinction between a shirt that says, “Blessed” vs. a shirt that says, “Not Lucky, but Blessed”?

I’d say yes and no. Yes, because there is technically a difference in meaning.

No, because the person wearing it probably hasn’t put that much thought into it. I imagine the person is wearing the shirt because they like the saying, rather than intending to preemptively correct people passing by.

Would you see a distinction between a shirt that says, “Blessed” vs. a shirt that says, “Not Lucky, but Blessed”?

For instance, one shirt just makes a statement, the other is like it’s correcting people before making the statement.

Yes, I think that the correction is what bothers me more than the statement.

I am unable to warm to anyone who either states or implies that they have been blessed. To me, their message is as meaningful as stating, “I am humble.”

As a Church member, I have been indoctrinated with the idea that everything good comes from God as a reward for obedience. D&C 130:21 states, “And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” So, if something good happens, it’s because I earned it from God. If something bad occurs, it’s simply a negative outcome from unfortunate circumstances.

We teach that God is no respecter of persons, and indeed we are all blessed to inhabit this beautiful Earth. Beyond that, I’m unconvinced that God offers a merit-based blessing system. I suspect the “revelation” may have been overcooked. For me, it’s the same with prayer. I can’t bear to hear that Sister ABC prayed to find her lost car keys and went straight to them, whereas entire congregations prayed and fasted for young Brother XYZ — only for him to lose his fight with cancer, irreparably tearing apart his family. I pray only to offer thanks unless I’m in Sunday-robot mode, in which case I pray that all the people who stayed home to watch TV will be blessed. Um, OK.

My daughter wrote an essay in which she compared all of humanity to a fetus living in darkness inside its mother’s womb. We live our lives seemingly without direct contact with God – unaware that the very earth itself is the fertile womb of God that is literally providing for all of our needs. Accordingly, we are all blessed beyond measure as we breath the air and eat the food. No additional miracles are necessary.

That is charming indeed.

I find myself quietly frustrated by people who are convinced that God is involved in the minutiae of their lives; what they should eat, wear, choose to watch on TV, etc. I am satisfied with the idea of a loving heavenly parent sung about by Bette Midler in the movie Beaches. “God is watching us — from a distance.”