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Back to the question of the post: I do not think we can buy blessings, but I do believe strongly we can be “blessed” as a result of our actions and mindsets. That applies to life, generally, not religion, specifically.
Old Timer wrote:
Back to the question of the post:I do not think we can buy blessings, but I do believe strongly we can be “blessed” as a result of our actions and mindsets. That applies to life, generally, not religion, specifically.
Kind of. I do point out above that if you do bad, some of the bad things which occur will be of your own making. The reverse is true – some of the good things which occur will be of your making if you do good.
I have had a few experiences I chalk up to divine blessings, but I believe more “blessings” are natural cause-and-effect than we tend to realize or want to believe. Old Timer wrote:
I have had a few experiences I chalk up to divine blessings, but I believe more “blessings” are natural cause-and-effect than we tend to realize or want to believe.
I know of some things that could have been “blessings” or divine intervention in my life and the lives of others close to me as well. It’s really my own biases that keep me from firmly stating these things are blessings. Still, as I look around my small town of about 350 residents with two empty nest member couples (and one very hardcore inactive lady) I ask myself are any of us more or less blessed than anyone else? It’s pretty hard for me to see much of a difference in any of us, Catholic, Protestant, JW, NR, or atheist. We’re pretty much average Joe’s making our way in the world today giving it everything we’ve got.
Old Timer wrote:
I just don’t think it is valid to use the Lord’s Prayer to criticize the idea of asking for blessings in prayers. I think that approach requires a heaping spoonful of distortion with which I personally am not comfortable.
I wasn’t criticizing. I was pointing out a possible explanation for the inconsistency between 1) the lack of begged-for personal blessings I’ve observed in my own life, and 2) the fact that Jesus tells us to pray for things.
This is how my friend reconciles the inconsistency: Jesus might have meant that blessings are for groups rather than individuals, and it’s up to the group to pass them on. FWIW, his experience is similar to mine, though in his faith crisis he lost belief in the teachings of a provincial fundamentalist Christian church, and somehow ended up as full-time clergy.
I’d actually rather the thread picked up on the bit about Job, though. I think Satan makes a keen point in that story. It happens to be the positive version of a point atheists are fond of making when believers say that they need religion to act morally: if you need to be threatened in order to do good, then you’re not a good person. In the story of Job, Satan says that if you do good in order to get a reward, then you’re not a good person… and God doesn’t correct him, but lets him carry out his suggested experiment on Job.
Reuben wrote:
… if you need to be threatened in order to do good, then you’re not a good person. …
The person issuing the threat or the person being threatened? Or both to some degree?
We spent some time during Sunday school yesterday on the following from the Book of Moses:
Quote:…this is a cursing which I will put upon thee, except thou repent…
I stripped the quote of the greater context, but it was likewise stripped of context when presented to the class. The context really doesn’t help though. It’s all speculation but we typically bend the story to match the conclusion we want, in this case Cain equals bad because we know what comes later in the story. I’ll bend the story a different direction.
Cain worked in agriculture, Abel worked in livestock. Both gave sacrifices from their respective vocations in an attempt to please the lord. The lord wasn’t happy with Cain’s sacrifice. Cain worked hard to produce his sacrifice and was legitimately confused when it was rejected. The lord then showed up, told Cain what a bad attitude he had, told him he was the father of Satan’s lies, told him he was Perdition and was always a bad seed, and threatened him with a curse if he didn’t shape up… which he couldn’t anyway because at this point the lord is running Cain into the ground, turning him into a self-fulfilled prophecy because the story needs a bad guy. And for all we know, from Cain’s perspective the lord was being unappreciative of something that Cain had sacrificed in order to please the lord.
So the moral. Be careful in how you obey, lest you guess wrong about what the lord wants and you end up upsetting him through what you interpret to be obedience?
Cain: Merry Christmas dad, I bought you a new car.
Lord: Thou wicked and slothful servant, knowest not that I have a great number of children? I needest a minivan. Cursings. A curse and a pox upon thee and thy car. Thou art the absolute worst of mine children. And now thou poutest at mine rebuking and and recoil at mine fickle nature? Knowest thou what, thy name is now Perdition. That’s right, Perdition. Ponderethize on that! [gets in the new car and drives off]
On my commute I sometimes listen to Catholic radio. This morning’s mass had the James 1 as the scripture. They didn’t do the whole chapter, just the first part – but it clearly applies to me starting in verse 6: Quote:But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
So there you have it, I can’t buy blessings through prayer anyway because I am double minded and unstable (which is probably what some members of my ward think as well) and shouldn’t expect to receive anything. Fortunately for me, I don’t expect to receive anything, but at least I now know why.
So ….. 1) Everyone has good things that could be termed blessings. 3) Some good things happen randomly. Others are the natural result of good choices and dedication. 2) An individual believing in blessings will likely begin to look around their life and reframe/reinterpret good things as heavenly blessings. 3) In order to expect to receive blessings through prayer the believing mind (and therefore the strong potential for confirmation bias) is a prerequisite. I posit that the believing mind is its own reward in that it will start to identify blessings and hopefully increase a sense of gratitude for the positive things in life.
Cain and Abel is an interesting story for a variety of reasons. * Does it actually hide a human sacrifice? We have the story of Abraham and Isaac as an open and admitted human sacrifice, but which is turned down. Was Cain actually sacrificing his brother in the original story to make up for his failure otherwise?
* It is the story of the hunter/herder vs the agriculturalist, or perhaps the hunter-gatherer vs the settled existence.
Roy wrote:
So ….. 1) Everyone has good things that could be termed blessings. 3) Some good things happen randomly. Others are the natural result of good choices and dedication. 2) An individual believing in blessings will likely begin to look around their life and reframe/reinterpret good things as heavenly blessings. 3) In order to expect to receive blessings through prayer the believing mind (and therefore the strong potential for confirmation bias) is a prerequisite.I posit that the believing mind is its own reward in that it will start to identify blessings and hopefully increase a sense of gratitude for the positive things in life.
1) To some extent, but some more than others.
3(!)) Random, yes. But good choices definitely affect our lives to some extent.
2) Depends on the mindset. I believe in blessings but my paranoia and pessimism make them hard for me to see sometimes.
DarkJedi wrote:
So there you have it, I can’t buy blessings through prayer anyway because I am double minded and unstable (which is probably what some members of my ward think as well) and shouldn’t expect to receive anything. Fortunately for me, I don’t expect to receive anything, but at least I now know why.
Isn’t that a catch-22?! When promised blessings don’t come, it’s always the recipient’s fault for not believing hard enough. God must work contrary to the nature in this case. Nature doesn’t care one wit whether you believe in it or not.
And the truth is, we all have doubts on some level or another. I think it’s rather silly for God to bless or curse us depending on our “belief” in the supernatural, over our belief in virtue or right-action.
Many of those who don’t believe in the supernatural are often very cut off from nature in my experience. It leads to a very sterile worldview in many cases. SamBee wrote:
Many of those who don’t believe in the supernatural are often very cut off from nature in my experience. It leads to a very sterile worldview in many cases.
Very off-topic, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all. It greatly depends on the person, but I’d say it’s more likely the inverse is true.
I find this a lot. Some of them even struggle with metaphor in music & literature. But literalism is the curse of our age – we have turned into machines. DarkJedi wrote:
So what are your thoughts? Can we “buy” blessings by obedience?
I skimmed the replies and my thought may take this thread a different direction. DJ, if this isn’t where you’re headed feel free to ignore or delete.
From a literal perspective, I think the answer is “yes” based pm the the way LDS treat tithing and using a literal interpretation of the word “buy”. We cannot be baptized, receive the Melchizedek Priesthood, or go to the temple without paying tithing. One may argue that not everyone earns an income, and therefore doesn’t have to buy anything, but I argue that’s a minority. One may also argue that it’s not about “buying” anything and rather that it’s about obedience – but that argument can apply so broadly to most commandments that it implies the only valid reason to obey is to show obedience.
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