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I met a very spiritual YW in the mission that was terrified of getting her PB. We teach that the tribe of Ephraim was given the responsibility for proclaiming the gospel. She had her heart set on being a missionary and was scared that she might be of some other tribe. Fortunately, my companion was of the tribe of Dan!
😮 That helped allay her concerns.
DoubtingTom wrote:
I’m wondering if PB will ever go away. They seem to be either so generic as to be meaningless or so specific as to be unlikeley to be fulfilled. Being a skeptic, I am inclined to believe that they are not truly inspired but come from the patriarch. And I don’t think declaring lineage has as much meaning today as it did in the early days of the church. I guess I just don’t really see the point.But supplanting a PB with blessings coming from the father – now that could be much more meaningful!
I think the problem is that they end up too much as an order to serve a mission, do this, that and the other…
But I do really like the idea of them. Someone said to me before I got mine that it was personal scripture. I agree… it doesn’t matter if mine is like unto another’s… it’s still uniquely given to me in certain respects.
They are a great source of comfort to those who believe in them. Not so much to those who don’t.
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
Old Timer wrote:
They are a great source of comfort to those who believe in them.Not so much to those who don’t.
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.
I don’t think it’s that simple.
Believers sometimes break themselves against what they think are commandments from God in their PBs. Moving from one category to the other is really hard, especially when a person remains a believer in other ways. PBs are a part of a complicated web of interactions with the Church that is really difficult to disentangle when you have to.
My lesbian/bi daughter takes great comfort from hers. I think in some ways she needed essentially God himself to tell her her worth. But it comes at a cost: it’s moved her toward orthodoxy, encouraged her to marry a man in the temple (i.e. it’s messing with her head a bit), and she’ll have a very hard time separating the positive message from the messenger if her orthodoxy makes her unhappy and she figures that out. It’ll make figuring that out harder, too.
I understand how accepting that simple explanation can help an unbeliever come to terms with the Church giving out (as an unbeliever would see it) horoscopes. It’s basically how I’ve come to terms with mine. I can’t adopt that point of view wholeheartedly, though, because I don’t think it’s true, and I need to keep my eyes open for my daughter’s sake.
I do appreciate the reminder that PBs are often a net positive for people who believe in them. My daughter’s might even be a net positive at present.
But at least we don’t have to pay for them anymore! Pay for them? I know we sold the BoM in the early church… But that seems odd to sell a blessing. Are you talking just about the printed copy? On my mission, I decided to get a copy of John Tanner’s PB (I’m a direct descendant). After a couple of days of deciphering 19th century cursive, I realized that his PB was extremely vague and says basically nothing. It’s also way shorter than mine.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchal_blessinghttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchal_blessing” class=”bbcode_url”> Quote:According to historian D. Michael Quinn, patriarchs were paid in the early years of the LDS Church. The practice of paying patriarchs diminished in the 20th century and was officially ended in 1943. “‘Both the Presiding Patriarch and local stake patriarchs charged a fee. In the 1840s the fee was $1 per patriarchal blessing at Nauvoo; by the end of the nineteenth century it had increased to $2 per blessing. Joseph Smith Sr. gave patriarchal blessings without payment of a fee, but would not record them. ‘Uncle’ John Smith commented that he “lived very poor ever since we left Kirtland Ohio” (from January 1838 until January 1844). Then his nephew, Joseph Smith, ordained him a patriarch ‘through which office I obtained a comfortable living.’ “….Patriarchal blessing fees ended in 1902, although patriarchs were allowed to accept unsolicited donations. Not until 1943 did church authorities prohibit patriarchs from accepting gratuities for giving blessings.”[2]
So there are people alive that might have at least “tipped” the patriarch.
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