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I posted this originally on MAD in hopes of getting a descent answer since the question lies beneath a believers paradigm yet I don't seem to have gotten a very good answer yet, so I'm going to try to look at it from an apostates perspective.

Our Elder's Quorum lesson really bothered me today. The lesson was great and really like the Brother that gave it, but at the same time it brought up some very difficult and contradictory ideas.

The story he told goes like this:

This brother had seizures when he was an infant. He received a blessing that stated, "If he (the infant) would dedicate his life to God's service, God would heal him." The infant grew up to be an obedient and somewhat successful youth. He had money to go on a mission, was morally qualified, and would soon turn 19. When asked by the SP if he would go he replied, "I should, but I'm dating this girl and not sure if I want to go." The young man prayed about it and he said he Jesus in his minds eye at judgment day. Jesus asked why he did not serve a mission. The young man did not have a good answer. Jesus stated, "Just as I restored your faculties, so can I make your health as it was before."

I've often wondered about this idea of bargaining with the Lord when we get sick. I've seen people get very active in Church when they get sick in hopes that God will heal them, maybe quicker because of their increased obedience.

My question is whether or not this thinking is correct or if it is even healthy to think this way. In my experience God seems very unpredictable in who He heals and who He allows to suffer. So my question is, "Is it true? Does God bargain with people on health cases like this?" Is it good to step up our obedience in times of trial in hopes that God will be more likely to help us, or does God consider the issues separate?

Is this just a way of getting inside the heads of young men and putting more pressure on them to serve? Go on your mission or you'll be back on your way to getting half your brain cut out. The fairness of it doesn't add up. On the one hand LDS/Christianity seem to want to appease converts and tell them that they're worthy of everything people who worked and sacrificed in Church for all their life, yet on the other hand they want to threaten the current members with blessings or cursings if they don't do the job well. It just doesn't add up to me, and I've sadly come to the conclusion that these beliefs were simply made up for one purpose alone, filling the pughs, tithing envelopes etc. It has nothing to do with truth or helping people cope with life's challenges.

Jesus stated, "Just as I restored your faculties, so can I make your health as it was before."

What a prick you make Jesus out to be. That's no Savior of mankind talking. That's a man hoping no one looks behind the curtain. Jesus wouldn't say that.

Hold on a second Harmony. I was just retelling the story, and yes it bothered me that Jesus would do this. That's why I brought it to the boards. I wasn't sure I liked it either.

I would have probably agreed with the lesson a few years ago. I thought I felt impressed to give priesthood blessings to people that contained if/then statements like that several times. I had a debilitating back problem while serving a mission that I thought just kept me humbler. I think all in all, it did.

"I give unto men weaknesses that they may be humble.." That pretty much should answer your question.

This one is a little more sobering:

"For behold, the Lord hath said: I will not succor my people in the day of their transgression; but I will hedge up their ways that they prosper not: and their doings shall be as a stumbling block before them." Mosiah 7:29

If that doesn't pin down the doctrine here's a couple more that I penned into the footnotes over the years:

Hel 12:3
D&C 122:7
D&C 84:58
D&C 101:1
D&C 103:1-4
Alma 4:3
Alma 32:6
D&C 104:78
Mosiah 2:36
Luke 12:48
Story of Jonah

I used to teach this principle by drawing a typical highway on the black board. I explained the department of transportation was required only to maintain the road itself and a little of the shoulder. Sometimes they would put up guardrails for the idiots, sometimes not. The further you veered off, the more on your own you'd be - trees, boulders, squirrels, ditches, cliffs - all become your hood ornaments. It's easy to picture. Since most of us drive in the real world, it makes common sense to keep the wheels on the pavement.

The only added strangeness is that God's DOT has enough time on their hands to work on the periphery - pushing stumbling blocks in front of your off road adventure like boulders, ditches, cactus, shark infested swamps, cliffs, mail boxes etc., pedestrians. I would think there would be enough crap out there without having to rearrange it. He even prepared a fish..... for Jonah.

So is it subtle force or free agency? I don't know, but maybe that's why the current talk from the GA's now omits the word "free".

Since I've become permanently inactive, there's a little part of me that says the other shoe is going to drop anytime. The rest of me is saying, that if something goes wrong, well, maybe that's JUST LIFE.

It's just

more fear,

more guilt,

more pay, pray and obey!

I don't even think it has to be antiMormon to obey for other reasons. I just get uncomfortable when we start attaching obedience to temporal happenings since the relationship between them doesn't seem fully elucidated.

ajax18 wrote:Hold on a second Harmony. I was just retelling the story, and yes it bothered me that Jesus would do this. That's why I brought it to the boards. I wasn't sure I liked it either.

There's your answer, ajax. It bothered you. That should tell you all you need to know. Why did it bother you? Because Jesus, the one I know anyway, wouldn't say that, wouldn't do that. That Jesus is an invention of a mind that not only doens't know Christ, but actively refuses to gain any knowledge.

I'd hate to judge him that harshly. Most of what he preached in that lesson was beautiful gospel and the class was very uplifting. I even felt close to the man since we're both southern rednecks and probably related. Yet when people start talking about their obedience to God being rewarded or cursed in a tangible temporal fashion I get uncomfortable because it it does happen, it seems to happen in a very unpredictable manner.

My wife was diagnosed with MS.

We called on our home teacher, who is a great man, to asist in giving her a blessing to heal her, well during the prayer before the blessing, all of us in the room received a revelation that we should give the blessing, and God would honor it in staying the disease and keeping it at bay, but he would not remove it, and that we should live up to our temple covenants and it would remain at bay.

All of us had that same impression.

Gaz

Gazelam wrote:My wife was diagnosed with MS.

We called on our home teacher, who is a great man, to asist in giving her a blessing to heal her, well during the prayer before the blessing, all of us in the room received a revelation that we should give the blessing, and God would honor it in staying the disease and keeping it at bay, but he would not remove it, and that we should live up to our temple covenants and it would remain at bay.

All of us had that same impression.

Gaz

So if all or one of you fail to live up to your temple covenants it will directly affect the health and comfort (and in the case of MS, life) of your dear wife?

I am reminded of the experience of one of my family members who, for years, was required to pay a portion of his shop rent to the mob (the real mob). They determined whether he was fullfilling his end of their extortion. Because of his loyalty and conviction, our family and livelyhood remained secure. Yet, oddly enough, I feel no particular sense of gratitude to those men so bent on our well being.

I have no doubt you all had the impression you speak of. In all soberness, I am incapable of comprehending that God would set my health contingent upon another's faithfulness - not even necessarily my own.

The second article of faith comes to mind...