Tales from the High Priest Crypt - Mysterious priesthood blessings

[Gadianton]

Yeah, these are the bet hedging variety of religious nuts. Medicine always errors on the side of caution or $, depending on how you want to look at it. With medicine so specialized, I've even wondered about referral schemes. It's hard to imagine a concern no matter how mild every being wrong. Be advised, however, that no Christian doctor is ever going to reveal the promptings from the Lord until after the follow-up happens and the referral turns out justified. Even then, such incidents will need to remain on the lowdown. If a Christian doctor is slam-dunking diagnoses on matters without evidence and is persistently right anyway, it's going to cause a big problem. The most obvious problem is that any oversight is going to notice that the data and recommendations are totally out of whack, and conclude that data is getting recorded improperly. And so these kinds of lies can only be peppered in.

It is funny though to watch these nuts speak about such ordinary things as if they are miraculous because they don't have the balls to make a real, extraordinary claim. Faith healers at least have the right idea in principle. God has been known to actually heal people, not just make recommendations that could have happened anyway. Where's the doctor who says, "this x-ray is looking bad, it's really serious. However, I'm releasing you to go home because the Lord has revealed to me that ye shall be healed by sunset."

[drumdude]

I witnessed my grandfather-in-law be sought out for blessings, cornered countless times after the 3 hour church sessions. He was a former stake presidency member and extremely well respected. I watched him give a lot of sickly Mormons very detailed blessings. I don’t recall any of them ever being in the news having made a miraculous recovery.

It’s almost like those who were really sick didn’t trust lower level priesthood members to actually heal them. Or maybe his prestige made his blessing more powerful. These are all, to my eyes, simple superstition. They might as well be praying to Zeus or Athena or the Sun. Or burying figurines of saints under their yard to help sell their house.

But from inside Mormonism it’s all warm and comforting and normal. What other religions do is mere superstition. What they do is “real.”

Or perhaps, and this is probably closest to the truth - these blessings function solely as a comfort. The more rational Catholics tell me that’s the real purpose of prayer. Not to change the will of God, not to supernaturally heal. But to comfort us while we’re down here suffering. That prayer can bring comfort is obviously undeniable.

[Gadianton]

"The story struck me because, on at least two occasions, one of them a particularly clear case, I’ve heard words come out of my mouth during priesthood healing blessings that I had not intended to say...and that were fulfilled"

The kind of language I've bolded is a good indication that this claim is getting invented on the spot. If you've performed a miracle, and you're not Jesus and so the number of miracles is less than five total, then you know exactly how many miracles you've performed. No guestimating necessary. It's not like, "Yeah, I've had diarrhea on at least two occasions in the last year, one was a particularly clear case.." where guestimating fits the context and is believable.

The "clarity" of such cases is assumed in the very claim itself. Consider: "I've been abducted by aliens twice and was probed in both cases. Of course I can describe their faces! It's the most horrifying things I've ever experienced." vs. "On at least two occasions I've been abducted by aliens and probed, one of those was a particularly clear case."

lol.

The language being used is that of going back into ones memory and looking for experiences that might fit the occasion.

"I know what it's like"

He absolutely knows what's it like to tell a good fish story.

[Gadianton]

On a humorous note, Joseph Smith's father, Joseph Smith Sr, was the church patriarch in Nauvoo. He charged $1 for patriarchal blessings; about $40 in today's money. To his credit, he didn't charge the poor.

I wonder how much the apologists charge on average?

[Doctor Scratch]

On at least two occasions, one of them a particularly clear case, I was typing at my computer when all of the sudden I wound up writing a critique of Mopologetics that I never intended. Thus, the Mopologists shouldn't feel slighted in any way, as this was clearly the Lord's hand at work!

On a humorous note, Joseph Smith's father, Joseph Smith Sr, was the church patriarch in Nauvoo. He charged $1 for patriarchal blessings; about $40 in today's money. To his credit, he didn't charge the poor.

I wonder how much the apologists charge on average?

On average? At minimum, I think they expect to be paid the equivalent of a chicken-fried steak, a 12 oz. "Kids' Size" chocolate milkshake, and a somewhat stale cinnamon roll.

[Equality]

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ncoln.html

A week or two ago, I posted here some extracts from a book by Reggie Anderson, written with the assistance of Jennifer Schuchmann. The book is entitled Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters With the Hereafter (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale Momentum, 2013). I want to mention here another passage that caught my attention, partially at least because I’ve had a couple of roughly similar experiences myself.

The book tells a story about a boy who was brought in by his mother one night while Dr. Anderson was working the overnight shift in the emergency room. The boy had bumped his head. It didn’t seem very serious at first, but then the boy began vomiting and the mother grew worried. Dr. Anderson examined him and concluded that there was nothing to be concerned about. He was intending to give her a sheet of information on head injuries and then send the two of them home.

“”Well, his scan looks good,” he heard himself say, “but I think we should send him to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital to get a CT scan of his head.”

“I had no idea why I said that. I wasn’t intending to say it, but the words slipped out of my mouth. I looked at the nurse. She stared back at me like I was a lunatic. Even the mother looked a bit confused.”

Out of the room, the nurse questioned him. The boy seemed healthy, after all. Now, they would need to find a neurosurgeon in the middle of the night, make arrangements at the Vanderbilt University hospital, order an ambulance to transport the boy and his mother to Nashville, and so forth. They would need to do lots of paperwork.

All Dr. Anderson could respond was “God just told me to send him.” To this day, he writes, he doesn’t know what prompted him to do what he did. He expected the neurosurgeon to call and say that the boy was fine.

When the neurosurgeon did call, though, four hours later, he asked why Dr. Anderson had sent the boy. Anderson responded that he didn’t know.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” the neurosurgeon said. “I just got out of surgery. We evacuated a hematoma from his brain. If you hadn’t gotten him here in time, he would have died.”

The story struck me because, on at least two occasions, one of them a particularly clear case, I’ve heard words come out of my mouth during priesthood healing blessings that I had not intended to say and that seemed decidedly imprudent and unrealistic given the realities involved . . . and that were fulfilled. I know what it’s like.

Spooky. Similar to Dan's account of water dousing, it's not subject to much examination or prodding as to the accuracy of the supernatural events described in the story.

I enjoy finding these little Mormon anecdotes. I think it makes the Mormon audience, intently listening, believe more strongly in their collective "powers." These stories are often multi-dimensional, too. It's not enough of a miracle that the priesthood blessing worked, it's also a miracle that the priesthood holder said something they couldn't have known about. Two birds with one stone. There's an implicit art to telling a good Mormon folk tale, and it has a pattern. Just like a good Mormon blessing/prayer.

I mentioned to Marcus in another thread that I wish someone would collect all of these Mormon stories (tm). They're genuinely fascinating, and a very Mormon cultural phenomena. I've seen similar stories watching documentaries about the FLDS, with very similar language around priesthood, miracles, authority, and so on. Teenage girls talk about how strongly and unmistakably they felt the spirit to be sealed to a man old enough to be their father.

These kinds of folk tales have a very powerful binding force, keeping members bound to each other and to their beliefs.

The thing about stories like these, which are so prevalent in Mormon culture, is that they really don't prove anything about foundational Mormon truth claims but the faithful devour them anyway. Every religion, every culture, has similar woo-woo stories going back as far as we can probe the historical record. The only proposition that, collectively, they can be used to support, is the vague notion that "there's something more out there that we don't yet understand" about the universe and our conscious interaction with it. Which is really not all that controversial a statement.