I have had a few experiences recently that made me wonder how God manages our faith and blessings. It is easy for me to imagine that he runs us like we would run little people in a game of "SimPersonal Life."
An easy case would be if we need a blessing and fast for it. By fasting or doing good deeds we accumulate potential blessing points. If you are asking for an answer to whom you should marry, it would cost you 50 potential blessing points. If you want to cure a physical ill, it would cost significantly more, say 150 potential blessing points.
Sounds easy right? When you involve faith, others and others' faith it becomes complicated. For example, if you have a lot of faith it will lower the physical ill potential blessing points requirement to 125. If others have faith it can lower that amount some more. Joseph Smith said that your faith to be healed when receiving a blessing is more powerful than your faith to heal when giving one. So if person A needs a blessing and they have X amount of faith it will lower their needed total 30 points. If person B needs the same blessing and person A gives them the blessing with the same X amount of faith, it only lowers the needed point total by 20.
To make things even more difficult, what happens when you need that healing blessing, everybody comes together and you only totaled 149 points when you needed 150? Do you get a partial blessing or is it all or nothing?
I imagine that things do work similar to this, but on a much more complex level such as throwing in things like do you need the faith promoting experience, will it help you carry out something else in your life that God needs you to do, etc.? Although I have never conceived it in this way before, my lifelong wish has been to understand God's scoring system and what point tallies I need for the various blessing I wish I could get. I think if I knew that one blessing required 500 points, I wouldn't even try. On the other hand, if I knew that I was short just a few points on another blessing I would have tried a littler harder instead of giving up with a hopeless frustration that I never got an answer. Life would be a lot more manageable that way.
An easy case would be if we need a blessing and fast for it. By fasting or doing good deeds we accumulate potential blessing points. If you are asking for an answer to whom you should marry, it would cost you 50 potential blessing points. If you want to cure a physical ill, it would cost significantly more, say 150 potential blessing points.
Sounds easy right? When you involve faith, others and others' faith it becomes complicated. For example, if you have a lot of faith it will lower the physical ill potential blessing points requirement to 125. If others have faith it can lower that amount some more. Joseph Smith said that your faith to be healed when receiving a blessing is more powerful than your faith to heal when giving one. So if person A needs a blessing and they have X amount of faith it will lower their needed total 30 points. If person B needs the same blessing and person A gives them the blessing with the same X amount of faith, it only lowers the needed point total by 20.
To make things even more difficult, what happens when you need that healing blessing, everybody comes together and you only totaled 149 points when you needed 150? Do you get a partial blessing or is it all or nothing?
I imagine that things do work similar to this, but on a much more complex level such as throwing in things like do you need the faith promoting experience, will it help you carry out something else in your life that God needs you to do, etc.? Although I have never conceived it in this way before, my lifelong wish has been to understand God's scoring system and what point tallies I need for the various blessing I wish I could get. I think if I knew that one blessing required 500 points, I wouldn't even try. On the other hand, if I knew that I was short just a few points on another blessing I would have tried a littler harder instead of giving up with a hopeless frustration that I never got an answer. Life would be a lot more manageable that way.
2 comments:
Hey Carson,
I guess you maynot recall the parable of the dimes that I shared with you in bariloche? Well lets just say if you need a buck and all you got is a dime, the lord makes up the difference. a few prerequisites: faith, belief, deserving, the lord has to want it for you. (reminds me of Janice Joplin and a mercedes benz)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-GFqhCq2HA
E Wells
I remember the story. Thanks for your comments, and were's my mercedes? ;-)
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