Tonight at the Christmas devotional, I spoke of my experience meeting an angel named Lydia. Lydia is 12 years old. I was told that she is suffering from a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer.
I was deeply moved by the faith of Lydia and her family! Though facing a monumental challenge as far as this earth life is concerned, Lydia is filled with faith. She has an eternal perspective. She knows that the Lord loves her and will care for her. Lydia’s deepest desire is to be with her family forever in the celestial realm. That includes her desire always to be with Heavenly Father and Jesus too.
Desire is important in this season of gift giving, when we are particularly mindful of the desires of those whom we love. During this season, I also invite you to consider your own desires. What are your deepest desires? What do you really want to experience and accomplish in this life? Do you really want to become more and more like Jesus Christ? Do you really want to live with Heavenly Father and with your family forever and live as He lives?
If you do, you will want to accept many gifts offered by the Lord to help you and me during our time of mortal probation. This Christmas season, let us focus on four of the gifts Jesus Christ gave to all who are willing to receive them. These gifts are:
1. He gave you and me an unlimited capacity to love. 2. The ability to forgive. 3. Repentance. 4. The promise of life everlasting.
These four gifts will bring us more and more joy as we accept them. They were made possible because Jehovah condescended to come to earth as the baby Jesus.
He was quick with the photo op, faith-promoting anecdote and social media post though.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
He doesn't want to show off? God wants her to suffer so Pres. Nelson can use her as a prop? It's all a bunch of nonsense?
You decide.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Exiled wrote:God wants her to suffer so Pres. Nelson can use her as a prop?
This the correct answer. It's why the Christian god is so deplorable and not worthy of my worship.
"Jesus gave us the gospel, but Satan invented church. It takes serious evil to formalize faith into something tedious and then pile guilt on anyone who doesn’t participate enthusiastically." - Robert Kirby
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer. -- Henry Lawson
When my sister had cancer, she received a blessing from a GA who promised her she would would live to raise her children. Guess how that turned out?
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Res Ipsa wrote:When my sister had cancer, she received a blessing from a GA who promised her she would would live to raise her children. Guess how that turned out?
Probably another false prophecy from the make believe Spooky Ghost no doubt.
Res Ipsa wrote:When my sister had cancer, she received a blessing from a GA who promised her she would would live to raise her children. Guess how that turned out?
Oh dear. I'm so sorry. Stuff like this has happened in my family so often, although not quite as brutal as your experience. The people who are hurt by stuff like this are ignored while the coincidental successes are praised to the skies. It is horrific, and so many lives are damaged.
If Mormons really believed in the power of priesthood blessings they would be conducting studies on temple prayer roll subjects to show how those whose names were on those rolls benefited.
It would be simple to do so, but they don't for the obvious reason that such prayers are no more effective than any other type of placebo based treatments
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
