Disclaimer:
I don’t know whether this belongs in Great Debates. I hope not. I’m not interested in debating the issue, but am interested in understanding a Christian POV. For those who are not and for those Christians who don’t believe that God blesses them, please don’t attempt to refudiate anyone else’s rationale. But asking for clarification is perfectly acceptable.
My mom is a southern evangelical Christian. Often times when she blesses her meals she prays a blessing on her children. You’ll have to take my word for it, but when my mom is praying a blessing on her children, this prayer isn’t only a generic wish for well-being, but a request of God to provide material prosperity, and believing that God will follow through with the blessing. In my athiest mind, that goes against any sense of justice or fairness. I could embrace the notion of praying for her God to provide guidance to her children so that they would behave morally and so be blessed. But the notion of blessing family members regardless of how they behave is unpalatable to me. If you believe that God blesses you and your family because of your prayers, please explain it to me where I can understand the value of this. One tele-evangelist that my mother listens to is Joseph Prince. In his message today, he said (refering to the Bible) that God would bless Israel even when Israel behaved badly as long as the high priest was Godly. So, I don’t think I am misunderstanding my mother’s beliefs. In your experience, how prevalent is this belief among Christians?
I was raised Presbyterian, with a dad who was a head-elder at our church.
The logic as I understood it growing up was that you asked God to bless you–spiritually, financially, emotionally, etc.–and therefore if something good happened to you, it was a blessing.
If you didn’t notice any results–or negative results, as in something bad happened to you–it was either “not your time” or “God knows best” or a “test of faith.” It’s not for you to ask why bad things happen. You just keep praying and having faith that the light is at the end of the tunnel.
Raised Presbyterian as well. But we had a slightly different view around here.
It basically came down to “you never know.” God MAY have had a helping hand, or he may have blessed you by pointing you in the right direction and making oyu do it yourself, or maybe he didn’t bother to interfere at all and left you to fumble aorund in the dark and you made it all by yourself like a big boy!
Bad things, either big G ignored you and you screwed up, he figured it wasn’t good to help(/didn’t fit with his incredibly vague plan), or helped someone else who deserved/needed it more than you.
But asking God for a blessing was more of saying good luck, we figured if he was gonna bless you he’d do it regardless, maybe praying could draw a little extra attention to you (though I never got a straight answer on why an omniscient being needed me to flag down his attention, maybe God just wants us to man up and ask him our favor straight and up front).
I guess that “Bless you” is sort of a way of wishing someone good luck. I believe that “all things work together for the good” eventually – although there are some things that haven’t seemed to be “the good” to me. I just don’t know. It’s part of my faith.
I don’t always go with what the Bible says, but I do believe that we don’t earn our blessings. “The rain falleth upon the just and the unjust.” But in someways, I do believe in kharma. Somethings have a way of catching up with us.
Your rationale is perfectly understandable to me, as are the other responses.
I don’t remember my mother teaching this dogma (from OP) to me when I was a child. I was curious whether it was widely accepted in the Christian faith. Vaguely I recall a Bible story where God is promising some judgement upon some people (probably Israel), and either a prophet, high priest, or king pleads for God not to do it. So God basically says, “For your sake, I’ll wait till you die.” That seems to be in a similar vein as the beliefs of my mother, but seems somewhat more palatable ----the not-so-much having blessings heaped upon the wicked, but sparing pain to a loved one by putting off judgement to the ones that that faithful servant cared for. Not smiting someone might be considered a blessing, but it’s not what I usually think of as an example. I personally think of blessings as being a bit more proactive. And if God were actively blessing the wicked, it seems like it sends them the wrong message. How can they learn if they are getting positive re-enforcement for bad behaviors? Of course, God being omniscient might know that regardless of how He acts, these particular children are going to hell, so He might as well bless them for His own (i.e. my mother). I sort of understand that----it goes against my childhood teachings that God limits his knowledge ----doesn’t look up the answers in the back of the book ----and therefore freewill exists. --------not saying this is the rationale, just trying to work it out.
Non-Christian here.
To my mind, praying for anything interferes with the "Thy will be done " part of the Lord’s Prayer.
But I do feel blessed.Sometimes.
It’s possible to ask for something even while accepting that the person being asked may not do it. It’s the same way with prayer. God has the final say, but you can still make requests that may or may not fit into the big plan.
I’m United Church of Christ (No, we don’t God Damn America at our meals!)
I’d say that point of view is common among the prosperity type Gospel which is common among televangelists these days. It isn’t a common viewpoint among mainline Prostestant churches, but is more of a evangelical megachurch interpretation.
A lot of televangelists, and regrettably a lot of churches, teach that God will grant you financial prosperity if you pray for it hard enough, believe strongly enough that you’re going to get it, and in some cases, speak aloud what you want.*
Disregarding that whole can of worms for the moment - yes, I believe that God blesses me. When children’s church is over and one of the kids hugs me and thanks me - that’s a blessing. When I’m at church and the sermon is really comforting and moving - that’s a blessing. When I deliver a pizza to someone’s house and I get a whiff of honeysuckle from the bushes - that’s a blessing. IOW, it doesn’t have to be something tangible and is rarely something material. I keep waiting for God to bless me with a lottery win, but I think God has bigger fish to fry at the moment, so I don’t bug him about it.
*This is called “Speaking it into Existence” or sometimes “Name It and Claim It.” We discussed it briefly in this thread. I think it’s crap, but there you have it.
[Moderator Note]I just want to remind people that this is a poll for Christians. If you are an atheist, there is no need to report that you don’t think that God blesses you, o.k.?[/Moderator note]
