thread: 2007-01-04 : Self-identification vs. Membership
On 2007-01-11, Brand Robins wrote:
Christian,
Because these are the things people want, and we pray for them so long as they are in God's plan. Only the most extreme schools ever say that you must be miserable and short in this world in order to be happy in the next. Mormonism, for example, lays claim that you can tell the value of a religion by how happy it makes you in this life as well as the next one.
Of course, I've also prayed for the opposite. More than once when I used to go around with my father the Bishop to give blessings to folks in illness and trouble we ended up giving a blessing to someone that they would pass quickly and without further pain.
My father, talking about one of those that was particularly upsetting, said something to the effect: "It isn't that God wants us to be happy now or then, he wants us to be happy period. We pray for what we think will make us happy, and he responds with what actually will."
