TL;DR: Worthiness to use priesthood is a threat that someone will die if you are bad. Was threatened; am horrified at what I used to believe.

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My family recently had a health scare, wherein my oldest (4) went undiagnosed (we hesitated ---just a few hours--- to take her to an emergency room) with type 1 diabetes until she was deep in keto-acidosis. She was hospitalized and came out of it fine (though she hates the constant shots).

It was a terrifying thing watching her get more and more ...dry, her body spending all the fluid it could trying to get rid of the building glucose in her blood. When I'd look at her with concern etched in my face, she'd croak "I'm okay, daddy."

It still kinda screws me up.

Got a phone call from my TBM brother, which started out comfort and ended up

"Come back! Come back to priesthood blessings! Come back where it's safe! ...

"I know you have problems with pornography or whatever-

(I stopped him here and snarled that my not attending had nothing to do with pornography, but stopped short of asking how he dare assume that)

Then it got *really* uncomfortable:

"What if that little girl had died?"

A few more hours would have done that, see? If she'd fallen asleep and we'd decided to let her be, for instance. It was a traumatic thing, and so far all of the "you got her here, she's safe, you made reasonable decisions based on what information you had" from the nurses has not been quite enough to make the shrieking insecurities quiet.

But now I'm on the phone with my well meaning (?) Brother who is threatening that without a return to active church attendance, my kids are going to die.

I get that he's sincerely worried, but think about that: a God who gives freedom, but will assassinate your family if you disobey? A magic any man can wield, but only if he stands in a particular building for 3 hours on a Sunday?

I told him he was welcome to give her all the blessings he wanted to, cited the doctrine about how time and distance were no object, and hung up.

My wife points out that I did this same thing at her birth: she was sick (APGAR 2) and I blessed her while she was resuscitated. If she'd not recovered, I'd have blamed my sinful nature *for killing her*

Now, I would just be very sad, and hope to move on when the sadness stopped; but, if I had a tragedy like this now, I'd be openly blamed by my family for not preventing it.

What a horrible thing to teach.

Like those choose your own adventure books back in the day, so it is with Mormon logic and dealing with life's uncertainties. If you were still going to church, and something tragic would happen to any one, the explain atom is that God needs them on the other side. But if you are not in the ideological 'right place' all bets are off and your degree of faithlessness is the root of all tragedy and sorrow that becomes to those around you.

And speaking of blessings, how many blessings anymore are "arise and be whole" blessings? The blessee is "blessed" that the doctor will be inspired to know how to fix them. What kind of exercise is that? Why not just ask the doctor if he wants a blessing? Or bless the doctors as they are graduating or when they start their practice?

I'm glad she got the care she needed in time.

It is a horrible thing to teach and a horrible way to be indoctrinated and programmed to assign blame.

cheezus Wrote:
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> If you were still going to church, and something tragic
> would happen to any one, the explain atom is that God
> needs them on the other side.

But even that doesn't always work. Our Sunday school teacher used to tell us how true the Mormon church was and why it was so important to do what we are told we should do.

That all went out the window when her young RM son was killed in an automobile accident when driving back to BYU. She completely weirded out and could never understand how "god could have ever done that to her".

Pardon my spell checker from earlier....


That I think is a normal human reaction to deal with the grief of losing a loved one. When it is subjective, the canned explainations ring hollow or untrue. A less affected party has the luxury of finding the root cause or a dismissive explanation to a tragedy or maybe a distracting reason to an event causing heartache. It probably isn't just Mormonism that does this, but Mormonism has come up with some crazy reasoning behind confirmation biased canned responses. Sometimes it is like playing a game with my 6 year old son. The rules changed with each turn to ensure his victory. The rules in the Morg members head are geared to find the win for the faithful always and loss to the unfaithful...always.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2016 11:33AM by cheezus.

I am so glad your little one is doing much better! And I imagine I would have done exactly what you did in getting her to the ER. Try not to beat yourself up.

As to the horrible teaching, it seems really hateful, too. It's a chance for the believer to show hatred to the unbeliever under the guise of "being concerned." What's the word? Oh yeah, passive aggression. It's not helpful, at all. In fact, it is harmful and degrading. Now that we know better, we do better.

Best wishes in her recovery and long term care. I have a friend who has Type I and it is an uphill battle.

All will die; bad things happen to good people, bad people and all in between. There are no exemptions, but charlatans succeed in selling invisible exemptions. Those who believe that they have purchased* exemptions must blame victims in order to hold onto the invisible product - it's the only way to do so, said the charlatan. He said that even better exemptions are available, but the buyer must keep buying them to keep the original ones fresh.

The buyers try to re-sell to others not to harm, but to bolster their own invisible purchases. They can never stop doing this, lest their purchases vanish into vapor. They wrap it up in altruism to hide the ugly fact of this, most especially from themselves. They simply cannot afford to care if it is harmful to others.


*time, money, freedom, proselytizing (pro sell it izing)

Shame on your brother for trying to scare you. Thankfully, I think you know that this illness had nothing to do with anything about the mormon church. If blessings help, it's because of the hope and emotion of the participants. There's no value in the words other than that.

Good luck with this journey. I've worked with several diabetic children who have all adjusted well, especially with caring parents like you. I'd keep her away from your brother until and unless he settles down. I wouldn't want him to alarm her.