I've seen it happen in part member families. The member spouse convinces the non-member to submit. Often the blessor will take the opportunity during the blessing to preach to the blessee and challenge them to join up. Mormonism at its finest.
has offered to give me and mine blessings a few times. Our son has had some mental health issues, ended up with meningitis and life flighted to SLC in April. I was offered to sit next to them at church and blessings. My boss offered my son a blessing and I turned it down. I have no doubt if I asked my aunt's husband. I don't claim him as family, that he'd be willing, but I'd never do that.
Any blessing I got--3--didn't do a damn thing and in reality left me with a stupor of thought.
After I had cancer, my TBM brother tried to tell me that only his prayers had mattered. Not a "blessing" proper, but he clumsily tried to tell me about "authority" or some such, without using the word "priesthood." In other words, he tried to take credit for my survival and recovery, but after the fact.
Does anyone remember the one about the GA anointing his buddy who had been hit with shrapnel and commanding him to live?
I'm thinking Paul Humbug Dunn but could be wrong.
I do remember Dunn had a story about a soldier dying in his arms, and it turned out the guy was still alive in the 1980s.
We had an eternal investigator who always asked us for a blessing, she seemed really into the ritual, and had been blessed by elders in our district for many years, and was very creepy.
If you watch the documentary on Mark Hofmann, there's a segment where right after the third bomb goes off and severely wounds Hofmann, a passer by says he saw Hofmann was wearing garments so he blessed Hofmann and commanded Hofmann to live.
It's been a while since I saw it, but IIRC right after he says it the interviewer seems a bit incredulous, and they guy confirms that he commanded him to live, and seems to believe in his own power to do so. Just another glimpse of mormonism's weirdness...
When I was a mishi we had a door approach where we'd bless a home. Using all the theatrics and etc, we had perfect strangers crying after doing it. I believe it was lorin c dunns idea.
I personally don't see a problem if someone performs some form of spiritual blessing especially when the person receiving is on their death bed or is suffering a serious medical condition.
What harm can be done, the act may give them some peace of mind and allow them to face death with some comfort.
None of really know if there is something after we die, but we all might recall a religious teaching we heard as a child and think maybe, just maybe, there is some new life after death.