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Just got back from it. My girlfriend put it this way, "I liked the idea. Just not the delivery."
I think that about summed it up for the most part. The idea of it was faith vs. fear. They used the word "will" in place of faith though. Which was fine. They're undoubtedly connected. The story is basically just a cover for the theme, and the theme was what I enjoyed.
It always comes back to faith for me. I've never been able to let the subject alone for long. Faith. It covers so much. It has so many applications. I always think back to Jesus. Was it a true story? Was it meant to teach spiritual lessons or practical ones? What is the power of confidence? And how does it correlate with the power of suggestion? The power of expectation? We all know those who say they've seen a miracle. I recall my little sister having a problem with her jaw. She had it since she was probably four years old. About a year before she left on her mission I had filled her head with dreams of faith based miracles. I derided the common method of giving blessings wherein people lay their hands on people's heads and refuse to verbally assert the cure unless "moved upon" to do so. I thought that was the easiest copout that existed for a lack of faith and/or understanding of the mechanism. I would talk about this for hours to anybody who cared to listen and I would constantly be upping the language of my blessings in the attempt to match that ideal and increase the faith of the person I was blessing. But the mechanism seemed to elude me. I was only aware of two miraculous faith healings that I had ever been involved with. Every other attempt I made had fallen short for some reason. I will share the details, since I see no reason it would be construed as boasting considering the fact that I am still at a loss as to how or why they happened.
They were both on my mission (I'll get back to my sister's story in a minute). The first, my companion and I were asked by a member (I served in Veracruz, Mexico) if we would bless him to be healed. In fact, he worded it like this, "I would like you Elders to heal me. I have a cyst on my backside that I have had numerous operations on. They've cut it out and it's grown back every time. It hurts to sit. I can't concentrate. I've had it for nearly ten years and I don't know what else to do. I feel good about you two. I think you have faith. I want you to heal me."
I didn't bother telling him it might not work. I had read something recently about faith and had been trying to approach blessings of health in a much more confident manner, and I wasn't about to express my doubts to someone like that. I simply said, "Absolutely" and laid my hands there and said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I grant you your request and command your body to be healed of this wound. Amen." He shook our hands and we left.
We didn't eat at their house again for another six weeks. We were on a rotation with the ward for Sunday afternoons. When we did come back we had forgotten all about it. We sat down to eat and halfway through the meal we noticed they weren't eating. The wife was just staring at him like she was trying to scream at him through her eyes. He finally nodded and turned to us and said, "Elders I want to tell you what happened after you gave me that blessing a few weeks ago." We stopped eating and looked up cautiously. I was a little afraid that nothing significant had happened and that he was going to ask us to do it again or call us out for having no faith or something. "After you left that day I was overcome with drowsiness and laid down for a nap. As I slept I had a dream. I was standing outside my body, watching myself sleep. A hole opened up in the ceiling and I saw a little man no more than two inches tall float down through it and land on my hip, as I always sleep on the side where I don't have the cyst. He had with him a sword and a pouch. He walked up to the top of my pants and pulled the backside of them far enough to expose the cyst. Then he took his sword and he cut it open from end to end, then reached into his pouch and pulled out some kind of dust and sprinkled it in the wound. Then he closed the wound with his hands and the wound stayed shut. I then watched as he floated back up through the hole in the ceiling and disappeared."
At this point, my companion and I were 100% weirded out. Remember, this is Mexico. These people see the virgin in the beans about once a week. "I continued sleeping for several more hours and when I woke the cyst had burst and had gotten my clothes dirty. So I took a shower to clean off. When I reached my hand over the area of the cyst the pain was gone. I went back to bed and when i woke it was like it had never even been there. It hasn't come back. So I want to thank you for having the faith to bless me the way that you did, because I know that miracles come by faith. I can't tell you how happy I have been since that day." Yeah we were shocked. We didn't talk much the rest of that day. I was just trying to figure out why this had worked when it hadn't so many other times. Was it his faith? Was it the words I used? Was it "God's will"? Was it MY faith? Was it just the faith it took to say the words I said? Was that enough in and of itself? I couldn't figure it out.
The next time was in my last area. A woman we had recently baptized stopped us in the middle of a discussion and asked us to "pray for" the little boy who was laying sick at her side. Her father was present and he was devout in another faith. He had come to check up on what his daughter had gotten into and this took guts for her to request this when he was there. We didn't hesitate. The kid had a bad fever and had been inside all day fighting it. You could feel it radiating as we put our hands on that little head and gave a simple blessing of immediate well being. We didn't muddy the water with anything like, "Your heavenly father loves you, in time you will get better, etc, blah, blah, blah" we simply told him to overcome his sickness and to go out and play as soon as he felt up to it. It was bold but it was the bravest thing I could think of to say and I thought that was probably best. We sat back down and reintroduced our lesson. About five minutes later the kid got up and ran outside to play. We didn't even notice. We were too focused on the woman's father. Her 21 year old son was the one who stopped us and pointed it out. He couldn't believe it. He got baptized the week after I finished my mission. The woman's father never joined but all her kids and her husband did. I'll never forget the look on her father's face that day.
So I told my sister those stories, and I could see that she too was struggling to find the connection and the mechanism, the hows and the whys. One day she went to my dad, who doesn't really ever like to get himself mentally prepared to give blessings but always seems to give great ones and feels incredible for days afterwards, and she told him quite simply that she was sick and tired of this pain in her jaw; that she didn't want surgery and that she saw no reason God couldn't heal her. She told him she didn't want him to argue otherwise, but that she simply wanted him to cowboy up and find it in himself to speak the words she needed spoken and nothing else. She fasted two days trying to root out the spirit of doubt in her own heart for that blessing. My dad fasted one for the same purpose; not so much to prove anything to God really, but to prove something to themselves I suppose. When he finally placed his hands on her head, he told her she was healed. He was scared to say that but he said it anyway. My sister waited a few minutes before testing the jaw despite the fact that she had felt an "odd surge" when he uttered the words. When she did the pain was gone and it has been ever since. That was four years ago.
So as I watched the Green Lantern tonight, the old thoughts about the role of faith and the limits of reality came into mind... hm. Lame movie. But what an idea.
What do you guys think? How far can faith go? Can it go like...the Matrix far? Could it at least effect the types of healings that were talked about in the New Testament? Do we see enough of them in our lives or in the lives of others? Do we not? Is it faith we lack or are we grounded in reality and these stories are hiding something from us that we don't want to see because we WANT to believe? Is there a "trick" to it? A "mechanism"? Is there a certain amount of confidence required cumulatively or individually? Can one person's lack of faith screw up the whole process? Can the person requesting the blessing be utterly faithless but be overpowered by the faith of those giving the blessing? There is something to believing and speaking according to faith despite the fear but I don't know how far it can go. I don't think I've even scratched the surface on the one hand, but on the other I wonder if there is even a surface to scratch at all or if it's just a pipe dream. I WANT to believe.
Can anyone help mine unbelief?
I think that about summed it up for the most part. The idea of it was faith vs. fear. They used the word "will" in place of faith though. Which was fine. They're undoubtedly connected. The story is basically just a cover for the theme, and the theme was what I enjoyed.
It always comes back to faith for me. I've never been able to let the subject alone for long. Faith. It covers so much. It has so many applications. I always think back to Jesus. Was it a true story? Was it meant to teach spiritual lessons or practical ones? What is the power of confidence? And how does it correlate with the power of suggestion? The power of expectation? We all know those who say they've seen a miracle. I recall my little sister having a problem with her jaw. She had it since she was probably four years old. About a year before she left on her mission I had filled her head with dreams of faith based miracles. I derided the common method of giving blessings wherein people lay their hands on people's heads and refuse to verbally assert the cure unless "moved upon" to do so. I thought that was the easiest copout that existed for a lack of faith and/or understanding of the mechanism. I would talk about this for hours to anybody who cared to listen and I would constantly be upping the language of my blessings in the attempt to match that ideal and increase the faith of the person I was blessing. But the mechanism seemed to elude me. I was only aware of two miraculous faith healings that I had ever been involved with. Every other attempt I made had fallen short for some reason. I will share the details, since I see no reason it would be construed as boasting considering the fact that I am still at a loss as to how or why they happened.
They were both on my mission (I'll get back to my sister's story in a minute). The first, my companion and I were asked by a member (I served in Veracruz, Mexico) if we would bless him to be healed. In fact, he worded it like this, "I would like you Elders to heal me. I have a cyst on my backside that I have had numerous operations on. They've cut it out and it's grown back every time. It hurts to sit. I can't concentrate. I've had it for nearly ten years and I don't know what else to do. I feel good about you two. I think you have faith. I want you to heal me."
I didn't bother telling him it might not work. I had read something recently about faith and had been trying to approach blessings of health in a much more confident manner, and I wasn't about to express my doubts to someone like that. I simply said, "Absolutely" and laid my hands there and said, "In the name of Jesus Christ, I grant you your request and command your body to be healed of this wound. Amen." He shook our hands and we left.
We didn't eat at their house again for another six weeks. We were on a rotation with the ward for Sunday afternoons. When we did come back we had forgotten all about it. We sat down to eat and halfway through the meal we noticed they weren't eating. The wife was just staring at him like she was trying to scream at him through her eyes. He finally nodded and turned to us and said, "Elders I want to tell you what happened after you gave me that blessing a few weeks ago." We stopped eating and looked up cautiously. I was a little afraid that nothing significant had happened and that he was going to ask us to do it again or call us out for having no faith or something. "After you left that day I was overcome with drowsiness and laid down for a nap. As I slept I had a dream. I was standing outside my body, watching myself sleep. A hole opened up in the ceiling and I saw a little man no more than two inches tall float down through it and land on my hip, as I always sleep on the side where I don't have the cyst. He had with him a sword and a pouch. He walked up to the top of my pants and pulled the backside of them far enough to expose the cyst. Then he took his sword and he cut it open from end to end, then reached into his pouch and pulled out some kind of dust and sprinkled it in the wound. Then he closed the wound with his hands and the wound stayed shut. I then watched as he floated back up through the hole in the ceiling and disappeared."
At this point, my companion and I were 100% weirded out. Remember, this is Mexico. These people see the virgin in the beans about once a week. "I continued sleeping for several more hours and when I woke the cyst had burst and had gotten my clothes dirty. So I took a shower to clean off. When I reached my hand over the area of the cyst the pain was gone. I went back to bed and when i woke it was like it had never even been there. It hasn't come back. So I want to thank you for having the faith to bless me the way that you did, because I know that miracles come by faith. I can't tell you how happy I have been since that day." Yeah we were shocked. We didn't talk much the rest of that day. I was just trying to figure out why this had worked when it hadn't so many other times. Was it his faith? Was it the words I used? Was it "God's will"? Was it MY faith? Was it just the faith it took to say the words I said? Was that enough in and of itself? I couldn't figure it out.
The next time was in my last area. A woman we had recently baptized stopped us in the middle of a discussion and asked us to "pray for" the little boy who was laying sick at her side. Her father was present and he was devout in another faith. He had come to check up on what his daughter had gotten into and this took guts for her to request this when he was there. We didn't hesitate. The kid had a bad fever and had been inside all day fighting it. You could feel it radiating as we put our hands on that little head and gave a simple blessing of immediate well being. We didn't muddy the water with anything like, "Your heavenly father loves you, in time you will get better, etc, blah, blah, blah" we simply told him to overcome his sickness and to go out and play as soon as he felt up to it. It was bold but it was the bravest thing I could think of to say and I thought that was probably best. We sat back down and reintroduced our lesson. About five minutes later the kid got up and ran outside to play. We didn't even notice. We were too focused on the woman's father. Her 21 year old son was the one who stopped us and pointed it out. He couldn't believe it. He got baptized the week after I finished my mission. The woman's father never joined but all her kids and her husband did. I'll never forget the look on her father's face that day.
So I told my sister those stories, and I could see that she too was struggling to find the connection and the mechanism, the hows and the whys. One day she went to my dad, who doesn't really ever like to get himself mentally prepared to give blessings but always seems to give great ones and feels incredible for days afterwards, and she told him quite simply that she was sick and tired of this pain in her jaw; that she didn't want surgery and that she saw no reason God couldn't heal her. She told him she didn't want him to argue otherwise, but that she simply wanted him to cowboy up and find it in himself to speak the words she needed spoken and nothing else. She fasted two days trying to root out the spirit of doubt in her own heart for that blessing. My dad fasted one for the same purpose; not so much to prove anything to God really, but to prove something to themselves I suppose. When he finally placed his hands on her head, he told her she was healed. He was scared to say that but he said it anyway. My sister waited a few minutes before testing the jaw despite the fact that she had felt an "odd surge" when he uttered the words. When she did the pain was gone and it has been ever since. That was four years ago.
So as I watched the Green Lantern tonight, the old thoughts about the role of faith and the limits of reality came into mind... hm. Lame movie. But what an idea.
What do you guys think? How far can faith go? Can it go like...the Matrix far? Could it at least effect the types of healings that were talked about in the New Testament? Do we see enough of them in our lives or in the lives of others? Do we not? Is it faith we lack or are we grounded in reality and these stories are hiding something from us that we don't want to see because we WANT to believe? Is there a "trick" to it? A "mechanism"? Is there a certain amount of confidence required cumulatively or individually? Can one person's lack of faith screw up the whole process? Can the person requesting the blessing be utterly faithless but be overpowered by the faith of those giving the blessing? There is something to believing and speaking according to faith despite the fear but I don't know how far it can go. I don't think I've even scratched the surface on the one hand, but on the other I wonder if there is even a surface to scratch at all or if it's just a pipe dream. I WANT to believe.
Can anyone help mine unbelief?
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