Mormons pray for everything. They pray that the spirit will attend a meeting and make everyone feel good. They pray to find lost car keys. They pray for a sick family member. They pray to pass an exam. They pray for safety. They pray for a miracle: that their mutual activity donuts nourish and strengthen them.

If you grew up in the Mormon church, surely you have heard a prayer like this:

Dear Heavenly Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for this food. Please bless it to nourish and strengthen our bodies. Bless the missionaries. Bless the prophet with health and strength. Bless Elder Smith that he will be safe from harm’s way. Bless us to travel home safely. Bless Grandma that she can overcome cancer. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I know I’ve said countless prayers just like that in my lifetime, and heard countless others. As a missionary I dutifully studied the scriptures. One day I was studying prayer. I looked it up in the bible dictionary and it basically said that the purpose of prayer wasn’t to change the will of God, but to help one align their will with God’s will. It changed my whole perception of what prayer was from that moment on. But because of that, I then started seeing how most Mormons don’t view prayer that way.

If the purpose of prayer is to align one’s will with the will of God, where is the supplication to help one understand God’s will in the above prayer? It’s not there at all. Mormons have so many things that they need to ask God for, that after awhile they stop saying “please bless” and it just becomes a command, “bless this, bless that, bless so-and-so”. By commanding God, they’re not even attempting to align their will with His. By the church’s definition that doesn’t constitute a prayer.

This really started to bother me as I started noticing it everywhere in church, member’s homes, and even in conference, these prayers where people are commanding God to bend His will to theirs. Mormons have the audacity to command God. I tried not to, but even I fell into the routine of Mormon prayers commanding God.

The interesting thing about Mormon prayers is that whenever they appear to be answered, it’s because of the prayer and the faith of the person praying. Brother Jones was in pain so everyone prayed for him to get better. He got better. Then they bare testimony of the power of prayer and a loving Heavenly Father at the next open mic Sunday. But what does that say about their God? That He only helps people when they command him to help them? “Bless Brother Jones to overcome his kidney stones.” Boom. Wish granted. Good thing they asked, he might not have overcome it if they didn’t.

But what about when a prayer is not answered? Not enough faith was held by the person offering the prayer. It wasn’t God’s will. God’s ways are not our ways. God has a plan for all of us, this must be part of His plan. God needed Sister Young to die a slow, agonizing death battling cancer to bring the surviving family members and ward members together by serving her with warm meals and picking up her mail while she struggled for her last breath. What a heavy price to pay just to get people to pretend they like each other for awhile!

Priesthood blessings go even further than a dinner time prayer. In these blessings, everyone understands that they’re not asking, they’re telling. A priesthood holder doesn’t lay their hands on someone in the name and authority of Jesus Christ and say “please help us understand if Brother Law should live or die, and help us understand thy will.” Nope. They are there to command.

When I had children I knew it was expected that I should give them a baby blessing. This ritual sounds fine and normal and everything, but it’s really very strange in practice. A priesthood holder gets as many righteous dudes that he knows to go huddle with him around the infant in front of the church congregation. Then he, always a he, begins a prayer that sounds like a blessing. He declares he’s doing it in the name and authority of Jesus and the priesthood and that his intention is to give the baby a name (which is often redundant, the baby is usually named weeks before when he/she is born) and a blessing. They declare the name that will now be known in the records of the church and in the hearts of man, and then begin to bless the baby.

Typical blessings include variations of the following:

“I bless you to have a testimony of the restored gospel.”

“I bless you to be kind.”

“I bless you to have a desire to obey the commandments.”

“I bless you to have a good relationship with your mother.” (Dad tosses his voiceless wife a bone in the prayer, because love.)

“I bless you that you will serve an honorable full-time mission.”

“I bless you that, when the time is right, you will choose a worthy companion to marry in the temple.”

Etc, etc, etc.

Mormons believe in agency, the ability to make one’s own decisions without coercion. It’s so important, it’s the central part to the Plan of Salvation. Mormons believe that Jesus proposed to his father in the pre-existence that everyone should have agency and God said “Oh yes, let’s not forget that! Good Idea!” If a baby blessing has any power behind it, then it rejects the plan of salvation by imposing the father’s will on the baby. If it has no legitimacy, then the Priesthood holder is rejecting the plan of salvation in their attempt to impose their will on the baby. What if the baby grows up and doesn’t want to serve a mission? What if they don’t have a desire to have a testimony? What if they hate their mother and want nothing to do with her?

Obviously, the baby has no idea what blessings are being bestowed upon their head. They’re never going to remember. And unless someone records the blessing, no one else is going to remember either. It seems that the baby blessing ritual isn’t so much for the baby as it is for the father to remind everyone that he’s in charge, he’s got the mighty priesthood power, he’s flexing his spiritual muscles for all to see, and he stopped masturbating long enough to get his temple recommend back in time to publicly exercise his sacred duty (you still might not want to shake his hands in the foyer after, just to be safe).

I remember thinking as I held my babies in a huddle in front of a congregation and had to give a blessing that I didn’t want to bless my babies the way everyone else did. I thought it was ridiculous to tell a newborn that I was giving them the desire to do stuff that they could easily change their minds about as they grew older. And who was I to tell them what their future was going to be? Who was I to decide those things for them? I knew that my words weren’t going to change anything. They were just words. But a lot of baby blessings go on for ten, fifteen minutes. Both of the two blessings I gave were a minute or less. What was the point? Who was I to attempt to deprive them of their God-given agency?

In conclusion, a few questions about prayers and blessings:

If the purpose of prayer is to align one’s will with God’s will, why ask Him to “bless” anyone? Do you presume to know the will of God?

Does God bless or withhold blessings based on whether or not someone asks him to? Is that a petty God you want to worship?

Do you feel that you have the right to impose your will on God by requesting a blessing for yourself or others?

If a baby blessing isn’t binding due to the baby’s agency, what is the purpose of the baby blessing?

If a priesthood blessing isn’t binding due to “God’s will being done”, why bother attempt to save someone God’s marked for death? Did you pray to know His will or can any swinging dick proclaim they have the power through Jesus to remove a marked man’s death date from the Book of Life?

I say these things in the name of critical thinking, understanding, and three distinct ideas or reasons to really drive a point home in a closing sentence,

Brother Ghost