Any-Street

@bluebell @Kenngo1969 @manol @let’s roll Thank you, everyone, for your replies to my post. I truly appreciate it. This has given me some good info to think on. Just to give some more back story, I am fully expecting my son to not want a blessing. He really dislikes the church. He thinks that it's most likely not true and said that even if it is true then he doesn't want to live with God because God does things that he is very strongly opposed to (assuming that what the church teaches matches reality). The biggest one is that the church teaches this (this is a direct quote): This means that someone who is deeply in love with someone of the same gender and chooses to marry that person and they live a life full of joy and do good things is not only sinning (because they acted on their feelings of same gender attraction) but they can never be exalted unless they split up with the person they love so deeply. My son finds this deeply troubling and repulsive. There are other things like this that trouble my son. He has been consuming content that is against the church and he plans to remove his name from the church's records the second he turns 18. So hopefully you have a better idea of my son's position. This is what makes me wonder if it's even appropriate to offer a blessing in the first place if he is of this mindset and has no faith in Jesus, nor a desire to have faith in Jesus.

I know school doesn't start back up for a couple months but I'm thinking ahead. My son (who is in high school) only attends church because I've asked that he attend. I hope that something someone says in church someday will reach him in a way that I haven't been able to. He believes that Jesus was a good person but is not the Son of God. He doesn't take the sacrament. Each year on the night before the first day of school, I ask my kids if they want a father's blessing and I give a blessing to whichever ones say they want one. I expect that my son will decline this year, but I'm wondering if I should even offer it to him at all given that he doesn't believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus Himself showed that faith is a prerequisite to miracles. See Matthew 9:27-29. See also Ether 12:12. Imagine you asked your child if they wanted a father's blessing and they said yes. Then you ask "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" and the child said "No. It's the opposite. I believe that is a false statement." Would you proceed with the blessing? For instance, maybe they want it just because it's what they are accustomed to or they feel obligated or something.