Reducing Costs

My brother and I spent most of the day playing Magic: the Gathering. In Magic, just about every card you could play has a mana cost relative to the power of its effect. For example, if you want to summon a large, powerful dinosaur, you will have to pay a lot of mana.

Usually.

There are some cards that reduce the mana costs of others, such as Knight of the Stampede's effect "Dinosaur spells you cast cost (2) less to cast", and some cards have effects that reduce their own cost, such as the effect of Ghalta, Primal Hunger: "Ghalta, Primal Hunter costs (X) less to cast, where X is the total power of creatures you control." Normally, Ghalta would cost twelve mana to cast, but with the help of Knight of the Stampede and a few other creatures, he could cost as little as two, giving you a very powerful dinosaur at an unbelievably low cost.

I don't think God would let us get away with anything like that in real life.

In the Gospel, each blessing has a commandment associated with it. The greater the blessing, the more we have to do to earn it. If we want the benefit of the blessing, we have to pay the cost associated with it, and there aren't any tricks that will let us get great blessings at lower costs. Each blessing we get from God has to be earned in full.

Thankfully, some blessings come cheap, and we earn them by doing things that we were just going to do anyway, like being nice to other people and praying occasionally. Other blessings, like those we learn about in the Temple, are much greater and carry greater costs. There are no tricks or loopholes that will make earning those blessings any easier. We can't reduce the costs of those blessings. We have to actually earn them.

In a way, I'm thankful for this. Yes, it can be difficult to qualify for certain blessings, and it can be frustrating that God can't/doesn't cut us a little slack from time to time, but I'm thankful that God is just and that His requirements aren't arbitrarily tougher or easier based on His mood. God is fair. His requirements are fair. And the requirements He has set for His blessings will remain fair, no matter how badly we would like to reduce them.