When people say they are "blessed" aren't they just claiming that God shows favoritism toward them?

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We say that in our family and that’s exactly what we mean. When I study the Bible it’s hard not to come away with that conclusion. God will bless a family down through generations. The way I imagine it is that each descendent dilutes the strength of the blessing by spreading it out, so it doesn’t last forever. If one descendent renews the deep connection with God that their ancestor had, then the blessing is strengthened with the next generation.

The theological concept of grace entails things that God provides for all of us that we don’t actually deserve. A blessing is a different animal indeed, it’s bestowed onto the particularly deserving. It’s exceedingly subtle, but blessed individuals receive fewer consequences for their bad actions and get rewarded more for actions that bring you closer to God.

A family blessing is earned by an ancestor, and descendants deserve the blessing by virtue of descending from the ancestor, but do not have to earn its fruits. If I wanted to make a covenant with God, that covenant doesn’t really make sense if it only affects me. I want to watch my children succeed too.

Think of it as a luck bonus in an RPG. Whenever you roll the dice on something, the results are nudged upwards some. The slow, but steady trickle of good favor makes you a slight bit more confident than you would be otherwise, but not enough to really affect your sense of individuality. I’m not entirely sure where my sister would be if it weren’t for her blessing.

I’ve never seen anyone cursed in the sense that Job was. People go through rough patches for spiritual reasons, or they’ll do something really displeasing to God and He’ll chastise them appropriately. And certainly senseless chaos can affect anyone. But a negative blessing, God hasn’t worked that way since the Old Testament, and then He usually did it at the level of the whole of His chosen people. Blessings last a lifetime, chastisements are very brief. Even Job was returned double of everything that the Lord took away from him.

God can be omnibenevolent and just at the same time. Justice means that people are rewarded according to their actions. Omnibenevolence means every time God takes an action, that action has an ultimately-good outcome. If God were fair then He wouldn’t be capable of being just. What makes this so is omnipotence. Humans are not omnipotent, they cannot make all of their wishes come true. So we can follow both the principles of fairness and justice.