RockSlider wrote: Things are good, I only posted here because of how ludicrous the whole Sealing/Exaltation deal is, if only one can step back and see it for what it is (fear based control).
Not only is Sealing/Exaltation fear based, but the entire system of modern day Mormonism. Failure to obey = punishment, even a minor indiscretion like drinking coffee can keep you from being with your family forever. Who believes in a system like this? Or in a God who would create/sustain such a system?
Joseph Smith would not recognize the modern day church with its emphasis on obedience, its leaders dressed like businessmen, its temples doing only bloodline ordinances, its monotonous endless useless meetings and assignments and so on. In fact he would see this as a modern-day version of the great and spacious building.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
To me, temple rites and rituals are just the magic rituals that Joseph and others practiced to find his buried treasure. Still, those treasures would keep .....slipping ......away.
I remember I used to irritate the fire out of Pahoran by referring to LDS doctrine as "involuntary forced divorce". He snarkily would reply that it was OUR choice to be divided eternally from our families. Nothing involuntary about it.
But the fact is that people can't force themselves to believe in LDS doctrine. Once you reach the tipping point of "gee, this is obvious, man-made nonsense", there's rarely any turning back. So if by some bizarre twist of an irrational reality/god, the LDS church is actually true, I have, indeed, been involuntarily divorced from the people I love the most.
I sometimes wonder how my father took this to his deathbed, believing that half of his children would be separated from him for eternity. That would have tormented him. So I comfort myself with the hope that he, like my mother, liberalized his beliefs enough to allow us to be together in the next life, despite my disbelief. I'm not sure how she rationalizes that with LDS doctrine, which she still seems to believe, but she does, so I ain't pushing it.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
I want to say that reading this makes me feel very sad.
Here is my question.
How could anyone possibly believe this:
Matthew 11:30 (KJV)
30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
And synthesize it with this:
RockSlider wrote:I recently wrote an essay for my children, the following is extracted from that showing the choices I left my wife/children and my consequences for my apostasy from the Church
Wife's choices:
1. Stay with me in hope that I will repent and we still make the 7th heaven. 2. Divorce me and find another worthy priesthood holder that will get her to the 7th heaven. 3. Stay with me for mortality and become another man’s wife after death a. If only wife, 3rd or 4th heaven based on the man’s worthiness b. If plural wife, 5th to 7th heaven based on who will take her. 4. Stay with me for mortality and decide to not become another man’s wife a. Relegated to 3rd heaven (servants to the higher heavens).
Children's situation (items 1:1 from above list) 1. We are all together as a family in the 7th heaven 2. You become sealed to the other man and are all together as a family in the 7th heaven 3. You become sealed to the other man and are all together as a family a. In 3rd or 4th heaven just your mom. b. In 5th to 7th heaven lots of mothers 4. You will be with your mother, not as a family but co-servants to those in higher heavens.
My consequences:
1. Separated for eternity from his mortal wife whom he loves 2. Separated for eternity from his children whom he loves. 3. Separated for eternity from his grandchildren whom he loves. 4. Resurrected but stripped of his reproductive organs. 5. Stripped of normal human sexual desires and left with the other sexless masses of the Terrestrial Kingdom
Not only is the threat of lost prosperity and family in this life, but throughout eternity is at stake. Surely my weakness and apostasy merits this.
Whats not to love about this religion?
?
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
RockSlider wrote:I recently wrote an essay for my children, the following is extracted from that showing the choices I left my wife/children and my consequences for my apostasy from the Church
Wife's choices:
1. Stay with me in hope that I will repent and we still make the 7th heaven. 2. Divorce me and find another worthy priesthood holder that will get her to the 7th heaven. 3. Stay with me for mortality and become another man’s wife after death a. If only wife, 3rd or 4th heaven based on the man’s worthiness b. If plural wife, 5th to 7th heaven based on who will take her. 4. Stay with me for mortality and decide to not become another man’s wife a. Relegated to 3rd heaven (servants to the higher heavens).
Children's situation (items 1:1 from above list) 1. We are all together as a family in the 7th heaven 2. You become sealed to the other man and are all together as a family in the 7th heaven 3. You become sealed to the other man and are all together as a family a. In 3rd or 4th heaven just your mom. b. In 5th to 7th heaven lots of mothers 4. You will be with your mother, not as a family but co-servants to those in higher heavens.
My consequences:
1. Separated for eternity from his mortal wife whom he loves 2. Separated for eternity from his children whom he loves. 3. Separated for eternity from his grandchildren whom he loves. 4. Resurrected but stripped of his reproductive organs. 5. Stripped of normal human sexual desires and left with the other sexless masses of the Terrestrial Kingdom
Not only is the threat of lost prosperity and family in this life, but throughout eternity is at stake. Surely my weakness and apostasy merits this.
Whats not to love about this religion?
Other possibility:
1. You come to Christ, are born again, and lead your whole family to Christ. After death, you all are present with the Lord.
1. You come to Christ, are born again, and lead your whole family to Christ. After death, you all are present with the Lord.
2. You die in battle, and have a 50/50 shot of ending in Valhalla and becoming an einherjar (although the somewhat consolation prize of Fólkvangr wouldn’t be terrible either).
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski
1. You come to Christ, are born again, and lead your whole family to Christ. After death, you all are present with the Lord.
2. You don't come to Christ, and He leaves you and your children to burn in Hell forever because He loves you.
3. You don't believe in all that nonsense and you and your family enjoy Sunday activities while everyone else acts insanely in a church.
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.