He’ll sell them shovels too. The shoves they get for free.
[QUOTE=FatBaldGuy]
Yes, it’s very different - if LDS, like other Chritian denominations, holds that you can’t enter Heaven without being baptized, then baptism is not at all like merely having someone of a different faith (or the same faith, for that matter) pray for your soul. I can’t think of a single religion that requires having strangers pray for someone’s soul in order for that person to be admitted to Heaven. Plenty of religions encourage, or even require, saying prayers for the dead or dying, but if there is a faith that holds a person’s immortal soul hostage to the acts or omissions of others, I haven’t heard of it.
As a non-Christian, with all due respect, frankly I don’t care what John, Peter, Paul, the Corinthians, or early Christians thought about baptism, or about much of anything else, for that matter. And even more frankly, I think it’s extremely insulting and condescending to assume that any non-Christian who was born since the beginning of the Common Era (particularly in Europe where Christianity is practiced all over the place, and frequently in a rather in-your-face manner, with official state churches and the like) remained a non-Christian only because they didn’t know any better. And no mainstream sect of Judaism, even the most liberal ones, believes that Jesus had any special significance, so for this purpose you can pretty much throw your New Testament arguments out the window.
And if we don’t believe that older forms of baptism have anything to do with the salvation of our mortal souls, or indeed aren’t even sure we have a mortal soul, why should we feel any differently about an LDS baptism?
Nobody is disputing that.
And nobody is going out and kidnapping Jewish people and forcing a baptism on them. The particular rite in question has a member of the LDS church performing a rite, a kind of prayer, in the belief that a person who has already died will choose to either accept the rite or reject it. So, nobody is saying any person who was not a Mormon while they were alive actually was a Mormon while they were alive.
That statement is just as presumptuous as you imagine our rite to be.
Nobody is disputing that either.
Really? I’m under the impression, the belief, that the person will either agree that the rite is necessary or will reject it out-of-hand. And that’s because I happen to belief that the spirits of the dead have the ability to make such a decision. If you do not hold to that opinion, then the entire discussion is really ridiculous, isn’t it?
So, what do you think of all those folks who pray that we LDS “come to our senses” and reject our religions while we are alive?
Interesting supposition you posit there…got any proof of it? Our belief is that the spirit of the dead person will either reject it or accept it. There is no “of course they’ll accept it” in our system.
And, yet, you purport to have the decision made for the spirit of the dead made by someone other than that spirit, don’t you?
How do you know the spirit of the dead person would disavow it? I have no way of knowing if they would accept it or reject it.
Or it’s something that brings them great joy in the afterlife. You, just as I, have no way of knowing what the dead feel.
[qutoe]It also, BTW, is also offensive to many non-LDS Christians, who believe that the sacrament of baptism cannot be performed on the dead and should not, under any circumstances, be performed on the unwilling.
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That’s because their theology is different than ours. And you might want to revisit your last ten words there. We also believe that baptism cannot be performed on the unwilling. Thus, for those who are alive, they must agree to baptism. For the dead, a living person who is willing to undergo the baptism for the spirit of the dead does so and, in our theology, the spirit of the dead person rejects it or accepts it.
Having said all that, I do agree with Eva Luna a bit. The Church should ensure that the agreement is followed completely to the letter, as the spirit of the agreement is the same as the letter of that agreement, there should be no conflict. Any LDS member who violates its should receive an appropriate level of church sanction. After all, one of the questions asked of members during their Temple Recommend interview is if they support the Church’s leaders. The Church leadership made that agreement. Violating it is not supporting the leadership.
Monty, i’m not familiar with the beliefs of the CoJCoLDS (see, i’m being polite! 
), so could you answer a couple of questions on this for me?
Where is the spirit of the dead when it is given this choice? And, should it choose to not accept the baptism, would that change their situation at all?
This particular Mormon wouldn’t mind it for a moment. After all, I take the Eleventh Article of Faith seriously:
If that person wants to say all that about me after I die, more power to them. After all, I personally believe my spirit will not accept the ceremony. If they say, though, that I was not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while I was alive, though, I would hope that my survivors would point out to them that’s not the case.
But a third person should prevent a second person from doing what that first person possibly does desire after discovering whatever it is he may have discovered in the afterlife?
I can start to answer the question for you, Revenant Threshold. The spirit of the dead is in the Spirit World. Yes, I know, sounds like a silly answer, doesn’t it? But that’s actually where we believe they are. For a full answer, I’ll get back to you quickly. I need to do some researching so I don’t give you bum gouge.
I just wanted to clarify, as a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, that this is not the viewpoint of (most) Mormons, and that it certainly is not doctrine. We are taught that:
… which we interpret to mean that a person’s personality, behaviors and beliefs will continue past death. Someone who does not believe that the Mormon Church is God’s Church in life will not be miraculously converted in death, and someone who has listened to the Mormon missionaries a dozen times and still doesn’t believe a word they say will possibly never come to believe it.
That said, there are billions of people who have never been taught the gospel (the"Mormon" gospel), and likely many who have heard of it, and disbelieved it, who may reconsider when presented with new evidence. (A person with no belief in any sort of Afterlife would undoubtedly begin to question that position if they found themselves in one).
Unfortunately, if anyone (even a single person) decides after death that the Mormon Church is right, and that they want to be a part of it, they’re out of luck. Salvation depends on baptism, a purely physical ordinance that can’t be performed in a spiritual or metaphysical world.
So Mormons on earth perform these physical ordinances in proxy for the dead. In theory, these ordinances are performed by decendants of the deceased. In practice, I’m sure many members of the church are over-zealous and submit names of people they are not related to for proxy work.
In these cases, it is not even a matter of the dead person having to refuse the ordinance. It is only valid if he makes a conscious decision to accept the ordinance. (It’s an opt-in, not an opt-out).
It’s understandable that someone’s living relatives would object to having any proxy work done for a deceased family member. It is my understanding (though I have never been involved in such a situation) that if any living relative of a deceased person whose name has been submitted objects to having the ordinances performed, they will not be.
It has been claimed in this thread that a desceased devout Jew would want absolutely nothing to do with the church in death, and would be offended by having the ordinance performed for them. While this is undoubtedly true in many instances, there are also likely many devout Jews (or persons of any other religion, or none at all) who will, upon being taught the gospel in death, become firm believers. (This possibility is demonstrated by the numerous devout Jews who have joined the church while they are still living).
The feeling of most members of the church is that it is better to risk offending the small number of people who might take offense in order to provide for the (possibly also small) number of people who wish to take advantage of the opportunity to have the ordinance performed for them. The alternative – to perform no proxy ordinances, and thus deny salvation to any who died without baptism, is the far less desirable choice.
Baptism is a sacrament, not a prayer. It’s considered a sacrament in the Mormon church no less than in other Christian denominations, and it is the merest gloss – not to mention doctrinally incorrect in all Christian faiths, including yours – to represent it as nothing more than a mere prayer. When Mormons do a baptism by proxy, they do not pray for the person, they purport to actually baptize the person. I’ll take correction on this if I am wrong, but I think we both know I’m not. It’s not like I decided to disapprove this practice without taking the time to find out what, precisely it is.
No, the LDS are purporting to subject a person after death to a Christian rite that you must be pretty damn certain they would not have agreed to while alive. The LDS thereby substitutes the judgment of its own faith – a faith never held by them – for their judgment, as best it can be ascertained by the people who knew them, their descendants and co-religionists.
I said baptism is “sacrament they do not believe in and would almost uniformly reject out of hand,” which MONTY says is “That statement is just as presumptuous as you imagine our rite to be.”
The hell? Which part of that is presumptuous? Do you deny that Jewish people do not believe in Christian sacraments, including baptism? Or do you just deny that, not believing in it, they would not subject themselves to it? How many Jews do you see lining up to be baptized while they’re alive?
It is only ridiculous to the extent that any discussion of subjective judgments is ridiculous. I certainly don’t find it so. While your faith purports to give the dead the chance to disavow the baptism, that does not and cannot change the fact that the sacrament is already performed – without their permission, and contrary to their ascertainable wishes. It is the very fact that the LDS would presume to baptize people without their consent in the first place – quite probably contrary to their wishes – that is offensive. And it cannot be cured by explaining, “Well, they can say ‘no’ later.” Your church has already ostensibly baptized them. There is no cure for that except not doing it in the first place.
I think they’re not purporting to subject to any sacrament, which is (as you ought to know) something entirely different from being prayed for. I also think that if someone was purporting to do something similar to you – say, on your behalf and in your name, disavowing your believe in LDS theology or Christian theology – you’d probably be torqued about it, even if all they did was some mere “rite” and not a major – heck, the major – Christian sacrament .
[quote]
What? The wishes of the spirits of the dead cannot be ascertained, except for asking those who lived with them and among them when alive – and granting them the courtesy of believing their faith is deep enough and sincerely enough held that it will not be abandoned after death – a courtesy the Mormons insultingly do not grant when they subject them to a Christian sacrament that those who know have very clearly notified the LDS is inappropriate and vehemently not appreciated. It is the administration of the sacrament itself that is offensive, and the LDS does not give the person any choice about whether it will be administered or not. If you intended to give them that sort of choice – to the extent you could, when the person is dead – you would try to find out whether it would be okay by asking those who knew them or knew what they believed. And when you were told it was not okay, you would honor that by not doing it.
(A) To the extent anyone can deterimine the probably reaction of someone who is dead, that determination can only be made by reference to those who knew them or knew what they believed. Those people will tell you these Jewish people do not want this and would disavow it. The only way to disregard that is to assume the dead Jew will somehow have seen the light and “know better” after death, which is – again – an insult to the depth of faith and commitment that person may have held to his or her own faith. (B) The potential to accept or reject does not and cannot vitiate the performance of the sacrament in the first place – and the performance of the sacrament is what people are objecting to.
Look, you’re either baptizing the person whose head you’re placing your hand on, or you’re baptizing the person whose name you use when you purport to baptize them. You clearly are not baptizing both. To assume that the person is willing because the (Mormon) proxy is is willing, is ridiculous. Again, as far as you can possibly ascertain, many of these people are not willing. Yet the LDS apparently baptizes some of them anyway. The honest LDS response, insofar as I can ascertain, is “Well, that’s what we believe and so we do it, sincerely believing it to be in the best interests of the dead.” And as a matter of faith, I must accept that, even though it is deeply antithetical to my own beliefs. But I don’t think there’s any question as to why an outside observer – especially a Jewish one – might find the practice highly offensive. And I don’t find the rejoinder “We don’t mean to be offensive” to be very persuasive after being told, “regardless of whether you mean to be or not, you are.” At that point, the question becomes whether you will acknowledge the offense and stop, or disregard it and continue. But if the decision of some of your coreligionists is to disregard the offense and continue the practice, I sure as shootin’ don’t have to respect them for it.
Thanks for the response, Monty, and i’m afraid i’ve thought of another question for you; when in the Spirit World, are spirits aware of the prescence of God? That is, do they just find themselves in the Spirit World, unaware that there is a alternative option, or (to use a very simply analogy) do they find themselves wandering about outside some obvious but very locked gates?
Then I guess I’m a little unsure why you would receive them as members of the LDS church, if not out of the confidence they will accept your faith. The fact that you bother to do so seems to undercut your statement that you’re not really sure if they’ll accept or not. Nobody gets in who doesn’t accept.
This is your belief, and by subjecting non-LDS – heck, non-Christians – to the sacrament of baptism, and/or confirmation into the chruch, you are substituting your belief for theirs, to the extent theirs can be known. This is offensive.
It is NOT an opt-in, or an opt-out. There’s no “opt” about it. To make this argument is to completely ignore tha factual reality of what the LDS does. The baptism is already performed. The sacrament is already, physically, administered. The confirmation is already made. There is NO option about it. How could there be? The person is dead. The only option that could conceivably come into play is if you asked permission of someone who is likely to know the wishes of the deceased. But the LDS does not ask; they just go ahead and do it.
Except, of course, it is not only strict descendants who are likely to object. It is also co-religionists who know or believe they know, if only by reputation or deeds, that a person of their faith would not want this.
A Jew who joins the LDS while living is by definition not a devout Jew. Judiaism is irreconcilable with LDS. To assume that a Jew who lead a righteous Jewish existence all his life on earth would change him mind after death is insulting to memory because it calls into question their depth of faith and commitment to their religion.
And here we have the bottom line: We know it’s offensive; we’re going to do it anyway. But I don’t have to have any more respect for this intentionally offensive behavior than I do for any other intentionally offensive behavior, even if it happens to be cloaked in the trappings of religion. And not one Mormon posting has answered my hypothetical, so I’ll ask it again:
And I’m done posting to this thread. I resolved a long time ago to not get involved in any more religious arguments on the Board. I know I will never change the mind of any LDS regarding baptism for the dead, and I guarantee you won’t change mind. I attempt to remain minimally respectful and civil regarding the sincerely held beliefs of others, and I frankly doubt my ability to do so in this case, that’s how strongly I feel about it. So I’m not sure whether I’m ahead or behind, but it’s past time to quit in either case.
See you in other threads, with other, less contentious subjects.
Actually, we call it an ordinance. And rites and ordinances of religions are prayers.
Actually we do. And the way we pray is by going through a particular ordinance.
I don’t think we both know that.
Then perhaps you’re slightly confused, especially over terminology.
No, the LDS offer something to the deceased individual and, in our theology, God accepts the deceased individual’s decision regarding accepting that offer or not.
The part that the deceased individual would “almost uniformly reject out of hand.” You and I have no actual idea what the deceased learn, if anything, on “the other side of the veil.”
No. And that’s not the point I made.
No. And that’s not the point I made.
More than zero. And I have no idea, nor do you, how many, if any, who accepted baptism after their death.
And perhaps the rite does have the permission of the person in the afterlife?
Well, we’re not actually baptizing anyone who’s alive without their consent. Nor are we digging up corpses and dunking those. We’re performing a religious rite, a type of prayer.
In our theology, the “cure” for that is already available to the deceased. They say, “No.” They say it at the time, not later
Actually, it’s not “entirely different.” Again, a rite is a kind of prayer.
If they did it while I’m still alive, I’d probably laugh at them. That’s kind of how I view those who try to pray to “save” me from my church. If they do it after I die, you already have my answer above.
Unless you believe in our theology, a theology which holds that the deceased can, and sometimes do, make decisions after they’ve discovered whatever it is to be discovered in the afterlife.
Again, you do not know, nor does anyone else, what the deceased has discovered after death. Nor does the rite concerned “subject the person to a baptism.” It is a type of prayer, which includes a baptism of a living person who is already a member of my church, to stand in for the deceased.
The ordinance is administered to a living person, a person who believes in the LdS faith. And the theology, which you are continuing to ignore, specifically states that the deceased do have a choice about it.
Probably because those living cannot know what the deceased has discovered, if anything, after death and in our theology the Lord has commanded us to go through this rite, this kind of prayer.
And they talk to the dead? Interesting.
Or it’s a recognition that the deceased have decided to convert after discovering whatever it was to be discovered after death. And since we’re not digging up corpses, the only person going through the rite in life is the LDS member in the Temple.
Then accept, as I do, the agreement as made between the Church and the Jewish leadership who made the agreement. And read what I said in my posting above about what I agreed with Eva Luna on.
Actually, the person going through the baptism is the one going through the baptism on behalf of someone else.
We do not assume that. We assume that the person either is willing or unwilling. We leave it to the dead to decide that.
While they were alive. We kind of feel that death changes some things.
Well, apparently, some of the Jewish leadership recognize that there are cases wehre there should be no offense.
And, again, I agree with the Church’s agreement and would not violate it myself as certain others have, who, as I said above, should receive Church sanctions. That agreement does provide for the practice to be stopped for certain persons. And, yet again, I shall continue to support the Church leadership by following the agreement they made.
I’m sorry you’re bowing out of this thread, Jodi. Your postings aren’t that contentious–even for Great Debates, which as we all do know does get contentious on religious issues.
Well, I haven’t read most of this thread. But I wouldn’t mind if some Jews had a post-death ceremony for me. Anyone is welcome, except no puppy-sacrificing on my grave, please.
I disagree with quite a bit that scottnic said; I think it’s a very tiny number of Mormons who are willing to offend huge numbers of Jews with the practice. It’s the official policy of the LDS Church not to do so, and people ought to obey that. Some do not. The prospect of double-checking and overseeing every single name submitted to make sure that it’s not inappropriate is too huge a project to take on; it’s an honor system, and people are supposed to be submitting their own ancestors; not Elvis, not Richard the Lion-Heart, and not random Jews. However, there are LDS people of Jewish descent with every right to do the work for their ancestors, and lately, AFAIK, most of the cases of people checking names and screaming about Jewish names has been those people.
There is no reason to go around doing this work for random members of the populace; Mormons have plenty of their own ancestors to work on, and the expectation is anyway that only a tiny fraction of the real job will ever get done before the end of the world as we know it. Why antagonize people over it? Of course, many people are antagonized by the mere concept, regardless of whether or not we’re baptizing anyone but our own families, so it’s pretty inevitable on the whole, but the LDS Church doesn’t want to start whole scandals over it.
After a short conversation with DangerDad, we have come to the joint conclusion that we would be quite honored and touched by post-humous ceremonies offering us Judaism, and we think most Mormons would be too. We would certainly attend in spirit, and send nice vibrations their way. Mormons really do still consider the Jews to be the chosen people, so that would be a unique honor.
I do quite understand why Jews are not touched and honored by our practices, and why it bugs many people, and I’ve already explained that I think those feelings should be respected. But IME, Mormons are not similarly bugged by the prospect of a role-reversal–not only by Jews, but by anyone. I would be quite touched by Catholics doing it as well. This is meant to be a simple answer to Jodi’s question, not a description of how I think others should feel about it.
There are two problems with this. The first is that this isn’t how Judaism works. No Jew is going to do this, for the simple reason that you don’t wind up in a worse place for not being Jewish. In all my years of Hebrew School and temple, my rabbi ever said, even once, that we were saved in God’s eyes more than anyone else. We had obligations, but we ddn’t get any special redemption because of it. That’s the reason you don’t see Jews in white shirts on bicycles in your neighborhood.
Second, if for 2,000 years Jews had killed Mormons for being Mormon, you might feel differently. I know Mormons haven’t done this, but you are Christian, right, and you inherit some of the history.
But my thanks for supporting the actual position of the church. You seem to get it, the church seems to, but Monty doesn’t.
Beg pardon? I completely get the position of my church. I also posted upthread–go ahead, read it–more than once that I support the position of my church on this issue. What I do not support is a misrepresentation of either the issue or the theology of my church.
One question.
On this earth, you don’t know what is true. You may have faith, but if any Christian of any stripe could prove his belief beyond a reasonable doubt, I haven’t seen it. So, let’s cut out the “We have the truth” crap. You can act for yourself as if you do, no problem there, but when you’re doing things to other people as if you had it, you’ve crossed the line.
In heaven, or wherever, we presume that the souls know more than you do. What I get from this, however, if you are right, and a non-LDS soul wants whatever it is they’d get from this ceremony, they can’t have it without the magic prayers. Why is that? Can God not save people for some reason, so you have power he doesn’t? Or Jesus if you prefer? And why do Christians consider God such a big pussy, unable to do stuff without Jesus or baptisms, like some senile old fart unable to go to the bathroom without his son’s help.
When I believed in God, and prayed directly to him, I never once got a “this deity is not in service” message, telling me to hang up and call 1-800-Jesus.
Yeah, I understand that you support the decisions of your church. I know enough kids reluctantly about to go on missions to know that this is a big thing. But your arguments show you don’t really get it. I’m being charitable and assuming the church decision is made out of a deep understanding of the offense of this policy, not out of the desire not to look like shmucks.
You have no idea of how offensive it is for you to be spitting on the graves of my ancestors like this. Many, probably most, of them went through oppression and suffered pogroms and bigotry. For you to say that we can’t know that they wouldn’t convert at the snap of a finger shows you don’t get it.
In other words, you actually do realize that I get it yet you made the public accusation that I don’t. And you did that in language not fit for GD.