I can’t understand why people get upset over this stuff. They think they are doing a good thing. What harm are they doing?
It doesn’t affect but injures the living for it’s insult of co-opting a loved ones memory with an appendix.
Personally, you wanna pray over my ashes, which will be compressed into golfballs and sent sailing into the ocean... be my guest.Luke 16
So if you were a Jewish mortician who got a network of worldwide morticians to circumcize dead people...to make them supposed afterlife Jews...why, they think they are doing a "good thing"...would they not? And who would know? (Therefore, in your book, what harm would they be doing?)
Harm:
Millions of Mormon man-hours -- Genealogy -- is rooted in baptizing dead people. Now, genealogy for "roots-searching" is fine, but when "genealogy as ultra time consuming religious obsession" takes over, wouldn't you say it might be good to consider what the apostle Paul has to say about this?
Or do you all just ignore the New Testament?
...stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths AND ENDLESS GENEALOGIES. THESE PROMOTE CONTROVERSIES RATHER THAN GOD'S WORK—which is by faith." (1 Timothy 1:3-4)
But AVOID FOOLISH CONTROVERSIES AND GENEALOGIES...because these are unprofitable and useless. (Titus 3:9)
(Paul says it's useless, provokes controversy, and is not faith-promoting. So even the controversy ignited by protagonist Mormons is distracting)
As for the question, "Does this 'hurt' anyone?" yes it does -- in two prominent ways...
(a) It hurts the living because over-focusing on the dead distracts what we can do in relating to & in caring for the living!.
We can all agree that Jesus talked much about serving the living -- the poor, the widow, the orphan, the lost sheep, right?
So what would happen in the world if all religions obsessed with the dead as much as Mormons do? Obviously, we're not going to "end poverty in our lifetime" (Jesus said, "the poor will always be with you")...but since countless LDS leaders have called the Mormon people self-saviors and saviors of the dead, it's not only a distraction from the poor but delusional.
(b) Since countless LDS leaders have called the Mormon people self-saviors and saviors of the dead, it's not only a distraction from the poor but delusional.
We already have a "Savior of the world" -- we don't need millions more trying to bump Jesus out of that limelight:
* And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be THE Savior of the world. (1 John 4:14)
* They said to the woman, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is THE Savior of the world." (John 4:42)
Last time I looked in the Bible, Christians were supposed to object to idolatry in their culture. And if you don't think that Mormons make baptizers of the dead "saviors" who rival Jesus Christ, you haven't read their leaders' comments on baptism of the dead. For those citations, see: Are Mormon people LITERAL saviors of dead Jews, others? (The OTHER World Series: Vanity)
If you're a Christian or Jew and you conclude "this doesn't harm anyone," you're catering to idolatry -- substitute "saviors" pretending to act in his name.
No harm. They do believe that Princess Diana can decline the invitation in the great beyond. Kind of like Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on your door, but your dead.
My mother was deeply opposed to mormonism for personal reasons; anything and everything about mormons upset her greatly. My mother died recently and think it is highly likely a mormon grandchild will baptize her into it. That thought upsets and distresses me more than I can say, knowing how she felt about that cult, and especially knowing how seriously she took her Catholic faith. It is a terrible act of dishonor; it defiles her memory and her Christian witness. I feel very angry, hopeless, and helpless about it. No one should ever be dead dunked into that heretical cult without the agreement of that person’s close family.
Progressives.
Just pissing a lot of folks off, is all.
Dead zombies chase down live people;
Live MORMONs chase down dead people.