I AM Jewish, I I would absolutely HATE to learn that my parents or my grand-parents’ names could be found on a mormon nutty database and “baptized” by a bunch of crazy sectarians.
I don’t love my kin LESS, because they passed away. Their memory is dear to me; so I’m telling the mormons : leave us alone, idiots, as we leave you alone!
In their favor, they do have wonderful, and free, resources for tracing ancestors.
Does being added to some data base really reflect on the deceased? - after all, it's an action they never agreed to, but a possible benefit to future family genealogists.
I'm not a mornom, but have used their resources for tracing families. Their 60’s missions to Scotland managed to microfilm all of the church historical records. They make the results available for free, the Scottish govt. charges you “per look”.
Don’t deflect from the topic of this thread with “their method of tracing people genealogy.”
My grand-parents were very religious, I I wouldn’t want their names anywhere near mormons’, less being used in weird ceremonies.
If we all go on THAT path, why not deter bones in a graveyard and use them as baseball bats? After all they belong to dead people , so they couldn’t be harmed, right?
< /sarcasm>
Don’t deflect from the topic of this thread with “their method of tracing people genealogy.”
My grand-parents were very religious, I wouldn’t want their names anywhere near mormons’, less being used in weird ceremonies.
If we all go on THAT path, why not deter bones in a graveyard and use them as baseball bats? After all they belong to dead people , so they couldn’t be harmed, right?
< /sarcasm>
In their favor, they do have wonderful, and free, resources for tracing ancestors. Does being added to some data base really reflect on the deceased? [Az_gila]
Az_gila -- Lds do more than "genealogize" -- they ritualize...the dead in their temples.
But let's look @ genealogy for a moment -- as to what can become objectionable about it from a Biblical standpoint.
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...one of which I covered last post.
THE OTHER WAY IT HARMS?
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.
Just be wary of the information, in many cases it is not accurate. My mother is entered three times, with the information being incorrect in some fashion. I have offered to send copies of birth and death certificates and the response is “we stand by the entries”.
Even Jesus is listed with His wives and cause of death as unknown.
Yes, that's nice. And it gets to the genesis of the dispute. The Jewish community has also spent a great deal of time and effort attempting to compile the names of victims of the Holocaust, an impossible task as entire villages were destroyed. And lost of man hours and money. Institutions fought the effort tooth and nail. The Red Cross and, I believe, the German government refused access to records until the last couple years. Certainly this was done to some extent for the dead, but primarilly for the living. Survivors and relatives, could learn the fate of family members and even within the last couple years family members have been reunitied. You can imagine the surprise of the groups collecting and distributing this information, one of the early results is baptism as a Mormon.
Harmless or not isn't really the point. People are entitled to take offence, or not. What's significant is that the Church has barred the practice, and is correct in enforcing their policies. Perhaps a millenia from now reasearchers will use the baptism data to prove America was a Mormon country.