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.
“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?
They would. But a better anology perhaps would be if they only claimed to be spiritually performing circumcision. The LDS doesn’t dig folks up and then baptize their remains.
“And who would know?”
I have wondered why we know about it when some one gets “baptised.” They seem to just put up who they have “baptised” on websites as far as I can tell. What I don’t get is why they agree to stop when asked. It seems pretty cruel to deprive someone of a second chance to accept salvation just because someone living wants them to. Why would anyone agree to that?
Freegards