Anyone following me knows myself, DW and three kids left the church last year. When we realized the church was a fraud, DW and I were in a conundrum about nightly family prayers (coming to the crashing realization that we're praying to a pretend being).

We really liked the 'coming together' of our nightly prayer ritual so we, instead, decided to have 'Miles Minute.' Each one of us takes a turn and says one thing that happened during their day (mostly things we're grateful for).

Well, tonight we were joking around about it being Family Home Evening night and one of the kids started singing "Families Can be Together Forever." After a bit of messing around, our youngest says:

[son] "I don't get it Dad?"
[me] "What don't you get son?"
[son] "Which family are we going to be with?"
[me] "What do you mean?"
[son] "Well, the song says our family is going to be together forever but, what happens when I have my own family?"
[me] /huge smile!/ "DW, you've got to come in here and listen to this!"
[son] "How am I supposed to live with you guys when I have my own family, and what about your parents?"
[me] "And what about when your kids grow up and have their own families?"


I told him how, if he still believed, this question would now be something he would have to 'put up on a shelf' and not get an answer to until he dies.

It was an awesome little "ah-ha!" moment for him! :)

That's funny! I remember thinking about the exact same thing when I was a kid. Glad your son's shelf has already been taken down for him and he doesn't have to live the life of confusion that we all led.

Yes it's a strange conundrum.

If Mormons really do believe in Adam and Eve then really it's their family of billions that somehow all go to the park to play together!

"Hey, Heavenly Mother, Johnny asked me if I could come over to his world next Saturday and do some clean-up work before he has to rest on Sunday. He found some kewl dinosaur bones that Adam used on his world and he wants me to help him strategically place them so it looks like the dinosaurs died there naturally. You know, cuz he wants to mess with his kids heads like we had happen to us. Can I go...pleazzzzze?"

Congratulations. That had to make you feel so good. The kid's mind works well. Nothing wrong there.

The whole "Eternal Families" thing is such bullshit. It has nothing to do with being with your family. It is about being sealed to someone so you can become gods and create spirit babies and new planets. All Christians believe that any people who believe in Christ will be in heaven and you would be able to be with anyone you want that is also in heaven. I assume other religions also believe that all the good people will all be together in joyous bliss unless you are Buddhist and believe you won't exist anymore as an individual. The only problem is if you have a family member who is a sinner but Mormons have the same problem. If you have a family member who has extramarital sex, drinks alcohol, smokes, views pornography, doesn't pay tithing, etc. you can't be with them forever. At least in regular Christianity you just have to believe in Jesus try not to sin to be saved. They don't have such a long list that will damn your family members.

The next question is...

What if I don't like my family?

As a kid, I believed that we would all live in the same neighborhood, possibly even on the same street in the CK.