How many stories have we read, or talks from the pulpit have we heard about people who courageously chose to follow the spirit and join the Church knowing their families would not approve and possibly even disown them.

Church members love hearing stories like this. I remember many myself. One in particular from my mission. I had an AP that was getting ready to finish his mission and head home. Leading up to that he was paraded around every Zone and honored for his remarkable mission service, but mostly honored for the fact that he had no 'home' to go home to. His family had disowned him for joining the Church and choosing to serve a mission.

Don't get me wrong, he was a great missionary and most likely today is still a strong member and leader. However there are/were many other missionaries I served with that I can say the exact same thing about. But the fact that his family was torn/ripped apart when he chose to join and serve the Church is really what set him apart from all the other missionaries serving in my mission as 'exemplary'.


Go visit LDS.org, or ask any member what the LDS Church is all about and 90% will answer, "The Church is all about FAMILY" Family this and family that. This is what they all preach and use to convince other people and themselves that the Mormon Church is the only true Church in the world. The only Church that believes that Family is forever.....

In one hand, Family is most important while in the other hand, if your family is against the Church it's a badge of honor and courage to kick them to the curb.

Maybe the Church should add an *:

Families are Forever*

*Yes indeed. But only when it benefits the Church, otherwise Family means nothing.

You brought up one aspect of the issue, but there is another that is equally important.

The church uses the family as stick to beat its members into submission due to the fear that they have of losing the right to live together as a family forever. Saturday's Warrior, though not doctrinal, is a great example of the cultural pressure.

If there is a God, and I believe there is, and there is heaven, I believe that too, then what changes after death that would make our loved ones in this life note our loved ones in the next? The entire notion of families not being forever, if you believe in a God and an afterlife, is absurd.

Best,

Mehmet

Yes, it used to be Families Are Forever;


but then some policy wonk re-thought 'the plan' & decided it should be 'Families CAN BE Forever'.

the ever-present Ifs:


IF you DO AS WE SAY,100% of the TIME, 100% of the WAY(s) including the Black/White thinking that we use to intimidate you- 'There is a wrong and a right to every question'

and: 'Salvation is individual, Exaltation is by family' (Nelson)


and: 'the ('worthy') husband must call his wife from her grave' <else she just rots there, correct?>


and: attending the temple is required to learn the handshakes, passwords necessary for admittance to the CK

They don't even know what a family (habit) is, nor LIVING IN THE MOMENT, nor practicing charity, forgiveness, or unconditional love...

Therefore, they are living in a fantasy land, a bubble, a dark corner.

They wouldn't know family - or Jesus Christ - if it was their own.

It's MORMONISMs cross/ wedge/ stick.

M@t

My great grandfather was disinherited for marrying his Mormon wife, and then converting to her religion, by his very devout other religious minded mother.

Where's the love in that? Or in LDS disowning their own for following their hearts elsewhere?

I remember some of those. People shunned for getting baptized into TSCC. At least they won’t be shunned when they leave.

No. When they leave they will now be shunned by members and their loved ones in TSCC, and those who shunned them earlier will be gone...

Until the afterlife when you separate to your very own planets, or if family gets divided into different kingdoms for eternal shunning.

I remember a lot of screaming and yelling when my bother got baptized at 18; at the time I thought it was because my mother was upset because he was leaving the "other American church"--Episcopalianism--but now I think it was more about him telling her that he'd found the "One True Church™" and her's was wrong and corrupted. No matter that her family line had priests and bishops in the Episcopal church almost all the way back to its founding, but of course they had no priesthood authority.

Things calmed down, and later my mom became one of the first...female episcopal priests!

It separates families at the family events of weddings and baby blessings. It hijacks the family event of funerals. By demanding tithing, it sucks out the cream of family financial resources. This makes it so there is not enough money for buying needed things for family members, for the home, and for family vacations. It reduces the parents to being perpetually broke day to day, thereby causing a never ending financial tension between the husband and the wife. It teaches the wife to disresepct and be disappointed in the man, even if silently, if he does not receive or is not worthy of high callings. It causes the husband to know inwardly that he is inferior to these other men who are called to the high and mightly positions. It causes women to be locked in a world of inferiority in church and in their personal lives. While proclaiming the importance of family, the LDS church undermines it and robs it by demanding tithes and offerings which, if not paid, will doom many families to divorce. Fortunately, my wife and I resigned the church together and moved on to better things. Now the anti-family policies of the church are plain to be see.