That's a really good question. The doctrine of "Forever Families" is to at least some degree dependent on the notion that you want to hang out with these people forever. And we all know that there are some families that are best kept at a very great distance.
I'm lucky that I have a wonderful family that I wouldn't mind hanging out with forever. :)
JS lived at a time and in a place where families lost kids to disease and accident frequently. Moreover families would move to a new location, split up and move on again. To such people the notion that the various members could be together was probably highly appealing. You can see that, for instance, in Joseph's statements about his brother Alvin.
Since families were often fragmented back then, it is probable that JS and the others weren't fully aware of what family life would be like in a stable and sedentary world such as ours. In any case, I think the key is that today people think of eternity as families as they SHOULD be--you know, when God fixes everything.
It's really when one gives up hope for the "divine repair" scenario that eternal families start to sound like a curse rather than a blessing.
Not all families are dysfunctional and sometimes even dysfunctional families are better than being alone.
"JS lived at a time and in a place where families lost kids to disease and accident frequently."
Not just kids but other family members too. In the age before antibiotics and emergency medical care people died from things we think are quite minor. My grandfather lost his first wife and in childbirth when they were both about 20 years old. His second wife, my grandmother died when I was very young. I used to work with him on his farm in the summers picking fruit when I was a teenager and he told me lots of stories about his first love. It gave me a sense of how much emotional attachement affects us through out our lives. Using the "families will be together forever" message was very powerful in attracting converts. I saw this time and time again on my Mission where it offered hope to people to be with their loved ones again.
Hedning, what I don't get is that if your potential converts were already Christian, their belief is that they would be with their families in heaven anyway. Mormonism puts a little extra shine on it, but it's essentially the same concept.
There are three or four sentences in the new testament from the apostles that makes it sound like in Heaven there are no family ties and marriages do not continue. These are played up by many literal biblical christians and the mormons teach that is the necessity of the restoration of all of the keys of the priesthood sealing ordinances etc. One Lutheran lay minister told me that he was basically taught we will be one big happy family of eunachs (sp?).
Yes, and most Christians believe that they will see their family members without benefit of the earthly family structure. Mormonism promises that you will exist in familial intimacy not in a sterile "community."
It's a powerful idea although one that lends itself to all sorts of bad things in this life.
It all started when Alvin died. Joe found a way to turn a lemon into lemonade. At our expense of course. Telling non-Mormon families that they won’t be together in heaven is pretty disgusting. I don’t know why Mormons worry about Hell. Nothing could be worse than suffering their own religion.
I think it was a ponzi scheme to keep the maximum number of people paying tithing and bowing to priesthood authority.
At age 10, it was game-over for me and my family. I had no shortage of primary teachers flat-out telling me that my family would not be together in the life after. My two older siblings realized that church life was not worth living and the mormon gossip council (ward council) had dutifully noted the obscene gestures of priesthood reinforcement (the bishopric and youth leaders came unannounced and received the international peace sign and a very direct f--- you).
The church never cared for singles and the divorced. And anyone else who failed to marry and pop-out kids.
It actually sickened me the myopicness of charity that existed in mormonism but eventually brainwashed cattle blame the victim of this neglect and humiliation.
It is their fault for getting offended when they are clearly inferior people who will never inherit our kingdom because they didn't earn it like having as much sex as we did, covenantly speaking of course. Serious what sort of delusion does it to take to think one did anything to help the earth by doing something they wanted to anyway?
As a never-mo (just interested in cults), I've always been baffled by that teaching. The absolute last people I'd want to spend eternity with are my family. I know most people like their families at least a little more than I do -- probably a lot more -- but damn. Way to alienate me from the minute the missionaries open their brainwashed little mouths.
The "forever family" concept appeals to many parents who have recently lost children. At their most vulnerable, these bereaved parents' critical thinking skills may not be at an optimal level. I've never lost a child, but I can imagine how losing one might lead a parent down a crazy path with the hope of regaining the lost child in some way.
Because 1 + 1 = 2 (or 1) and so on and so forth, where the end result is called a family.
Then people think if it's good for this life, why not extend it, and call it "forever" meaning whatever abstract guess, imagination, or superstition is believed to follow this mortal life.
It's real easy: like all else LDS it is make-believe.
How many former missionaries here used the old advertising "guilt" tactic where you basically said "You mean you don't love your family enough to want to be with them IN HEAVEN?"