Last Sunday, I taught the EQ lesson on salvation for the dead. \u00a0We covered all of the usual ground: \u00a0Joseph Smith’s personal sadness at Alvin’s funeral where the preacher informs the family that Alvin is going to Hell; the various statements critical of the then-popular idea among New England Protestants that the unbaptized would be condemned en masse (Jack, I believe that many modern Protestant faiths give much more flexibility on this concept — is that correct?); the shoemaker story designed to highlight the artificial line between the two groups; and so on. \u00a0I’ve heard all of this a dozen times in Sunday school or EQ.<\/p>\n
But from there, I nudged the class in a different direction, an idea that I had been wondering about. \u00a0Given that church members (1) reject the idea of damnation for the untaught, and (2) believe that baptism is necessary for salvation, it is clear that some form of work-around is necessary. \u00a0But is there any reason why the work-around should take the form that it does?<\/p>\n
After all, the existing work-around — research family member’s name, turn it all in, do a whole series of ordinances (baptism, confirmation, endowment, sealing) individually — has some potential disadvantages. \u00a0It is very labor intensive, requiring member participation on a broad level at every stage of the process. \u00a0It is also inefficient. \u00a0Our stake family history specialist told me last year that duplication rates are as high as 80% in some districts — that is, four of the five people you do temple work for, already had it done. \u00a0The church is trying to crack down on duplication, but has had only mixed success so far, and that’s with modern technology. \u00a0The duplication rate prior to the computer age was even higher. \u00a0(You read critics saying “Hitler was baptized five times” or the like — but it turns out that, prior to computers, a *lot* of people were baptized five or ten or twenty-seven times.) \u00a0Also, the existing system has built in blind spots. \u00a0It depends on genealogy and good records. \u00a0Absent those records, it is literally impossible to do temple work for one’s relatives. \u00a0For instance, my ancestors on the Hawaiian side are completely unknown after just a few generations. \u00a0Our temple work is a patchwork quilt, with missing spots all over the place.<\/p>\n
All of these — labor intensiveness, duplication, blind spots — are potential weaknesses of the current model.<\/p>\n
And other models exist which could potentially ameliorate those issues. \u00a0The most obvious counter-example is Moroni 8. \u00a0We don’t worry about little children, they don’t need baptism at all. \u00a0They have been granted a group waiver of sorts. \u00a0God makes the rules. \u00a0Couldn’t God simply extend the Moroni 8 rule to the untaught? \u00a0There’s no reason to think that conceptually, He couldn’t. \u00a0An omnipotent God has already issued a group waiver for one group on fairness grounds, so why not another?<\/p>\n
Or, He could make the process more efficient, less tied to one-on-one vicarious ordinances. \u00a0Why not have one church leader baptized on behalf of everyone who died without the gospel during the year 1800, another baptized on behalf of everyone who died in 1801, and so on? \u00a0Sure, it would lack the one-to-one nature of the existing system, but we’re already making a symbolic stand-in. \u00a0I don’t see any insurmountable reason God couldn’t offer that option. \u00a0It would be much more efficient — after just a few months of work, we would have given salvation to *all* of the dead.<\/p>\n
Why stick with our inefficient patchwork-quilt approach?<\/p>\n
I suggested that it may be intentional. \u00a0The current model, for all of its downsides, is intensely participatory, at the member level. \u00a0And when combined with Malachi, with Obadiah and Saviors on Mount Zion, I think this may be a feature, not a bug. \u00a0The current model isn’t just about check-the-box for a deceased person, it’s about forging a personal link with an individual member, the hearts of the children, turning to their fathers.<\/p>\n
That’s the only way that our existing model makes sense, I think. \u00a0Otherwise, God would have put in place a much more efficient system or set of rules. \u00a0Which means that the current model is not set up to optimize number-of-persons-covered or any other such metric. \u00a0Instead, it’s for . . . us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last Sunday, I taught the EQ lesson on salvation for the dead. \u00a0We covered all of the usual ground: \u00a0Joseph Smith’s personal sadness at Alvin’s funeral where the preacher informs the family that Alvin is going to Hell; the various statements critical of the then-popular idea among New England Protestants that the unbaptized would be condemned en masse (Jack, I believe that many modern Protestant faiths give much more flexibility on this concept — is that correct?); the shoemaker story designed to highlight the artificial line between the two groups; and so on. \u00a0I’ve heard all of this a dozen times in Sunday school or EQ. But from there, I nudged the class in a different direction, an idea that I had been wondering about. \u00a0Given that church members (1) reject the idea of damnation for the untaught, and (2) believe that baptism is necessary for salvation, it is clear that some form of work-around is necessary. \u00a0But is there any reason why the work-around should take the form that it does?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8802"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8807,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8802\/revisions\/8807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}