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It is early in the morning and I am unable to sleep. I realized that as the end of the year approaches, that I have not had one single day in 2009 that I have not cried my eyes out. I know I sound dramatic, but this has so broken my heart, no, this has broken my soul. Several years ago, an extended family member on my husband’s side confessed to having been involved in incest. There were multiple problems occurring over at least two generations. A young son in the family, was removed by the State and placed in foster care. This young man was unable to have any contact with the family for three years as per court order. Not only was he himself a victim, but he had victimized his two young sisters and that is why he was removed from the home and not allowed back in the home. As he approached age 16, he was finally released from foster care and allowed to move in with his grandmother. He was registered as a “youth sex offender”. His father, who had been involved in incest put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
For years, I had labored with this family, talking to them frequently about the healing power of repentance and recovery from sexual abuse. All of this seemed to be of no avail. They would ask, “when do you think Christ is coming?” I’ll repent right before He returns. There was always “tomorrow”, “I’ll repent, I’ll just do it tomorrow”.
My former spouse insisted that all of the temple work be performed on his deceased family members after their death. Many had rejected the gospel completely in this life. But, that shouldn’t matter, as long as he could just go to the temple and perform all of their “saving ordinances” by proxy everything was going to be just fine. Sure enough, one year after the family members death, he headed straight to the Salt Lake Temple where he performed all of their temple work. They were endowed and even sealed for time and all of eternity. He would constantly preach that if one doesn’t accept the gospel in this life, some family member would surely do their temple work for them after their death. It was easy, so, so easy. Faith and repentance in this life – optional.
I struggled and still struggle with this. I simply cannot accept that temple work is done for people who lived their entire lives within walking distance of the temple. People who were baptized members of the church as children and then fell away. Now, I know that others will say that I am being very judgmental.
I am. I have had to face the bitter reality of the full ramifications of this behavior on young family members. I have loved them and counseled them to forgive, to love and to heal in Christ. I know others will say that it is for God to judge, not me. They are right. But this belief, this firm conviction that others can walk into the temple of God and perform all of the saving ordinances of the gospel for those who have lived their entire lives rejecting it has destroyed our family. Not a single member of my former spouses family has been willing to come forward in faith and work toward resolving some of these issues. Some family members are practicing polygamy illegally. Some are still practicing incest and laughing a joking about it. Are they afraid for their eternal salvation, heck no. They know that some active member will do their temple work for them after they die and they have become convinced that that will save them.
What a tender soul you must be. And what a difficult story to live with daily. Quote:For behold, this life is the time to prepare to meet God. Yeah, the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors. For behold, if ye do not improve your time in this life, behold, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
Quote:Can ye say when ye are brought to that awful crisis, “I will repent. I will return to my God?” Nay. For the same spirit which doth possess your body at the time ye depart from this mortal life, that same spirit will have power to possess your spirit in the life to come.
Has this family heard brother McConkie’s thoughts on the Second Chance Theory from his talk “The Seven Deadly Heresies”? Note the last sentence of the below was later softened for publication.
Quote:Heresy four: There are those who believe that the doctrine of salvation for the dead offers men a second chance for salvation.
I knew a man, now deceased, not a member of the Church, who was a degenerate old reprobate who found pleasure, as he supposed, in living after the manner of the world. A cigarette dangled from his lips, alcohol stenched his breath, and profane and bawdy stories defiled his lips. His moral status left much to be desired.
His wife was a member of the Church, as faithful as she could be under the circumstances. One day she said to him, “You know the Church is true; why won’t you be baptized?” He replied, “Of course I know the Church is true, but I have no intention of changing my habits in order to join it. I prefer to live the way I do. But that doesn’t worry me in the slightest. I know that as soon as I die, you will have someone go to the temple and do the work for me and everything will come out all right in the end anyway.”
He did and she did. Complete waste of time.
Being a strong universalist, I of course don’t ascribe to God the denial of second chances to anybody. I say, “To any doth he say depart?” “Nay, his hand is stretched out all the day long.” But it’s the plain gospel fact that couch potatoes don’t win marathons. We all hurt ourselves when we hurt each other.
Hugs and blessings to you.
What pain and suffering! (((hug))) Wow. I cannot even imagine.
I do think it can add insult to injury to do temple work of abusers. It sends a message to the abused that I am not so sure is healthy. The same thing happens when a living abuser is rallied around and “helped” during life while the victim is taken little notice of and told to just forgive already.
God will judge, he doesn’t need vicarious work to help him figure it out.
I think that temple work should always be thoughtful, caring and a way of honoring the dead AND the living. There is absolutely no reason to take the names of extremely abusive or murderous people through.
This is another example of those really tough unexplainable situations which makes orthodox believers’ head explode. It’s so important to the orthodox believer to be able to explain everything, that God has a perfect plan that is unchanging and transcends exception because it is all-encompassing. Which is why when these exceptional circumstances crop up it serves to shake the orthodox believers’ faith. A righteous, charitable father dies young leaving four kids under the age of 10 to a widow with no education or job prospects. A 13 year old beehive tearfully “admits” to her TBM parents that she is gay. A GA is very publicly excommunicated after infidelity.
I, too, have multi-generational incest in my family and one family member did almost 20 years. Although, not being in Utah, there is a slightly less mormon cultural influence over the whole affair. However, trying to reconcile the intensity of the damage done to my family members, with church teachings (forgiveness, priesthood authority, etc) is not possible in any orthodox paradigm. It’s nearly impossible from any paradigm period, which then begs the question, “How broad does one attempt to expand one’s perspective until it can encompass even the unexplainable?”
MWallace, I am glad you shared your deep trial with us. It does help to share our burderns. Here are my thoughts:
1. The gospel teaches that the same spirit and person we are when we die will follow us into the next life. So, thinking that ordiances for the dead will change them just like that is ridiculous. They still have to have the remorse and all the steps of repentence in order to truly change their nature. I had an experience with that in fact. My mother in law was a very difficult person who had been very cruel to me while she was alive. After she died, I was going to try to let go of my anger and do the temple work for her but I just could not bring myself to do it. So, I had some one else do it. As I was taking a walk one day before her work was to be done I had this strange feeling about her spirit. I sensed she was having a big temper tantrum and kept saying, “It’s too hard to change. Its too hard to change.” So, change is not easy whether in this life or the next. I do understand though that when we die we have more perspective as we will know ourselves from the pre-exisitence and the truth about eternity. The scriptures tell us we will be judged by our works and the desires of our hearts. If our works and desires were and are evil that is what we will reap.
2. If you look under the subject heading of Near death experiences, I share a story from a customer who had a powerful one that shows we will have to experience all the pain we have put others through if we have not repented. That is true justice to me and the only way one can understand what they did to hurt others in this life.
3. If the purpose of life is to become like Heavenly Father then we will never live with him or JC until we are like them, so only repentance and the atonement can change them.
4. My brother sexually abused my sister and I know the hell it caused her. My brother did apologize sincerely and remorsely to my sister before he died but there was so much damage done that takes time to heal.
I pray you find peace and know God is just and not let injustices slide by.
Sincerely, Bridget
This is an issue I believe NO ONE “Knows” too much about. Not leaders, not members. I don’t mean to be harsh and I’m sorry you are so restless but I couldn’t help but think … What is worse? Someone who knows they are doing “Bad” things, knows that there probably is a little more to salvation than grace and actually thinks a temple ordinance done by someone else will save them. OR the member doing the ordinance that thinks the ordinance alone will most definately “Fix” or get someone else eternal salvation. I guess I don’t get “It” anymore b/c I take it all as symbolic and not in a literal sense. What Bothers Me the Most I guess I am afraid to form any opinions on whether to do T W for Incestors or not.
I do know that in addition to being a terrible thing incest is a symptom of even greater problems. This may help explain the reason these people think they don’t have to repent in this life because somebody will do their work after they are dead. I have no documentation on this but I think that in the spirit world you still have to be worthy before you can accept—receive the work that has been done for them.
What I would like to do is share my own story. Many people completely block out any memories of the abuse that happen to them. Usually there is a family belief that accounts for this. “Íf your Mother is told about this, it will kill her.” In my case the the family belief was “ If you don’t have kids this can’t happen again.” I grew up with problems that others didn’t have, but no reason why. When I went through menopause, and felt there could be no children the memories came rushing back. Thank God for a good therapist and years of hard work I am happily married and we have lots of other things to work on.
During the time I didn’t know anything had happened to me; I went to the temple and did the work for the woman who had abused me. These are the impressions I had during that time in the temple. I felt her presence in the Endowment Room. My Mother was also there as her escort. Neither of them spoke or even managed to make direct eye contact with me. I felt her presence at the veil; she seemed very repentant but eager to have the work completed. It wasn’t until years later that I remembered what she had done to me.
The emotion I feel is eagerness to have this all explained to me at the judgment or whenever the Lord knows I am ready to understand.
Thank you so much for all of your kind responses. I will, perhaps, always struggle with this issue. My heart and soul testify of two eternal truths:
(1) we must minister to our love ones whilst they are alive on upon this earth, feed our little lamb, feed our sheep, bind up the spiritual wounds of sin whilst
we sojourn together. We are our brothers and sisters “spiritual keepers”.
(2) we must cultivate faith in Christ, faith sufficient to bring forth repentance and the fruits thereof, even the fruits of peace and salvation in this life and in
the life to come. We must not procrastinate the day of our repentance for this is the day, now is the time, here is the place.
. . . . . . . and there is no one, and no thing, not even the Lord himself who can do it for us. We must do it for ourselves.
Although I thoroughly embrace and testify of the truth of the doctrine of universal salvation wherein all mankind may be saved, I reject the “Spiritual Codependency” that deceives us into believing that we can repent for others, save others in their sins and redeem those who have rejected Christ while in the flesh.
I have always shrived to lose weight. Maintaining a healthy weight has been a lifelong struggle for me. I have been obese, then lost all of the excess weight.
How? I finally realized that now one can do this for me. This is something that I MUST do for myself. No one will exercise for me. No one will eat healthy for me. I have been given a mortal body with weaknesses so that I can learn how to overcome the temptations of the flesh. That truth was the MOST liberating knowledge of my life. Yes, others can help, instruct, teach, lend support, but I must do this for myself.
I have learned not to do for others what they can and must learn to do for themselves.
Great thoughts MWallace. I love it! One of my most fundamental beliefs goes down to the question of whether or not there is a God. Let me explain my line of logic regarding how your beliefs should govern your actions. If you are an Atheist, and you live your entire life hurting others and exalting yourself, when you die and leave this world, you will leave it a worse place than when you found it. If you live your entire life the best that you can and help others along the way and go about doing good all your days, then you will be a happier person here and now, and when you die the world will have cause to mourn because you left it a better place than you found it. If you believe in God, and you live the self-centered life, then you will have to answer for your behavior. If you believe in God, and you live a good life, then in the end, you can look forward to a reward in heaven. With regards to the incestors, the principles of faith and repentance, I’ve heard it said, are much easier to practice with a body attached to the spirit. So when we die, repentance is much harder to do. Those who die indulging in drugs, will still be addicted after they go to the Spirit World, but there are no drugs there to feed the addiction. Those who have been lascivious will still crave satisfaction without being able to get it. But those who have been self-disciplined and control their cravings and led lives of sobriety and faithfulness shall find rest to their souls because the temptation to indulge in those things will be removed along with the ability.
We are who we are, and death is like stepping through a doorway into another room. There is no escape from our personal demons except moving forward and fixing our problems. I think mercy enters the picture, what we call the atonement, in that I personally believe these days that the opportunity to make things right is open ended. There is no escape. That is justice. We face our demons when we are ready and want to. Until then, we suffer at our own hands … for what can seem like forever. ldsmaverick7, I hear ya…there are a lot of things like that which make you really stop and think about things that are said in church all the time.
I think in my crisis a year ago, I read Joseph Campbell’s book “Power of Myth” and came across Descarte’s quote:
Quote:If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
When I was brave enough to let myself doubt everything…even the existence of God, I was able to learn some incredible things because I no longer had the fear of eternal damnation to stop me from stretching my mind and my spirit.
I eventually came back to believing even more strongly that God does exist…but I have a new perspective on it now, and can better empathize with others who do not believe God exists.
So I guess I identify with your questions and how you express yourself. I don’t know if you’ll come to the same conclusions I did, I think it is a personal thing we go through. But regardless if you find similar meanings or different ones than I did, I respect you that you are brave enough to go down that path. I think it is the journey that is most valuable for us to experience, regardless of what truth you find for yourself (however you define truth).
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