Blixa wrote:I don't think you'll find anything in the Book of Mormon that will speak to this, barrel. If you haven't already noticed there is a difference between early Joseph Smith (Book of Mormon) and late Joseph Smith (everything else). There are plenty of contradictory elements between the two bodies of his writings. He made it up as he went along, or perhaps he only decided to produce a full-blown religious organization after the success he had getting people to believe in the plates; this would explain why the "two halves" aren't tightly joined.
I agree with you that most standard issue christian sects imagine the afterlife as a place where one will be reunited with friends and loved ones. The difference for the LDS is that the afterlife is imagined as an endless cycle of gods producing spirit families, testing them with planetary trials, exalting them to start the whole thing over again. I think it is partly this that gave rise to the obsession with lineage that sealing is about. It also, I think, has roots in some of the ideas recently discussed on several threads here, that different lineages, bloodlines etc, are more righteous and have higher status. It also ties in with the racial ideas that I think run through Mormonism like the notion that when you are baptized, endowed, etc., given your tribe, your blood literally changes to that "tribe blood"---you become on a kind of biological level non-Gentile (ok, I actually need help fleshing this one out. Anyone give me some sources for it, so I can think/write more?).
I didn't realize that the "tribe blood" or family lines were of such import. I've actually been thinking of the early LDS and it seems to me that perhaps one of the most troubling things to me was the hierarchy. I suppose there's a "mainstream" Christian in me somewhere because on the face of this it seems backwards to what Christianity taught, or what I always believed it to be. I can actually understand how some mainstream Christians would be aghast to believe that any other Christian denomination would say that God essentially judges us by our family names. That just doesn't make sense when you look at what Christ taught.
Where did the idea of man becoming God and couples creating spirits in heaven originate?
That's the "theological" side as it were. The practical/cultural side is what other posters have been detailing: the stress it puts on parents and marriage partners if anyone should "fall away." As Gaz quotes, not only are individuals judged, but we are also judged as families. Thus, you supposedly endanger your family's salvation/exaltation if you apostasize (though there are also ways this is contradicted too, through sealings and other beliefs).
I read what Gaz wrote and didn't understand it apparently. I'll go back and reread it after I post this.