The Fourth Reich

One of the most beautiful practices of The Church of Jesus Christ is that of performing ordinances for the deceased, by proxy. Latter-day Saints believe that baptism is essential to salvation, and that other temple ordinances (e.g. endowment, sealing, etc.) are essential to exaltation. We also believe that, since God is just, absolutely everyone will have the opportunity to accept those ordinances. A just God, for example, would not damn one of His beloved children just because that child was unlucky enough to be born in, say, eighth-century China, and go his entire life without even hearing the name of Jesus Christ.

Because this practice is so beautiful to us, it confuses us to no end when people react so adversely to it. An extreme example of this occurred in the late 20th century, when a Holocaust-survivors group objected to somebody having submitted the names of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims for proxy baptism. The Church’s response was to issue an official apology for the actions of this/these unnamed member(s), explaining that members are counseled to only submit the names of their own relatives for proxy work. The Church also purged the victims’ names from the database, an olive branch to the Jewish community, and reiterated the counsel to its members.

Of course, people will be people, and people—whether knowingly or otherwise—continued to submit the names of Holocaust victims for temple work. Perhaps these victims were their own relatives, in which case I’d call it a gray area; perhaps they weren’t, but the people were somehow ignorant of Church polity. Regardless of the reason, it happened, and people continued to rant and rave about it—and the Church continued to put more and more measures in place, to prevent it.

The most recent complaint came, earlier this month, when someone noticed that a few Holocaust victims, including the family of Elie Wiesel and the parents of Simon Wiesenthal, had been added to the Church-owned genealogical database, FamilySearch. There is no indication that the Wiesels’ ordinances were performed, mind you; some random person, somewhere on Earth, simply entered them into an online database. (The Wiesenthals’ ordinances were indeed performed.) And because of this horrific sin, some Jewish groups are once again denouncing the Church of Jesus Christ for both the doctrine and its practice, leading the Church to once again issue a public statement on the subject.

The Church’s statement is great, and I applaud it for approaching the subject so gently and lovingly. However, I’d like to issue a public statement of my own:

For those who have such a problem with Holocaust victims (or anyone, really) being given the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, let’s consider the possibilities:

1) There is no afterlife. If that be the case, the proxy ordinances are worthless. If the ordinances are worthless, they’re not hurting anybody. You, on the other hand, are hurting us considerably by making a mockery of our doctrines. Please stop.

2) There is an afterlife, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not the true Church of God. If this be the case, the ordinances are invalid. If the ordinances are invalid, they’re still not hurting anybody. See above.

3) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true Church of God, but these people don’t want to be members of it. If this be the case, there’s nothing to worry about. The ordinances are only valid if the individual accepts them, and since they’ve been rejected, they are equally invalid. See above.

4) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true Church of God, and these people do want to be members of it. If this be the case, the ordinances have been accepted and are totally valid, but you’re causing these poor souls irreperable damage by forcing the Church to negate them. Put simply, you’re indefinitely prolonging the torture of these poor people who, in my humble opinion, have already suffered much more than enough.

Let’s face it: if all this temple stuff is just a load of crap, then nobody’s ever going to consider these people Christians just because some deluded Latter-day Saints made a misguided attempt to help them. If, however, the Church and its ordinances are truly of Divine origin—and I invite you to learn for yourself, if they are—then the misguided acts of the Third Reich are nothing compared to your own. I know this is going to sound harsh, but perhaps it will put it into perspective: at least the Nazis only killed their physical bodies.

Please think about it.