Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Don't they have something more important to fuss about

Jews continue to complain about the fact that Mormons are posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims into the Mormon faith. I've never understood this one. If I were a religious Jew, as opposed merely to being Jewish, and did not believe in the Mormon faith, why would their baptism have any more meaning to me than having someone stand up in the middle of a corn field, wave a wand and pronounce the magic incantation "abracadabra"? It seems to me that the Jews, by protesting Mormon acts, are reflecting an insecurity about their own religion that I find very disturbing. And it's all well and good to claim that, "Well, it's disrespectful of the Mormons to do that," but it's not really. From the Mormom perspective, I would tend to believe that it's very respectful, since, according to their own lights, they're giving these poor Holocaust victims a second chance at the Mormon paradise. Of course, I'm one of those people who's never minded proselytizers. I mean, I admit to going out of my way to avoid them, since I consider it a waste of my time -- I'm not about to be converted -- but I've always considered it a very kind impulse that someone wants to take his time to save my soul. The fact that I don't agree with his path to Heaven doesn't mean I don't appreciate the effort. So color me as someone bewildered by the effort some Jews are making to protest an act they must believe is religiously meaningless, and that I believe is motivated by kinder impulses.