Like I mentioned in Part 1, at the dinner table, my Dad (the LDS/Mormon) and I (I wasn't Baptist, at this age) would go on and on about why there were 3 heavens in Mormonism. This would eventually roll into the subject of “sealing” which I explained in Part 1 as a Mormon “temple” ritual of parents and their children getting “sealed – hooked – tied – linked” together in so many words for eternal life in their eternal heaven. (I have color coded to follow easier – Me, black and Dad, blue)
Ok with that said – the conversation would go back and forth with questions of “then what?” Dad would tell me how when we go to heaven if we would be all “sealed” together we would know each other and be together. I would ask, “Why do you think we won’t know each other?” Dad would say, “I don’t know, but we just need to be sealed to make sure we can all be together up in heaven and know each other.” “Don’t you want to know me as your Father in Heaven?” And I would ask “How do you know we will all go to the same heaven (being there are 3) and if we don’t –then what?” I don’t know. Then I would say something like “Dad, do you think you’re going to have your own little “house on the prairie” up there – you’re own little cloud where we will all sit and be together like a family homestead here and just go visit other people’s clouds?” Kind of, he would reply. And then I would say “Dad, if God is our ‘Father in Heaven’ what am I to call you – Father #1 or Father #2 - Because God is our Father when we get to heaven – we are his children according to the Bible.”
My Dad would begin to get very flustered at this point – because even he had to admit it didn’t make much sense. I would also ask “Now while you’re setting up our home and our family – how are “you” going to be doing this when you’re NOT at our home (our cloud, so to speak)?” Then he would say, “What do you mean I won’t be there?” That’s when I would say, “Weren’t you ‘sealed’ to your Mother and Father?” and he would say “yes” and then I would ask him this questions “Then how do you expect to be on our ‘cloud’ if you are to be on their cloud?” Pass the bread…. He would say!
I mean to me it seems this a system of “absentee” Fathers or Mothers who will have been (sealed) to be with their families and can’t possibly set up their own families – blah, blah, blah, blah - Get the point here? And answer me this “while we are doing all this stuff – What is God doing?
Then I would get a response like this “You ask to many questions!” – I was a questioning kid I must admit and I still ask many questions but I have always felt that if things ring true – there are answers - Don’t you? This was just another thing that never rang true. It wasn’t in the Bible and it was just “Weird.” I wanted heaven to be a special place that God has prepared for us and where we would be “His children” and we would be there to be with “Him” and if He has his “own cloud” that’s the one I want to be on – Don’t you?
