If I am going to love like Christ, it can only be His love through me.

Wow. I will remember this quote, Blake. This is me. And I believe that it is because I am of an altogether different species than God (please see my engagement with some of your writings here).

Concerning your repudiation of individual salvation, I agree. In John 3, I see the direct involvement of all three members of the Trinity. But I don’t see how any of the apostles were instrumental, yea even necessary in an absolute sense for the imputation of righteousness to others by efficacious grace.

To thrust man into some kind of community role in the work of salvation is to unfairly demand of them an unconditional love that they are simply unable to produce.

Second, what work for the dead presupposes is that our individual exaltation is integrally related to the salvation and exaltation of all others — thus “individual salvation” is an oxymormon. That happens to be true. What is at issue is the relationships we have. Work for the dead is the recognition and ritualization of that simple fact. That is why I stated that salvation all alone in heaven would be hell. Work for the dead is a way of recognizing that our salvation is never done individually or alone and that our efforts to enter into relationship requires us to recognize that such relationships must be formed beginning in the here and now. You may see it differently, but that is of little moment.

Finally, your statement “those who have no connnection to the deceased” is precisely the assumption that work for the dead challenges since it gives us some connection to the deceases. It is precisely the fact that such work creates connections where there was not one previously that the work takes on its meaning of love. So I suggest that your assertion that it depends on such a presupposition of no connection is false.

So here is my challenge: explain how we could be saved all alone if salvation consists in being in relationship with others — all others who are willing to be in such a relationship? Salvation in heaven all alone is hell. We can remedy that by seeking to enter into relationship by offering a gift of love by our service here.

The dog cannot comprehend the shot, but man can, and should, comprehend the absurdities and irrationalities of its own conjurings.

Taking the sacrament is a personal witness unto Christ, and an expression of worship and love for the Redeemer – a relationship between the worshiper and God.

Prayer is a communication between an individual and God. Sometimes things are asked for, and third parties invoked, but it is essentially a personal dialogue.

You can call Temple work for dead people “gift-giving”, but it pre-supposes that a ritual done off a computerized list by those who have no connection to the deceased is required for third-party souls to be eternally saved in the afterlife.

[Edited]

If the answer is no, why would that make a religion strange? If the entire purpose of the religion is to teach us how to love one another, and ordinances for the dead are the best way to teach us pure love, then it seems to be the opposite of strange. It seems sublime.

Did I miss something in your post, or did you answer your question?

If the answer is “yes”, then we have one very strange God.

If the answer is “no”, then we have one very strange religion.

The demand that we must be baptized to be saved, as section 76 clearly states and Jon 3:16 less clarly so, is not based on logic or common sense. Either God has commanded baptism as the mode to enter into a covenant relationship with him or he hasn’t. That isn’t something proven by logic or moral considerations. It is simply a question of fact: has God in fact so commanded? If one believes that God has so commanded, and one seeks a relationship with God, then baptism for the dead makes eminent sense and doing it as a means of opening the doors to salvation is a work of love par excellence. But for one who doesn’t see that or believe that, it is still understandable that perhaps we do work for the dead because in this way we express a pure love. So this observation is meant to be an expression that even a non-LDS may grasp. They may be led to see that our efforts are neither irrational nor an affront, but an offering of love to them.

The problem I have with this is that, unless we rein in our fantastical theology a bit, one is made to feel as if mortal life were in a giant fish bowl. How in the world do we learn to offer an offering in righteousness a la Kierkegaard with all our ancestors eyes on us?

I find the idea terrifying.