Temple Marriage

I don’t believe that only in the highest level of the CK, will families be together. Consider the following:

1. The telestial kingdom – the lowest degree of glory – is supposed to be better than this mortal life.

2. On the earth, in this mortal life, most people have families.

3. Families won’t exist in the telestial kingdom.

How on earth do you reconcile #3 with #1 and #2? I can’t. There is no way that the lesser degrees of glory are better than mortal life if everyone is alone forever. It’s like, mathematically impossible. There is only the Celestial Kingdom and outer darkness. So either, we are wrong about the other two degrees of glory, or we’re wrong about 99.99% of human families being broken up.

First of all, I don’t believe that a temple marriage (ordinance) is required to be together forever as a family. I choose to believe that God (or Jesus) will be merciful and not deny family relationships to continue beyond the grave just because of an ordinance that must be performed in a temple, either while the people are alive or after death by proxy.

Being together as families after death is a difficult concept for me to understand. I’d like to think of my wife and children being together with me, but what about their spouses and their children? Are we going to be one big happy extended family?

The aspect of this concept that I find most theologically interesting is the idea that we all have to be saved together as a network of people, not just as couples. That’s a scary proposition, but so is a lot of what Jesus was really saying. It’s definitely a challenging idea.

It was pretty much, every other church believes all righteous marriages are forever. This is the only one that believes that every otherwise wholesome, fulfilling marriage will be ripped apart if you didn’t get all the boxes checked on your life list…but somehow that’s not a punishment and you’ll still be eternally happy.

I don’t think every other church defaults to eternal families. I’ve got very long winded reasoning but I’ll spare people and keep it short. I’ve been to churches where one member believed in eternal families, another member believed that we lose our identities in the afterlife (wouldn’t even be able to recognize a family member), and yet another member believed in reincarnation (which is interesting for a member of a Christian church). Many other churches I’ve attended have a broader spectrum of belief than what I typically see in the LDS church. I believe the LDS church has a spectrum of belief as well but eternal families is one of those defining doctrines so I think there’s less variance when it comes to that subject.

I try to consider the environment in which eternal families was introduced/restored. Did the majority of churches in those days believe in eternal families? I get the impression that when it comes to eternal families the LDS church was paving the way for the rest of the world. Now here we are nearly 200 years later and the general populace is on board with the idea of eternal families. You hear the phrase “till death do you part” being replaced by “so long as your love shall last” which is very fitting.

When more and more people start believing in eternal families I can see how it begins to look like the church has created a problem that it later steps in to solve. In my opinion when introduced, the doctrine of eternal families solved a very real problem. Creating requirements to obtain the ordinance was both a way of making it more special and a way of distinguishing our marriages from marriages performed in other churches. Those things have stuck and will stick with us out of tradition so now it appears that we’ve thrown up a barrier to something the world eased its way into accepting as a given.

Just one theory among many.

Being together as families after death is a difficult concept for me to understand. I’d like to think of my wife and children being together with me, but what about their spouses and their children? Are we going to be one big happy extended family?

I think when we long for an eternal family what we really mean is that we want to be with our spouse for forever. It makes sense, who wants to lose their most intimate relationship? I’m broken when it comes to family, I don’t want to spend the eternities with my parents. Do I want to move back into my parents house right now? Nope! Then why would I want to for eternity? I project my feelings onto my own children and realize that as much as I’d love to have an eternal family where we’re all there, they will probably feel the same about me. I’ve got to let them go. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

It’s everybody, dude. We’re all related, so at Thanksgiving dinner, you’ll be cooped up with the entirety of humanity’s turkey farts.

It’s funny you mention Thanksgiving. That was my first thought when reading FaithfulSkeptic’s comment. I wouldn’t mind visiting family members on Thanksgiving. If one day is as a thousand years that means I only have to visit once every 365,000 years (366,000 years on a Leap Eternity)… but that also means Thanksgiving lasts 1000 years. Does that mean the football games last 170 years?

Oh, and good luck killing the turkey.

I am agnostic about it. I don’t know for sure if that will happen. I do know this.

1. Commitment to the eternal marriage/temple covenant can have a number of negative side effects.

a) Some women believe that if their husband is not saved in the CK, then it will hurt them — living as an angel etcetera…or not allowed at the highest level. I am not sure this is theological, but my wife has said it to me, and so have others said it in Sacrament meeting. As a result, some women will divorce their husbands (and vice-versa) if the husbands falter in their church commitment. So, that covenant can actually hurt marriages that might have otherwise survived with reasonable success.

b) The eternal family concept, with the cultural message it says about the quality of our membership, can keep people together when it might be better for them to be separated or divorced.

c) When non-member family is involved, and are stone-cold toward the church, the eternal family concept can be a disheartening part of life. It can actually weaken family relationships in some people who no longer see their family members as part of the long-game.

d) It can divide non-member families due to the one-year penalty for getting a civil marriage and then a temple marriage.

e) When people who have temple marriages get divorced, I have noticed a high proportion seem to marry non-members or stop their involvement in church. And with the tendency for Mormons to NOT engage with other religions after they leave Mormonism, this can be unfortunate.

On the other hand there are a number of positive effects

a) Hope of a better world that binds families together, creating support and family values and a strong family culture.

b) Comfort when family members die that there may be a together family in the eternities.

c) Sometimes the pressure can be healthy to keep people faithful in the church — away from alcohol, infidelity, engaging in physical abuse or influences that would make them ineligible for a TR, if this is important to them as a result of the covenant.

d) Some people find the whole experience of renewing their marriage convenants through sealings spiritually satisfying and good for their relationship.

So, I consider it a mixed bag.

Personally, I would rather we believed all family members will be together independent of the temple — with God recognizing the family relationships created when spirits enter the bodies of children at any point after conception. And that salvation and togetherness was simply based on living a “good life”.

In fact, that is my hope now — my mission call says that “God will honor the good in my life”. I hope that extends to family relationships after death.

I am working on the assumption that my entire family (both mems and non-membs) will be together in the eternities, regardless of my TR status. Although I have plans to hedge my bets and get back into TR status again at some point in my life. I have yet to find the right motivation to take that step, but it is always in the back of my mind.

I absolutely love the concept. I just think most members haven’t thought it through enough to really understand what it teaches – like Hawk mentioned in her comment.

Also, it is not a common doctrine in other religions, although it is a common belief of many congregants in those religions.

I try to consider the environment in which eternal families was introduced/restored. Did the majority of churches in those days believe in eternal families?

Look back through history well before the Restoration and see how many mentions you’ll find of one waiting or even longing for death to be with a departed loved one again. Obviously a lot of people have believed in it for a long time.

Personally, I think most of it falls under another header that I’ve heard plenty of times in most churches, including LDS; we need to stop haggling over the details of the afterlife and focus on doing good here. The vast majority of what happens there is almost certainly beyond our comprehension, so settle for doing good things to earn the rewards and be pleasantly surprised when we find out what they really are.