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I tend to think if we want to compare our knowledge and capacity to understand eternal truths now with what it will be in the next life – if there is in fact a next life – our best example may be comparing our knowledge and cognitive abilities as adults with the capacity of infants. I simply can’t imagine a next life without that type of major shift in awareness, so to answer your question everything about the next life will be in a new context. Any speculation from a mortal perspective will simply appear “laughable” for lack of a better word because it lacks any awareness of multiple “new” dimensions and the complexity that they add.
Old-Timer wrote:I want to get input from others about one very specific situation related to the concept of polygamy, particularly from people like Ann and Dax who are so opposed to it in any form, at any time, and see it as inherently evil. I don’t mean to try to lead anywhere with the following questions; I sincerely want to know people’s responses in order to try to understand how different people view this specific situation.
1) A woman has been married to two men in her life and has loved each husband deeply. She was sealed to the first husband but couldn’t be sealed in this life to the second one. She was the only wife of each husband. She knows she can be sealed to both husbands after her death and has asked that she be sealed to her second husband, as well. She doesn’t want to have to choose between them and hopes she can be sealed to and live with both of them after she dies. She asks you what you think about her desire and decision – not what you would advise her to do, but what you think about it.
2) A man in that same situation asks you the same question, with the exception that he was sealed to both wives in this life.
I would like general thoughts about the situation, but I also would like to know how you would answer someone in the situation, in a private conversation with only that person, if they asked for input.
(I’m not interested in thoughts about the policy difference, since I think the policy should be the same for men and women, and I don’t really care which one would be applied. I only want to know what you would say to the people in this situation.)
My answer to this question is that the decision should be made by consensus with by everyone who had a legal, married relationship in their earthly life. For example, the man who had two women in a legal, married relationship in this life should be able to choose his DESIRES for multiple wives in the next life, but the women to whom he was married should be allowed to opt-out of the plural marriage if they are uncomfortable with it, or participate in it.
This is where I feel the whole temple marriage concept breaks down, however. It completely ignores the agency of the people who were sealed in this life and died. Their perspective is critical in whether a plural relationship should exist any longer after this life is over. The church has no doctrine or policy to solve the question. The only answer given is that God will work it out later — unsatisfactory in my view. There is a convoluted process to get sealings cancelled (which could exist in the next life? Do we know???). I am of the mind I’d rather figure out who I want to be with in this life, and then work it out after we know the constraints upon us after judgment and beyond.
I know a woman who is in this exact position. Her first husband was my seminary teacher. They were married for 15 years I think and had 7 kids. One year later, he was killed in a car accident. Then later on, she remarried and has been with her second husband for about 20 years now and they have a few kids (not sure how many). They were married in the Temple, but not for eternity. I have always wondered what will happen when she dies. Who will she be with? What happens to the children she had with her second husband? In all honesty I have no idea. Maybe they will all be one big happy eternal family, or maybe there is another option that we are unaware of and cannot understand in this life. Roy wrote:Losing our daughter as a stillbirth was very difficult. Part of the difficulty is that she is not considered to have been “a living soul” officially by the church. I have no assurances that a lifetime of temple covenant keeping and religious devotion will ever bring her back to me.
Roy, having gone through a similar experience I am disturbed by this. This is something that I have never heard before and I hope that it is not true. It has only been 4 years since we lost our son (stillbirth) but this has never been brought up, in fact, just the opposite was stated to us. We were told by our leaders that we would have a chance to raise him in the next life. That being said, I’m not sure what to believe about this anymore and hope that when I pass (hopefully in many, many years) I will see him again. That’s what is getting me through.
Back to the topic at hand (Sorry for the derailment)!
Quote:It completely ignores the agency of the people who were sealed in this life and died.
Um, isn’t it bedrock doctrine that nobody is forced to remain in a sealing or be sealed if they don’t want to be in it? I’m not sure I understand what you mean when you say that our sealing doctrine ignores agency.
Meh Mormon wrote:Roy wrote:Losing our daughter as a stillbirth was very difficult. Part of the difficulty is that she is not considered to have been “a living soul” officially by the church. I have no assurances that a lifetime of temple covenant keeping and religious devotion will ever bring her back to me.
Roy, having gone through a similar experience I am disturbed by this. This is something that I have never heard before and I hope that it is not true. It has only been 4 years since we lost our son (stillbirth) but this has never been brought up, in fact, just the opposite was stated to us. We were told by our leaders that we would have a chance to raise him in the next life. That being said, I’m not sure what to believe about this anymore and hope that when I pass (hopefully in many, many years) I will see him again. That’s what is getting me through.
For those that may be curious on this issue, my introduction discusses it at length:
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1937 The short version is that we, officially as a church, do not know and in the absence of knowledge we do not perform temple ordinances for these cases.
Meh Mormon, I’ll send you a PM.
Old-Timer wrote:I would like general thoughts about the situation, but I also would like to know how you would answer someone in the situation, in a private conversation with only that person, if they asked for input.
I would say something like this, sincerely trying not to sound flippant. “I have no freaking idea. I personally believe the afterlife will be so different than we imagine that questions like this aren’t meaningful to me. There are too many logical implications of afterlife polyandry that confound me.” Not a particularly useful response from me, I realize, but the question for me is directionally the same as “how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?”
BUT – if I were to be asked about the policy difference you’d get a different answer.
Orson wrote:I simply can’t imagine a next life without that type of major shift in awareness, so to answer your question everything about the next life will be in a new context. Any speculation from a mortal perspective will simply appear “laughable” for lack of a better word because it lacks any awareness of multiple “new” dimensions and the complexity that they add.
Yes, Orson. I am with you.I also realize speculation is comforting for some people to have faith in the unknown. So I’m OK with people speculating, so to answer’s Ray’s OP, in both scenarios…they should be sealed to who they feel they should be sealed to.
I cannot imagine the infinite eternities are all limited by a narrow rule like “You must be married in the temple”, “You must share your husband with other worthy wives”, “You must be mormon”.
To me, it is as laughable as South Park’s episode where the people killed in the bus are in hell, and told, “The answer was…the Moooor-mons. Yes, that’s right, the mormons was the correct answer.” … and the rest of you get eternally damned with consolation prizes of happiness as far as you can understand limited happiness being neutered and serving those who are above you, and somehow we will enforce no unsealed resurrected beings can be together.
:wtf: In all seriousness to Ray’s OP, multiple partners sealed for the eternities does not bother me. Marriage in this life is for 2 consulting adults to build a household together where there is safety for intimately sharing life’s experiences.
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