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And why do we have to go to external websites to learn about this concept which implies that our commitment to our current spouse may well be diluted by everyone being sealed together? I’ve been a member of the Church for 27 years, served a mission, served in a lot of higher profile local callings, and this is the first I’ve heard of it….why even bother to keep your eternal marriage together if in the end, everyone is sealed together and it therefore is not a unique relationship? Quote:perhaps God is symbol of the collective god species intermarried family(if that makes sense). And as we are exalted we are welcomed into that unified collective “God”. I guess I’m talking crazy now. but the thought did give new meaning to the way the creation in the Book of Abraham is phrased.
Saw this comment off of MH’s blog and wondered how that squares with Ray’s perspective.
Old-Timer wrote:If you take out the foundation assumption that our relationships in the hereafter will be “sexual” in nature, “polyandry” becomes nothing more than communal sealing in practice – a “grand counsel of the Gods”, per se, creating and ruling together. In that setting, unity and “marriage” mean totally different things than they do now – without losing any power, imo. In fact, it makes MANY things much easier to reconcile for me.
Old-Timer wrote:As I’ve said elsewhere, I have major problems with the practice of polygamy – but not the principle of communal sealing and a “council of the Gods” perspective that creates “intelligent, spiritual life” without “sexual activity”. If polygamy is what it took to get us to be able to begin to see that eternal possibility, I’m OK with it – as much as I have major problems with its temporary practice. If the eternal perspective I’ve just described is wrong, I see it as nothing better than a botched attempt to break free from social constraints.
I REALLY like the council of the Gods theology, especially since it has such enormous and good implication for issues with sexual orientation, so I can accept temporary polygamy as the Church was figuring out its theology.
Ray, does the comment above harmonize with your views? If not, could you kindly point out the differences?
Yeah, roy, that’s pretty much how I see it – for the time being, subject to further light and knowledge, yada yada yada. SD, that’s a really hard question, and I understand intellectually the pain of your own situation when you ask it – but:
I really do believe the concept and principle of marital sealing is powerful and important, even with the complications it brings – especially in situations like yours. Because of the nature of my marriage, this is almost entirely intellectual for me; I know that’s not the case for you. If you need to reject how I see this, I understand that completely. I’m not a visionary man in any classic sense, so there is a good chance I’m totally bonkers with regard to this topic.
I have no answer for you right now – and, I’m quite certain, no “good” answer for you. This is one case where I have nothing but a shoulder and an ear to lend. I wish I had more, but I don’t. Just know, please, that I feel for you and hope you find peace in some way regarding that question.
Even though my own situation is different, even if it wasn’t, I would still have this concern I think: a) That I wasn’t even aware of it until I read some of the posts in this thread. Pretty major departure from what I think most Mormons think they are getting into when they kneel at the altar. And completely dishonest in my view. It’s like you married Rachel and then find you will eventually wake up next to Leah, Hapsibah, Lucy, and all the Brady Bunch sisters (or should we expand this to the boys too — is there more I don’t know about?)
b) To me it would confound the special relationship MOST people have with their spouses. And would be distressing for many of those people too. Why don’t we talk about our Mother(s) in heaven if our eternal relationships are eventually akin to a family of cats?
The deeper you get into this, the more it sounds like JS had an overactive libido and this whole theology was invented to justify a few indescretions. I wonder seriously if Emma was frigid or had a problem like my wife’s, and JS ended up seeking comfort elsewhere. I hate to be so blunt, but that’s how this is coming across to me right now.
SD, this is just me being me – speculating about where my mind takes me when I think about this stuff. It’s not what we’re taught – because it’s not what the Church teaches – or what 99.9+% of the membership believes. Please don’t make it more than one person’s imaginings. (I don’t mean that last word to mean “false stuff” – but it absolutely might be “made up crap that has no basis in reality”.)
Brian Johnston wrote:SilentDawning wrote:Again, why would he ask for the wives of married men, interrupting THE men’s ability to be sealed for eternity? That is the part I don’t get.
Joseph’s exploration of sealing and binding people together never seemed to have quite solidified before his death.
This questions asks why we can’t seem to overlay our current understanding of sealing on the historical events we are talking about in the past. The answer: because the square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole. Our current notions of temple marriage are very different than the early exploration into ideas of the “sealing” of the whole human family into one long chain or bond. We are surprised by the way Joseph acted. I think he would be equally surprised to see where we ran with his ideas (or his “revelations” on the matter).
The implications of this are really quite remarkable….that much of the theology represent JS’s ideas…in a Church that is mainstream and and doesn’t claim authority/divine commission/access to truth, etcetera, that would be OK…it would be a kind of foregone conclusion that as a Church, the people were trying to figure out even the basics as they went along….kind of like the quote from the Dunkers I have quoted in Ben Franklin’s biography. Up front, they didn’t want to state any kind of creed as they knew it would be subject to change as they experienced their own beliefs. “What we once thought were truths, we found to be errors, and what thought were errors we found to be truths”….approach it this way, it seems to me the focus becomes one of figuring out and journeying, with “access to salvation through ordinances” as peripheral or even not important. The underlying assumption is that no one knows for sure.
With that approach, it seems to me that one is better suited to a Church which supports exploration, without all the demands on your time and money, the guilt trips, etcetera.
Quote:And why do we have to go to external websites to learn about this concept which implies that our commitment to our current spouse may well be diluted by everyone being sealed together? ….why even bother to keep your eternal marriage together if in the end, everyone is sealed together and it therefore is not a unique relationship?
The first sentence looks like 2 questions. Why go to external websites? Because correlation doesn’t teach this stuff. It is what it is.
“implies that our commitment to our current spouse may well be diluted by everyone being sealed together?” I’m not familiar with your situation SD, but I don’t view it as diluted. I’ve had some anarchists on my website that have been proponents of this whole multi-husband, multi-wife tribal model, and they don’t see the relationships as diluted. I think anarchists are weird, but I understand their point intellectually. A more conventional way to think about it would be to look at your children. Is your commitment diluted because you have multiple children?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of polygamy at all. I have watched Sister Wives, and I am amazed/appalled/impressed with how Kody Brown handles all his wives. I know Ray has said that if consenting adults agree to it, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with it. Intellectually, I get that, but whether it’s Kody Brown, or Abraham (Hagar/Sarah), or Jacob (Rachel/Leah), it just seems to not be worth all the problems of jealousy. In a perfect world, there won’t be any jealousy, and Kody does a great job in the imperfect world, but when I look to Abraham and Jacob, their families seem dysfunctional, and I can’t see how they are examples (as it states in D&C 132) or that polygamy is beneficial in God’s eyes, or even required to get into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom as Joseph Smith taught. It makes no sense to me.
The hardest part of polygamy is the thoughts of sexual relations. It has been documented that some polygamist marriages were non-sexual, and primarily financial. Kathryn Daynes has documented many of these cases in Manti, Utah. She also documented the weirdest case of surrogate parenthood (because in vitro didn’t exist) that I have ever heard of. See
http://www.mormonheretic.org/2009/11/08/surrogate-parenthoodtypes-of-polygamist-marriages-daynes-part-3/ But if we can separate the sealings ordinances from sexual relations, then these sealings to God and each other make more sense. Joseph was trying to make (as Ray mentioned) a communal sealing. As I said, if we look at these from a completely non-sexual vantage point, then being sealed to each other and to God is a pretty cool thing. If we’re to be sealed to God, then it is not unique. Yet, as Joseph said, that same sociality that exists here will exist up there. I think it is a mischaracterization to think that you will wake up in bed next to Rachel, Leah, and the Brady Bunch Sisters. If you didn’t do that in life, you won’t do it in the next life either. )Kody Brown has separate bedrooms for each wife!)
I think there will still be a unique relationships, and sealings to spouses is a different type of sealing than to children, or to parents or to the Brady Sisters. As Howard W. Hunter said, we do the sealings here, but we will still have our free agency to choose whether we want to stay in these communal sealings in the hereafter anyway.
mormonheretic wrote:Why go to external websites? Because correlation doesn’t teach this stuff. It is what it is.
That was my implicit question….why not? If this is part of what we will eventually experience, why make it invisible? So people will make these commitments, get emotionally invested, have families, and create a web of Mormons around them as I have, which aids in retention? It seems like a bait and switch tactic.
I don’t really know how to respond to the rest of what you wrote. It’s a new, out of the box perspective for me…I will have to think about it. On one hand, it’s good that if you marry someone with whom you’re not compatible, there is an opportunity to augment the family skill set with additional wives who bring the right skills and mindset to the family. On the other hand, it just seems creepy.
Like it or not, the Church DOES paint a picture that isn’t always accurate in my view. I don’t like it. Such commitment to purity and being “totally honest in your dealings with your fellow men”, and then, there is all this secret doctrine that you only learn about later on, that you may not even be suited to…
My take on this is modern society is completely hypocritical. In many parts of the west, it’s okay to have sex with multiple partners, but not okay to get married to them all. That’s hypocrisy. I know women with illegitimate children by multiple men, and men with children by multiple women. No one really bats an eye lid. But suggest that a person can marry more than one person, and it’s “shock horror”.
SilentDawning wrote:That was my implicit question….why not? If this is part of what we will eventually experience, why make it invisible?
Ray doesn’t know what we will eventually experience. It is a cool theory, one that answers many of the lingering questions about who will get the kids in the next life after divorce or what will happen with sexual orientation difficulties in the next life and it also happens to fit some of what JS was doing, but that doesn’t make it fact. This is just part of the great buffet of Mormonism, just the part that is way in the back and poorly lit. If this satiates your soul and adds meaning and purpose to your life – eat up. If not, you can always pass and save room for some of the other dishes. I personally recommend the dessert section.
Old-Timer wrote:SD, this is just me being me – speculating about where my mind takes me when I think about this stuff. It’s not what we’re taught – because it’s not what the Church teaches – or what 99.9+% of the membership believes.
Please don’t make it more than one person’s imaginings. (I don’t mean that last word to mean “false stuff” – but it absolutely might be “made up crap that has no basis in reality”.)
Quote:Such commitment to purity and being “totally honest in your dealings with your fellow men”, and then, there is all this secret doctrine that you only learn about later on, that you may not even be suited to…
Secret doctrine?
As I said, more like imaginative speculation of one person – with tweaks from one more person – with tweaks by another person – rejected by well over 90% of the membership and, probably, the leadership.
One more thing:
My view on this doesn’t change one bit my exclusive commitment and attachment to my wife in this life – and, I hope, throughout the eternities. When I think of myself, I think of 1/2 of “us”, not 100% of me. My heart wants our current, collective doctrine to be accurate – but my mind likes to consider lots of possibilities. It’s just how I’m wired.
On a more personal note, I’m sending you a PM, so we don’t derail the focus of this thread.
I saw his point in the last quote you gave earlier….so I get that part of it. Thanks Roy…
This one issue I have very strong fellings about. I dont think it should be anyones business how consenting adults form relations period. I feel that polygamy has just as much validty and success as well as no more ability to be abused as any other type of relationship construct. It sickens me that in a free country these people cant be left in peace to marry and raise families however they see fit. I dont think God cares what you do with your privates, you cant take it with you anyway its just flesh. All flesh God finds worthy of destruction since it is tainted with sin. gtb7697 wrote:This one issue I have very strong fellings about. I dont think it should be anyones business how consenting adults form relations period. I feel that polygamy has just as much validty and success as well as no more ability to be abused as any other type of relationship construct. It sickens me that in a free country these people cant be left in peace to marry and raise families however they see fit. I dont think God cares what you do with your privates, you cant take it with you anyway its just flesh. All flesh God finds worthy of destruction since it is tainted with sin.
Let’s see now, girls 14 and under being “married” to older men, families being reassigned to more faithful brethren, young men being kicked out of communities and left on the street, having your home taken away, being forbidden to have sex with your wife, being told you can’t listen to the radio, watch TV, read the news paper. If it was just Bill Hendrickson and his three wives in Sandy minding their own business that’s fine with me but it never is. Maybe “God doesn’t care…” but I’m glad someone here on this side of the veil does.
GBSmith wrote:gtb7697 wrote:This one issue I have very strong fellings about. I dont think it should be anyones business how consenting adults form relations period. I feel that polygamy has just as much validty and success as well as no more ability to be abused as any other type of relationship construct. It sickens me that in a free country these people cant be left in peace to marry and raise families however they see fit. I dont think God cares what you do with your privates, you cant take it with you anyway its just flesh. All flesh God finds worthy of destruction since it is tainted with sin.
Let’s see now, girls 14 and under being “married” to older men, families being reassigned to more faithful brethren, young men being kicked out of communities and left on the street, having your home taken away, being forbidden to have sex with your wife, being told you can’t listen to the radio, watch TV, read the news paper. If it was just Bill Hendrickson and his three wives in Sandy minding their own business that’s fine with me but it never is.
Maybe “God doesn’t care…” but I’m glad someone here on this side of the veil does.+1. Couldn’t agree more.
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