Good questions, I believe there is a difference.

But, shared Christian belief realizes that the communion among believers in heaven results in a bond significantly greater in love than what we perceive in our knowledge of marriage. That bond is a consequence of the everlasting worship and praising of God. Why wouldn’t God be the focus of any discussion involving the word “forever”?

I wonder, do the rest of you also see massive differences here between this statement and your beliefs? I wonder if I’m justified in my own perception of these differences as dramatic. But I personally don’t believe in (and in fact downright reject the notion of) “a bond significantly greater in love than what we perceive in our knowledge of marriage.” I see a fundamental difference here being our rejection of the transcendent gap between celestial love and forms of fundamental sociality and earthly ones. Or if there is a gap – one of degree perhaps – we’re not left with odd epistemological problems of how to articulate or acknowledge it; we understand the celestial BECAUSE we experience the earthly here and now.

Next, I don’t believe my bond with God and other loved ones is a “consequence of the everlasting and praising of God.” Frankly, I’m not sure what this could possibly mean. But I do not believe my relationships are established via my praise of God.

Finally, there’s a trivial sense in which God is a “focus” of my “discussions of forever”: He’s my father, and together with my mother and savior, and as architect of the whole plan, he’s at least indirectly responsible for or a contributor to my relationships hereafter. He’s a fundamental, ennabling variable that can’t be ignored. But there’s no magic that God does to establish my relationship with my wife. Our exaltation, ennabled by the relevant aspects of the plan of salvation (e.g., the atonement) will come about because my wife and I live a celestial marriage. As Brigham Young said, if the streets in heaven are paved with gold it will be because the Saints go out to the heavenly hills, mine it, and lay down the gold themselves.

Thanks for your comments here and on other threads.

For some reason, our spam filter (which was working overtime, snaring 300 spam comments) flagged you as potential spam. I just released this comment, and three more, from the filter.

Thanks for your comments, and hopefully the filter won’t do that again. It’s usually very effective, every now and then it gives a few false positives.

A better source than I would likely be the temple president, or even better, his source.
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“For the record, I do know of two cases (one personally) where living women were sealed to a second man without the first sealing being canceled. They both received first presidency permission to do so. (I assume there are other such cases.)”

Interesting. Based on permission must be granted for a sealing to be invalidated, if the husband were excommunicated but did not grant permission to be a jerk/ whatever, especially if the Holy Spirit had never sealed the union, I would have imagined that those who hold the keys of sealing could unseal it (though Doctrine and Covenants 132 only specifies seal and bind, not the releasing).
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“Seems to me if God can “sort this out” for dead women, he can sort it out for women who aren’t dead yet but will be dead when it needs to be sorted.”

Sure, He could. He could do lots of things, like He could have sent an already-translated BoM to JS, He could have prepared the barges for the Jaredites, He could have swished Lehi et. al. across the desert, He could have told the leaders Mark Hoffman was lying and dangerous, He could just have angels bring all the genealogical records down from heaven and get the job done in a jiffy; but there are reasons, somewhere along the heaven-mortal humans spectrum, probably varying according to the problem and situation.
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“Children are not commanded to cleave to their parents. They are commanded to LEAVE them in order to “become one” with their spouse. What would your reaction be if YOU were cleaving to your wife alone and SHE was out courting other men to bring home?”

How would you feel if your mother was playing with your baby sister instead of you?
So it hurts you thinking about that, right?
Is this cultural? Sure. Is it right or wrong? Coming from the Lord, I have a hard time believing it’s wrong. Could it be incomplete? Who knows?
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“It’s funny how questions about polygamy almost inevitably turn to questions like this. Let’s see if you’re REALLY faithful. Let’s see if you can give the appropriate Primary answer.”

Absolutely. But not just with questions about polygamy– that’s just *your* bowl of sour pudding–everyone else has their *own* flavor of sour pudding in their bowl.

Frankly, I can’t help but imagine it would help the Church a lot if Primary answers were lived. (You must have gone to an interesting Primary, as I don’t remember hearing any of what I shared, other than the two questions about love and hurt…)

I know they are hang-ups for many; how much so, if so, how much so, for you, I’ll leave that up to you.

Is it a bad question? Absolutely not. Is it a wrong question? I imagine not. Is it bad to want answers and reasons? Usually not. I truly do hope your humble, faithful, patient prayers bring you at least some level of comfort and peace, somewhat like Mariah Pulsipher’s vision: “I then saw in a vision the beauty and glory of plurality of wives.” Who knows, maybe there will be a vision of plurality of husbands…?

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#32, Travis,
I’m still waiting for anyone (well, at least one of 15) to say something about the key Elias (Abraham’s dispensation) held. I imagine his was a key for sealing marriage and perhaps plural marriage, and Elijah’s key is for the sealing of generation to generation.
As I said before, there really is so much we not only don’t understand right now, but *can’t*.

As with many political and religious endeavors, such as with universal health-care, the devils are in the details.

Such terms as exactness, strickness, quickness are being used more and more over the LDS pulpit to describe the degrees of adhence to LDS gospel perfomance standards… standards which qualify an individual for exaltation and particpation in an eternal family.

While grace remains part of LDS salvation theology, the term “grace” is now being used in the context of “the enabling power” to help the member achieve the aforementioned high hurdles of exactness, strickness, and quickness. President Faust taught that grace itself must be purchased or earned: “After all we can do to pay to the uttermost farthing and make right our wrongs, the Savior’s grace is activated in our lives through the Atonement, which purifies us and can perfect us.”

Despite the translation slant in Matthew 5, the pursuit of perfection remains a continuing pulpit favorite.

If the fullness of joy is to be found within the fullness or the completeness of a family reunited in the eternities, what is the likelihood that all (or many) will be able to meet the heroic and pious performance standards currently being required? And then, what of those brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who miss the mark? Sorry, another Kingdom for you.

The foreverness of LDS families is a sharp and eternally painfull two-edge sword. The members of the tidy families found in Ensign articles somehow all seem to encounter the “then I came to realize” moment in the nick of time and foreverness for all is assured.

Yet, the struggles of life and righteousness are frequently fought in the middle, often vacilating and unresolved, grey zones of weakness, commitment, desire, converstion, and pride. Does this put at risk the foreverness of families? Hard to say.

Consider…

The outwardly faithfull, socially converted, TR carrying, seated on the stand member who for years has been unable or unwilling to get beyond…[one or more]

[1] Constant arguing with his/her spouse.
[2] A cup of coffee in the morning at the office.
[3] The Boy Prophet was a brilliant and sincere religious reformer, but nothing more.
[4] The BoM has many truths, but is not historical.
[5] Happy to be a good LDS parent, raising Seminary attending children, and serving when called, but unwilling to take on a older-couple mission.
[6] A social temple attender, but is still at odds (freaked-out) with the ritual.
[7] With limited success continues to come to terms with lapses in personal righteousness. Seeking forgiveness and closeness with Christ, but then for months or years – just drifting along being a visible, active, social ward member.

Years ago, the Ladies Home Journal had a monthly article, “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Should the Ensign carry a similar article, “Is This Family… Forever?”

The increasing heroics of contemporary LDS theology regarding the process of eternal salvation make foreverness of complete families, a more elusive goal.

Earl

… my impression is that the original LDS understanding of polygamy was that each marriage was a separate entity. So a man with six wives was a party to six different marriages, not a single marriage with seven parties.

And what is our current understanding? Is it any different?

manaen #16

My understanding was that being tied to one husband was bad enough for a woman that being saddled with multiple husbands actually would be death. Does that help?

Only if it “helps” when men say, “Hey, I don’t want polygamy. One wife is more than enough.” In other words, no! :)

grego #22:

Is the hang-up that LDS women *want* multiple husbands, or that women don’t think it’s fair that men can have multiple wives–maybe because women see themselves as such wonderful blessings? Or something else, like God’s unfairness or bias?

Maybe the hang-up is that you think my questions are a “hang-up,” rather than valid questions.

Is it that if there is another wife, somehow the relationship won’t be good/ will be less than if there weren’t/ enough time/ etc.–such as when there is more than one child in a family? (Doesn’t seem like that’s fair to the firstborn, either, to suddenly have another child enter into the family without his/her consent…)

Children are not commanded to cleave to their parents. They are commanded to LEAVE them in order to “become one” with their spouse. What would your reaction be if YOU were cleaving to your wife alone and SHE was out courting other men to bring home?

Do you believe that they would ever do anything to hurt you?

It’s funny how questions about polygamy almost inevitably turn to questions like this. Let’s see if you’re REALLY faithful. Let’s see if you can give the appropriate Primary answer.

I have just one response. Recently Elder Holland said that he PRAYED that blacks could get the priesthood for years before it occurred. Would you ask him the same questions?

Referring to genealogy, where in life the woman was married to more than one man–since the woman will be eternally married to one, but we don’t know which one, she is sealed to all of them; only one, however, will be valid.

Got a source for that?

For the record, I do know of two cases (one personally) where living women were sealed to a second man without the first sealing being canceled. They both received first presidency permission to do so. (I assume there are other such cases.)

Seems to me if God can “sort this out” for dead women, he can sort it out for women who aren’t dead yet but will be dead when it needs to be sorted.

It was actually years ago when I read one of Card’s Ender’s Game sequels that I started thinking of the sealing as less about the parents permanently linked with kids in an endless, massive group hug. He describes something about a web linking people. And it seemed to make more sense to me that somehow (for some reasons) we need to be tied to each other.

Jettboy, funny. My husband always says, “We won’t be resurrected into the Borg.”

For the same reason I believe it is premature to conclude that heavenly society is based on the authoritarian brand of collectivism. Historical expedients notwithstanding, the idea of stewardship is deeply embedded in our doctrine as the counterpart of consecration, and if stewardship isn’t another name for subsidiarity, I don’t know what is.