How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?

Stephen Fleming

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Lately I’ve heard a number of comments in church of ward members noting people of other faiths liking the idea of eternal marriage as a something of a validation of our beliefs. The recent movie release Eternity seems to play around with this idea of a woman getting to the afterlife and trying to figure out what to do with the two different men she was married to in life. This does seem like a conundrum and seems to have been the point the Sadducees wanted to pose to Christ about the woman with seven husbands.

Having been in the church all my life, eternal marriage is obviously a big deal: both something we really advertise and a conundrum over all the possible alternate scenarios like the woman with two or seven husbands. I thought Stephen Fry (2:45) mocking what he saw as the Mormon eternal extended-family Christmas dinner was pretty funny. “What happens if you’re good?”

Abundant observers have rightly noted that men being allowed to be sealed to more than one woman while women are not allowed multiple sealing is completely sexist and unfair (we have some of that in the church!) but I also wonder if some women might worry about ending up with post-mortal husbands duking it out like Olsen’s husbands in Eternity.

So that’s my question. If you were in charge, how do YOU think the eternal-family, eternal-marriage system should work? I know most would prefer nice clean monogamy for time and eternity, but what should happen in the exceptions? Deceased spouses, unpleasant in-laws, unpleasant biological family, marital struggles, etc? Some people feel that every new addition to the extended family is all pure bliss, and some feel like Stephen Fry.

As I noted in a post from 2009, I liked Tatiana’s idea and believe that Celestial people ought to know how to get along.

Comments

4 responses to “How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?”

  1. REC911

    Part of the problem is that we are looking at this with our earthly knowledge/views. No freakin way my wife would want me to participate in polygamy. There are also lots of single sisters that probably would embrace it in this life so they can experience marriage. Lots of married/single sisters that would not. Lots of men that feel one wife is hard so no thanks to having more. Pretty sure there were members back in the polygamy days for each of these categories. Some embraced it and some loathed the idea. To me this is the answer.

    We dont know how/what we will feel regarding this in the next life until we actually get there. I think we will all look at this completely different then. It will all make sense and we will all be fine with the choice we make regardless of that choice or what the doctrine actually is. (live it/not live it) If the church brings this back again in this life, heaven help us all…

    I cant think of a worse time to pick an eternal spouse than how we do it. IMO the commitment in this life my wife and I made to live a celestial/eternal marriage is the “ticket” we need to recommit to it in the next life with a sure knowledge of what will be required of us to live it. I believe that we will also get to re-select if we want with that sure knowledge. I like the idea that my wife and I are helping each other as a team to get to the other side and then do it for real and have the option to re-pick or pick each other again. Regardless, whatever choice I am allowed to make in the next life, I will be happy with it. (new wife, same wife, no wife, multiple wife’s, destroying angel, devils minion, servant to my wife and her many husbands, harp tuner, temple cleaner, etc.)

    Yes I understand this is not what the church teaches and I am open to being wrong. :)

  2. Anon

    One wife is GOOD, and no, I don’t think that marriage is hard. I want nothing to detract from our relationship, in time or eternity. I want to be with and help her…. always. I don’t believe we’ll need to populate generations on multiple planets, or that anyone’s wife (or wives) will be walking, talking, spirit body factories in the next life. I think that is someone’s overactive libido played a role in those type of ideas.

  3. Stephen Fleming

    REC, your willingness to except any role should make you ready for any contingency!

    Anon, that’s my point. What about variance: spouses dying, not married, divorce etc? One way of putting it, who should Elizabeth Olsen be married to in the movie? Young husbands dying in war has been a pretty common occurrence in human history.

    The Sadducees’ question to Jesus came in context. Plato taught eternal marriage and the Greeks had been dominant in Judea since Alexander the Great over three-hundred years before. What happens in the next life with a woman with more than one husband? Again, not uncommon.

    Of course, Jesus said no marriage in the resurrection, an idea that Joseph Smith and Christian Platonists rejected. So those believing in eternal marriage like Christian Platonists did have to deal with that answer from Jesus. Thus Jacob 2 and DC 132.

  4. Neal

    The church is sexist with current practices. Better, but still sexist. No one, NO ONE knows what relationships look like in the next life. The sealing power, I believe, is to seal us in God’s family.

    Some early leaders viewed collecting wives as a competition to build their personal kingdoms. They looked forward to endless sex in the next life.

    The church should allow living women to be sealed to multiple men. It should lose short veils in the temple and the word “preside” in sealing ceremonies. I’m not holding my breath but maybe the boys in the red chairs will figure it out before they lose all the women in No America.

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