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 women 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.
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