- Stephen Fleming on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “Thanks for the comments! I agree with Neal and Lily that love in the next life is about more than just biological family. I’ve often felt that our church rhetoric is that biological family is what is “eternal” and that other relationships are not. That’s not what Joseph Smith taught.” Nov 21, 05:42
- on 1860 Utah Had Fewer Skilled and Educated Workers than Almost Any Other State/Territory in the US: “Kerry William Bate: Thank you! el oso: Interesting; yes, I assume a lot of early Utahns were actually skilled and educated, but in the 1860s everybody is just starting to have enough calories to not be constantly thinking about food (and farming) all the time.” Nov 20, 19:19
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “Head Scratcher, Romantic love can be a wonderful thing–and it’s quite possible that those feelings will continue in the hereafter. But far greater will be the joy that we’ll have in bringing forth and nurturing new life–that’s what eternal marriage is really about. And that’s why marriage is a unique arrangement in eternity. And sadly, I think our modern culture has downplayed the importance of bearing and nurturing children–and exalted romantic love–to such a degree that we’ve forgotten one of the primary purposes for our being here. And that’s to learn how to be life givers! We can have all the romantic love in the world–but if we don’t participate in bringing forth and nurturing life–whether here or in the hereafter–we will not have experienced the maximum joy that is reserved for those who do the works of Abraham and Sarah.” Nov 20, 18:09
- on 1860 Utah Had Fewer Skilled and Educated Workers than Almost Any Other State/Territory in the US: “An ancestor of mine was a skilled tradesman when he lived on the east coast back then. Shortly after this census he moved to Utah, but became a farmer because there was little need of his trade in the area where he settled. After a couple of generations of farmers, none of my generation (descended from the ancestor’s grandson) are farmers now.” Nov 20, 18:08
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “Jack – It seems like prophets have described our relationships as couples as being romantic love. Look at some of the “Teachings of the Prophets” manuals and other quotes throughout time. If it was going to be a generic, general or communal love, I don’t know why we would go to the trouble of sealing couples in marriage. That’s what makes plural sealings so hard to figure out. Elder Scott said he didn’t remarry because he “didn’t want to mess things up.” Yet, we have Elder Packer in a conference talk talking of a widower getting remarried as not having lost faith in marriage. I don’t know what he meant by that. I can’t reconcile the need to stay faithfull while our spouse is alive in the flesh only to abandon that faithfulness upon his or her death. It almost sounds like we don’t really believe our deceased spouse is alive and well in the spirit world.” Nov 20, 16:58
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “I worry more about whether or not I’ll qualify for the celestial kingdom that about what family relationships will be like. I’m sure whatever they’re like, they’ll be good.” Nov 20, 16:57
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “I think we have to consider what exalted beings are really like. IMO–they are perfectly virtuous and perfectly loving. I don’t know if eros plays any part in their motivation. My guess is that it is subsumed by the love of God. And so what ever marriage “looks like” in the next world it will be based on pure love and the joy that comes from considering the welfare of others before our own.” Nov 20, 14:05
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “I hope there will be same-sex couples in eternity (not for everyone, of course, just those that want it). And if those couples make it to the next life and discover they don’t want that forever, they don’t have to stay together, and at least they got to be happy in mortality.” Nov 20, 13:15
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “The more immediate thing to ponder is how it will be in the Millennium, with a mix of resurrected and mortal beings. A 1,000 year family-building experience.” Nov 20, 13:03
- on How Do YOU Think Eternal Marriage/Family Should Work in the Next Life?: “The implication is that some choices and desired — other desires and choices will not be allowed. It begs the question as to which desires and choices will be allowed. I am confident that those people who dislike plural marriage would be perfectly fine with the young widow or widower with 4 kids remarrying, at which point they would be in a “plural marriage” arrangement — sealed to first spouse and either married for time or sealed to second spouse, depending on facts. Eventually someone will seal by proxy a woman to all husbands she had in mortality, so at the end of the day, all spouses will be sealed to all spouses. The questions that arise: can/will woman accept a sealing to their second husband? Will women have to choose between spouses, and if so, how would they choose? I know several older sisters who have were sealed, widowed, remarried, widowed, remarried — each time to a good husband. There is no such thing as a “marriage of convenience.” Marriage is marriage. In the end, all I know is that I could be the best husband in the world, but that will never trump my wife’s excercise of agency. If I die and she ‘moves on’ and remarries, I have to believe I will be given the same opportunity to ‘move on’ in the spirit world.” Nov 20, 12:00
