How does Polygamy Play Into God’s Law of Marriage? (Part 2)
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JAmesNovember 16, 2021
My ancestor practiced plural marriage, but she was the third wife. Who am I going to lose in my family line? My forefather or foremother? Who is going to be kicked out into another family and no longer able to associate by choice and marriage whom they chose in this life? My forefather and 4 foremothers loved each other and were happy. They were sealed by authority with the promise that the ordinance was "bound on earth and in heaven." You are suggesting, even if they choose each other willingly in this and the next life, that they do not get each other, and in fact the sealing power here on earth is null and void on a grand scale in the eternities. Also polygamy is not a term the scripture uses. You use the term as though polygamy itself is a type of marriage order, "an exception." In reality, all marriage takes the exact same order. Every single marriage is between one and and one woman. Every marriage can only be consummated between one man and one woman. Anything else is biologically impossible. Hence the term plural marriage, which is a term denoting the plurality of monogamous marriages. Three wives = three marriages. So I think the idea that polygamy is a sacrificial exception outside the eternal order of God is a big stretch. And you have overlooked the nature of the sealing power on earth tied to heaven and overlooked God honoring those agents who desire their plural marriages to continue as was promised in the authorized marriage ceremony.
Anita B. AnonymousNovember 13, 2021
I rarely make comments of any kind to any sort of article. But this article has impacted my life and my eternal destiny. I am a convert of 4 years. I grew up with an abusive, violent, misogynistic father and I survived an abusive husband. Being completely fed up with men, and still needing a primary relationship, I married a Lesbian woman. That marriage too, ended in disaster. I concluded that if there was any love at all on this earth, it had to be coming from a Divine Source- humans are just too messed up and life is just too hard for love to survive here. An honest look at my life led me to admit that I had indeed seen and felt evidence of love. Therefore, there had to be some kind of “Source of Love” somewhere. And I was determined to find it or die trying. I was shocked and surprised when my quest led me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Here, I found more peace, joy, hope, and love than I had thought possible. I was baptized, confirmed, & endowed. A year after my endowment, I was blessed to be sealed in a Temple marriage with a wonderful, loving, righteous man. When I encountered beliefs of Latter-Day Saints around the issue of polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom, my trust in God as well as my joy and peace, began to crumble. I had actually believed all that stuff about marriage partners being equally yoked; polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom is NOT being equally yoked. I had believed that Heavenly Father loves all his children equally. How is it that a man sealed in the Temple can be commanded to take on 50 more wives? Would God command my husband to take on 50 more wives in the Celestial Kingdom? As a result, I would spend a day with my husband to do this? What kind of God does that? That doesn’t sound like Heaven- that sounds like hell. So it must be true- “women are “less than”, dirty, unworthy creatures and they are allowed in heaven only because they provide sexual pleasure to men and produce babies. I am not a beloved daughter of God after all, I am a piece of dirt. My destiny is to be in a harem and spend the eternities changing diapers and burping a billion babies. I want to be destroyed. I don’t want to be a woman. I want to be broken down into the basic elements and be obliterated. Even the sons of perdition are entitled to this escape. Can’t I have the same out? I was in dangerous territory and sinking fast. I was a mess. My relationship to the Godhead, my relationship to my husband, and my relationship to all things Spiritual was crumbling. With anguish I prayed and relentlessly searched scripture for greater Light and Wisdom on this matter. I had just a spark of hope that maybe, just maybe, my understanding was faulty and incomplete. Maybe my perceptions and understanding were colored by my childhood in the brutal earthly culture of Satan, coupled with incorrect teachings of imperfect (but well meaning) mortals. I continued going to the Temple and beseeched the Godhead for further Light and Wisdom. For a long time, I spoke to no one about the heavy darkness and gnawing fear inside me. Then with our “Come Follow Me” studies on D&C 132 this week, I confided my feelings and fears to my husband. While he was kind, loving, and patient, I remained enveloped in fear and darkness. We prayed together and individually. I saw no reprieve. This article was like the first light following a brutal dark arctic winter. It brought a glimmer of light and hope. The heavy darkness has begun to recede and I feel trust in Heavenly Father, hope in Jesus Christ, and joy in the Restored Gospel beginning to return. I want to thank you for this carefully researched, well thought out, logically constructed article. It has played a crucial role in the process of restoring peace and trust in my relationship to the Godhead, my husband, and all things Spiritual.
MaryNovember 12, 2021
Excellent article, very well thought out and backed up with logic and actual scripture. The idea of polygamy and that I may be forced to live it at some point tormented me for years, ever since I was a girl. Its only been in recent years that I have found a little peace on the matter after the spirit reassured me. I know many women who still are tormented by this idea, its pretty common. I find that the conversations and rationalizing surrounding polygamy always seem to involve warped and sexist thinking. Hopefully as a people we can begin to evolve and view things with more logic and clarity, like in this article. If you truly believe that God loves his daughters and sons equally and wants them all to be happy and saved in the eternities, the old ways of looking at it fall apart. This article gives me hope for my ancestors that practiced polygamy, I always mourned the unfairness of it all and how much pain it caused the women back then.
James W ScottNovember 12, 2021
I’ve read with interest your essays on polygamy and commend your views and conclusions on the three mystery versus in D&C 132. I tend to agree with your conclusions re the somewhat obscure meaning of the tenets taught in these versus. I’d like to offer a few comments on the idea that motherhood and child bearing are a sacrifice of similar import as the atonement. The Lord’s sacrifice and even Abraham’s obedience are horrendously more horrific than the sacrifice of having children. (And I’m certainly in awe of my own wife’s suffering 5 times for our children.) In the vernacular of today’s attitudes toward child bearing it seems, at least in America that anyone having more than two children are the exception and in some cases an imposition on the resources of society and that the woman that has children is making an enormous sacrifice of opportunity and beauty. Many women in the 19th century gave birth to 12 or more and seemingly forgot Eve's ‘curse’, the pain and acceptance of 18 or more years of responsibility. The separation of the sex act and having children has become a major issue. President Spencer W Kimball complained the “veneration of the orgasm” (Conf Report, Nov 1974) has replaced the intimacy of giving birth to and caring for and bringing children to ‘the joy and happiness of a posterity’. ‘Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward” Ps 127:3. In taking umbrage to that sacrificial view can I point out that Eve after hearing the curse of child bearing testified that were it not for her transgression they would not have had children and she gloried in that ‘curse’, that sorrows would multiply AND conception. In fact not having children became a major stumbling block for many in the scriptures: Rachel and Leah, and their handmaids, entered into a major competition to see who could provide the most offspring, even to prostituting Jacob over some mandrake stems. Hannah plead with the Lord for Samuel over the shame of not having any children while her wife mate did. The struggling of single women in Isa 4:1 where seven women vied for a husband’s name and attendant child bearing. Tamar prostituted herself with Judah for children when he refused to marry her to his son Er. Even Emma had trouble having and keeping her offspring alive and healthy. Mrs. Thomas Kane, the peacemaker, in their journey to Salt Lake to defuse the US Army’s entry into the SL valley overnighted in a polygamous household. She wrote that while she was outraged over the idea of polygamy commented that there was no animosity between wives and that they got along well and the household was run in a wonderfully efficient and peaceful manner.
Judy PetersonNovember 12, 2021
Wow! This is SO GOOD! “Mormon myths” abound, particularly in my generation (I’m 80 yrs old) of lifelong active members. I have come to many of these truths on my own, of course under the guidance of the Spirit) and it’s so encouraging to see them in public print. Thank you !
gary bealNovember 12, 2021
My wife and I read both of these articles and were greatly blessed and uplifted. We completely “bought” the interpretation and reasoning of the first article and found it sound and doctrinal. I do have a couple of issues to raise with the “implications” put forth in the second article, though in general concurrence with its logic and conclusion. On the topic of a “sex ratio” in the afterlife, I’m not sure I agree with the assertion that there is no doctrinal basis for assuming more women than men. If we assume that in the pre-existence the sex ratio was 1 to 1, what happened to that ratio when the Sons of Perdition were cast out? Some posit that this portion was as many as one-third of God’s spirits who were cast out of heaven. They were not “sons and daughters” of Perdition, but only sons. And after this life, only men will be assigned to outer darkness. Brigham held this view, as do many (but not) all of the brethren who have spoken on the topic since then. In our Temple endowment, women are pronounced clean in ways that men are not; it doesn’t seem reasonable that all men will overcome their uncleanness in this life. These doctrinal observations argue against the 1 to 1 sex ratio in the resurrection. The article states that if one believes polygamy is “ubiquitous” in the celestial kingdom, there must be at least twice as many women as men. In the history of the church 1840-1890, polygamy was “ubiquitous” (everywhere present) yet only about 3% of the men practiced polygamy. It didn’t require that there be twice as many women for it to work. For me, the logic of that position just doesn’t hold up, nor comport with early church experience. The third area that raises questions is in the arena of a man in this life, who after his wife dies, marries another wife “for time and all eternity.” Whether this constitutes a sacrifice or not for the 2nd wife, she nevertheless freely enters that covenant without being commanded. You point out that the brethren anticipate consequences of Temple covenants in the hereafter by not requiring a child of faithless parent(s) to be sealed again. If plural marriage is always a sacrifice akin to Abraham’s, why would the brethren not facilitate stopping that unnecessary sacrifice? I have read (not nearly as much as the author[s] of these articles) about some of the experiences of polygamous wives in the early days of the church. My observation is that not all of them saw or experienced polygamy as a painful, singular Abrahamic-type sacrifice. I fully agree that many (perhaps even most?) saw polygamy that way, but the interpretation published seems to allow little room for actual participating women to see it as something other than sacrificial. Lastly, the second article seems to allow no need or requirement for ever requiring a woman in the hereafter to live “the Law of Sarah” (D&C132:65). My understanding is that God never gives a law or commandment that is strictly temporal or worldly. For reasons that are too sacred to be discussed here, it is my belief that polygamy does have a role to play in our eternal progression, but perhaps in a situation similar in context to the one the author so beautifully explains in the first article. Please know that nothing I have written above should detract from the beautiful and profound discussion of polygamy in the first article, but only perhaps quibbles with some of the implications of these profound insights in the second article.
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