It's been enlightening for me reflect upon some of the different types of marital relationships that I observed in such a multicultural tapestry as the Côte d'Ivoire. I say multicultural because there are over 60 different languages spoken by the different peoples within the nation's borders, and though many of their traditions are similar if not analogous, there are also competing varieties of modern European and Eastern traditional types of marital arrangements there also. There was an amazing complexity compared with what I had always assumed was the almost binary choice of cohabitating couples in Western cultures (marry, or live together, with few other socially sanctioned arrangements possible), and yet there seemed to be no confusion. If there was any confusion, it didn't come from the culture, but rather from recent successive changes in the state's legal definition of marriage. As with many African nations there existed a long history of traditional marriages, each done in a way sanctioned by traditional authorities. Currently in the Côte d'Ivoire, these traditional marriages are still valid and binding, but only to the authorities who sanction them. In other words, they are of no consequence in the eyes of the law.
Now I don't have annotated facts for this paragraph, so if there's anyone out there who can set the record straight, please enlighten us--until then, I hope you'll find the following script based on reflection and experience to contain the essence of the truth...Since the state is the judicial authority more advantageous to the cause of a woman repudiated than paternalistic tribal councils, cases for spousal abuse began to be made under French law. It became too easy in too many judicial cases for a man to claim he was never married to a certain woman, so it became necessary for the state to require registration of marriages.
However it came to be, traditional marriages are currently common, but it is becoming more and more popular for people to get married twice, and sometimes 3 times: once before the tribal elders (or whatever tribal authority is involved), once before God (in whatever religious ceremony you find necessary beyond your ethnic tradition's), and once before the law.
It makes sense that each of these entities would have an interest in sanctioning the union of a man and a woman because such a union changes the spheres of privilege, status and consequence and such changes are conceived of differently by each of the 3 authorizing entities.
To be clear, I should re-state the definition of marriage I put forward earlier:
Marriage is a human social institution whereby a man and a woman covenant with each other, as ratified by an authority beyond the couple themselves, to form a family (a single social unit, whether that unit later includes children or not) with a right to certain privileges and status as granted by the marrying authority.
In all three jurisdictions marriage authorizes sex, and therefore sanctions the possibility of child-bearing. This single uniting possibility (whether achieved or not, whether blessed by the actual arrival of children or not) can therefore accurately be said to be the goal of marriage. There are other privileges and consequences of the union, of course. For example, some tribes grant land, or membership within ruling councils only to married men or only to men with children. Christianity in general, and LDS doctrine in specific hold men and women to be autonomous moral agents individually, but created incomplete in such a way that only the union of male and female (in a sexual way, yes, but also, and more fundamentally, spiritually becoming one in purpose) can produce true and lasting happiness of soul. From this doctrine flows the concept of marriage as being ordained by God and therefore requiring His ratification. The civil authorities must at least nominally keep a register of their citizens so that they can be called upon for various civic duties (taxes, etc.), and privileges (voting, etc.).
Now this point about individuals, male and female, being completely autonomous moral agents, and yet being inadequate for their own eternal happiness without the other sex is capital. In the LDS conception of heaven there are degrees of glory. God, in his mercy, will grant each individual the maximum glory s/he can abide. I say abide because glories, or rather powers which can be used to glorious ends, come with responsibilities and with moral laws that govern their use. If you want to achieve the highest glory, you must prove worthy or capable of living the highest law. I can only guess that this implies that there will be as many degrees of glory as there are individuals. Yet doctrinally it is certain that there exist several grand groupings called kingdoms. There will be some who have lived mostly just lives and who have only treated others without perfect justice because they could not bring themselves to accept (and all will have had the choice) that its true source is Jesus Christ. They will be judged according to their works and the standard of God's laws, and rewarded for all the good they did, even though they did not take the final step and accept Christ as their Redeemer. These, however, have not been able to abide the higher law of the Gospel, and therefore will not inherit the same kingdom of glory with those who have confessed the Christ by judgment time. Of all the laws and commandments God gives us, is not the most difficult to truly share being, body and soul with a spouse? Do we not each have such separate challenges as individuals that it takes a lifetime and longer to perfect the symbiosis that allows our grandparents, in a memory I'm sure we can all access in our own experience, to look each other in the eye, know what the other was thinking, twinkle, smile, and serve the other without a word being uttered? And is it not the most deeply rewarding to the soul's heart to know you two are one, more than just physically, more than just for short periods? Does the vast inspired heart of all earthly art and literature not tend to that one great and eternal meaning?
The LDS model for marriage is contained in the great Intercessory Prayer where Christ asked for His Father to grant that the disciples of Christ may be one in the same way that He and His Father were one. Husbands and wives striving each for their own oneness with Him, oneness in purpose, in attitude, in worthiness, in effect, and even in power have the possibility of drawing closer to this kind of unity as demonstrated by the Godhead than any other human relationship can. Why? Because just as the bodies of the sexes are biologically complementary, so is some element of their spiritual nature that we have no current means of investigating scientifically yet. Does it not seem in total keeping with truth and reason to believe that the highest law in heaven to which humans must submit in order to receive the highest glory therein be the very law of marriage, of family that lends the very core of meaning to that most sacred appellation of deity: Father?
Now, let's be quite clear and undo the lie that PBS continues to claim by highlighting either false or misled witnesses: entry into the highest glory of the highest of heaven's kingdoms requires abiding the law of eternal marriage NOT necessarily a polygamous eternal marriage. We claim to have no understanding of what life is like in that state of bliss other than that our legally and lawfully MONOGAMOUS families will continue to progress and eventually receive a full inheritance of God's power and glory as He has promised: which infinite power and glory must include becoming, eternities later, even as He is, and therefore doing as He does; each somehow governing a universe of our own as our infinite God manages His in all glory and righteousness; each, through a process we understand absolutely nothing of even the most rudimentary basics, begetting spirit children as He does, and setting about creating worlds in which they too can progress, gain material bodies on which their morally agential nature as spirits can act, be redeemed for their sins, and inherit what power and glory we have for themselves in one eternal round. It is beyond heinous to suggest that Mormons, even the early ones that WERE called upon to practice polygamy, somehow believe that polygamy in and of itself is that highest law of heaven. Such a suggestion cheapens the joy to be found in the true union of a man and a woman and reduces it to the basely sexual and the maleficent patriarchal, both extremes of which are antithetical to the nature of true unity eternal marriage both holds as its ideal, and produces as its result when the principles underlying it (not selfish greed, not lust for sex or for power, but love and selflessness!) are applied to their fullness.
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