How can God not give exact instructions on how to obey a commandment?

[Calm]

2 hours ago, ALarson said:

Not really.  Maybe it was a test.

Are we commanded to accept everything God has given us? 

Is there scripture out there that has such language used with something generally considered a test and something we are meant to refuse?

[Ouagadougou]

5 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Not the same.  But you know that.

They didn't marry Joseph when he was only 14 years old, did they?  They were all adults when the marriages took place.  We can debate what is a child vs. an adult.  But let's not play ignorant here.

What business does a 57 year old man (Lorenzo Snow) have marrying a 15 year old girl?  There is no justification for such behavior and I'm baffled how anybody could think for a second that this is ordained of God.  The average age of marriage for women during that time was not in the teenage years below 18, so there is no excuse for it.  It's simply wrong in my opinion.    

[JLHPROF]

8 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Not the same.  But you know that.

They didn't marry Joseph when he was only 14 years old, did they?  They were all adults when the marriages took place.  We can debate what is a child vs. an adult.  But let's not play ignorant here.

My point is that these marriages had eternity in mind.  There is precious little evidence that Joseph had relations with his adult wives, let alone relations with the few who were under 16.
I personally would have no issue if he did, but Joseph's marriage to a 15 year old was in no way any less appropriate than his marriage to a woman 15 years his senior if sex wasn't involved.

They're all long dead at this point.  If eternal marriage is a valid principle they are all one big happy family in the Celestial Kingdom and the age the ceremonies were performed is not even a consideration.
I mean, Eve was married to Adam right after being created - practically a newborn!  She didn't even get to date around!  She was basically his sister too. 

 

Edited November 3, 2016 by JLHPROF

[Calm]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Wasn't David receiving the inheritance of Saul, the prior leader.  Wives were considered property back then and I believe that this was custom for the new leader to be given the property of the old leader.  Also, it doesn't specifically say that God commanded or even condones for David to marry these wives.  Thats how I read it anyway.  

Then why the promise of giving more?

[JLHPROF]

4 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

So inspiring and ordained of God, right?  Mentioning that Joseph was married to older women (cougars) as well does not justify why teenage girls (as young as 14) were married to him.  If anything, it reconfirmes how crazy, weird and unnecessary polygamy was, in my opinion.  

Nah.
All it confirms is a misunderstanding of the practice and an unrealistic expectation of marital age.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Gave them as property, not necessarily to marry again.  

Do you have other scripture where "gave" is used this way with adult women?

[JLHPROF]

1 minute ago, Ouagadougou said:

What business does a 57 year old man (Lorenzo Snow) have marrying a 15 year old girl?  There is no justification for such behavior and I'm baffled how anybody could think for a second that this is ordained of God.  The average age of marriage for women during that time was not in the teenage years below 18, so there is no excuse for it.  It's simply wrong in my opinion.    

Mortal perspective.
They've both passed on to eternity and their ages are completely irrelevant to their relationship.

[James Tunney]

6 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

My point is that these marriages had eternity in mind.  There is precious little evidence that Joseph had relations with his adult wives, let alone relations with the few who were under 16.
I personally would have no issue if he did, but Joseph's marriage to a 15 year old was in no way any less appropriate than his marriage to a woman 15 years his senior if sex wasn't involved.

They're all long dead at this point.  If eternal marriage is a valid principle they are all one big happy family in the Celestial Kingdom and the age the ceremonies were performed is not even a consideration.
I mean, Eve was married to Adam right after being created - practically a newborn!  She didn't even get to date around!  She was basically his sister too. 

 

Wow, bring on the dissonance reduction and don't be shy to ask for more because there is plenty.

[Ouagadougou]

7 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Mortal perspective.
They've both passed on to eternity and their ages are completely irrelevant to their relationship.

Sorry, the doesn't make any sense and in no way justifies why such behavior was acceptable or even from God.  They were alive on earth at one time, so it is very relevant.  That's like saying the Firist Vision is irrelevant because Joseph Smith has passed on to eternity already.  Are we not spiritual beings having a mortal experience?   

[JLHPROF]

4 minutes ago, James Tunney said:

Wow, bring on the dissonance reduction and don't be shy to ask for more because there is plenty.

If you mean I experience zero dissonance over early Church polygamy, you would be correct on that point.

[JLHPROF]

2 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

Sorry, the doesn't make any sense and in no way justifies why such behavior was acceptable or even from God.  They were alive on earth at one time, so it is very relevant.  That's like saying the Firist Vision is irrelevant because Joseph Smith has passed on to eternity already.  Are we not spiritual beings having a mortal experience?   

It makes perfect sense.
You aren't speaking of something like the First Vision.

We are talking about eternal marriage.  A man and a woman joined together forever, lasting millions upon millions of years.  Does the starting point in our 80 year life really make a bit of difference?  What really is the significance in millions and billions of years between 16 and 18?

Edited November 3, 2016 by JLHPROF

[James Tunney]

26 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

If you mean I experience zero dissonance over early Church polygamy, you would be correct on that point.

It's because of your dissonance reducing nonsense you tell yourself?

Edited November 3, 2016 by James Tunney

[Ouagadougou]

12 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

It makes perfect sense.
You aren't speaking of something like the First Vision.

We are talking about eternal marriage.  A man and a woman joined together forever, lasting millions upon millions of years.  Does the starting point in our 80 year life really make a bit of difference?  What really is the significance in millions and billions of years between 16 and 18?

Yes, the starting point makes a huge difference, especially if somebody is under the age of 18 in my opinion. Today, the church teaches that we shouldn't date before age 16; however, early leaders were marrying teenage girls as young as 14.  It's not morally right for girls that age to be married off; I see no way to justify such behavior and believe it is ordained of God.  The fact is, when some early church leaders were alive, they married young teenage girls.  Where they are now in the afterlife is not a justification for their conduct when they lived on earth. 

Edited November 3, 2016 by Ouagadougou

[Calm]

1 hour ago, ALarson said:

We're really back to not knowing what God commanded or caused to happen vs. whether man (or woman ) did it or caused it and then claimed that it came from God.

On that basis, it seems there is little reason to use any scripture or anything else for that matter to attempt to demonstrate what God actually wants.  Every utterance ever recorded on earth (as far as we have) was recorded by mankind and therefore there is no way of determining for sure (outside of our personal encounter with God that typically cannot be shared with others) what God said.

So why ask anyone for support for their position on God's instructions, desires, etc. and instead just save time by stating "I believe ______ and therefore reject your claim no matter what you pull up" and save everyone time and effort.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Calm

[ALarson]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

On that basis, it seems there is little reason to use any scripture or anything else for that matter to attempt to demonstrate what God actually wants.  Every utterance ever recorded on earth (as far as we have) was recorded by mankind and therefore there is no way of determining for sure (outside of our personal encounter with God that typically cannot be shared with others) what God said.

I agree.

That's why I believe my own personal relationship with God is where I should put my trust.   It's not that I don't trust anyone else, I do.  But in the end, it's what I have experienced when I've prayed about different issues with questions I've had and the answers I've received from these prayers.  Even scripture should be pondered and prayed over.

I do not believe anyone is all bad or all good, I just believe that on this topic (polygamy and most especially the polyandry), Joseph erred.

Edited November 3, 2016 by ALarson

[JLHPROF]

11 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

Yes, the starting point makes a huge difference, especially if somebody is under the age of 18 in my opinion. Today, the church teaches that we shouldn't date before age 16; however, early leaders were marrying teenage girls as young as 14.  It's not morally right for girls that age to be married off; I see no way to justify such behavior and believe it is ordained of God.  The fact is, when some early church leaders were alive, they married young teenage girls.  Where they are now in the afterlife is not a justification for their conduct when they lived on earth.

I certainly believe that physical, mental, and spiritual maturity should be a consideration.  I do think there should be minimal ages for marriage based on those considerations.

But I just don't think numerical years matter as much as those conditions, especially age differences.  If Joseph was 20 when he married a 15 year old nobody would care.  If he was 18 nobody would care.  The fact that he and other prophets were "older" means nothing.
 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Ouagadougou said:

Real history:

- Joseph Smith (age 37) married a 14-year-old
- Brigham Young (age 45) married a 16-year-old
- Willford Woodruff (age 46) married a 15-year-old
- Lorenzo Snow (age 57) married a 15-year-old

The average age of marriage was not 14, 15 or 16 when these prophets lived.  Nothing prejudice here: seven of Joseph Smith's wives were under the age of 18; and another 11 were married to other men.  

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Age.htm

However, if we just look at the ages of the participants, the range is within the community's norm for Joseph (if he were multiple men, it is not an anomalous percentage of young women marrying older men).  The average age of Joseph's wives was not 14, 15, or 16.  The one problem is that it was done within the co text of polygyny/polyandry.  Those two issues is all that needs to be focused on IMO (and more than enough IMO for those who wish to reject).

http://en.fairmormon.org/Polygamy_book/Age_of_wives

(see the charts on age differences)

"To my knowledge, the issue of age disparity was not a charge raised by critics in Joseph's day. It is difficult to prove a negative, but the absence of much comment on this point is probably best explained by the fact that plural marriage was scandalous, but marriages with teenage women were, if not the norm, at least not uncommon enough to occasion comment. For example, to disguise the practice of plural marriage, Joseph had eighteen-year-old Sarah Whitney pretend to marry Joseph Kingsbury, who was days away from thirty-one. [19] If this age gap would have occasioned comment, Joseph Smith would not have used Kingsbury as a decoy.

One hundred and eighty Nauvoo-era civil marriages have husbands and wives with known ages and marriage dates. [20] Chart 12 2 demonstrates that these marriages follow the general pattern of wives being younger than husbands.

Chart 12-2

When the age of husband is plotted against the age of each wife, it becomes clear that almost all brides younger than twenty married men between five and twenty years older (see Chart 12-3).

Chart 12-3

This same pattern appears in 879 marriages from the 1850 U.S. Census (see Chart 12 4). Non-Mormon age differences easily exceeded Joseph's except for age fourteen. We should not make too much of this, since the sample size is very small (one or two cases for Joseph; three for the census) and dynastic motives likely played a large role in Joseph's choice, as discussed above.

Chart 12-4 

In short, Mormon civil marriage patterns likely mimicked those of their gentile neighbors. Neither Mormons or their critics would have found broad age differences to be an impediment to conjugal marriage. In fact, the age difference between wives and their husbands was greatest in the teen years, and decreased steadily until around Joseph's age, between 30–40 years, when the spread between spouses' ages was narrowest (note the bright pink bars in Chart 12-5)."

Edited November 3, 2016 by Calm

[Calm]

27 minutes ago, Ouagadougou said:

Yes, the starting point makes a huge difference, especially if somebody is under the age of 18 in my opinion. Today, the church teaches that we shouldn't date before age 16; however, early leaders were marrying teenage girls as young as 14.  It's not morally right for girls that age to be married off; I see no way to justify such behavior and believe it is ordained of God.

That is a huge mass of humanity you are condemning given the history of marriage.  It seems strange to me to look at the world as only approaching doing marriage right in the last 100 years or so and the previous 5,500 years or so of history where we sort of know how marriage was done in many communities were so culturally off.

Do you see God as ordaining any type of marriage btw?

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

It makes perfect sense.
You aren't speaking of something like the First Vision.

We are talking about eternal marriage.  A man and a woman joined together forever, lasting millions upon millions of years.  Does the starting point in our 80 year life really make a bit of difference?  What really is the significance in millions and billions of years between 16 and 18?

God appears to be concerned as to how we treat our spouses.  Part of that treatment includes when we choose to marry them in my opinion.  Repentance may eternally remove whatever sins exist between people, but that does not remove the fact that they are sins.

I do see maturity being the key issue, people just use numbers to make it easy.  But our own law allows for other treatments, such as the emancipation of minors and the declaration of adult children continuing legally as dependents due to mental and emotional limitations (such as my 26 year old daughter who was mentally mature enough at 13 or 14 to be declared an adult, but emotionally is officially disabled due to extreme anxiety and depression such that she cannot support herself...or at times even make decisions on what to eat very well).

Edited November 3, 2016 by Calm

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, JLHPROF said:

And we're back to the "God wouldn't do that despite the record because we don't like it" argument.

They were writing records to tell a narrative for theological purposes, not to record factual history.  What were they trying to teach through the genocide story?  Perhaps to prove that God favors the Israelites over other groups or to teach that outsiders should be avoided.  I don't know all the reasons.  Many of these narratives were written hundreds or thousands of years after the events, again for theological purposes based on their conceptions about God.  

I choose to believe in a God that wouldn't command genocide, this is a modern reinterpretation of the narrative.  These kinds of reinterpretations are also present in the biblical texts that we have (we don't have access to originals).  Unfortunately we don't have access to what actually happened or what God actually may or may not have commanded.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Then why the promise of giving more?

You can still look at the more as reference to the property aspect of everything David was given.  The house of your master and his wives.  This is the estate that is being referenced.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Do you have other scripture where "gave" is used this way with adult women?

I can't think of any off the top of my head.  The 10th commandment refers to women as property, and this concept was common throughout the bible from my reading of it.  Are you disputing that women were thought of as property, or are you asking if the word "gave" was used specifically?  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

On that basis, it seems there is little reason to use any scripture or anything else for that matter to attempt to demonstrate what God actually wants.  Every utterance ever recorded on earth (as far as we have) was recorded by mankind and therefore there is no way of determining for sure (outside of our personal encounter with God that typically cannot be shared with others) what God said.

So why ask anyone for support for their position on God's instructions, desires, etc. and instead just save time by stating "I believe ______ and therefore reject your claim no matter what you pull up" and save everyone time and effort.

I completely agree that there is no way of determining for sure what God said outside of personal encounters.  This is the essence of the gospel of agency and of Mormonism as I believe it.  Our encounters with God are all subjective and personal.  

I don't agree that there is no reason to discuss these issues.  We should talk about them and make our case for what we believe is right.  This is essential in the human experience.  Some people claim authority to speak for God, some say that written texts speak for God, others don't believe in God.  We all have to find middle ground, we all have to find values that we can collectively aspire to in order for society to work.  

[cdowis]

31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I choose to believe in a God that wouldn't command genocide, this is a modern reinterpretation of the narrative.  These kinds of reinterpretations are also present in the biblical texts that we have (we don't have access to originals).  Unfortunately we don't have access to what actually happened or what God actually may or may not have commanded.  

We do have the Book of Mormon which explains it.  Apparently the Brass Plates have the details.

Edited November 3, 2016 by cdowis

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I can't think of any off the top of my head.  The 10th commandment refers to women as property, and this concept was common throughout the bible from my reading of it.  Are you disputing that women were thought of as property, or are you asking if the word "gave" was used specifically?  

The latter.  While women were often presented as property and treated that way, at other times they were not...for example, how can a person be "one flesh" with property?  The concept of giving in this case may be more custodial (as in caregiver) than transfer of property.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Calm