God Squad: Are there marriages in Heaven?
Q: I thought to myself, "Who could I ask this question?" You were the first one to pop into my head. My husband of 59 years passed away five months ago. I am missing him terribly. I thought I was doing well with my grief and then there was a posting on the internet about how there are no marriages in Heaven. Per the Bible. I can’t even begin to tell you how that made me feel. The tears just flowed. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I do know that Love Never Dies. I feel it to my core. Thank you so much! — M
A: Dearest M, trust your core! Like most questions about life after death, the question of whether marriages begun on planet Earth continue in planet Heaven is above my pay grade, but I can give you the official line.
For Christians the verse that is often quoted is Matthew 22:30, where Jesus says, "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” This question was asked by a group of people trying to stump Jesus. They asked him which husband would a woman who had been married several times be married to in Heaven. Jesus' response does not directly answer their question, but it does clarify his teaching that there would be no marriages performed here on Earth after the Resurrection in the Messianic time. Not much help here.
Matthew 16:19 has a different and more direct take on this. "Whatever you bind on Earth shall have been bound in heaven,” This means that marriages bound here are bound there.
Let us step back and think this through. What we know without any kind of revelation is that our bodies and our bodily needs will not accompany us beyond the grave. This clearly means that if there is a Heaven and a God (you know I vote yes on both) or if there is nothing but worms, either way our days of having sex and procreating are quite decisively over at the time of our death (if not considerably before). So one of the clear purposes of marriage obviously has no place in Heaven for our disembodied souls, but what about our marital love and your beautiful belief the “Love Never Dies”? Does that last?
This is not a simple question not only because we cannot know the answer here but because cellphone service is terrible there. What I believe is that in Heaven a new kind of love enters our souls: the direct and unmitigated love of God. This love may well eclipse the love we had for any other human being. In such an environment, marriage will not be eliminated but transformed into just another example of the glorious forms love takes in our lives. This means to me that true love of the kind you were blessed to have with your dearly departed husband will definitely endure in a realm in which love is the principal unifying force.
There is a teaching from some Christian denominations that is echoed in Jewish teachings, as well. According to this belief, there was a person alive on Earth when we are alive who is our true soul mate. Judaism calls this person our bashert. This is the person we should have married if we had met them. Rarely, but sometimes, we meet and marry our bashert. When our soul enters Heaven, we are introduced to our bashert, with whom we get to hang around. Father Tom Hartman was obviously not my spouse; but in addition to my wonderful wife, Betty, Tommy was absolutely positively my bashert.
Here is my prayer for you, dear M:
I pray that after you live 120 years and your soul goes to Heaven, God will tell you to prepare yourself to meet your bashert. Maybe there will be angel music and singing (I am a little fuzzy on the details here) but eventually there will be a soul standing in front of you in the shadows of God’s throne who will step forward and be smiling and crying tears of joy, and so will you when you see that your bashert was your husband, and he will say what you always knew, “I love you, and I have been waiting for you. Let me show you around.”
Q: I thought to myself, "Who could I ask this question?" You were the first one to pop into my head. My husband of 59 years passed away five months ago. I am missing him terribly. I thought I was doing well with my grief and then there was a posting on the internet about how there are no marriages in Heaven. Per the Bible. I can’t even begin to tell you how that made me feel. The tears just flowed. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I do know that Love Never Dies. I feel it to my core. Thank you so much! — M
A: Dearest M, trust your core! Like most questions about life after death, the question of whether marriages begun on planet Earth continue in planet Heaven is above my pay grade, but I can give you the official line.
For Christians the verse that is often quoted is Matthew 22:30, where Jesus says, "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” This question was asked by a group of people trying to stump Jesus. They asked him which husband would a woman who had been married several times be married to in Heaven. Jesus' response does not directly answer their question, but it does clarify his teaching that there would be no marriages performed here on Earth after the Resurrection in the Messianic time. Not much help here.
Matthew 16:19 has a different and more direct take on this. "Whatever you bind on Earth shall have been bound in heaven,” This means that marriages bound here are bound there.
Let us step back and think this through. What we know without any kind of revelation is that our bodies and our bodily needs will not accompany us beyond the grave. This clearly means that if there is a Heaven and a God (you know I vote yes on both) or if there is nothing but worms, either way our days of having sex and procreating are quite decisively over at the time of our death (if not considerably before). So one of the clear purposes of marriage obviously has no place in Heaven for our disembodied souls, but what about our marital love and your beautiful belief the “Love Never Dies”? Does that last?
This is not a simple question not only because we cannot know the answer here but because cellphone service is terrible there. What I believe is that in Heaven a new kind of love enters our souls: the direct and unmitigated love of God. This love may well eclipse the love we had for any other human being. In such an environment, marriage will not be eliminated but transformed into just another example of the glorious forms love takes in our lives. This means to me that true love of the kind you were blessed to have with your dearly departed husband will definitely endure in a realm in which love is the principal unifying force.
There is a teaching from some Christian denominations that is echoed in Jewish teachings, as well. According to this belief, there was a person alive on Earth when we are alive who is our true soul mate. Judaism calls this person our bashert. This is the person we should have married if we had met them. Rarely, but sometimes, we meet and marry our bashert. When our soul enters Heaven, we are introduced to our bashert, with whom we get to hang around. Father Tom Hartman was obviously not my spouse; but in addition to my wonderful wife, Betty, Tommy was absolutely positively my bashert.
Here is my prayer for you, dear M:
I pray that after you live 120 years and your soul goes to Heaven, God will tell you to prepare yourself to meet your bashert. Maybe there will be angel music and singing (I am a little fuzzy on the details here) but eventually there will be a soul standing in front of you in the shadows of God’s throne who will step forward and be smiling and crying tears of joy, and so will you when you see that your bashert was your husband, and he will say what you always knew, “I love you, and I have been waiting for you. Let me show you around.”
