Polygamy and Divorce

It’s not a new concept.  It’s stated in the book of Genesis that it didn’t take long from the point of creation for the first man to decide that he wanted to take to himself two wives.  Shortly after that we have a situation where the patriarchs of the Israelite people had multiple wives and children from them.

The Arab people believe that they can marry up to 4 women, and that their system or marrying multiple women is superior to our culture that has men and women marrying and divorcing multiple times—also called “serial monogamy.”

Polygamy and the Bible

A few weeks ago I was at our Bible Study and we were talking about Romans 7 and the husband and wife relationship, and that is where I brought up the fact that polygamy and the Bible is a very interesting topic.  David, Solomon, Abraham, Jacob—there were a lot of people that we think had good standing with God and yet they were committing this sin.

The Bible never comes out—that I can see—and states “for this sin of polygamy, you get…”  And yet the Bible is very clear about what happened to people that had multiple wives.  It was never a happy household—with jealousy and all other sin hiding all around.

However, the Bible is very clear on how the family is supposed to be constructed.  First, there was one woman created for one man.  Solomon encourages one wife in the Proverbs.  Jesus reiterated this design in the New Testament, and Paul emphasized it as well.

There’s no question that it was intended to be one man and one woman until death.

But is Polygamy Better Than Divorce?

The main argument that is being made in this camp is that polygamy means that you continue to care for someone that you may have grown out of love with.  Many that support this line of thought see Divorce as a messy situation, breaking apart families and children.  They see polygamy as keeping family units together, just changing functions and duties.

To be sure, a group of people can better provide for the group and two people can.  It also allows for a situation that has people that like kids being with kids.  And there’s no problem with mismatched sex drives.

But they’re both sexual sin.  They’re both a flawed image of the family.  And there is definitely not as strong a bond there as there is with a single man and woman coupling.

And it leads to something that’s worse—polyamory.

Polyamory

This is the logical outgrowth of two separate sinful sexual trends.  The first is the amoral practice of fornication—not saving sexual relationships for marriage.  “Swinging” or open sexual relations have been able to occur because that which is right in a marriage has been allowed to take place outside of it, with lessening social stigma.

The other is polygamy.  For all of the talks about Fundamentalist Mormons practicing it, and the exposes talking about how bad it is, people in the U.S. find themselves curious about it, and sometimes experimenting with it.  We have television shows glorifying it.

Mix these two together and you get polyamory—or a group of people choosing to be together intimately.  Unlike swingers, they are not casual relationships, but unlike polygamy there’s no formal marriage.

These groups are growing and that’s a scary outcome for those of us that hold to Christian values.  Now Newsweek is even giving them publicity and showing them in a positive light.

Moral Decay

While many would be tempted to blame same-sex marriage for what’s happening here, I would instead say that same-sex marriage is just another manifestation of the same kind of cultural obsession and glorification of the perversion of sex.  By pushing the envelope through our entertainment, our advertisement, and our education we’ve allowed even worse perversions to creep up.

We’ve allowed some loose and permissive definition of morality “consenting adults” to rule the discussion rather than God’s Word, and we’re reaping the results of it.

One does not have to be a Bible scholar to know what God says happens to a society that falls into sexual perversion.