Well, as many of you have probably heard, New York Magazine recently ran an issue with a bunch of kittens on the cover, but which was dedicated to discussing the growing trend of polyamory. Or, as it’s called in the article “ethical non-monogamy.”
Now, I will say that over the years I have seen an increase in the number of people who are publicly admitting to their sexual incontinence and adultery, as though giving it a title other than cuckold or adulterer or adulteress somehow makes it not morally disgusting. I have noticed that this is something that people are doing.
And the fact that an outlet like New York Magazine is doing an issue where serial adultery is a special focus is not a surprise. There is very little that can surprise me, anymore. And, I think the ho-hum response from Americans about this is because Americans, in general, are similarly unsurprised. It’s no shock that the degenerate act in degenerate ways and promote degeneracy.
And make no mistake, polyamory is nothing but moral degeneracy. It’s decadent, narcissistic, perversion masquerading as being something hip and cutting edge. But the reality is that it isn’t in fact cutting edge. People have had adultery for thousands of years. For practically all of human history there have been men and women who are enslaved to their base passions who will violate the their oaths and vows and will adulterate with another person or people.
And again, for a very long time, the decent people of the world have considered the men who cannot control their lusts to be overgrown children not worthy of any position of trust or respect and the women as loose, at best, if not prostitutes.
No decent society has ever smiled upon adultery because no decent society has ever thought that violating the most fundamental trust and harming someone in the closest possible relationship is a good thing. If you will break your oaths and your vows to the woman in whose ears you’ve whispered “I love you” while wrapped in intimate embrace then there is no trust you won’t violate. If a woman will welcome another man into her bed and into her body she has violated the most basic trust there is and she’s considered utterly untrustworthy.
Now. Am I saying that there cannot be forgiveness? Of course not. Am I claiming to be perfect? Of course not. And all people, or at least all wise people, know that we too are subject to temptation, and we are frail and feeble and that we too might fall and with a mighty crash, too! And that’s why in most societies people have hushed up adultery, not out of hypocrisy but as a means to offer forgiveness while not promoting an activity that is utterly corrosive to society.
If fact, I’d like us to look at some examples of people in the Bible who experimented with this whole “open marriage” or polyamorous or non-monogamous type lifestyle.
Genesis 16:
16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”
Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.
6 “Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
Genesis 21:
21 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 7 And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
8 The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”
11 The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. 12 But God said to him, “Do not be so distressed about the boy and your slave woman. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 13 I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.”
Genesis 30:
30 When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!”
2 Jacob became angry with her and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?”
3 Then she said, “Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.”
4 So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, 5 and she became pregnant and bore him a son. 6 Then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.” Because of this she named him Dan.
7 Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. 8 Then Rachel said, “I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.” So she named him Naphtali.
9 When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. 10 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. 11 Then Leah said, “What good fortune!” So she named him Gad.
12 Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. 13 Then Leah said, “How happy I am! The women will call me happy.” So she named him Asher.
14 During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, “Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes.”
15 But she said to her, “Wasn’t it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son’s mandrakes too?”
“Very well,” Rachel said, “he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son’s mandrakes.”
16 So when Jacob came in from the fields that evening, Leah went out to meet him. “You must sleep with me,” she said. “I have hired you with my son’s mandrakes.” So he slept with her that night.
17 God listened to Leah, and she became pregnant and bore Jacob a fifth son. 18 Then Leah said, “God has rewarded me for giving my servant to my husband.” So she named him Issachar.
19 Leah conceived again and bore Jacob a sixth son. 20 Then Leah said, “God has presented me with a precious gift. This time my husband will treat me with honor, because I have borne him six sons.” So she named him Zebulun.
21 Some time later she gave birth to a daughter and named her Dinah.
22 Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. 23 She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.” 24 She named him Joseph, and said, “May the Lord add to me another son.”
2 Samuel 11:
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
1 Kings 11:
11 King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
Obviously I could add more examples to this, but in the end, I think it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the Bible show us over and over and over again that polyamorous relationships don’t work. Polygyny and polyandry in whatever forms they may exist simply create more problems. The challenges that come with one man and one woman attempting to become one flesh are great enough, but adding more people into the mix never makes things better.
On of the great blessings of Christian society has been to promote and normalize lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual, marriage. The fact that the standard has been one man and one woman bound together by a public oath for life is one of the best things that ever happened to the Christianized world. There are more benefits than I have time to discuss.
But this biblical standard is being attacked on every front. From the no fault divorces that started decades ago, to homosexual marriage, to now the pushes for polygamy and pedophilia, normal, healthy marriages that have the effect of stabilizing society and leading people to Christ are being torn down. Because make no mistake. All the perversion is not done ultimately with a view to promote perversion, but to tear down righteousness and decency.
And I and other Christians can rant and rave about how bad things are getting and how we need to return to morality, and that’s all true enough—if your goal is to preach to the choir. But if your aim is to convince the unconvinced, then I think there is another tack that may be better.
Let me propose that rather than spending all our time finger-wagging, tongue-lashing, and brow-beating, we spend time being happily married.
I know—it’s a crazy thought, isn’t it. But here’s my carefully calculated, deeply intricate, miraculously clever masterplan to reorder society—be happy.
Let me lay out the steps for you, because I know it’s complicated.
Step 1: [Skip Step one if you’re married] find a person of the opposite sex whom you enjoy being with, who shares your Christian convictions, whom you’re physically attracted to, and with whom you want to spend your life.
Step 2: Marry that person, in public, in a church, or a suitably beautiful public location, officiated by a churchman. [Also skip this step if you’re already married.]
Step 3: Have children. Don’t wait around. Don’t try to get everything in hand. Don’t wait till you’ve got everything perfect. Just start having babies. If you’re unable to have babies, then consider fostering and or adopting so that you can share your love with children who need it.
Step 4: Keep having babies. The number of babies any family can handle is going to vary based on a lot of things, but have a lot of them.
Step 5: Love your babies and help them grow into Christ-loving adults, by being kind and having high expectations, taking them to a serious church, holding them accountable, and doing your uttermost to be the kind of person you want them to become.
Step 6: Strive to be warm and gracious, loving your spouse as Christ loved you; invite others into your home to share in the blessings of hospitality from a family who love eachother.
Step 7: Rejoice in the enormous blessings of marriage and children and strive to make eachother happy.
Now, what I’m not adding in are all the steps that follow the first 7 steps that actually make this a very effective plan. But I’ll lay it out in more of a narrative than a step-by-step kinda thing. You see, when a whole lot of Christians live in the blessings of Christ and have happy, Christ-honoring, baby-loving, families then people will see that. People will see that Christians like this are happy. They will see that marriages done in the Christian mode are happier and their kids are happier and altogether there is just more plain flourishing coming out of God-loving, Christ-honoring marriages and families than out of the lives of the godless.
Sooner or later people will notice that all the sin they’ve engaged in has brought nothing but sorrow and misery and brokenness, but that those crazy Christians have happy, wholesome, flourishing lives. Of course, Christian marriages and families are not and will not be perfect. Of course, some Christians will fail utterly to be good spouses and parents and some kids will go off the rails. Sure. But I’m talking about the law of averages, here. As I’ve said many times, individuals are infinitely unpredictable and large groups are infinitely predictable. The law of averages works—if Christians, en masse, work to simply have happy, godly, families that celebrate children as images of God, that seek to settle down in and permanently better a community, who have warm, hospitable homes, on the average, that’s going to lead to a lot of happy, wholesome, well adjusted people and the unsaved will notice. This won’t convert everyone, but it will be noticed by the majority, and it will inspire others to imitate us in our deeds, if not in our creeds.
Brothers and sisters, winning a society for Christ takes time. It takes centuries. So, I implore you. Do your part to help the Church play the long game. Have a happy marriage and a happy family. It might do as much, if not more, than anything else you do to advance the cause of Christ.