A Biblical Response to Polyamory (CWAC Podcast)

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00:00

Hey guys, it's Keith and welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

00:03

I'm joined today by Uncle Rich.

00:06

He's here in the studio and we're going to be talking about polyamory and monogamy.

00:12

It's a season of marriages at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

00:15

Just a few weeks ago I did a wedding for a young lovely couple and I'm currently doing marriage counseling, premarital counseling for another couple that's going to be married at the beginning of August and I'm going to be starting premarital counseling with another couple that just got engaged.

00:31

So I'm excited to be thinking about the subject of marriage and looking at all of the things that go along with walking a couple through the premarital counseling process and since this subject is fresh on my mind, Rich is joining me today to talk about the subject of marriage and specifically one of the things that we would consider to be a threat to marriage in the modern context and that is the subject of polyamory.

00:57

Many of you have probably heard that word used in some type of social context recently, but most of us are more familiar with the term that used to be very common and that is the term polygamy.

01:11

Polygamy, of course, is the idea of having multiple marriages.

01:15

Someone who marries or not multiple marriages but married to multiple people.

01:18

A husband having multiple wives or a wife having multiple husbands.

01:21

But that idea has sort of shifted in our cultural context and now where we see polygamy as not the thing that is being encouraged, but rather a lot of people are encouraging this idea of polyamory or being able to be in a relationship, a sexual relationship with multiple people at one time.

01:43

Richard was actually good enough to send me a video that he had seen online from Brett Cooper.

01:49

Now, Brett Cooper is with Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro.

01:54

She's the female Ben Shapiro.

01:57

My daughter actually turned me on to her.

01:58

She found Brett Cooper a couple years ago and first thing she asked was like, who's this girl look like? I said, she looks like Ben Shapiro.

02:07

Is that his sister? Yeah, or his daughter.

02:10

Probably not old enough for him to be her father.

02:13

No, I think he's in his late 20s early 30s.

02:16

Probably not.

02:17

She's 21, 22 years old.

02:18

Yeah.

02:19

Anyway, yeah, I found the video and she was talking about how now monogamy is considered to be kinky.

02:28

Yeah, that was what was that was interesting.

02:30

You sent it to me and she did say she said monogamy is the new kink, right? Like people are seeing this as the odd thing, the kinky thing that people would actually enter into a sexual relationship and be in that relationship till death do them part.

02:43

Right.

02:45

So when we talk about the subject of polyamory and specifically the term that she used, and I want to give credit because she's the one who sort of turned us on to this idea, she used the term ethical non-monogamy and which I had never heard before.

03:00

I've heard I've heard of monogamy, of course, which is the idea of having one partner for life, the person that God has given you as husband or wife, that person is with you forever.

03:12

But the idea of ethical non-monogamy, meaning being that it would be ethical and it is ethical to be in a relationship with more than one sexual partner for an extended period of time or for however long a person chooses and that the idea that she put across in the video was that monogamy itself.

03:33

And again, she's not saying this.

03:34

She's quoting other people.

03:36

She's showing videos and I'll add a link in the description below to her video if you want to go watch it.

03:41

It's only maybe less than 20 minutes and you can go watch her video.

03:44

She addresses what other people are saying.

03:47

This is not something that Brad Cooper herself is putting out, but it's something that she is addressing that other people are saying and they're saying that monogamy itself is unethical.

03:57

Mm-hmm.

03:57

So they're saying, yeah, we have ethical non-monogamy from the side of those who are supporting this and then from their perspective, what we would support, which is a monogamous relationship, meaning that a person is with one partner for life in a marriage relationship and a covenant marriage, meaning that they're to be in that relationship until they die, that they're saying that is unethical because it takes away a person's ability to express all their desires and all their wants and all of their wishes from a sexual perspective and even heard one guy in one of the videos say that it increases the things like jealousy and that monogamy forces people into a jealous attitude.

04:46

And so that's what, that's the problem.

04:49

That's how monogamy is unethical from their perspective.

04:54

And so I have some websites that I had pulled up and one of the things that I wanted to address is this, the idea of marriage rates, because I mentioned this in my sermon last week.

05:05

I was talking about marriage currently.

05:06

I'm preaching through Colossians chapter 3, which talks about husbands and wives and children and those things and I said we see a decrease in divorce rates.

05:16

People always talk about the divorce rate, one out of every two marriages fails.

05:19

That's actually not true.

05:20

I want to point that out.

05:21

It is not true that 50% of all marriages fail in divorce.

05:25

That's not correct.

05:25

That's never been correct.

05:26

That is an incorrect statistic that's often cited, but it's just like many statistics, it's made up on the spot.

05:32

People think that that's true.

05:33

It's never been true.

05:34

Just to pull that, just to verify what I'm saying, I did pull this up from a lawyer who does divorces and he quotes this.

05:42

He says, is the divorce rate 50%? Nope.

05:45

In reality, the 50% divorce rate was never the reality.

05:48

This number is based on projections from the 1970s that it eventually would get that high, but it never did.

05:53

Projections held that if 2% of married couples continue to divorce each year over the ensuing decades, the number would reach 50% or even higher, but it never has.

06:02

In fact, the divorce rates according to legaljobs.io, the current divorce rate in the U.S.

06:07

is 2.3 persons per 1,000 people.

06:10

Overall, the rate of divorces in America is falling.

06:13

Divorces amongst people age 50 plus years are rising and there are fewer couples choosing to marry now than there were in pre-1990.

06:22

I think that has to do something with the lower divorce rate.

06:24

I mentioned this, as I said in my sermon, the reason why we see fewer divorces now is because we see fewer people being married.

06:33

Part of the reason for that is we see a leaving of traditional understandings of the family, a leaving of traditional understandings of things like responsibility in family and responsibility among people and cultures and ideas of what the role of the father and the mother are and the different understandings of just basic life, and a lot of these things are being jettisoned.

07:01

So when we talk about the subject of polyamory, I want to quote from a man who calls himself a Christian polyamorist.

07:12

This is what he says.

07:13

He says poor study of the Bible and much proof texting on marriage by American evangelicals coupled with our confused American relationship with monarchy versus democracy cause us to lose focus on how subversive many of the Gospels and biblical narratives were.

07:31

Christian polyamory, and again, I can't state it enough, this should not be confused with patriarchal polygamy, can be understood as naturally stemming from a progressive reading of the Bible.

07:42

And that's the end of the quote on the website.

07:44

And again, this is from criticalpolyamorist.com.

07:48

This person is saying that you can read the Bible in such a way that you come away with the belief that polyamory is true or accurate.

07:59

So thoughts? Yeah, I don't see how he's how he's coming to that conclusion based on what Scripture says as far as polyamory is concerned.

08:13

When you have so many scriptures that have, and we're gonna probably go over some of them, I'm sure, that deal with sexual immorality and husband and wife and one woman man, all that stuff.

08:26

I don't see where he gets polyamory can be.

08:28

Well, you notice what he said in the article.

08:30

He said that American evangelicals are proof texting.

08:34

And so what you just did, it would probably feed it and we're going to, like you said, we're gonna look at these texts.

08:40

But his point would be the Bible does not present this as a truth, but rather something that Christians have forced on to the Scripture.

08:50

And we know what proof texting is.

08:51

We've seen people do proof texting.

08:54

Any one of us who sat in a dispensational Bible study.

09:00

Oh, man.

09:01

Did you see what happened today on Twitter? Oh, you're not on Twitter.

09:04

No, I'm not on Twitter.

09:04

I got included on a poll.

09:09

It said, who's your favorite amillennialist? And it was like some really big names and then me.

09:18

The only reason I was even included, I think, is I was on the podcast as one of the amillennialists on the podcast.

09:24

So there's no reason, I even put that in, there's no reason I should be on this poll.

09:30

Anyway, the premillennialists are losing their mind and saying how dumb amillennialism is and all this stuff.

09:38

So if anybody who's on Twitter maybe have seen that.

09:41

But anyway, the point is we know what proof texting is, whether it's a position we disagree with or something.

09:47

We often accuse people of proof texting, meaning taking one verse out of its context and using it to argue a point that the Bible doesn't teach.

09:56

That's what proof texting is.

09:58

And so that's what this man, I'm assuming it's a man, I had to go back and look at the article, or maybe he doesn't even identify as a man.

10:05

We don't know anymore.

10:06

The writer of this article is T.B.

10:08

Livermont.

10:09

That doesn't help.

10:10

He's a guest blogger and that's awkward, but so he writes, he or she, or yeah, writes this statement about polyamory saying it's not biblical.

10:24

It's something that is imposed on the Bible through proof texting and and so we're gonna address that in a little bit when we actually look at the scripture.

10:34

But I do want to quote one other source.

10:37

Now, this is from the Center for for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender.

10:43

This is centerforfaith.com is the website and the article is entitled, Why Christians Need to Think About Polyamory.

10:54

And as I was reading this and kind of getting ready for today's podcast, I was thinking about my own children.

11:00

Because this wasn't even a thing when we were younger.

11:05

Now, I'm not saying there weren't people who weren't sleeping around, but that's what we call it.

11:08

Right, right.

11:09

When we people talk about having multiple relationships or open relationships, it was very taboo.

11:14

It was very odd to hear about someone who was in sexual relationships with multiple people and in such a situation we would have we would have said that was immoral.

11:23

Even as unbelievers we would have said that it's not moral to be to carry on multiple sexual relationships at one time.

11:29

Right.

11:30

But this is what he he the writer of this article is Preston Sprinkle.

11:35

This was written in 2018 and he says polyamory is much more common than some people think.

11:42

According to one estimate as many as 5% of Americans are currently in relationships involving consensual non-monogamy.

11:50

Now that we use the term ethical non-monogamy earlier, but he calls it consensual non-monogamy, which is about the same as those who identify as LGBTQ.

12:00

Another recent study published in a peer-reviewed journal found that one in five Americans have been in a consensual non-monogamous relationship at least some point in their life.

12:09

Another survey showed that nearly 70% of non-religious Americans between the ages of 24 and 35 believe that consensual polyamory is okay, even if it's not their cup of tea.

12:20

What about church folks of the same age? Roughly 24% said they were fine.

12:25

This comes from a book called Cheap Sex.

12:29

That's where that where that particular statistic was cited.

12:33

So it's interesting that he's saying that this issue really needs to be considered as much so or more than the LGBTQ issue because they're, you know, the 5% of the population that are engaging in that, well, they're about 5% of the population according to his statistics, are engaging in some form of polyamory and it's being accepted by an even larger number of people who would say that it is okay.

13:02

So we find ourselves at this point where you and I both have kids.

13:07

Mm-hmm.

13:08

And you're, you know, your children are teenagers.

13:12

Not all of them.

13:12

You have children who are teenagers.

13:14

I'm sorry.

13:14

And by God's grace, I don't have any teenagers right now, but I do have two adult children.

13:19

Mm-hmm.

13:20

I mean, I've got those who are under teenage years.

13:24

My daughter, Hope, is fixing to be 11.

13:26

It's interesting because Jennifer said today she was almost a preteen and I wanted to vomit.

13:31

Just hearing the words, your daughter's almost a preteen.

13:35

And I was like, I don't even want to think about it.

13:39

I've been through it once with Ashley and Cody.

13:43

One girl, one boy.

13:45

And I've got four more coming as it goes through.

13:50

So, but thinking about it, you know, from your context in a situation where you've got a teenage girl and a teenage boy, you know, we know that both, that all of them are being introduced to all kinds of weird ideas.

14:02

Mm-hmm.

14:03

Whether it's at school or whether it's in their peer groups.

14:05

Have you heard them talk about this? Has this come out in conversations with, it's not like my friend's polyamorous or anything like that? No, not polyamory or anything like that.

14:16

The only thing I've heard from my oldest, when she was at school, she's homeschooled now and fortunately this influence is an honor and she's agreed to continue to homeschool.

14:28

Something she wants to keep doing, which is, praise God for that.

14:33

But even my son hasn't mentioned it.

14:35

But the thing they've talked about was a lot of the transgender nonsense.

14:40

Mm-hmm.

14:42

Was a focal point for a lot of the kids in their peer groups talking about their, you know, their pronouns were they, them or whatever and this kind of stuff.

14:53

So I haven't heard polyamory.

14:56

But judging from that statistic from 2018 with 23, 24 percent of evangelicals thinking it's okay.

15:07

It's not outside the realm of possibility that it's going to become a more prevalent conversation point that you're gonna have to have with your kids because it's not okay.

15:19

So I haven't seen that yet in the context of Callahan, Florida.

15:24

Sure, and we do, we are small-town guys.

15:27

I mean, you know, we live outside of Jacksonville.

15:30

We live in a small town outside of Jacksonville, Florida.

15:32

Jacksonville is sort of a bigger town.

15:34

But even Jacksonville, I've heard people say it's the biggest small town in the world, right? Because by landmass, it's huge.

15:40

But it still feels very small-town like.

15:44

But we are, you and I, we grew up in a one street light, two street light town.

15:51

Yeah, I guess Hilliard would be the one street light town.

15:53

That's what we always figured was the more, well, they were the more country.

15:58

For the longest time we both, Hilliard and Callahan, had one street light.

16:00

We didn't get ours until, you know, 2000.

16:04

We got an extra street light then.

16:06

So we might have three now.

16:08

Yeah, exactly.

16:09

We're killing it.

16:10

But no, polyamory, I haven't, I didn't have to address that.

16:14

Now, if your children turn on the TV, all these sister wives and those kind of TV shows, they've been exposed to it.

16:24

But is that the same thing? And I'm certainly not disagreeing, but this group would say that like sister wives doesn't count.

16:33

No, because they're married.

16:35

Yes, they're legally married.

16:37

One man with four or five different wives.

16:39

They're opposed to that.

16:41

They're opposed to, no, I would say they, there's not a monolithic they.

16:45

The things that I've seen is there's opposition to the idea of marriage because it's polyamory.

16:52

It's not polygamy.

16:53

In fact, going back to that quote by the self-identified Christian polyamorist, he made a distinction between Christian polyamory, which it's hard for me to even say that because I don't think that's legitimately a thing.

17:08

But he made a distinction between Christian polyamory and patriarchal polygamy.

17:15

Right.

17:16

And patriarchal polygamy, I'm assuming based upon the attitude, which is coming out in the article, patriarchal polyamory would be one man with multiple, or polygamy would be one man with multiple wives, which they would probably argue is wrong.

17:32

One man shouldn't have multiple wives because that enforces a patriarchal society, enforces a patriarchal authoritarian situation.

17:41

Right.

17:42

And they would be opposed to that.

17:44

Again, like I said, there's not a monolithic they.

17:46

I'm assuming based on what this says.

17:48

Well, even Brett Cooper's video, because you know the way she sets it up, she goes to multiple TikToks, people making their own comments.

17:56

And one of the people in it were talking about the patriarchy and why polyamory is better than monogamy because monogamy is a result of the patriarchy.

18:08

Yeah.

18:08

Because the patriarchy wants to submit women and all this other stuff and have all these gender roles.

18:14

Yeah.

18:14

Where polyamory allows you to be free and you're not confined within these borders of marriage and defined roles and responsibilities.

18:25

Yeah.

18:25

Traditional roles and responsibilities.

18:27

And all of this is an opposition to the traditional marriage relationship.

18:32

Oh, this is aimed at destroying that.

18:35

Yes.

18:35

This is to eliminate the patriarchy and any type of the husband being the head of the house and head of the home and the wife being submissive to her husband's leadership and all that's out the window.

18:48

Sure.

18:48

This allows for you to be able to be free to do whatever you want to do with whoever you want to do it and everybody's gonna be happy about it.

18:55

It's interesting that the one fella talked about monogamy creating jealousy.

19:00

Okay.

19:01

Well, if you're in a relationship with someone and you decide you're going to be polyamorous, so you're I guess in some way committed to this person, but you're allowed to go outside of the relationship.

19:12

Well, at some point jealousy is going to come into play, I would think.

19:15

Especially if you start spending more time with the other ones than you do with the original.

19:21

Yeah, and my only assumption is...

19:22

It breeds jealousy.

19:23

Yeah, my only assumption he would say, well, we're not going to have the same issue with jealousy because we expect that.

19:30

We expect to have that.

19:31

And again, I'm not defending them in any way.

19:33

No, no.

19:34

Just saying that this is how they're justifying this idea.

19:39

They're meeting it head on.

19:41

You're going to eventually cheat anyway, and you're going to end up in divorce anyway, because the divorce rate's so high, so you might as well just be open about it and have your fun.

19:47

That's their thought process.

19:49

Well, that all...

19:50

And not be bound to any traditional hold of vows, or covenant, or commitment.

19:56

Right.

19:57

They don't want any of that.

19:58

And what's interesting is at some point, they will.

20:02

Yeah.

20:02

In my opinion, they will because that's not going to prove to be long-lasting.

20:07

Yeah.

20:08

I can't see how it would.

20:09

Just free-for-all, do what you want.

20:11

That's great while you're in your 20s, I guess, and maybe your 30s.

20:14

But there's going to come a day when you're alone.

20:19

Yeah.

20:19

And you're going to be longing for the family that you don't have because you decided to do whatever it is you're doing right now.

20:28

And that's the danger of this is that society will crumble if marriage crumbles.

20:33

Sure.

20:34

Okay.

20:34

It's interesting you mentioned destroying marriage because in a sermon a few years ago, I preached on the subject of biblical womanhood.

20:41

And it's actually the title of the sermon is The Disintegration of Biblical Womanhood.

20:45

I did quote some feminists about what was being taught about marriage and family in the academy.

20:52

So this first one is from Robin Morgan, who is a radical feminist member of the American women's movement.

20:58

She said this, We can't destroy the inequalities between men and women until we destroy marriage.

21:05

So it's not like people would say, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist because you believe the desire is to destroy marriage.

21:12

That's what was just said.

21:14

And it goes on Sheila Cronin.

21:16

This is the leader of the feminist organization NOW, N-O-W.

21:21

Quote, since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women's movement must concentrate on attacking the institution.

21:29

Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage.

21:35

And Linda Gordon, a feminist writer said, quote, the nuclear family must be destroyed.

21:43

I want to go on because there's just a few more.

21:45

Dr.

21:45

Mary Jo Bain, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the School Center for Research on Women said this, Quote, in order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.

22:02

Vivian Gornick, a feminist author, University of Illinois said, being a housewife is an illegitimate profession.

22:10

The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family maker is a choice that shouldn't be.

22:16

The heart of radical feminism is to change that.

22:20

And finally, Margaret Sanger, who many of you know, founder of Planned Parenthood, she said, quote, the most merciful thing a large family can do to one of its members or infant members is to kill it.

22:33

Now, I know that doesn't really have anything to do with polyamory, but just the idea of how this radical view of the family, the radical view of destroying marriage, destroying family, destroying the idea that women should have a role in the home of raising children and bringing them up, all of these things have been steeped in our culture, brought into the academy, force-fed to our young people, and this is the idea that is being promoted.

23:00

And we see the fruit of this is something like polyamory, because what does polyamory seek to do? Tear down the traditional structure of the home that we find, not only in scripture, even though I would argue it has its basis in scripture, and we're going to see that in a minute, but we see it everywhere.

23:18

The traditional family, we see this everywhere.

23:20

And somebody says, well, what about in the cultures where there are, you know, polygamy? We're going to talk about that in a moment, but we have seen monogamy throughout human history as the norm, not the deviation of the norm, even though there are obviously some historians who are going to look to caveman cultures and things like that and say, well, this caveman culture didn't have monogamy, therefore, we shouldn't have monogamy, because, of course, we should definitely be following the caveman.

23:54

Well, and my first thought always goes to when these people start talking about how marriage enslaves the woman, and obviously they're going to argue from the viewpoint of, especially with the gender roles and complementarism is that the wife is to submit to her husband, okay? They have a very wrong understanding of what submission means, and I wish I'd have looked it up.

24:22

Somebody put it out there.

24:26

I guess it was a meme or whatever, but it was on Facebook, but this atheist fella who was a devout atheist, he may even be a famous atheist, I don't know, can't remember his name.

24:36

But anyway, he made the point about the thing that Christianity has done is elevate women and eliminate this, you know, take the woman and elevate her up and remove her from a basic kind of slave kind of deal and make her equal with her husband.

24:58

That's what Christianity has done, because Christianity takes the marriage relationship, and we'll see this in Ephesians 5 when we go to it later, but it's they're equal before the eyes of God but have different roles and relationships, and the submission element is, and I'm going to butcher the Greek, but it's hupotasso or hupotasso, however the word is, but the idea being is to align yourself in the way that a unit would align behind like a military commander.

25:29

Followship.

25:30

So you follow your husband in his leadership in so much as he follows Christ, and you're both heading toward Christ.

25:38

That's the idea of submission.

25:40

The husband is submitted to Christ and he loves his wife the way Christ loved the church, and the wife submits herself to the husband in the same way the church submits themself to Christ, and you choose to follow him as much as he follows Christ, and it's not this lordy and over attitude.

26:02

It's an attitude of mutual respect for one another and love and care for one another as you pursue Christ's likeness.

26:11

That's the idea, but they don't have, they're void of any understanding of that.

26:14

They hear the word submit and think slavery, and that the patriarchal system is out there to just keep women barefoot and pregnant and stuck in the home so that they can be controlled, and that's not the picture at all, and Bible even pictures it in a way with motherhood of being a grand endeavor to raise your children, and children being a fruit, I mean a reward from the Lord and all that good stuff.

26:40

The Bible paints a very beautiful picture of this, and they take that and just twist the wording into a way to where they can then convince the young people in the generation that marriage is just slavery and husbands just want to rule over you.

26:58

Men want to be on top and have all the power and enslave women, and that just drives me batty because they don't understand what the Bible actually teaches, and they haven't cared to actually take and do some serious research and understand what's coming, or even talk to a Christian and actually get the right idea about it.

27:18

They just twist it because they want to destroy it, and it's because of their own carnal desires.

27:23

I mean, you think about it.

27:24

It's the sinful nature just boiling up.

27:27

It's depravity boiling up.

27:28

They want to do what they want to do, and do it however they want to do it without any structure or encumbrance.

27:35

It's rebellion in the highest form.

27:37

They want no authoritative structure.

27:40

They don't want to be submissive to any kind of authority, especially God's authority, much less any kind of authority given by God to a husband in the home.

27:52

None of that.

27:53

No structure whatsoever.

27:54

I'm free to do whatever I want to do with whoever I want to do it, and I want it right now.

27:59

Well, that's what I'm actually preaching on.

28:01

Like I said, I'm preaching through the text right now.

28:03

It is hupotasso, which is the word for submit, and I was addressing in last week's sermon how hupotasso is used for wives to husbands and hupakuo is used from children to the father or the parent.

28:19

The difference, hupakuo is where we get the word acoustics.

28:23

It means to hear, and so a child is told to come under the hearing of their parent, and if you compare that to the Proverbs, many of the Proverbs talk about how listen to your father and do not deny the instruction of your mother.

28:39

It's like listen to what they're saying and hear them.

28:43

Hupotasso has the idea of as you said, there is a military order.

28:47

That's the way it's used, but in a non-military sense means to come in line behind, which is what you said, getting in this understanding structure that God has provided a structure in the home where there is responsibility on behalf of the father and the husband to provide authoritative leadership within the home, and the wife is responsible to respect that role that he has been given, and she's told to submit to him in everything, and I talked about are there exceptions, and I encourage people if they want to go back and hear what I preached on this that obviously if a man tells you to jump off a bridge, that's stupid.

29:17

Don't be stupid.

29:18

God doesn't require the stupid of us, and obviously men are not given the right to require the stupid of things to their partners, and so we have a biblical commando of mutual respect, and there is a call of the wife to submit, and they see that word, like you said, they see it as slavery.

29:39

The Bible is not calling it to slavery, but it is called to joyfully follow the man's leadership in the home.

29:45

There is a responsibility he has, as you have in your home, to protect, provide, and pastor your home, as I use those three Ps all the time.

29:51

We're called to protect, provide, pastor our home because we're going to be judged for that.

29:56

The husband, the man in the home, is going to be judged for his responsibility, and I know we've kind of gone away from the polyamory, but that's what they're trying to tear down.

30:06

They're trying to tear down what ultimately God is going to judge every man, and he's going to judge men and women for how they engage in this relationship.

30:16

People say, well, God doesn't judge.

30:18

What God are you following? What God are you reading? It's not the God of the Bible.

30:23

It's the God of people's own making.

30:24

It's the idol that people have created in their mind.

30:28

So that leads me to the next portion of the podcast, and that is the question of does the Bible command polyamory? Does the Bible command monogamy? Because there is a lot of debate about this, not because I think the Bible is entirely unclear, because I do believe the Bible is clear, as we're going to see, but the debate stems from the fact that, as we all know in the Old Testament, there were polygamous relationships that were not condemned from the scriptures.

31:09

We see multiple people in polygamous relationships, such as the patriarch of the faith, Abram, who was married to Sarai, who of course became Abraham and Sarah, and he took Hagar, the handmaiden, as an additional wife, not just as a live-in lover.

31:30

He didn't take her in a polyamorous condition.

31:33

We would say it was a polygamous marriage.

31:37

And then, of course, we see Isaac has Rebekah, but then his son, Jacob, ends up with the sister who was, what did they say, weak in the eyes, which was Leah, and he really wanted Rachel, and ended up having to work 14 years for the woman that he wanted, and still had Leah, and if you remember in that situation, there were two handmaidens that gave them the Twelve Tribes.

32:11

If we read through the book, I taught through Genesis just a few years ago, and we see how the Twelve Tribes don't all come from the same woman, but the Twelve Tribes are coming from Leah and Rachel, and the two handmaidens, and their names escape me now.

32:27

Do you remember the names? That'd be a good Bible quiz question.

32:30

What's the name of them? If you know, put it in the comments, because I can't think of their names right off who they are.

32:37

But the point is, we see that, and we have to deal with that.

32:40

We can't close our eyes and say, well, the Bible doesn't say that.

32:44

We know the Bible says it, but in what context, and how are we to understand this? Is this meant to be the normative practice of all times? Is this the command, or are we looking at something called a description versus a prescription? And this is something that is important when it comes to biblical study, because there are times where the Bible describes something as the case, where it is not prescribing it as something that is to be done.

33:13

The Bible describes something without prescribing it, and we're familiar with that in other contexts as well.

33:20

The Bible, I think about this when the man, the rich young ruler, came to Jesus and said, you know, Lord, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus said, sell everything you have.

33:30

Some people take that as a prescription, that every Christian is to sell everything that he has, and be willing to, for all of us, to live essentially a life of poverty.

33:43

And in so doing, where would be the Christian businessmen? Where would be the Christian employers? Where would be the Christian investors? There wouldn't be any, and so I recently was actually taught on that, because I talked about that situation, and I said, is this prescriptive or descriptive? I think it's descriptive.

34:06

It's prescriptive for that man.

34:08

Jesus was saying to that man, here's your idol.

34:09

Your idol's for money, therefore you need to do away with it.

34:12

And there's a lot of people whose idol's money, and they do need to do differently with the money that they have.

34:17

But in that situation, it was not prescriptive.

34:19

It was descriptive, meaning it's not prescribed to all of us to sell every single thing that we have.

34:25

By the way, that would mean no more Little Debbie.

34:31

The Muffin Man would be no more.

34:32

For those of you who don't know, Richard is our resident Muffin Man.

34:35

He is a man who owns his own distribution business, where he distributes Little Debbie's for McKee Foods.

34:44

I'm subcontracted out for them, and I wouldn't be able to do it anymore.

34:48

If that was prescription, I'd have to sell my truck, my route, and everything, and live as a hobo, I guess.

34:54

I guess that's how that would work.

34:56

Yeah, absolutely.

34:59

So this comes to the question of, as we just said, the question of prescription versus description.

35:05

And by the way, you may disagree with me on my point that I'm making about prescription and description versus when it comes to the rich young ruler.

35:12

And if you have a disagreement, feel free to leave it in the comments.

35:14

I always like to read what people think, and I appreciate you for listening, even if you disagree.

35:19

But we do want to ask the question now, what does the Bible prescribe when it comes to marriage? Even though it describes polygamous marriage, I would say it's never given in a prescription.

35:30

Would you agree with that, that there's never a prescription given in the Bible? No.

35:34

Now it is governed in the law, in the Old Testament law.

35:39

There are rules that are set up, but it's not given as a command.

35:42

You should or should not take multiple wives.

35:47

So go ahead.

35:48

Well, I was just starting to think, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm going off the rails here.

35:53

I'm just kind of putting this together as we're going.

35:57

I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this podcast, folks.

35:59

So give me some grace.

36:04

Would it be one of those things, like polygamy in the Old Testament, even though it's talked about in the law, one of those things that God in his forbearance passed over, a sin he would have passed over, in the sense of, kind of look at it this way.

36:17

We kind of talked about, Cody kind of talked about this in a sermon the other day when we're in Leviticus.

36:23

He said, well, you look at Nadab and Abihu, killed on the spot for strange fires.

36:31

Mm-hmm.

36:32

But Aaron previously built a golden calf and God allowed him to continue.

36:39

Yeah.

36:39

You have poor Uzzah, who in good faith just tried to keep the ark from hitting the ground, killed on the spot.

36:47

But David, with the sin of Bathsheba, is allowed to live.

36:52

So God has mercy on, he has mercy in those he does and he doesn't.

36:57

So would this fall into that kind of category? Because when we get into the discussion of whether or not monogamy is prescriptive or descriptive, if we come to the conclusion it is prescriptive, this is what the Bible says we should do and a model we should follow.

37:14

So during that time period, was God just allowing this to happen even though it was sinful or wrong? Well, I would say, I think we have to be fair when we talk about allowance.

37:29

What does it mean to allow something? You know, God obviously decrees all things and in that he does include the evil and wicked choices of men.

37:37

But in regard to this particular context, I look at it a lot like I look at the institution of slavery.

37:46

Slavery is in the Bible and slavery is never technically condemned in the Bible.

37:51

But there are things that are involved in slavery that are condemned.

37:58

Things like man stealing or kidnapping, that is obviously condemned.

38:01

But the institution itself is not necessarily condemned.

38:05

In fact, we see it even referenced in the New Testament.

38:07

I'm going to be talking about that this Sunday because I'm talking about masters and servants.

38:10

And in the context, the word doulos is slave.

38:14

John MacArthur goes through a big argument about that in his book.

38:17

He talks about slavery and slave and the word doulos meaning slave.

38:20

So there are cultural contexts that the Bible does not necessarily condemn.

38:27

But at the same time there is the more appropriate and I would say more godly command.

38:35

And so when we go to the subject of marriage, we go all the way back to the beginning when God created.

38:44

And we have in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 what I consider to be the mandate for biblical marriage.

38:54

And that would be where everything else that doesn't follow that mandate would be a deviation.

39:00

Correct.

39:01

Now how we understand it in regard of sin and things like that, I think that's where it becomes difficult is to say it's an absolute sin.

39:08

It's certainly a deviation of the order that God has established.

39:13

Correct.

39:14

Yeah, and so the order that God has established is when he created, he created one man.

39:20

Right.

39:20

And then he created one woman.

39:22

You know much to the chagrin of people who believe in uh, what's the other woman that they believe? There's the people that believe that there was another woman.

39:32

Oh, what was her name? Uh, uh, hold on.

39:36

I'm gonna have to look this up real quick.

39:37

Yeah, I don't know.

39:38

Adam's other wife.

39:39

You ever heard of this? No, this is new to me.

39:42

There's an entire I can't think of it.

39:45

Adam's other wife.

39:48

Uh, not Eve.

39:49

It's the other one.

39:50

Who was Adam's second wife? There is Lilith.

39:54

Thank you.

39:54

I knew I knew I knew this.

39:56

I'm glad the internet is there to answer all my questions.

39:59

You think you've heard of things like Lilith Fair and stuff, right? I've heard.

40:02

That's all based on this idea that there was another woman that she was the uh, there's an entire mythology that goes around it that Lilith uh as a female figure in judistic mythology, uh supposed to be Adam's first wife And she didn't submit and therefore she was banished and God created Eve And so she represents feminism and the idea of non-submission To so so there's an entire mythology based around learning something new and it's not true That's why I was like, what are you talking about? Where's this even? It's not in the bible It's in uh cultural mythology But the idea that we find in the first two chapters of genesis is one god creates a man.

40:46

He creates a woman and he Establishes marriage by bringing the man and woman together And he says these words and these are the words that I think we we need to Consider as the prescription for marriage not just a description.

41:01

He says for this reason A man shall leave his father and mother And shall king james version shall cleave unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh now One of the most important things about that passage in genesis 2 is that's not about adam and eve The reason why we know that is because adam and eve didn't have no daddy they didn't have a mommy They didn't have a father and mother So what we have here has to be a prescription because it's not a description because it's not describing What adam and eve were doing right adam and eve joined together in marriage because god brought them together in marriage but their model became the Prescription for all of history because for this reason a man shall for what reason because god created adam and eve this way Right because god created one and one he created a ratio of one to one and he created them with with um Mutually compatible and complimentary Parts that would function together to be husband and wife and therefore the the the Model becomes the prescription therefore a man shall leave his father mother Shall cleave unto his wife and I didn't say this sunday and I wish I had because I was talking about this sunday shall weave You gotta you gotta leave cleave and weave and I couldn't come up with the third one And afterwards one of my one of my elders and I were talking brother mike and he said you gotta weave You gotta create that family so you leave you cleave And you weave and that's the prescription.

42:38

It is the model.

42:39

And how do we know it's the prescription? Well thousands of years later And when this is not a young earth old earth conversation, we don't say i'm having that Thousands of years later when jesus is being confronted by the pharisees in matthew 19 And they're asking him about the subject of divorce He chooses a passage to quote and he chooses The genesis 2 passage therefore man shall leave his father mother The two shall become one flesh therefore what god has brought together Let not man tears under yeah, so in that regard there's the prescription the prescription of the relationship of a man and woman Is that the man and the woman will come together and become one for life because he says what god has brought together Let not man separate.

43:30

This is not proof texting Because what i'm showing you is i'm showing you the model through the scripture and how it functions in its context Proof texting is is what we call string of pearl theology where you look at one text look at another text bring them all together Without any type of context i'm showing you how this context works Context begins in genesis.

43:49

This is what god created.

43:50

This is the model Yes, was there was there confusion and corruption? Throughout the old testament.

43:57

Yes, but by the time we get to the new testament, you know, we don't really see anymore We don't see polygamy right in the new testament.

44:04

In fact, we see the opposite we see in first timothy chapter three when god is or excuse me when the apostle paul on behalf of god is writing to timothy and he's giving the Instruction for elders and deacons and deacons, right? He says there to be what one woman men.

44:23

That's right beyond gunacos andre the The the greek one wife.

44:27

Yeah, it would translate most english translations husband of one wife that he'd be a one woman Man, right that he'd be a man who is faithful I think that's the best way to understand that but faithful to what faithful to one woman not faithful to two women right not faithful to multiple women and certainly not in a relationship that's Open sexually, right? That's right um well, then that was that's why I was That's why I posed the question like I did a moment ago.

44:57

So if the prescription is one man one woman for life And then we have the same thing repeated in the new covenant then That's why I was asking the hija How is it not? a sinful act to Enter into those polygamous relationships That the old cut the old testament.

45:19

Um Fathers did yeah Without being sinful that's why I said it wasn't like a forbearance that he yeah, and i'm not saying it wasn't necessarily sinful I'm saying the bible doesn't condemn it as sin In that regard it's certainly not in line with the prescription correct And in that sense I would say if a man today somebody came into my church today and said this is my wife ronda This is my other wife eve or something like that.

45:43

Hey, this is lilith and eve I would say this is wrong.

45:47

I would call them to repentance But I don't I I actually don't know what the next step would be Because if if there's multiple marriages that would mean one of those marriages illegitimate correct because the the current law Doesn't allow for polygamy at least in law in the state of florida.

46:03

I don't believe would it would allow him to be married I don't know if it's like that in any other state not to you know, pick on utah, but it might be even utah, I don't think allows for uh And the reason I bring up utah for those who don't know obviously mormons right have supported Yeah, at least at least traditionally have supported multiple wives And so that's that's where I would get into the you know, the calling to repentance those things and again I'm, not saying it's not wrong.

46:28

I'm not saying it's not sinful.

46:29

I'm saying there's no explicit uh, uh command or prohibition so so that that's where I would I would in addressing a person Well, that's where that's why I was that's why I was bringing it up in that context is Okay, so if there's no Specific command not to do it Then I think that's where some of these folks that are claiming the polygamy is okay.

46:54

Sure Are coming from is like well if god didn't if god allowed it to happen, especially abraham david and joseph and all that Allowed it to happen and Didn't condemn it as sinful Then what's wrong with it continuing now? Well, that is what that's the argument.

47:13

That's the mormon argument That's the argument from again When you know a guy comes into a church if he does have if he has engaged in some type of multiple marriage You know illegally, right at least from a legal standpoint um It is more difficult But again, I would make the same argument that i'm making now the argument of prescription Is that this is the way god designed marriage right and the and the cheesy answer is still sometimes Doesn't just because it's cheesy and we see it everywhere It doesn't mean it's wrong and that is you know, one man one woman for life You know, we've seen that in bumper stickers and things like that marriage is one man one woman for life And that is the biblical model.

47:54

That is the biblical prescription and therefore what deviates from that whether it's abraham or Uh, jacob or david or anyone else who's deviating from this is deviating from the model that god created, right? yeah, and I think I think where the issue comes up for some people and and again, this is Something that would maybe take more time But the issue for some people would be why there we don't ever see david repent of this We don't ever see abraham repent of this having the second wife and therefore is he living in perpetual sin, right? And if so Is god just overlooking it as you said or is there? More to play in regard to that more in regard to the issue of polygamy, right? So well, and we have our only option is lean on like you brought up.

48:39

Matthew 19.

48:40

Jesus corrects it.

48:41

Yeah, absolutely We know now without a doubt What the prescription is jesus corrects it paul repeats it Absolutely.

48:50

So and therefore if someone comes and tries to bring that old testament Example and say here this is prescriptive.

48:58

We say no that's descriptive and it's describing something that shouldn't be right It's describing something that is not in line with what god has prescribed.

49:07

Therefore the prescription which comes from the beginning Stands to this day.

49:11

It's endorsed by christ It's endorsed by the apostle paul and we have a prescription whereby we can stand and we can point people Christians to stand on it But this kind of gets away from our original conversation because the original conversation is the conversation of polyamory, right which does not according to one of their own advocates as we read does not Fall in the same category as polyamory polygamy and polyamory are different because polygamy enforces that patriarchal He's married to all the women, right? Yeah it enforces in fact most polygamous relationships Is one man many women right? In fact, we see this because we see a lot of Unfortunately in those situations too.

49:56

We see a lot of abuse and a lot of underage scandals Because the man, you know, we've seen this in uh, it's funny.

50:03

I was watching an episode of walker texas ranger And I know obviously like this is my heavy study.

50:07

No I love walker texas ranger.

50:10

I love chuck norris.

50:11

And uh, one of the episodes is of watching with the kids was a cult leader who had um Impregnated a woman before she turned 18 and that became a big legal issue and it is a legal issue It is uh, but but but he had multiple wives and there's a bunch of pregnant women around, you know and I remember when I watched the um the story of david koresh It was uh, it was a documentary that had been done and one of the things that he said to one of his followers Was uh, because a man he said I want you to know that while you're here You have to be celibate i've taken on the burden of sex for all of us Yeah The burden i'm holding the burden of sex for us all Today, you know, don't worry about it guys.

50:50

I got it.

50:50

I got this You don't need to worry about that.

50:53

Yeah so, um, but but when we talk about polyamory, we're in different con context, right because Fornication still stands and fornication is the act of engaging in sexual intercourse outside of the bonds of marriage So at least within polygamy, even if we you know going back to the issue of sin not sin At least within polygamy there is a marriage that has been established even if we say, you know Multiple marriages is certainly now would be illegal and wrong Polyamory is based on the idea at least from what i've seen is based on the idea that there's not a covenant marriage relationship There is not one man marrying two or three women or one woman marrying two or three men, but rather there is a open sexuality that divorces itself not to Use that term in a playful way, but it separates itself from the idea of Marriage that sex can be engaged outside of marriage in a way that is virtuous and good And right and inconsequential.

52:04

Absolutely.

52:05

Absolutely.

52:05

And why is there no consequences? Because we have abortion we have Unfettered contraception abortion which is used as a contraceptive tool, right? And Even if you remove the consequence of pregnancy or even sexually transmitted disease Sex doesn't come without consequences There's a reason it's A man and woman become one flesh.

52:34

There's a there's an intimacy and a union there that when when you enter into a sexual bond with somebody that Has consequences you can't just you're giving yourself to someone else.

52:46

Yeah, and it's you know it To say there's no consequence whatsoever.

52:53

You just do whatever you want to do and it has no effect on you at all It has an effect Some way somehow spiritual effect on you When you have multiple relationships with multiple people and multiple sexual partners It has a toll it takes a toll on you.

53:09

You may never admit it, but in your quiet time, you know it You know when when everything calms down and it's just you and your thoughts and you look back Because I can speak for it because I was sexually active at 17 You know, my wife isn't I wasn't a virgin when I got married and looking back There's pieces of me that i'll never get back that I gave to other people there's a reason that the bible Says that a person should remain pure until marriage and it's one man one woman for life Because once you enter into that one flesh union, yeah There's there's an intimacy there that if it's broken You leave part of you behind with that other person.

53:51

That's just my opinion Well, no I think the bible enforces that it says that all other sin is done outside the body But sexual sin is done, you know with the body.

54:01

This is a this is something we're using our body to send right? and the biggest danger in the world today outside of of Or in within the context of this conversation.

54:13

I think the biggest danger is the idea of a of a guilt-free shame-free sexually promiscuous lifestyle Right and we've seen that the idea that we can have sex with whomever we want whenever we want and there be no consequence it's and The sad part is I think with the way this There's been a numbing to this in the culture.

54:40

I mean when you think about I look at it this way when I was a kid It my parents didn't let me watch R-rated movies.

54:48

Sure.

54:49

But if I went to a friend's house And you know, I remember the first time I went and watched alien You know, I never seen anything like that.

54:56

Yeah, and the curse words and all that stuff.

54:58

I was physically Affected by what I was seeing and the language I was hearing because I wasn't exposed to that.

55:06

Yeah, I wasn't numb to it But now that i'm 43 years old and i've heard it a thousand times and seen a million horror flicks.

55:13

I can watch a movie And hear this language and it really don't have an effect because i've been Conditioned to it.

55:20

Yeah, that's what is happening to our young people with all this indoctrination They're being conditioned That this is has no effect and they actually may believe it.

55:30

They don't realize it's having an effect on them But it is having an effect but they've been conditioned and numb to the effect of it all.

55:37

Yeah And that's a sad state and even though you didn't get to watch R-rated movies We were both brought up at the same we were the same age right graduated the same year we were both brought up with television shows like um Seinfeld Friends, I mean things like that which in in one in a sense Desensitized to the idea of multiple sexual partners multiple, uh, you know this person sleeping around, you know Joey's and friends being a promiscuous person is is That's a laugh.

56:17

Yes somebody to mimic And he's the hero.

56:21

Yeah, he's the you know, what are you doing? Yeah, that became the the joke And so it certainly has desensitized the idea of sex outside of marriage Therefore when some if you say to a person today The average person who maybe doesn't have a church culture doesn't have a church background the sex outside of marriage is Is wrong.

56:40

They don't have a context for that if they haven't been In a bible-believing church if they haven't been taught from their parents, right? These things are meant for the bounds of marriage then the attitude is there's no problem.

56:54

And so polyamory is a is a outgrowth of illicit fornication And so that's what it's just the next step.

57:03

Yeah, it's the it's the natural evolution and they look at it from the context of You know, they don't see anything wrong with it.

57:11

You just got to be careful.

57:12

Yeah It's just be careful.

57:14

Don't get pregnant, you know take the necessary steps.

57:16

And if you do there's a way out There's a way out.

57:19

Yeah, and you don't even need your parents consent to do it.

57:21

That's right if you're underage So and I would say as we begin to draw this to a close for those who are you know thinking about this maybe thinking Maybe you're a parent or maybe you're in ministry and you're ministering to people Understand that this is the evolution of the culture.

57:36

This is where the culture is going in regard to Sexual activity and it's no longer just a sex outside of marriage.

57:43

I mean, that's that's been an issue for a long time But now it's sex outside of marriage with multiple partners without consequence and even being celebrated And that's the idea behind polyamory and I know there'll be some who's oh you guys aren't being fair to this To this to this group there there are these people over here who believe it this way or there are those who believe it that way Um, honestly, i'm not too concerned about being fair I'm, mostly concerned about being accurate and I do think polyamory means having multiple loving partners And I know some would say well not all polyamory is sexual but For that which is sexual and I don't know in what way it wouldn't be but for those that is sexual any sex outside of marriage Would be outside of the biblical bounds for right and wrong so The bible is clear that we are to follow the prescription given to us in genesis That your goal should be if you're not married And you want to be in that relationship to find the person that you're willing to commit your life to to make vows And those vows would include To love honor and cherish till death do you part? Final thoughts No, I think you summed it up.

58:58

Well good Well, thank you brother rich for being with me today uncle rich for being on the show today.

59:04

I appreciate it And thank you for being a part of conversations with the calvinist I want to remind you that we have a new podcast that comes out every week and you can find us at calvinistpodcast.com If you're watching this on youtube, please take the opportunity to hit the subscribe button and leave a comment Those things actually do help the show and helps us helps us to reach a wider audience If you would like to follow me on twitter, you can do so at your calvinist And we have a facebook group which is conversations with a calvinist on facebook You can find us there and interact with us there If you have a question or a subject you'd like me to address in a future episode You can send it to me at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com And again, I want to thank you for being a part of the show today Thank you for watching conversation with a calvinist.

59:44

My name is keith foskey and i've been your calvinist.