Everyone wants me to read and write stuff.....

Sheesh, my sister just sent me this article. It's quite the intellectually toxic mix of a journalist writing about the Bible and marriage. Apparently they are passing most of their opinions off as an accurate understanding of the Bible as the expert on religion at Newsweek.

They begin by noting polygamy:

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile?

They may as well cite King David's adultery as an instance of the Bible condoning adultery. For those who do not know, according to the Bible we are still living with the fall out of Abraham's lack of faith and it may turn out to be literal nuclear fall out some day if some of the sons of Ishmael have their way.

Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.

The Bible notes that most of them had problems for just that reason. For example it notes that Solomon had many wives and was led to paganism, the occult and "Did evil in the eyes of the Lord." as a result. It is interesting to note that if the Bible was inspired totally by the minds of men then it is likely that the mentality read in it would read just like a lot of cults read. Something along the lines of: "One of the rules is that men get to have sex with as many women as they like, preferably virgins." One would think that the fact that it doesn't read that way might cause these journalists to pause and think but then, they are journalists.

Moving on:

Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Many married couples have done just that and our culture is shaped by it. One of the main metaphors for understanding the Christ and therefore understanding Christianity is that of the bride and bridegroom. And if men do follow the biblical model and lay down their own interests, desires and even their lives for the sake of their wives it does not generate a terrible or oppressive civilization as these journalists seem to believe. Their modern notions of romantic love only arose after the biblical model came to prominence. A man and woman are naturally complementary and people often sense that this comes about by design but romantic love did not typify the pagan world. Much of what we call romantic love arose when Christian knights began to do away with pagan ways and to honor women. You would think that people would think of this given that it is still represented in the form of fairy tales and the like. Note that this form of romantic love has little to do with the "gender equity" that these journalists mention. Just think if every romance movie had a guy in the girl's role and so on, of course they do not because men and women are not the same and we should be thankful that they are not. Vive la difference!

Moving on:

...while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

It may not be explicit enough for journalists to understand but it is explicit enough to promote marriage while condemning all forms of adultery and even lust. Pedophilia, zoophilia and homophilia are all explicitly or implicitly condemned because the "two in one flesh union" which is only possible between a man and a women is also the only possible way for their union to be exemplified in the flesh of their children. Given the biblical model it is the same type of union whether or not it is ever exemplified by children.

Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world.

The fact that polygamy was often pointed to in a negative light although the practice was common shows that there is a difference between the biblical ideal and what goes on in the real world. It does not show that the biblical ideal is wrong, instead it seems to indicate that the Bible was inspired more than the interests and desires of the men who wrote it. I'm no biblical expert but here is an interesting experiment, look in the Bible and see if you can find anywhere where polygamy is mentioned favorably. Something along the lines of: "This man was a great man because he had many wives." Etc. Would it not be in the interests of those who wrote it to portray polygamy in the best light possible?

He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew.

Yes, and he also said that anyone who causes a child to stumble should have a stone put around their neck and be thrown into the sea. That's something that proponents of same-sex marriage might want to remember because their focus is invariably the "rights" and desires of adults and they do not seem to care about children. It is already known that adopted children often go through a process of wanting to know their biological parents. It is not generally known what would happen if they were generally denied representatives for their natural or biological parents and instead lived with two women or two men or two effeminate men or one manly woman and another taking the feminine role. Gender roles do not simply disappear even among homosexuals because they are rooted in basic biosocial realities.

Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce...

He never explicitly mentions necrophilia, pedophilia or zoophilia either because some things should go without saying. It's funny how everyone turns into a prude when it comes to deep sexual disorientations and their main argument would be that no argument is necessary (After all, who would even talk about such things?!! Well, philosophers would and have...) but in the instance of homosexuality they've been conditioned to do away with basic forms of common sense having to do with basic natural categories which pretty much everyone but psychotics have a knowledge of. Ironically even the psychotic serial killer or sexual pervert who denies basic natural categories admits to them while in the process of perverting them. I won't go into how that is so, it's probably not worth thinking about for most people. Unfortunately people are probably going to have to think about sexual disorientations and perversions thanks to articles like this one. The funny thing is that this article was apparently written by "experts" on religion at Newsweek.

I may reply to more of in a future post. Or I may not, I'm not sure it's worth dealing with. It seems to be structured for people who want to believe something no matter what the truth of anything actually is because they have a nice gay friend who they want to support no matter what the truth is. The truth is that the Bible condemns homosexuality explicitly and implicitly time and again, every gay activist I've debated actually understands that and yet apparently these journalists from Newsweek cannot. I wonder if they even really expect people to take this article as some sort of serious news report on a current event or if it is just their way of saying: "We're nice and tolerant so we support homosexuality and you should too."