Those of you who know me well also know that church is no longer part of my custom. But sometimes, when I'm visiting my mom, I go with her. Mostly because I think it makes her happy, but also because I really like some of the people she goes to church with. But they aren't the ones I'm writing about today.
Midway through a sermon on 2 Timothy 4:1-8, the interim pastor inserted a little rant than began with something along the lines of "I don't dislike homosexuals, but..."and finished with "but the Bible says one man and one woman for life." This was greeted with a few amens, and my very irritated, furrowed brow.
I've noticed this notion has been dragged out repeatedly to defend withholding civil rights from homosexuals. But when was the last time someone used it to prevent heterosexual divorcees (outside of the Catholic church) from remarrying? You don't hear a lot of sermons exhorting divorced congregation members to abandon their current families and return to their first marriages lest they continue to commit adultery. And Jesus spoke to that in the New Testament, even. Matthew 5:32 "But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery." Mmkay. So that's not some law of the old covenant. That's Jesus talking. And Christians really like Jesus. But they're super busy being worried about the heterosexuality of their mantra than the spousal quantity and length of sentence involved.
You know what else? One man and one woman is not the Biblical example at all. More like one man and 700 wives, and maybe 300 concubines. Everybody picks on Solomon, but he's not the only bigamist of the Bible. Here's a list.
You know what's even more fun than that? The Bible doesn't actually say "one man and one woman for life." Nope. Try and find it if you can. I spent most of the remainder of the sermon searching Biblical concordances on my smartphone, but I couldn't find it either.
There's Genesis 2:24 -- the part that goes "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." And 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 (read it here) in which Paul encourages the congregation at Corinth to get married only if they can't keep themselves from whoring around otherwise. And Ephesians 5:22-33 (read it here) in which Paul reminds men to love their wives, but tells the women they must submit to their men. Don't get me started on Paul. His misogyny makes me angry enough to spit, but it's not my religion, so whatevs.
My point is, I've heard this "One man, one woman for life" thing for a long time.
And it's not there.
Full disclosure: I'm an atheist, a recovering radicalized Evangelical, and I probably have a chip on my shoulder.
Oh, look what I found at Religion Hurts Humanity. Marriage, as depicted in the Bible:
No comments:
Post a Comment