Tlaloc
Member
First of all, hello.
I've been in discussion and conversation with polygynist groups for about a year now, and have been searching for a second with my wife for about three years now. When I have time I want to jump into conversations here so I'll put a bit of my history and general philosophy in this post for anyone interested for the sake of context. Its long, so don't bother if you're busy.
Who is like God¿ In him we find the epitome of all the characteristics we should strive to have. We should have peaceful hearts, but he is the Prince of Peace. We are to treat people justly, just weights, just measures, but only he can say at the end who and what is absolutely Just (we cannot even be that without him). We are to love our neighbours, even our enemies, but only he can knowingly love all.
Now, getting to the point. It is my opinion that God's people tend to relate to him best through the good characteristics they excel at. The characteristic, the thing God Is, that I excel at is something that has been deeply neglected in the last several centuries. The beginning of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Go a sentence or two ahead and this is clearly referring to Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our Lord. Unfourtunetly I have heard endlessly in sermons that this is also referring to Scripture, and that this is a proof for inerrency of scripture. While I am a friend of inerrency, this is not such a proof. Two Greek words are routinely translated into the word word in the NT, one of which means quite directly speech or an audible voice, the other is Logos, which means so very much more.
The idea of the Logos is rooted in the works of Heraclitus, an approx 4th century BCE Philosipher. The Logos (In the divine sense, not our logos) is the Cause, the Reason for, and the Purpose of existence. Once Heraclitus gets into his idea of what the Logos is like and how it manifests his ideas become much less useful, but hey, that line up there is very good for a secular philosopher, good enough for scripture. Its seems St.John though Christ was the reason for, well, everything, and that he had a plan to make everything turn out (In the end of course) better than we can now imagine. It also seems that if you ask a Christian "Is Christ the Cause and Reason for our existence?" the question deserves a ¿ because it is basically rhetorical. If you where to ask "Is Christ Logic Incarnate?" (Of course, Logic is the closest English word) you would probably get at best confusion and in general anger to outright hostility.
If an aspect of scripture is neglected one century, there is a good chance it will be rejected the next. Fiedism (Faith cannot have a reason) is absolute stupidity on top of heresy in the face of a clear understanding of John 1 (Or, a clear understanding of most of scripture, but meh). I probably don't have to tell anyone here how frustrating and damaging such ideas have been or how they've fueled agnosticism and the incredibly false dichotomy between understanding God and understanding nature (Faith\Science).
Now, not only has God as Logos been neglected, but Logic itself has been misrepresented and shown to be something abominable to real Logic by mainstream culture and media. Spock isn't logical, he's an idiot by God's Logical standards. There is nothing particularly un-emotional about it, if you don't take someones feelings into account on a decision you are being illogical and will make a bad decision, I'm thinking many of the men here can attest to that. The best explanation I can give for Logic as God does it is this: If you care for someone, if you love someone, but don't know what they need or what their purpose is, you cannot help them, and therefore cannot show love for them, and you're love is limited. Blind love would give a starving man a feast only to have him throw it up because his body cant adjust, Gods Love would feed him slowly so he can stomach his food and be nourished by it. Love with understanding often goes against foolish love. In the same way, worldly logic so often neglect love saying someone is not worthwhile or that there are more important things, but God's Logos will always require you to help those in need no mater how weak or useless they seem, because their ultimate purpose is to be God's, and that makes them a priority #1 no mater the circumstances in the world or worldly cost.
My first drive is to understand, and when I truly understand I must care, and to understand more I must care more.
Now, concerning Polygyny. When I first read through my Bible at 10-11 it was clear to me there was nothing against it. I discussed it several times, even at that age wiped aside most of the junk arguments (Adamaic precident, 'bad effects', ect...) but when presented with the argument that no women would ever want that I let it sit, to my knowledge at the time it was true and that was enough reason for me.
But life is interning and unpredictable, and so much moreso for a Christian. After some years of dating and about a year before we where married it became apparent (Though it should have been much earlier, in some respects I am not observant) that she had a much keener eye for good looking girls than I do, and had an at least comparable attraction. She is a pastors daughter, and at the time never actually had a girlfriend, so I had the fortune of being the first to know.
I had at the time conducted a partial survey of what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, but that made it apparent that it was time to do an exhaustive one. It is very and undeniable clear what the Bibles view of 'gays' are in the OT\Tanach and the NT, but in very specific and clear passages there are equally clear and specific omissions. Its not until Romans that female homosexuality is actually condemned, and Romans has conditions on the condemnation. That condition is "Turning form their natural use." Which is, in this case, marriage to a man (That's a hard sell to more liberal people). Many people skim conditionals to make their point that F\F Homosexuality is unilaterally wrong, but I program, and I know that if you skip a conditional you get a result different than intended. The result I get is that within a polygynous marriage it is acceptable. So, based on this I undertook a study of polygyny for about a year until shortly before we where married, at which point we agreed we very much wanted to go Poly God willing. What cemented in my mind that her attractions are not corrupt was that the pharisee's in one of their many additions to the Tanach(OT) felt the need to add a prohibition to female homosexuality based on their exegesis. Such an addition would be meaningless if female homosexuality wasn't allowed before that point.
I'm not egalitarian about this issue, to me it seems normal to think of men and women as different (Ohh, I broke a social taboo right there) especially when it comes to sex itself. I in no way condone male homosexual acts, the script is clear about their badness. I also find no inconsistency with acceding to my wife's desires within the confines of marriage. Bluntly, she is not a man and does not need to follow the same rules men do in this case.
So here we are, shes had some girls she's let know about us, though nothing has developed yet. We've incidentally had spur of the moment bible studies on the issue of polygyny and female homosexuality in which we had a bunch of people pouring over scripture on the issue and changed some peoples minds.
I've been in discussion and conversation with polygynist groups for about a year now, and have been searching for a second with my wife for about three years now. When I have time I want to jump into conversations here so I'll put a bit of my history and general philosophy in this post for anyone interested for the sake of context. Its long, so don't bother if you're busy.
Who is like God¿ In him we find the epitome of all the characteristics we should strive to have. We should have peaceful hearts, but he is the Prince of Peace. We are to treat people justly, just weights, just measures, but only he can say at the end who and what is absolutely Just (we cannot even be that without him). We are to love our neighbours, even our enemies, but only he can knowingly love all.
Now, getting to the point. It is my opinion that God's people tend to relate to him best through the good characteristics they excel at. The characteristic, the thing God Is, that I excel at is something that has been deeply neglected in the last several centuries. The beginning of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Go a sentence or two ahead and this is clearly referring to Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our Lord. Unfourtunetly I have heard endlessly in sermons that this is also referring to Scripture, and that this is a proof for inerrency of scripture. While I am a friend of inerrency, this is not such a proof. Two Greek words are routinely translated into the word word in the NT, one of which means quite directly speech or an audible voice, the other is Logos, which means so very much more.
The idea of the Logos is rooted in the works of Heraclitus, an approx 4th century BCE Philosipher. The Logos (In the divine sense, not our logos) is the Cause, the Reason for, and the Purpose of existence. Once Heraclitus gets into his idea of what the Logos is like and how it manifests his ideas become much less useful, but hey, that line up there is very good for a secular philosopher, good enough for scripture. Its seems St.John though Christ was the reason for, well, everything, and that he had a plan to make everything turn out (In the end of course) better than we can now imagine. It also seems that if you ask a Christian "Is Christ the Cause and Reason for our existence?" the question deserves a ¿ because it is basically rhetorical. If you where to ask "Is Christ Logic Incarnate?" (Of course, Logic is the closest English word) you would probably get at best confusion and in general anger to outright hostility.
If an aspect of scripture is neglected one century, there is a good chance it will be rejected the next. Fiedism (Faith cannot have a reason) is absolute stupidity on top of heresy in the face of a clear understanding of John 1 (Or, a clear understanding of most of scripture, but meh). I probably don't have to tell anyone here how frustrating and damaging such ideas have been or how they've fueled agnosticism and the incredibly false dichotomy between understanding God and understanding nature (Faith\Science).
Now, not only has God as Logos been neglected, but Logic itself has been misrepresented and shown to be something abominable to real Logic by mainstream culture and media. Spock isn't logical, he's an idiot by God's Logical standards. There is nothing particularly un-emotional about it, if you don't take someones feelings into account on a decision you are being illogical and will make a bad decision, I'm thinking many of the men here can attest to that. The best explanation I can give for Logic as God does it is this: If you care for someone, if you love someone, but don't know what they need or what their purpose is, you cannot help them, and therefore cannot show love for them, and you're love is limited. Blind love would give a starving man a feast only to have him throw it up because his body cant adjust, Gods Love would feed him slowly so he can stomach his food and be nourished by it. Love with understanding often goes against foolish love. In the same way, worldly logic so often neglect love saying someone is not worthwhile or that there are more important things, but God's Logos will always require you to help those in need no mater how weak or useless they seem, because their ultimate purpose is to be God's, and that makes them a priority #1 no mater the circumstances in the world or worldly cost.
My first drive is to understand, and when I truly understand I must care, and to understand more I must care more.
Now, concerning Polygyny. When I first read through my Bible at 10-11 it was clear to me there was nothing against it. I discussed it several times, even at that age wiped aside most of the junk arguments (Adamaic precident, 'bad effects', ect...) but when presented with the argument that no women would ever want that I let it sit, to my knowledge at the time it was true and that was enough reason for me.
But life is interning and unpredictable, and so much moreso for a Christian. After some years of dating and about a year before we where married it became apparent (Though it should have been much earlier, in some respects I am not observant) that she had a much keener eye for good looking girls than I do, and had an at least comparable attraction. She is a pastors daughter, and at the time never actually had a girlfriend, so I had the fortune of being the first to know.
I had at the time conducted a partial survey of what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, but that made it apparent that it was time to do an exhaustive one. It is very and undeniable clear what the Bibles view of 'gays' are in the OT\Tanach and the NT, but in very specific and clear passages there are equally clear and specific omissions. Its not until Romans that female homosexuality is actually condemned, and Romans has conditions on the condemnation. That condition is "Turning form their natural use." Which is, in this case, marriage to a man (That's a hard sell to more liberal people). Many people skim conditionals to make their point that F\F Homosexuality is unilaterally wrong, but I program, and I know that if you skip a conditional you get a result different than intended. The result I get is that within a polygynous marriage it is acceptable. So, based on this I undertook a study of polygyny for about a year until shortly before we where married, at which point we agreed we very much wanted to go Poly God willing. What cemented in my mind that her attractions are not corrupt was that the pharisee's in one of their many additions to the Tanach(OT) felt the need to add a prohibition to female homosexuality based on their exegesis. Such an addition would be meaningless if female homosexuality wasn't allowed before that point.
I'm not egalitarian about this issue, to me it seems normal to think of men and women as different (Ohh, I broke a social taboo right there) especially when it comes to sex itself. I in no way condone male homosexual acts, the script is clear about their badness. I also find no inconsistency with acceding to my wife's desires within the confines of marriage. Bluntly, she is not a man and does not need to follow the same rules men do in this case.
So here we are, shes had some girls she's let know about us, though nothing has developed yet. We've incidentally had spur of the moment bible studies on the issue of polygyny and female homosexuality in which we had a bunch of people pouring over scripture on the issue and changed some peoples minds.
