Transcription
Why are polygamy haters condoning fornication and adultery? One of the strangest things in the world is that the people who hate polygamy also seem to be soft on adultery and fornication. It is not possible to condemn polygamy unconditionally without condoning adultery or fornication. Here's why.
If you have ever read the Bible, you know that Abraham is one of the central characters of the Old Testament. He is portrayed as the saintliest of saints, being willing to offer even his own son to God. Paul refers to Abraham as the father of the faithful. God loved and favored this man for his righteousness so much that there are multiple chapters in the Bible in which God is gushing and pouring out covenant blessings on Abraham and his posterity forever. The same goes for Jacob, Abraham's grandson. God even chose to name his people in all generations after Abraham and Jacob. Both men were polygamists.
Whatever one wishes to call these relationships, using a surrogate or a cultural practice, both of these terms are common in polygamy denial circles, or excuse it because it was legal at the time. It is not possible to rationalize that it was not adultery or fornication if it was not a marriage allowed by God. It isn't complicated. If it wasn't authorized marriage, it is fornication or adultery. Otherwise, the claim that fornication is okay because of these examples is patently false because such behavior is definitively fornication or adultery, even if you want to call it by a different name. That just minimizes the egregious sins of adultery or fornication and would excuse unchastity as long as your culture is okay with it or as long as it is legal. You can get away with an adulterous affair with perhaps not even a slap on the wrist from God. It's a bad argument that if something is legal, God must be okay with it or more okay with it than if it were illegal. You assume that you can sleep around with minimal consequences if you assume that God cannot authorize plural marriage. This is spiritually devastating nonsense. A pure fountain cannot produce bitter water.
Abraham and Jacob were men whom the Lord loved for their righteousness, which is called out by the Lord himself as exceptional and exemplary. They did not commit adultery. They did not commit fornication. And they did not do anything like either. Plural marriage cannot be an absolute evil. Therefore, the prime examples we have of its practice are in keyholding prophets and patriarchs whom God approved. Thus, anyone who wishes to make a boogeyman out of polygamy must necessarily condone fornication or adultery.
Plural marriage is marriage. Biblical marriage is marriage. The bait and switch polygamy deniers in reality vilify marriage. The only possible logical consequence is that fornication and adultery are okay. But the scriptures are true. God defines marriage. Society does not. If you reject God's definition of marriage, then you will accept things that are not marriage. You will call evil good and good evil. This is exactly what the polygamy denial movement is doing. And now you know why they are doing it: to go after the prophets and patriarchs using corrupt definitions of moral purity while paradoxically at the same time conflating lust with love.