Thought I'd Share This For Pride Month:
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Yes. "Just give us this one word and we'll be happy."
And see what a disaster it has brought us to.
Jesus taught that marriage is between one man and one woman. Sex is for the creation of life and bonding between a married couple.
Anything outside of that definition is sinful. Our broken society is largely because we abandoned that between LGBTQ, birth control, porn and abortion.
Yes, one man and one woman is a marriage, and the state need not be involved.
However ...
A Christian man can have multiple wives at the same time, if he so chooses.
Many of the men in the Bible had more than one wife.
For other men, we don't know if they had more than one, or any.
Adam, for example, had Eve. But he supposedly lived 900 years, and we are not told if he had other wives and/or children.
In fact, there is only one man in the entire Bible, OT and NT, who had ONLY ONE wife.
That was Uriah, and his life turned to shit.
His only wife cheated on him with David, got pregnant by David, and then David sent Uriah into battle and he ultimately died.
Maybe it is good for a man to have more than one wife, and that is why there are rules for a man in the OT to handle that situation.
The women benefit by having one or more BFF in the house, helping with the workload, and always having someone to talk to.
Monogomous married women have it very hard, since most men don't REALLY want to talk about things that women want to talk about, and women are not all that interested in what men want to talk about.
Worth considering, despite the false doctrines many churches push, claiming it is un-Biblical.
But nowhere in the Bible does it say that, and in fact God was angry at David for adultery (having sex with a married woman, not his own wife), and told David He would have given David more, if he had wanted.
There is a passage in scripture that does oppose polygamy: 1 Corinthians 7:2: where it is written, "let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." That is not possible with polygamy. You also have overlooked the fact that there was often rivalry between women in polygamous marriages; notable examples of such rivalries being between Sarah and Hagar, Rachel and Leah, and Peninnah and Hannah (1 Sam. 1-6) and that there has always been one woman favored and loved by the man more than the rest.
Are you calling God a liar? Or, are you calling Paul a liar? (lol)
God has specific rules in the Bible for how a man should handle having more than one wife.
You can't just take one verse (out-of-context) and claim that it means something, if the reading of that verse directly contradicts the rest of the Bible.
If the Bible is true, then the whole thing is true.
Therefore, you are misunderstanding Paul's letter to the Corinthians.
1 Corinthians is a LETTER written by Paul to the Greeks in Corinth.
I'm sure you know that, but it is good to be reminded that Paul is writing a letter to his brothers in Corinth, and explaining his understanding of the Word, and his recommendations on how they should behave as this new thing called "being a Christian."
Importantly, you skipped over what was written just before what you cited.
At 1 Corinthians 7:1, Paul writes --
This letter from Paul is a response to questions that the Greeks had about Christianity, and how to understand it, and how to understand the righteous way to live.
The next sentence --
This is a reference to Jesus teaching that a man CAN be celebate. It is certainly not a requirement, but it is not sinful. Paul is letting the Greeks know that it is an option for some.
Then, he says the part you left out at 1 Corinthians 7:2 --
"Nevertheless" means Paul is saying, "For those of you who are not celibate ... when you have sex, you should avoid fornication."
Fornication was NOT a Greek word. It is a word translated into English, from the Latin "fornicati."
Remember: The OT was written in Hebrew (ancient Hebrew which no longer exists in usage -- the jews of today have a bastardized Yiddish that they claim is the same Hebrew, but they lie). The NT was written in Greek.
Then, for hundreds of years after the Romans adopted Christianity, it was illegal for anyone to write the Bible in any language other than Latin.
The first man who translated it into English (Old English), was executed for doing it.
So, we have to be careful about what the words mean in our modern English language Bibles.
Fornicati (or fornication) is a placeholder word that does not have a specific meaning, but can encompass a few different things, depending on the context.
Our modern English claims it means "sex before marriage," but that is not a valid biblical definition.
In the Bible, it usually means either adultery or miscegenation -- both of which are forbidden.
Here, Paul is saying that IN ORDER TO AVOID "FORNICATION" ... a man should have sex with his wife, and a wife should have sex with her husband.
Why?
So as not to confuse the bloodlines.
The Bible is all about the family tree, or bloodlines, and to avoid mixing bloodlines (like Esau did), one should be having sex within marriage (ideally, though the Bible does not absolutely REQUIRE this, as prostitution was also a thing -- though, it was not looked at favorably).
Back then, there were no DNA kits. If a woman committed adultery (defined as a married woman having sex with a man who was not her husband -- both the married woman and the man she cheated with were adulterers), and if she got pregnant from that, then her husband would not know whether or not the kid was his.
This was a BIG problem.
Hence, the prohibition against adultery.
So, in order to avoid this problem, Paul was advising the Greeks that it is BEST to have sex within marriage, so the children will belong biologically to the man of the House ("House" means family), the man's legacy will continue, and his family's bloodline will continue.
But that is not a prohibition against a man having 2 or 3 or more marriages at the same time. If he is having sex with his wives, and they are only having sex with him, then all the children he is responsible for are his.
It has nothing to do with enforcing monogamy.
Can be a problem, sure; but that is irrelevant to the fact that the Bible never prohibits it.
And ... THAT is why God imposed laws for such a sitution.
The fact that people fail to live up to The Law is beside the point that there IS a Law.
No, I am not calling God a liar, but you are.
I am not calling Paul a liar but you are. When he said, "let every man have his own wife and every wife her own husband" he meant exactly that but you have made it out to be more than what it is.
Yes, a man should only have sex with his wife and a wife with her husband to avoid fornication obviously, but for those who are unable to be celibate, Paul commands marriage and that each be married to their own respective spouse. And if you have any doubt as to the reliability of any Bible translation, I would recommend a Strong's Concordance with which to cross-check any given English translation with the Greek and Hebrew and if you want to know what the Greek word for fornication is, the Strong's Concordance has that word which is defined as sex outside of a lawful marital bond and relationship, just as fornication is, and if the Hebrew of today is not the same as the ancient Hebrew, then I would challenge anyone to produce the ancient Hebrew so that the words, meanings, and applications thereof can be compared to the Hebrew words contained in the Strong's Concordance, so that it can be determined to what extent the Hebrew has changed.
Just because polygamy may have been tolerated at one time, that does not mean that was what God initially intended.
Another example of what was tolerated and yet not a part of God's perfect design was that under the law of Moses, a man who was displeased with his wife for any reason could divorce her, but Jesus said that this was not what God wanted, but was only tolerated due to the hardness of hearts. God initially designed marriage to be between one man and one woman for as long as they both live, but when polygamy is implemented, not everyone who wants to avoid the temptation of fornication would be able to have their own spouse because polygamy always robs someone of a prospective spouse who could otherwise be their own.
Everything God has created, creates fruit. A marriage can create another person. A gay union creates sickness, disease, and more.
We know them by the fruit they bear.... If they say they are of God, they are saying they are false prophets.
Marriage in church is getting the blessing and grace of God into the union of a man and woman. Jesus said that people are not given in marriage in heaven, they don't need to as they have the grace of God anyway by the fact of being there.
Just a thought. The fertilization of the egg, by a sperm, is the literal creation of 'one flesh'.
Is God simple saying that man and woman should beget children?
The scripture says that the two were to become one flesh, not that they would necessarily create one flesh; not to say that the begetting of children are not an objective in marriage, but the purpose of marriage is much more than just the begetting of children especially in this fallen world and since not all are able to produce children.