Leslie,
Jesus made it pretty plain that "the TWO shall become ONE," referencing Moses, Gen 2:24. That's the normative position. The matter of mandating that the elder has only one simply underlines that fact. He is to be an example of right-living.

Not that some societies have not found ways around the biblical norm. Sometimes there is the plea for welfare, as you mentioned. Leaving widows to starve is an outrage, not against polygamy, but against a church that can't read its own New Testament: Care for widows and orphans is commanded, James 1:27; 1 Tim 5:3-16; Acts 6:1. Who is the "family" of the widow? The church, if no one else is. 1 Tim 5:8 is as clear as anything: if a man, a son, won't take care of his own mother, he is worse than an unbeliever, a denier of the faith.

In the final analysis, the Bible's "welfare program" is preferred to the world's every time.

The Bible doesn't demand that families be broken up, but by banning polygamous elders, it shows its disapproval for the practice. And the legal maxim is applicable here: "Hard cases make bad law," meaning that any "extraordinary" situation one can bring forward to mitigate Scripture's clear teachings has little weight for deciding what should be allowable on a regular basis. Where the Bible reigns, eventually polygamy should die out, where it had become normal. Like slavery.

Let's look at some other Bible facts. The first "polygamist" was Lamech, of Cain's line of descent (Gen 4:19-24). It is as if God inserted the fact of his two wives to emphasize his depravity, even before his murderous boasting.

In all the cases of multiple marriage I can think of, not ONE of them was free of added strife. Far from "glorifying" polygamy (as claimed in the article) the Bible shows repeatedly how disruptive and destructive it is.

And where one man has 500 women, or 1000, all to himself--a harem for his sxual appetite--there are hundreds of men who have none because of it. We need to ask if that is good at all.

Hope this is helpful.

__________________
Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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