Buppa Dave
New Member
Hello, my name is David. I live in northern NJ and am going to celebrate my 32nd wedding anniversary this week. I have three grow children and two g'kids. I made twelve resolutions this New Years Day. Number nine is to attempt to write a book, or at least a monograph on non-scriptural traditions in the Christian Church, both benign and pernicious. For example, it is common to see Christmas trees and santa claus decorations in Christian's homes this time of year. In 1 Cor. 11 we "proclaim the Lord's death", but where in Scripture does Jesus ask us to celebrate his birthday? The American Christmas I grew up with was an odd synthesis of Luke 2 and materialistic greed. A pastor I sat under once asked, "If we tell our children there is an omniscient elf up north who will reward them for being good and they find out we have been lying, what are they going to think when we tell them about God?" This man was later asked to leave, not for this isolated incident, but for his ongoing candor and faithfulness to the Word. I'm not trying to lay any guilt trips on those who set up trees and exchange gifts, and I hope you all capitalize on this time of year when people seem more open to hear of our Savior and the reason He was born.
I first started thinking about plural marriage while visiting friends at Calvin College over 35 years ago. I was reading in Genesis about Jacob getting bounced back and forth from Rachel to Leah to Bilhah to Zilpah. Now you can imagine what I thought about this as I attempted to put myself in Jacob's sandals- remember, I was a teenager. Dang! A year later I was attending Calvin and talking with Dale Cooper, a prof. who went on to become the college's chaplain. He explained to me that polygamy was nowhere forbidden in scripture, but it was no longer accepted in our society. I ran out yelling to all my friends "Polygamy is OK! Polygamy is OK!" My friends were unimpressed, especially the one I was dating. Ten years later I was married with two kids and sitting in church. The pastor was talking about marriage. "In the beginning", he said, "It was one man and one woman becoming one flesh. And that is still God's ideal" While saying this he held up his index fingers about three feet apart and brought them together as he said "one flesh". I later talked to him about the lack of condemnation in the Word of polygamous marriages. He acquiesced, and said he would rather defend polygamy than divorce, which he HATED. It is worth noting this man later had a child with a young woman in the congregation betrothed to another man.
Fast forward to last Fall, I'm in a car with my wife for over three hours alone. She is reading Genesis in her morning devotions and asks me "When did it become a sin for a man to take more than one wife?" She then went on to observe that the world might be a less violent place if men were not limited to one woman. Dang! This brings us to the present, and my hopes of writing a book. I'm not an author, I'm an electrician, so I don't know if this is just a pipe dream. If you shoot at nothing, you will hit it.
I have been getting to know you some of you folks over the last few days by reading a lot of posts. One board member has become a friend on Facebook. If you want to be a friend there you will get to see how cute my grandchildren are. But I often go a week without checking in there. Also, I have a request- please put more information in your profiles. It is nice to know what part of the country (or world) people are from, even if it is as vague as "NE Canada". And if you don't need to remain anonymous post an avatar that looks like you. Thanks.
I signed on primarily for research purposes- to find out if poly marriages can be loving and Christ honoring in our society. I am naive about PM. I'm here to learn. It would be great if I made some friends along the way.
I first started thinking about plural marriage while visiting friends at Calvin College over 35 years ago. I was reading in Genesis about Jacob getting bounced back and forth from Rachel to Leah to Bilhah to Zilpah. Now you can imagine what I thought about this as I attempted to put myself in Jacob's sandals- remember, I was a teenager. Dang! A year later I was attending Calvin and talking with Dale Cooper, a prof. who went on to become the college's chaplain. He explained to me that polygamy was nowhere forbidden in scripture, but it was no longer accepted in our society. I ran out yelling to all my friends "Polygamy is OK! Polygamy is OK!" My friends were unimpressed, especially the one I was dating. Ten years later I was married with two kids and sitting in church. The pastor was talking about marriage. "In the beginning", he said, "It was one man and one woman becoming one flesh. And that is still God's ideal" While saying this he held up his index fingers about three feet apart and brought them together as he said "one flesh". I later talked to him about the lack of condemnation in the Word of polygamous marriages. He acquiesced, and said he would rather defend polygamy than divorce, which he HATED. It is worth noting this man later had a child with a young woman in the congregation betrothed to another man.
Fast forward to last Fall, I'm in a car with my wife for over three hours alone. She is reading Genesis in her morning devotions and asks me "When did it become a sin for a man to take more than one wife?" She then went on to observe that the world might be a less violent place if men were not limited to one woman. Dang! This brings us to the present, and my hopes of writing a book. I'm not an author, I'm an electrician, so I don't know if this is just a pipe dream. If you shoot at nothing, you will hit it.
I have been getting to know you some of you folks over the last few days by reading a lot of posts. One board member has become a friend on Facebook. If you want to be a friend there you will get to see how cute my grandchildren are. But I often go a week without checking in there. Also, I have a request- please put more information in your profiles. It is nice to know what part of the country (or world) people are from, even if it is as vague as "NE Canada". And if you don't need to remain anonymous post an avatar that looks like you. Thanks.
I signed on primarily for research purposes- to find out if poly marriages can be loving and Christ honoring in our society. I am naive about PM. I'm here to learn. It would be great if I made some friends along the way.
