"People like to have their thinking dished out for them, predigested and ready to swallow." F.H. Robison (1885-1932)
“Criticism sees the flesh in a brother. It tears down and condemns. It has self-superiority at its roots. Discernment sees Christ in a brother. It edifies. It combines loving appreciation of the present with hope for the future. If I do that, I am fulfilling the love commandment, so far as in me it lies, and demonstrating the unity of the Spirit.” Norman P. Grubb (1895-1993) The Liberating Secret
OK, I beg your indulgence: 1st: I make no pretense to always living up to Mr. Grubb’s admonition; sometimes, even when I know better, I fall short of the mark of being as loving or as edifying as I know I should be. 2nd: please grant me a do-over here on the Biblical Families forum threads. My name is Keith Edward Martin, and I’m posting this in the Introductions section, but it is in every sense of the word a re-introduction. I now realize in retrospect that I never managed to properly and/or thoroughly introduce myself here online but instead mainly jumped right in as if this were just some kind of anonymous mud-wrestling venue. I unconsciously rested on assuming that, because some key Biblical Families people had come to know me in real-life gatherings, I didn’t need to explain myself to anyone else. I apologize for that and beg forgiveness from anyone for whom that was confusing. In person, I have a tendency to be transparent when sharing, so my sin was failing to provide sufficient backdrop or non-verbal confirmation for the personal experiences I’ve asserted or the many stances I’ve taken over the past couple years. Know, though, that the unforced error was unintentional on my part rather than an attempt to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.
My basic bullet points are these:
· Male
· Born January 22, 1954 (Aquarius sun sign; Virgo moon sign; Aries rising sign) to a registered nurse and a rocket scientist
· Grew up in New York, New Mexico, California, Texas and Pennsylvania; adult homes in Georgia, Texas, Delaware, Alaska and (currently) Pennsylvania
· Have now lived in the same place for 16 years but had moved more times than my age when 35
· Not coincidentally, family legend has it that I’m descended from Jewish Gypsies
· Raised by Pentecostal/Lutheran parents; rejected that in mid 1970s; returned to Christ in 2001
· Fell out of hearse onto Texas highway traveling 55mph in 1972; ambulance rear-ending a Toyota at the same speed on the way to the hospital put me in a coma; took 1100 stitches to put me back together and was subsequently declared brain dead
· Intensive altered-states exploration, including 500+ hallucinogenic experiences
· Married since 1987 to the former Kristin Jean Keller of Baltimore, born November 16, 1968
· Five children (one from first of three previous serial-polygamy marriages), ages 41 to 15; parenting since 1976 (stepdaughter, born 1969), have had at least one teenager in my home since 2006
· First man given permission in the state of Georgia to be present at a Caesarian birth (1978); minor assistant at all four of Kristin’s entirely natural deliveries
· Bachelors in Psych/Business; Masters in Counseling; accepted into doctoral programs at University of Delaware, Florida State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Texas
· Careers in radio announcing; psychotherapy/social services; university residence life; truck driving/rack jobbing; domestic engineering; (and currently) online music media sales; editing and other document-production services
· Have facilitated and presented sessions at national and regional conferences on topics as diverse as human sexuality and creative discipline
· First created website, 1994; completed first (unpublished) novel 1995; much unfinished non-fiction
· Have known I intended to be a polygamist since 1969, having first considered it in 1962
· I’m like a cat, except I’ve already survived more than nine lives
I share my accomplishments and adventures for three reasons: (1) because I’m proud of them or proud that I survived them, (2) because I want to be known, and (3) because it’s always possible someone will conclude that I may be able to help them with something. I like to contribute.
I put myself on hold with the BF forums in August, because (a) I was experiencing frustration with myself and others in regard to having difficulty communicating; and (b) I began to feel like I had inadvertently invited the Adversary into my missives; in other words, I lost confidence that I was keeping Christ front and center in my motivations. Therefore, I withdrew and made a commitment to myself to refrain from participation until I had not only discovered how I had gone off the rails but determined a pathway to resume participation in a way that would keep God’s Love in the driver’s seat in combination with being more edifying and effective in my writing. If I were to wait for perfection in that regard, you’d never hear from me again, but I do believe I’m now sufficiently ready. In addition to this reintroduction, as part of my reemergence I’m going to simultaneously post some belated responses on threads in which I was participating in August, as well as begin a new thread related to the Myers-Briggs personality test . . . and another related to the ongoing question of how we men should properly treat women in these online venues. Those will also be uploaded in installments due to length.
One of my major mistakes last year was confronting a brother in Christ in public rather than sufficiently addressing the imperative to first do such confrontation in private. I have already apologized to him in public and private, and I have also made other private apologies to other individuals. I’ve addressed certain other issues with other individuals in private. I’ve probably exhausted everything I have to do in most of those regards, but those individuals are, of course, free to renew those conversations, in private or in public.
An elephant in the room, though, still begs to be addressed: from time to time, I and others have been criticized for writing overly-lengthy posts. To those who have such criticisms, please know that I’ve already read them, considered them . . . and thoroughly rejected them – just as anyone being badmouthed for being too brief should reject such criticism. I will instead be blunt: if you aren’t interested in reading my or others’ lengthy posts, what you should properly conclude is that those posts were not written for you, so you don’t even need to articulate why you don’t want to read them. They were written for some other audience. Speaking only for myself, I generally do not write in this community either for the purpose of receiving approval or for the purpose of providing my fellow community members a steady supply of pithy sound bites. There is no need for me to provide that function, mainly because CryptSleeper and other (for some reason mostly-anonymous) individuals staked out that typically-sardonic territory long before I arrived at my first Biblical Families gathering in April 2016. Therefore, it would be counterproductive to expect consistent succinctness from me, because it won’t be forthcoming. My focus generally is to thoroughly remove several layers of the onion. If you’re impressed, so be it, but that’s not my intention; my intention is to create clarity for myself within my own burgeoning contemplations and to expand understanding for others, and I have found that that often requires a willingness to immerse oneself in particular subjects.
Within Biblical Families, I have no authority other than that which any given individual grants me due to my age, wisdom, expertise or experience – but even those qualities do not automatically grant me any authority (and certainly not any superiority) over anyone. To assert such authority within the context of a New-Testament-driven community would be to fail to understand what is and isn’t encouraged to us by Scripture.
Our relationships are voluntary. As Frank Viola puts it in Who Is Your Covering?: none of us owe unilateral subordination to any authoritarian structure or person, but instead all are bound only by voluntarily-entered mutual subjection. I have that kind of relationship already with some in this community. It’s reasonable to assume that much of what I write is an open invitation to join me in the creation of yet another relationship of mutual subjection, but it’s far from a requirement. Be forewarned, though: I won’t be interested in voluntary subjection that requires me to suppress myself, as any need I have for that is already full to the brim. The World in general tends to operate as a Shut-Yourself-Down Machine.
I respect that most people are no more interested in taxing mental endeavors than I am in being suppressed, as well as that some folks have short attention spans. You don’t need to remind me of either one of those obvious dynamics. Just remember that, other than the quotes of others I share on the relevant thread, I generally am not writing for those with short attention spans. It’s clear to me that one’s attention span has no bearing on whether or not one is loved by our Father, so beating each other up about such personal differences is an unedifying waste of your time and mine – and maybe even His. After all, He made each of us the way we are, and He doesn’t make mistakes, so some very good reasons must exist for why we look at the world in so many different ways.
Elsewhere, I am posting an approximate reproduction of the longstanding OK Cupid profile I abandoned last spring. I mention this just to close this rant about misplaced criticism of my loquaciousness. If you’re interested, I refer you to the profile’s introductory paragraph. I chose not to apologize there and will not apologize on BiblicalFamilies.org, either. Finding and establishing the kind of connections I’m seeking in this life has been worth leaving no stone unturned.
Know, though, that I’m posting this not for the purpose of rustling up a date. I know that Biblical Families is not populated with the kind of women who are outside the boxes I’m not inside of. My purposes are to (a) further disclose myself, and (b) inspire some discussion.
If you do choose to peruse my profile, be cautious about it. I’ve written several elsewheres about my disdain for the whole concept of ‘triggering,’ which I believe I’ve accurately exposed for the purposeful postmodern liberal plot that it is to persuade people to become dependent losers in life by voluntarily embracing victimhood. If, however, you have bought into that oceanfront property in Arizona, you should be careful about reading, well, maybe most of what I write, but certainly my online dating profile. The minor warning is that it is far longer than this reintroduction. The main warning is that I recognize that I don’t represent the Biblical Families mainstream; the kind of family structure and partner(s) Kristin and I are seeking is consistent with the philosophies I’ve shared on BF forum threads, but if you’re attached to conformity within the nonconformity of Biblical polygyny, you could be in for a shock – and it’s up to you to prevent that if it’s something you want to avoid. If you read my profile, suffice it to say that you won’t be in Kansas anymore.
The shorthand summary of what you’ll find is that the fact that I’ve been seriously considering all of this for half a century is reflected not only in what I write but in what I’m looking for in regard to an additional wife or wives. A great deal of what is often considered off-limits is entirely kosher as far as I’m concerned. If, as a brother or sister, you want to discuss anything with me in an atmosphere of love and mutual respect, I welcome you with open arms, but we’ll both be better off without your condemnation. That’s easy enough to find from mainstream Christianity.
I’ll close with a quote from William F. Luck’s 1987 masterpiece Divorce and Remarriage that I would love to have been the author of, because it so closely mirrors the reaction I have when people think they have a right to declare what others are doing in their relationships to be unacceptable: “If this is not an instance of Christians shooting their wounded, I’m not sure what would be!” We are a subset of Christianity that tends to receive even more condemnation from most of mainstream Christianity than we do from the culture at large. It can be a source of lonely undue isolation to promote or seek scriptural polygamy. Why on Earth would we think it’s incumbent upon us to pile condemnation upon each other? The fact is that we are desperately in need of support from each other, and I’m committed from this point forward to being an advocate for promoting that orientation.
