We jumped the gun, what now?

[cnystrom]

My first wife and I have discussed plural marriage and even though she agrees it is Biblical, she won't give up what she's believed her whole life and mentions divorce if I want a plural marriage.

It would have been nice to know the rest of this story.

I have always thought that the study of polygamy led me to study what God thought of marriage in general and that it improved my monogamous marriage. One thing that quickly became obvious to me is that while God says nothing against polygamy, he says a whole lot against divorce. Why otherwise faithful Christians believe divorce to be an option has since been a huge mystery to me. For some reason polygamy is really horrible, but divorce is merely unfortunate, despite what the Bible does or does not say about the two practices.

In fact this is one of my go to statements when another Christian asks me about polygamy. "The Bible says nothing against polygamy but anyone who practices it would be shunned, but churches are filled with divorced people and no one thinks twice about that even though the Bible very clearly says that God hates that. There is a major disconnected there about how we think of marriage compared to how God thinks of it. I support how God thinks of it."

I think a study or marriage and divorce would be excellent for any shaky Christian marriage. If nothing else, it will illuminate if we are Christians merely by culture or if we are truly following God.

 

[Mojo]

Con (with) fide (faith)
Same as when you "confide" with someone you have faith that they will keep it to themselves.

@andrew, maybe manual is too strong a word with preconceived implications. Maybe we look at it like medical or sociological research. The famous "causation" vs. "correlation" success in plural marriage must be evident at some point.

Maybe a primer on correlations you and others have seen that lead to success. Those chapters on prayer and relationship would begin the book, then the "correlations" to functionality would follow. Maybe most of it would be the huge red flag warnings of things that would almost guarantee (causation) a doomed plural marriage?

Looking at the women only section and you will see 3-4 common reactions by women. There is enough data to at least begin there, no?

 

[andrew]

Agreed. And I didn't mean to say the impulse is wrong (maybe I was a little heavy-handed with my "here's a manual for ya" presentation. Something's going to happen eventually, and I hope BF as a group or someone here leads the way with that.

Meanwhile, I'm building a database that presently has about 50 families in it (aiming for about 100) that I hope will provide me with the kind of information I'm looking for. And like I said, I'm some years out before I'm going to be ready to say what I want to say.

In the meantime, a more likely growth path will be to start to publish some articles here on the main part of the website. Specific discussions of specific aspects of the biblical, practical, and legal aspects of the lifestyle (see, the structure is already there...) in ways that could become chapters of a book.

It's all happening, it's just happening slowly.

 

[andrew]

Just had a brainstorm. Watch your New Posts list....