Does the Bible teach equal rights?

Excellent response, and worthy of all acceptation. You ministers would do well to listen to this.

 

I don't see that touches on polygamy whatsoever. Why did God tell David "I would have given thee many wives" if polygamy was not an acceptable practice?

 

The first table of the law teaches us that all men, slave or free, have the unalienable right to worship Jehovah.

Honor thy father and thy mother teaches the right to raise and govern one's own family.
Thou shalt not kill teaches the right to life.
Thou shalt not steal teaches the right to own private property.
Thou shalt not commit adultery teaches the right to marriage.
Thou shalt not bear false witness teaches the right to equal protection under the law.
Thou shalt not covet teaches the right to liberty.

This is just a few. But a general statement summing up the rights granted in the Decalogue would be that all men are ". . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 

You don't see that Christ establishing the doctrine that marriage is between two doesn't touch on doctrines that say it could be three? Do you see that marriage is between opposite sexes?

Before the Light came into the world, there were certain practices that God "winked at" but now commands all men everywhere to repent, Acts 17

 

Could you cite the verse because I was unable to find a reference to that?

 

I don't think the point made by those verses has to do with monogamy versus polygamy, but just with the union of husband and wife. If God meant to abolish polygamy, then at some point He would have said so, in the NT. Instead it just reads that ministers specifically must be husband of one wife, implying to me that some in the church are husband of more than one wife. It does also imply, in light of the other requirements for ministers, that monogamy is the ideal. As I have said, it is a picture of Christ and the church. Obviously the Bible speaks of one man and one woman in marriage most often simply because most men will have only one wife (at a time, at any rate) or no wives at all. In any society, the male to female ratio is going to be approximately 1:1, and even with all the warfare diminishing the population of males in the OT, still most men had only one wife.

Here is the passage about David:
II Samuel 12: 7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I elivered thee out of the hand of Saul; 8And I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. 9Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. 10Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

Meanwhile, somewhere else wives are spoken of as one of Solomon's blessings (along with his cattle!)

 

Your point makes about as much sense as not using a flush toilet because if God wanted us to he would have mentioned that word.

Jesus did not talk about polygamy as he did about what God wanted. Who needs to spend time talking about perversions of what created when one needs to look at what God wants–focusing on Christ.

 

What I am saying is that it is not a perversion. It should be tolerated when the issue arises. I don't see anything in scripture condemning or endorsing flush toilets, either!

 

I agree. However, in the U.S. polygamy is illegal and in some other countries it is not.

Second best is never God's best.

 

This is not an argument in favor of establishing polygamy in the US. It is an argument in favor of tolerating polygamy on the part of those who practice it in other lands. I think I mentioned there was an instance where a man and his multiple wives joined the church. Missionaries forced him to choose one and divorce the others (which God hates, unlike polygamy!). The 'surplus' wives were forced into prostitution. There is no scriptural basis for that sort of insistence on monogamy, certainly.

 

I agree with you. However polygamy was not God's best. God's second best was to take care of the ladies and carry out his responsibility for which he was already obligated.

Some people lack wisdom and cause more problems for those trying to win people to Christ. They had a similar issue in Acts about the peope becoming a Jews to become Christians.

A few years ago a deacon in the church I was pastoring told a non-Christian that he had to believe the entire Bible to be a Christian. So later I confronted the deacon and asked him some questions. He could not answer any of the questions I asked. Then I asked the deacon if he expected the man to believe the Bible based on ignorance.

People trying to reach others usually get skilled in teaching and reaching people. However some remain ignorant about Christ and just repeat what they have heard. One must be wise to win souls.

 

I disagree with you. I think that gb did a good job of listing passages that show what God says marriage IS, not just for church leaders. There was, I believe, more to the requirement that leaders only have one wife than a general they would be too busy to be a leader if they had two or more.

Some of God's prohibitions come in the form of stating how things are supposed to be.

I certainly agree that polygamists in other cultures who become Christians should not be expected to abandon their wives. But it is incorrect to go from this concept to the concept that therefore God does not consider polygamy wrong.

 

At the time the Bible was written equal rights was a concept that would have been strange to say the least. Women and children had no rights, slavery was legal and authority was vested in a few well connected hands.

The concept however is there when you read the words of Jesus. Examine the book of Luke, a Gentile, the only Gentile writer of the NT that we know of. What groups of people get his attention, who are the hero's in his account? Gentiles and women, the excluded of the society. The excluded and unequal now have a place at the table because of Jesus.

It is clear that when you preach the Gospel of Jesus you are preaching freedom to everyone, acceptance to everyone, though clearly not everyone will accept such freedom and acceptance. There is equality before the throne of grace. There is no difference (Galatians 3:26-29) has far has God is concerned.

Society hasn't quite caught up to God. We still struggle with false differences and equal rights and opportunities to everyone and probably will until Jesus returns. Therefore it is paramount that Christians uphold the ideal as exemplified by Jesus even while living in the less then ideal.

 

Not to take this further of topic but to take this further off topic.

I can agree with the concept of tolerating polygamy while on the mission field where it is still legal and a part of the society. But going back to David is really not a fruitful argument. One only need to travel to the end of the Old Testament Ezra and Nehemiah to see how marriage was being treated by that time. Already what happened with Solomon was viewed in less then a positive way. It could be argued that what is the point is the foreign wives, not the multiple wives, which is true, but it shows that even before the close of the Old Testament, views toward marriage, what was a good marriage and was a bad marriage where changing.

By the time we get to Paul, the ideal leadership for the church is a one woman man, one man woman or someone who is not married at all. You have to remember the progressive nature of God's dealing with humanity.

 

We all have areas in our lives that trip us up time and time again. None of us are perfect, and none of the believers back in OT as well as NT times were perfect, either. Just because the Patriarchs were involved in polygamy doesn't mean the practice is right. "Looking unto Jesus," not heroes of the faith, people.

Hey, Amity, I know what you're talking about. I've heard of a lot of missionaries who have had the same problem. I heard of a village chief who got saved, and he realized that his practicing polygamy was wrong, but he didn't know how to solve it. So he talked to the missionary, and the missionary advised him to keep only one wife (preferably Wife No. 1) and live with her as husband and wife. He suggested that the chief shouldn't send the other women away, but that he should build homes and provide for them and their children, but not live in a husband-wife relationship with them.
DRF