POLYGAMY - OBJECTIONS, Q & A (8) POLYGAMY SHAMES GOD'S NAME AND STUMBLES THE WORLD

Even though polygamy is now proven to be acceptable before God, preaching and practising it will bring shame to God’s Name. Moreover, we will stumble the world and they will not be Christians.

There are many other matters in Christian life that are offensive to the world, and we still have to face the world with them, simply because they are truths. If a truth is agreeable to the world before it can be preached, then it’s the world that determines the way of the truth, not God. Also in which case, the world already has the truth and so she need not be preached to. The true gospel had been a great offence to many and will continue to be so. Yet we still have to live and preach it. It is easy believism and the fear of men that cause many Christians to live by the popular part of the truth and discard the persecuted part. I fully agree that we have to be wise, peaceable and edifying, but we still have to stand by the truth even when it is offensive. And we cannot condemn what is right to gain the world’s favor, in the hope that it will be easier to win them. And for truth’s sake, if need be, we will have to stand by the unpopular supposedly contemptible polygamous minority. The fact is however, that the majority of the world is polygamous and not monogamous. A worldwide ethnographic survey of 849 human societies showed 708 whose customs are polygynous (more than 1 wife), 4 polyandrous (more than 1 husband) and 137 monogamous. So we see that the "shame and stumbling" is actually self-imposed. But why then is such supposition that polygamy is shameful and stumbling? Because monogamy is shouting loudly, calling herself Holiness. But the one that will soon shout louder is what I term Homogamy.

But God’s Name is not put to shame just because there are the monogamous who think that what is right is shameful or because there are those who decide that they are holier than God is. Instead, His Name is put to shame by people who would not declare the truth. He does not rule by the vote of the majority. The infiltration and entrenchment of the Roman anti-polygamy theology has indeed added to the difficulty but we must not just flow along with it and make things worse. If modern Christianity had not deviated from Biblical truths such as this, the world would not be so stumbled today. We must in fact consider for the countless polygamous people that are kept out of salvation and God's house. The only way to undo it is still to preach and stand by the truth. The truth is to declare that polygamy, like monogamy is of God.

Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and the only way by which He set them free is with the truth, not with painkillers. He could not do much however with the "righteous". Many innocent ones who are hurt because of the abuse of polygamy become offended with this truth. With such, we are to accommodate. We have to pay a price, to show such wounded ones what God’s love and true patriarchy really are. It is the abusers and not the truth that hurt the innocent. We are to patiently and painstakingly undo the damage but never to compromise. We are to accommodate and not to compromise. For if we do compromise to reason like them, we distort the truth, misrepresent God and will never be able to set them free, and they will despise such shallow and passive Christianity, which is already how the world is looking at the Church today. If we decide however to stand by the truth and suffer a little persecution, they will one day be free and give glory to God. There will always be those who will perpetually persecute the truth and will continually find occasion to do so. They will be abusive in words and in actions. With such, Jesus instructed us to be wise, to love them, but not to cast our pearls before them.

Copyright © Israel CS Lim, 1998