Posts
Polygamy is Pretty Mild By Comparison
They're talking about polygamy over at BCC and T&S. It's certainly a topic that raises many questions with few real answers. Compared to what's going on elsewhere, however, it's pretty mild.
Purely by coincidence I've been reading about the evolution of sex in Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, by Carl Zimmer. It's a really good book and I plan to review it here when I finish it. Anyway, when it comes to sex and reproduction, it's a strange and twisted world out there. If you view nature as fundamentally fallen and antithetical to God's plan and purposes, then this will not suprise you. If, on the other hand, you view nature as more or less an expression of God's glory and purposes--well the puritan in you may be shocked.
I'll get into more details later. But for now you can read a little about Bonobos, a type of chimpanzee. (I'm just giving you the article link. What internal links you follow are your own business.)
To get ahead of myself, I'll pose a question: To whatever extent polygamy operates in time or eternity, is God trying to effect (yes, I mean effect, not affect) a biological purpose?
1 comments:
I doubt it.
I've not read the two big threads about polygamy going on at BCC and T&S. So I don't know what's been said there. But I tend to suspect that both polygamy and the law of consecration were designed to see if the saints really could sacrifice the self and act Christlike. Both practices are completely at odds with our natural inclinations and are easy to abuse. And, by and large, our history shows I think that we failed miserably at both.
But, I suspect that those who were able to sacrifice and live righteously given those challenges were able to develop extensively because of it.
The effect of both was also to separate Mormons from the world. Several scholars have noted that it served to make Mormons an unique people with our own identity much like the Jews. In a sense Mormons are almost like a quasi-race with a social and community distinctiveness that you don't really find in Catholicism or Protestantism. (Well, you do find it in certain forms of eastern Christianity - but mainly because the religion is so closely tied to the country/race)
Post a Comment