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If you missed my previous posting, I am writing a (hopefully) brief series of essays in response to a YouTube video that supposedly lays out the dirty truth behind what a Biblical marriage really is. In the course of the video approximately fifteen examples of marriages are brought up, each one completely outrageous and jaw-dropping if you’ve never heard of them. Each one is also actually in the Bible. However most of them are not examples of a Biblical marriage. If you’ve read this already, skip ahead to the essay.
What does “biblical” mean? Well it can mean “Of, relating to, or contained in the Bible” as defined in TheFreeDictionary.com. Basically anything that’s in the book regardless of its nature.
Biblical also means “Pious; reverencing God, and his character and laws; obedient to the commands of God from love for, and reverence of, his character; conformed to God's law; devout; righteous; as, a godly life.” from BrainyQuote.com. This, I think, is the meaning that most of us have in mind when we talk about something being biblical: that it reflects the character and precepts of God as set forth in the Bible. Godly.
Just because something is in the Bible (the first definition) doesn’t mean that it is in fact biblical (the second definition). The Bible doesn’t just show you what you’re supposed to do and then give examples of people who did them, the Bible shows us people in their real lives doing real things. Often real crazy, downright outrageous things. Because that’s what real people do. Just because someone lives their life in the heart of Crazy Town, however, doesn’t mean we make them the new standard for living. Usually we use it as an object lesson of what not to do. Why? Because it’s an indication of a wild deviation from the standard, whatever that standard is. And we know they’re deviating from a standard because when there is no standard, there can be no deviation, and where there’s no possibility for deviation you can never have shocking, outrageous behavior.
And so I am compelled to make the distinction between the marriages in the Bible, as mentioned in the YouTube vid, versus what a biblical marriage actually is.
In my previous essays I tackled the statements made in the video that a biblical marriage is one man, his wife, and their murderous son (Adam, Eve and Cain); one man and his sister (Abraham and Sarah,) and and the help (Abraham, Sarah, and Haggai); and one man and his table salt-wife (Lot and Mrs. Lot).
For this essay I’ll be looking at the statement made in the Betty Bowers video that a biblical marriage is between “one man, [and] a gal who’s kidnapped and raped right after her brother, father, mother and slutty sister have been slaughtered.” This is also known as the story of how wives were provided for the tribe of Benjamin after they had been nearly wiped out in a civil war.
But we can’t start there. That story all by its lonesome is bad enough, trust me, but starting there would be like coming in for the last half hour of a 2-hour movie. Sure you get the big bang and enough storyline to make what you’re seeing interesting, but you don’t know what’s actually going. ( Read more... )
What does “biblical” mean? Well it can mean “Of, relating to, or contained in the Bible” as defined in TheFreeDictionary.com. Basically anything that’s in the book regardless of its nature.
Biblical also means “Pious; reverencing God, and his character and laws; obedient to the commands of God from love for, and reverence of, his character; conformed to God's law; devout; righteous; as, a godly life.” from BrainyQuote.com. This, I think, is the meaning that most of us have in mind when we talk about something being biblical: that it reflects the character and precepts of God as set forth in the Bible. Godly.
Just because something is in the Bible (the first definition) doesn’t mean that it is in fact biblical (the second definition). The Bible doesn’t just show you what you’re supposed to do and then give examples of people who did them, the Bible shows us people in their real lives doing real things. Often real crazy, downright outrageous things. Because that’s what real people do. Just because someone lives their life in the heart of Crazy Town, however, doesn’t mean we make them the new standard for living. Usually we use it as an object lesson of what not to do. Why? Because it’s an indication of a wild deviation from the standard, whatever that standard is. And we know they’re deviating from a standard because when there is no standard, there can be no deviation, and where there’s no possibility for deviation you can never have shocking, outrageous behavior.
And so I am compelled to make the distinction between the marriages in the Bible, as mentioned in the YouTube vid, versus what a biblical marriage actually is.
In my previous essays I tackled the statements made in the video that a biblical marriage is one man, his wife, and their murderous son (Adam, Eve and Cain); one man and his sister (Abraham and Sarah,) and and the help (Abraham, Sarah, and Haggai); and one man and his table salt-wife (Lot and Mrs. Lot).
For this essay I’ll be looking at the statement made in the Betty Bowers video that a biblical marriage is between “one man, [and] a gal who’s kidnapped and raped right after her brother, father, mother and slutty sister have been slaughtered.” This is also known as the story of how wives were provided for the tribe of Benjamin after they had been nearly wiped out in a civil war.
But we can’t start there. That story all by its lonesome is bad enough, trust me, but starting there would be like coming in for the last half hour of a 2-hour movie. Sure you get the big bang and enough storyline to make what you’re seeing interesting, but you don’t know what’s actually going. ( Read more... )