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tinpraA while ago now, I came across a YouTube video, “Betty Bowers Explains Traditional Marriage to Everyone Else". It was put out there as being really, really funny by a non-Christian friend of mine.
Naturally, I wanted to avoid it like the plague. Why? Because I could only imagine it was a vid of some uber-right wing-y, ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Christian Fundamentalist behaving badly—or perhaps not badly, but oddly.
Admit it, there are some of things about your group—whether it’s religious, ethnic, cultural, fannish, etc.—that just doesn’t make sense to outsiders, and/or confuses the newbies. Worse, once exposed to the harsh light of viral videos, it makes you look silly in the eyes of the ever-judging world.
I thought the Betty Bowers vid was one of these. Either she was a genuine Christian doing things that non-Christians don’t understand (and that even we realize look strange to non-Christians) or she was cultural-Christian making genuine Christians look bad with her poor theology.
That’s what I thought. I was wrong.
My curiosity is never-failing, and I often click on things that I, at first, tell myself I won’t or shouldn’t. You guessed it. I clicked on the Betty Bowers link, even though I didn’t want to. I steeled myself to be embarrassed. I steeled myself to laugh in spite of myself, and frown immediately thereafter. I had steeled myself for the wrong things.
If you haven’t already watched the video, it’s a satire that's basically poking fun (and that’s stretching the idea of what “poking fun” is) at Christians and the idea of Christian marriage. The actress, since I’m presuming her real name isn’t “Betty Bowers,” starts the video by telling us that not only do the “heathens” not know what a Biblical marriage is, but clearly the Christians don’t either. Then she proceeds to give examples of what a “Biblical” marriage is.
Except, for the most part, they aren’t Biblical marriage.
Mind you, every example that she gave is contained in the Bible. She sometimes gives them an incorrect spin or uses them in the wrong context, but they’re all there.
But does that make them all examples of Biblical marriage? No.
Perhaps you’re now looking at this and going, “Um, Tin…if those examples are in the Bible then how are they not Biblical marriages?” Good point and good question. Let me go backwards a little bit.
Did you know that the Bible, both the Old Testament and New, is not just a book of great accomplishments, rules and regulations, or descriptions of a wonderful/terrible God and his great/boring Heaven? The Bible is part history, part laws, part poetry/music and…I think some other part that I’m missing. The laws are pretty straightforward. The poetry/music, are also surprisingly straightforward, at least as far as poetry goes. And the history is, well, historic.
As a book it is, in fact, chock of full of real people doing real things. Some of those things are absolutely fabulous. Glorious, even. Some of the things people say or do are just epic. Seriously. Why do you think so many movies were made about biblical events? Not just because folks were more religious Once Upon a Time, but because the stories were, and still are, grand.
On the other hand, some of the things people did were not just bad, they were horrible. Folks raped their sisters. Families sacrificed their children in fire. People abused the land and each other. They offered up their wives/daughters/concubines to strangers, and then the strangers killed them. Men sat on vengeance plots for years that eventually wrecked whole nations. Just as all histories are, the Bible is full of both the best and awful worst of the people it talks about.
The Bible doesn’t shy away from showing people in their most unflattering light, including some of its favorite people. As a matter of fact, other than Jesus, there are only two people about whom the Bible goes into detail and yet nothing bad is said about them. These are real things happening to real people in real ways. As one pastor whom I like to listen to often puts it, “The Bible is R-rated.” Just keep that in mind. If you’d like to argue this particular point, wait until the end.
So back to examples of marriages that are in the Bible that are not actually Biblical.
Think of it this way: The police force. What is it and who are they? If you give a concise and precise definition of the police, you come up with something like what I got from TheFreeDictionary.com: 1. The governmental department charged with the regulation and control of the affairs of a community, now chiefly the department established to maintain order, enforce the law, and prevent and detect crime. 2.a. A body of persons making up such a department, trained in methods of law enforcement and crime prevention and detection and authorized to maintain the peace, safety, and order of the community.
On the other hand you can give me an experiential and subjective answer that might go something like what I found on UrbanDictionary.com: 2. The biggest gang in the world. Or 4. A person whose job it is to enforce the laws passed down by the government. As in any job, there are good and bad police officers…Usually thankless job, until someone finds themselves needing the police, at which point attitudes often change.
Two very different perspectives from one website, neither of which is particularly reflected in the more clinical definition from TheFreeDictionary.com. So…which of the three is the right one? Which one should be the definition of police?
When you were a child going to school and you saw a picture of a police officer, did your kindergarten or first grade teacher hold up the picture of the smiling man and say “He’s a member of the biggest gang in the world. If you see someone dressed like this, keep your head down and your hands out of your pocket.” Unlikely. Might that have been good advice? Maybe, depending on where you live, how old you are and your gender. But when you define what a police officer is and what s/he does you don’t start with the experiential, although you may find that you need to end up there. What definition do you start with? The one that defines the highest ideal and the purest standard. The one that tells you what they’re supposed to do, whether or not they actually do it.
Even if, because of your personal circumstances, the first UrbanDictionary.com definition is more accurate, why do we get so enraged when the police act like the gang members we claim that they are?
Because we expect them to live up to the highest standard of what a police officer should be, whether or not that is usually the case.
Similarly the laws of the Bible tell you what you’re supposed to do. The histories of the Bible tell you what people actually did.
Things that happen in the Bible, whether they were for good or ill, never go unnoticed by God. When awful things happen to God’s people, even when that awful thing is punishment for their own sins, they never get past God’s notice. He hears the cries for mercy of the people, and he intervenes. On the same note, when awful things are done by God’s people, he doesn’t let that go unnoticed and unpunished either. You won’t read about him in the pages of the Bible slinging thunderbolts every time someone forgot to say their morning prayers or whenever a kid mouths off to their parents. Generally speaking, the Bible doesn’t deal in minutia that way. What you will see is God saying something to the effect of “I told you time and time and time and time again to stop doing that” (whatever “that” was) “I have sent you prophets, I have given time to repent, but you refuse. So now this is what I’m going to do and this is how long it’s going to last.”
Everything the actress in the Betty Bowers video mentions can be found in the Bible, albeit not always in the way that it’s represented. Are they examples of marriages in the Bible? Yes. Are they examples of Biblical marriage? For the most part, no.
How do we know they're not? Because they don't live up to the highest, purest standard of what a marriage is supposed to be as described in the Bible: one man leaving his parents, and one woman leaving her parents, joining together spiritually, physically and emotionally to become one new entity that reflects God's love for his creation, and living according to Godly standards. Nothing more, nothing less. (Matthew 19:4-6, ESV)
Here are the incidents, people and situations that are brought up in this—actually very short—video:
1. Adam & Eve
2. Cain’s (their son) incestuous relationship with, according to the video, Eve
3. Abraham & Sarah
4. Abraham & Hagar (and supposedly Sarah)
5. laws regarding rape victims in Deuteronomy 22: 28-29
6. Lot & his wife
7. abduction of virgins after slaughter of families in Judges 21: 7 - 23
8. number of David’s wives and concubines (I Chron 3: 1-9)
9. Absalom sleeping with David’s concubines after running David out of the city (II Sam 16-21) as supposedly decreed by God for David’s sin with Bathsheba
10. Solomon’s wives and concubines
11. Sheshan, his daughter, and Jarha his male Egyptian slave (I Chron 2:34-35)
12. slavery in the Bible in general, and in Leviticus 25:44-46 & Ephesians 6:5 in particular
13. Matthew 19:29 (which is out of context and misinterpreted)
14. Paul’s speaking against marriage in I Corinthians 7:1 (also out of context)
15. I Timothy 3:2 regarding Bishops only having 1 wife. Though I’m honestly not sure why this one is here.
You’ll be happy to know that I plan on addressing these issues in separate essays, although perhaps not each on individually. My hope is that, in going deeper into these examples and giving you the whole story you’ll have a better understanding of what Biblical marriage really is, how God cares about every aspect of his creation (like any good father would), and that the Bible isn’t some fairytale book with pages full of marshmallow fluff. I've been sitting on these essays for quite a while--over a year, in fact--but it seems fitting to finally get off my tuckus and put this out there.
You may want to buckle in.
Naturally, I wanted to avoid it like the plague. Why? Because I could only imagine it was a vid of some uber-right wing-y, ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Christian Fundamentalist behaving badly—or perhaps not badly, but oddly.
Admit it, there are some of things about your group—whether it’s religious, ethnic, cultural, fannish, etc.—that just doesn’t make sense to outsiders, and/or confuses the newbies. Worse, once exposed to the harsh light of viral videos, it makes you look silly in the eyes of the ever-judging world.
I thought the Betty Bowers vid was one of these. Either she was a genuine Christian doing things that non-Christians don’t understand (and that even we realize look strange to non-Christians) or she was cultural-Christian making genuine Christians look bad with her poor theology.
That’s what I thought. I was wrong.
My curiosity is never-failing, and I often click on things that I, at first, tell myself I won’t or shouldn’t. You guessed it. I clicked on the Betty Bowers link, even though I didn’t want to. I steeled myself to be embarrassed. I steeled myself to laugh in spite of myself, and frown immediately thereafter. I had steeled myself for the wrong things.
If you haven’t already watched the video, it’s a satire that's basically poking fun (and that’s stretching the idea of what “poking fun” is) at Christians and the idea of Christian marriage. The actress, since I’m presuming her real name isn’t “Betty Bowers,” starts the video by telling us that not only do the “heathens” not know what a Biblical marriage is, but clearly the Christians don’t either. Then she proceeds to give examples of what a “Biblical” marriage is.
Except, for the most part, they aren’t Biblical marriage.
Mind you, every example that she gave is contained in the Bible. She sometimes gives them an incorrect spin or uses them in the wrong context, but they’re all there.
But does that make them all examples of Biblical marriage? No.
Perhaps you’re now looking at this and going, “Um, Tin…if those examples are in the Bible then how are they not Biblical marriages?” Good point and good question. Let me go backwards a little bit.
Did you know that the Bible, both the Old Testament and New, is not just a book of great accomplishments, rules and regulations, or descriptions of a wonderful/terrible God and his great/boring Heaven? The Bible is part history, part laws, part poetry/music and…I think some other part that I’m missing. The laws are pretty straightforward. The poetry/music, are also surprisingly straightforward, at least as far as poetry goes. And the history is, well, historic.
As a book it is, in fact, chock of full of real people doing real things. Some of those things are absolutely fabulous. Glorious, even. Some of the things people say or do are just epic. Seriously. Why do you think so many movies were made about biblical events? Not just because folks were more religious Once Upon a Time, but because the stories were, and still are, grand.
On the other hand, some of the things people did were not just bad, they were horrible. Folks raped their sisters. Families sacrificed their children in fire. People abused the land and each other. They offered up their wives/daughters/concubines to strangers, and then the strangers killed them. Men sat on vengeance plots for years that eventually wrecked whole nations. Just as all histories are, the Bible is full of both the best and awful worst of the people it talks about.
The Bible doesn’t shy away from showing people in their most unflattering light, including some of its favorite people. As a matter of fact, other than Jesus, there are only two people about whom the Bible goes into detail and yet nothing bad is said about them. These are real things happening to real people in real ways. As one pastor whom I like to listen to often puts it, “The Bible is R-rated.” Just keep that in mind. If you’d like to argue this particular point, wait until the end.
So back to examples of marriages that are in the Bible that are not actually Biblical.
Think of it this way: The police force. What is it and who are they? If you give a concise and precise definition of the police, you come up with something like what I got from TheFreeDictionary.com: 1. The governmental department charged with the regulation and control of the affairs of a community, now chiefly the department established to maintain order, enforce the law, and prevent and detect crime. 2.a. A body of persons making up such a department, trained in methods of law enforcement and crime prevention and detection and authorized to maintain the peace, safety, and order of the community.
On the other hand you can give me an experiential and subjective answer that might go something like what I found on UrbanDictionary.com: 2. The biggest gang in the world. Or 4. A person whose job it is to enforce the laws passed down by the government. As in any job, there are good and bad police officers…Usually thankless job, until someone finds themselves needing the police, at which point attitudes often change.
Two very different perspectives from one website, neither of which is particularly reflected in the more clinical definition from TheFreeDictionary.com. So…which of the three is the right one? Which one should be the definition of police?
When you were a child going to school and you saw a picture of a police officer, did your kindergarten or first grade teacher hold up the picture of the smiling man and say “He’s a member of the biggest gang in the world. If you see someone dressed like this, keep your head down and your hands out of your pocket.” Unlikely. Might that have been good advice? Maybe, depending on where you live, how old you are and your gender. But when you define what a police officer is and what s/he does you don’t start with the experiential, although you may find that you need to end up there. What definition do you start with? The one that defines the highest ideal and the purest standard. The one that tells you what they’re supposed to do, whether or not they actually do it.
Even if, because of your personal circumstances, the first UrbanDictionary.com definition is more accurate, why do we get so enraged when the police act like the gang members we claim that they are?
Because we expect them to live up to the highest standard of what a police officer should be, whether or not that is usually the case.
Similarly the laws of the Bible tell you what you’re supposed to do. The histories of the Bible tell you what people actually did.
Things that happen in the Bible, whether they were for good or ill, never go unnoticed by God. When awful things happen to God’s people, even when that awful thing is punishment for their own sins, they never get past God’s notice. He hears the cries for mercy of the people, and he intervenes. On the same note, when awful things are done by God’s people, he doesn’t let that go unnoticed and unpunished either. You won’t read about him in the pages of the Bible slinging thunderbolts every time someone forgot to say their morning prayers or whenever a kid mouths off to their parents. Generally speaking, the Bible doesn’t deal in minutia that way. What you will see is God saying something to the effect of “I told you time and time and time and time again to stop doing that” (whatever “that” was) “I have sent you prophets, I have given time to repent, but you refuse. So now this is what I’m going to do and this is how long it’s going to last.”
Everything the actress in the Betty Bowers video mentions can be found in the Bible, albeit not always in the way that it’s represented. Are they examples of marriages in the Bible? Yes. Are they examples of Biblical marriage? For the most part, no.
How do we know they're not? Because they don't live up to the highest, purest standard of what a marriage is supposed to be as described in the Bible: one man leaving his parents, and one woman leaving her parents, joining together spiritually, physically and emotionally to become one new entity that reflects God's love for his creation, and living according to Godly standards. Nothing more, nothing less. (Matthew 19:4-6, ESV)
Here are the incidents, people and situations that are brought up in this—actually very short—video:
1. Adam & Eve
2. Cain’s (their son) incestuous relationship with, according to the video, Eve
3. Abraham & Sarah
4. Abraham & Hagar (and supposedly Sarah)
5. laws regarding rape victims in Deuteronomy 22: 28-29
6. Lot & his wife
7. abduction of virgins after slaughter of families in Judges 21: 7 - 23
8. number of David’s wives and concubines (I Chron 3: 1-9)
9. Absalom sleeping with David’s concubines after running David out of the city (II Sam 16-21) as supposedly decreed by God for David’s sin with Bathsheba
10. Solomon’s wives and concubines
11. Sheshan, his daughter, and Jarha his male Egyptian slave (I Chron 2:34-35)
12. slavery in the Bible in general, and in Leviticus 25:44-46 & Ephesians 6:5 in particular
13. Matthew 19:29 (which is out of context and misinterpreted)
14. Paul’s speaking against marriage in I Corinthians 7:1 (also out of context)
15. I Timothy 3:2 regarding Bishops only having 1 wife. Though I’m honestly not sure why this one is here.
You’ll be happy to know that I plan on addressing these issues in separate essays, although perhaps not each on individually. My hope is that, in going deeper into these examples and giving you the whole story you’ll have a better understanding of what Biblical marriage really is, how God cares about every aspect of his creation (like any good father would), and that the Bible isn’t some fairytale book with pages full of marshmallow fluff. I've been sitting on these essays for quite a while--over a year, in fact--but it seems fitting to finally get off my tuckus and put this out there.
You may want to buckle in.