Prostitutes and Polygamists

A Look at Love, Old Testament Style

ZONDERVAN

Contents

HUMANS BEHAVING BADLY

The Worst Sin You've Ever Committed

"Turn to the person next to you and confess the worst sin you've ever committed." I thought, "You're kidding, right?" The conference speaker seemed to read my mind, responding verbally to my unspoken question: "I'm serious. Worst sin ever. Go."

I was a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried InterVarsity staff worker, and on my immediate left was an eighteen-year-old first-year female student. I was at the end of the row; there was no one on my right I could turn to for escape. I didn't normally sit next to freshmen women (and never would again), since I didn't want to do anything that could be construed as flirting (sharing deep sexual sins might be construed as flirtatious), but I had come late to the meeting, and there had been only a few open seats. We didn't normally begin meetings in this manner, and if I had known what the speaker was going to do, I would have gone to a different section of the room and stood. For most people there, the first sin that came to mind was probably in the sexual realm, and I was in the majority. It was an extraordinarily awkward moment for all of us, so much so for me personally that twenty-four years later I still have a vivid memory of how I felt and what I was thinking.

But we shouldn't have been shocked by the fact that people sin, since most of the people present were Christians, and therefore, we had already declared that we sin. The Bible gives us no excuse for being reluctant to talk about sexual sins, since it has no problem sharing the worst sins ever committed by some of the holiest people who have ever lived, and many of those sins are of a sexual nature. I was uncomfortable sharing my worst sin with one other person, but that's nothing compared with having my worst sin published in the bestselling book of all time. Why is talking about sin, and sexual sins in particular, so uncomfortable? For many of us, our discomfort talking about sex begins at a young age in our families.

Love, American Style

"You may freely watch of every program in the early evening, but of the program of the knowledge of love and sex, you shall not watch, for in the day you watch of it, you'll be grounded."

This was the prohibition spoken by the Lamb parents to the Lamb children in 1972. (I may have paraphrased their actual words.) Before computers, Blu-ray, DVRs, DVDs, Netflix, live streaming, and YouTube, visual home entertainment was just television. No cable, just NBC, CBS, and ABC. A family VCR was still a decade in the future. On Friday nights starting at 7:00 p.m. (Central Time in Ames, Iowa), we three boys typically watched ABC's The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222, and The Odd Couple. Then the TV was turned off, and I headed to bed shortly afterward. (I was ten.)

The forbidden program? Love, American Style. It came on at 9:00. Each episode included unconnected stories of love, sex, and romance that our parents deemed unworthy for our young eyes.

Strangely, the parental prohibition just made the desire to watch it stronger. We thought it would be good to watch and a delight to the eyes. On those rare occasions when we figured out a way to see it, our eyes were opened. We realized the show wasn't all that good, only occasionally funny, often lousy, always silly. Silly, because love, American style, was quirky. But as quirky as love is in the US, in the Old Testament, it was even quirkier.

Love, Old Testament Style

Love, Old Testament style, was weird, bizarre, and often unholy. The book of Genesis makes it clear what the ideal was — one man, one woman, together, forever — but often for the people of God, the ideal was not the reality. The Old Testament doesn't just talk about sex but includes many incidents of what would now be considered deviant sexual behavior. Love may be "a many splendored thing," but in the Old Testament, it went beyond splendored to bizarre. And strangely, the authors didn't have any qualms about reporting these weird sexual practices in a book that was meant to be read to children (Deut. 4:9–10; 6:7, 20; 11:19; 32:46; Josh. 8:35). For most readers, the "love" stories of the Old Testament raise a lot of questions.

Judah praised his daughter-in-law Tamar for being righteous after he realized she tricked him into having sex with her for money. In Judah's day was it considered a good thing to have a daughter-in-law as a prostitute?

Jacob, who gave his new name, Israel, to the nation, had several wives. Solomon, who was considered the wisest man ever to live, had several hundred. Was it considered wise back then to be a polygamist?

While visiting the city of Gibeah, a Levite's concubine was forced to have sex with the men of the town throughout the night until she was dead (Judges 19). What were the biblical authors thinking when they decided to include this horrific story? "Hey, the Bible needs a few more gruesome stories of gang rape"?

The book of 1 Kings seems to have forgotten that David had sex with Uriah's wife Bathsheba — and then killed Uriah to cover it up — when it declared that David kept God's commandments completely and did only what was right (1 Kings 14:8). Since when is it righteous to commit murder and adultery?

"Did Cain really marry his sister?" If you haven't asked that question, you were probably embarrassed the first time a clever junior higher in the Sunday school class you were teaching did. Incest isn't just for modern royal families; ancient biblical families also engaged in it.

In terms of sexual deviancy, the Old Testament is worse than an episode of Arrested Development. Why does the Bible talk so much about polygamy, prostitution, rape, adultery, and incest? Because the Bible talks about real humans, and often humans behave badly. The Bible doesn't ignore bizarre sexual behavior, but parents and churches often do.

"What's a Foreskin?"

My mother passed away in August 2012, so now I can write a book on sex. Seriously, I really miss my mom and have committed to tell stories about her as much as possible as I continue to grieve her death. But it would have been awkward for her to read a book I wrote about sex, even sex in the Bible. Not only were my parents uncomfortable with my brothers and I watching shows that talk about sex, but they were also uncomfortable talking to us about sex, which was fine with us.

We were not alone. When it comes to sex, parents and children have one thing in common: they desperately want to avoid the topic. My teenage sons are not excited that I'm working on this book right now. My friend Sharon posted this message on Facebook recently: "Well, my six-year-old came back from a long time of reading the Bible (the Lego Bible) in her room and said, 'Mom, first of all, what's a foreskin? And what does it mean to lay with someone?'" Awkward, yes, but clever of Sharon's daughter to realize that Mom was the person she should ask what those confusing words mean.

Children's Bibles are usually no help, because they conveniently skip over things like David's adultery (or rape?) and murder. (The book of 1 Chronicles, curiously, does the same thing; 1 Chron. 20:1–2; 2 Sam. 11:1; 12:26.) I would like to see a children's Bible that is a bit more true to the text in the area of sex and sexuality. (Despite using small plastic bricks to communicate its message, the Lego Bible doesn't really fit into the genre of Kid Lit.)

The parental aversion to sexual discussions means there's often a deafening silence on the subject. It's not just six-year-olds asking about foreskins. In the Old Testament classes I teach, youths and adults frequently ask me about biblical attitudes toward polygamy, prostitution, rape, adultery, incest, and homosexuality. (Hopefully it's not because they're thinking, "Hey, this guy looks like he knows a lot about prostitution and incest.") Who will speak into the silence and answer their questions? Unfortunately, often it's not the church.

"Maximum Sex"

Parents avoid the subject of sex, and Christians in general do the same. Most churches avoid talking about sex. Can you imagine a sermon series on sex in Scripture? What about a Sunday school class on polygamy? How about a discussion of the incest laws (Leviticus 18) in your small group Bible study?

My senior year in high school (still in Ames, Iowa), I took four of my closest friends to Hilton Coliseum to hear Josh McDowell, a popular speaker with Campus Crusade for Christ (shortened simply to "Cru" in 2011). I couldn't get my friends to come to church with me, but they were willing to hear Josh. Why? The title of his talk was "Maximum Sex." Unfortunately, I don't remember as many sermons as I should, but more than thirty years later, I still remember his main point. He explained that sex as God designed it (one man, one woman, together, forever) results in maximum joy, pleasure, and intimacy.

I realize that more churches are gradually focusing attention on some of these sexual topics, but when Christians do talk about sex, it's still big news. As I was working on this chapter, the CBS news website highlighted a church outside of Houston promoting its new sermon series, "Love Sex." It made national headlines because it's still so unusual. (I'm sure attendance will go up during the series for this church.)

Josh McDowell's talk and the Houston church sermon series are the exceptions that prove the rule. Christians don't talk about sex enough, which made the willingness of this church and this speaker so shockingly unusual and headline-grabbing. People apparently really want to hear what the church has to say about sex. (And provocative titles always help.)

When the church does teach on sex and sexuality, it tends to focus exclusively on the ideal — one man, one woman, together, forever — which is good, but not sufficient, since the ideal is often not the reality. If someone in the church gets divorced or commits adultery, we don't know how to react, because people rarely talk about these issues. Many times when someone is raped or sexually abused (even sometimes within church buildings), a tragic situation is made worse when the incident is ignored, avoided, or covered up. While parents and churches may avoid the subject of sex, our culture doesn't.

Arrested Development and the Old Testament

If the church is sexually avoidant, our culture is sexually obsessive. And it seems to be becoming more severe. When I was growing up, programs addressing the topic of sex, like Love, American Style, were the exception; now they are the norm.

There's the obvious: Sex and the City, Modern Family, and Big Love(the story of a polygamous family in — wait for it — Utah). Perhaps the best example is Arrested Development, where in any given episode, teenaged George Michael and his cousin Maeby might flirt with incest; his grandmother Lucille might sleep with her husband George's brother Oscar (so, polyandrous, incestuous adultery); Maeby's mother, Lindsay, might unsuccessfully attempt an affair; and George Michael's father, Michael (played by Jason Bateman), might hire a woman he thinks is his sister, but who's really a prostitute (played by Jason Bateman's actual sister, Justine). It's hilarious and tragic. Prostitution, adultery, and incest, just like the Old Testament.

When the church whispers about sex and the culture yells about it, whose voice is going to be heard? And parents wonder what happened to their children. The church needs to talk about sex more — not just the ideal but also the reality. And the great thing is if parents or the church want some good material to teach from, all they have to do is open their Bibles. Granted, it's confusing sometimes, but understand- ing will come through examination, not avoidance.

An R-Rated Bible?

The Bible talks about sex all the time. It's not uncomfortable with the subject. A few pages ago, I mentioned the Lego Bible, which goes by the name of The Brick Testament, an online retelling of the Bible using Legos. While one might think that Legos + Bible = Children's Bible, before you bookmark the website on your child's computer, you need to know the whole story.

The website comes with content warnings, and each story has appropriate labels: N = nudity; S = Sexual Content; V = Violence; C = Cursing. For example, the story of the creation of the humans and their eating of the fruit (Gen. 2:4–3:24) has all four warning labels: N, S, V, and C. When the text speaks about the man and the woman becoming one flesh (Gen. 2:24), according to the Brick Testament they are actually consummating their relationship, certainly a reasonable assumption (see the next chapter of this book). Naked Lego Man is on top of Naked Lego Woman, and they are both smiling. (And so am I, while wondering whether I should feel guilty for voyeuristically experiencing their moment of intimacy. Fortunately, anatomical adjustments have not been made to the Lego creatures.) In the Brick Testament, the book of Genesis is divided into forty sections, and more than half (twenty-two) of the sections have an S or an N rating. If you were to translate those into film ratings, the book of Genesis would get an overall rating of R, or perhaps worse. I told you to wait on that bookmark.

The books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy have chapters devoted to legislation regarding sexual relations (Leviticus 18; Deuteronomy 22). Numbers 25 narrates how Israelite-Moabite sex led to idolatry. In addition to the gang rape of the Levite's concubine, Judges records Samson's failed first marriage, his encounters with a prostitute, and his sexual relationship with Delilah (Judges 14–16). The climax of Ruth is when she climbs into bed with Boaz in the middle of the night and uncovers his "feet" (Ruth 3:4–8). I'll let you decide how to interpret Esther's reaching out and touching the tip of the king's extended scepter (Est. 5:2). The book of First Samuel begins with the polygamist father of Samuel, then proceeds to inform readers that the priestly sons of Eli were sleeping with prostitutes at the entrance of the tabernacle (1 Sam. 1:2; 2:22). The most common image for idolatry in the prophetic books is adultery/prostitution. (There are too many texts to list, but here are a few: Isa. 1:21; Jeremiah 2–3; Ezekiel 16, 23; Hosea 1.) The entire Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon) is about sex. I'm going to stop now, but I could keep going.

Parents and churches have plenty of options to choose from to start gently raising their voice in this area. If we were merely to follow the biblical example and talk about sex as often as Scripture does, we would be forced to break our vow of sexual silence.

Humans Behaving Badly

A recent Time magazine article on the sexual antics of New York politicians Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner was titled "Men Behaving Badly." (Aren't you tired of the formula "X Behaving Badly"? The expression is overused.) While it seems like every few weeks a politician or church leader is caught up in a new sexual scandal, things weren't that different in Old Testament times. Some things never change.

As we've already seen, sections of the Old Testament could be renamed "Humans Behaving Badly," because both godly men (Jacob, Judah, and David) and godly women (Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth) appear to be involved in unholy sexual behavior. But that's not the only type of negative behavior I want to focus on here. When parents and churches blatantly ignore significant sections of the Bible that describe non-ideal sexual behavior, they are also behaving badly.

While many of these sexual stories may not seem suitable for family dinner conversation, if the divinely inspired biblical authors thought the stories were worthy of being recorded for posterity, then we shouldn't ignore them. Obviously, parents and churches need to use discernment regarding what is appropriate for their audiences, but if the result is avoidance of biblical texts mentioning sex, then our standards need to be loosened.