Eloquent as ever, Mizazeez wrote, “i suppose my struggle has never been with polygyny in general. i suppose my struggle was more personal. my husband taking another wife triggered pre-existing insecurities and animosity that would have surfaced at some other time due to some other circumstance had my husband not had polygynous endeavors.”
That is true in almost everything. Our problems are almost always of our own making. Our attitudes–our baggage–are behind almost every human conflict. God created men and women to be married in a particular relationship to one another, and it is not a relationship of equal partners. In Genesis 3:16 God told women (via Eve) that they will be in an eternal struggle against their pride and drive to rule their husbands. That is the true patriarchal curse of Eve, not that she would be ruled by her husband, but that she and all of her descendants would each have to battle and defeat their own Jezebel in order to be content in life as God meant it to be lived. This desire is like (perhaps more than “like”) a living creature, and it must be fought as such.
Our culture’s monogamous, polygamophobic dogma relieves wives of a large part of this battle. It tells them that it is OK to surrender to Jezebel in this one area. “It’s OK to rule your husband in this way,” it says, “because you’re equal.” Never mind the inherent contradiction of ruling an equal, and never mind that this one surrender gives the enemy a beachhead by which he can conquer the whole woman. Likewise, it tells men that they are perverts or domineering control freaks if they ever feel the slightest desire for another woman or if they entertain even a thought that the other woman might be a good addition to his family. Wives build a fortress of pride and indignation around this little kingdom and hold it over their husbands’ heads, constantly threatening and manipulating.
There are three evidences that this jealously guarded fortress is actually territory surrendered to fear.
First, godly women are to follow the examples of the Hebrew matriarchs, Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, in their relationships with their husbands. Three of those four women insisted on sharing their husbands with other women. While they were still motivated by fear or jealousy, those motivations led them to surrender more control to their husbands.
Second, most women would sooner tolerate multiple, temporary, and adulterous affairs than share their husband with a second wife. Not only does promiscuity put her husband’s soul at risk, but it puts both of them at risk of disease. Despite recent propaganda to the contrary, polygyny is no more conducive to the spread of disease than is monogamy. Women will tolerate sin and death before considering true submission.
Third, wives who are otherwise submissive and honorable are likely to enter an immediate rage at the prospect of a second wife. They will give in to the urge to hate, lie, and abuse, but will not give in to their husbands.
These are not characteristics of righteousness and love, but of fear and pride. They are only and thoroughly evil.
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