One of the teachers at the high school would like me to do a unit or two with his law class. We sat down to discuss which units he would like me to take on -- right now it looks like I will tackle family law and international law. (Thankfully he gave me some detailed curriculum -- I have lots of time to learn the information myself!) We got into a conversation about family law, divorce, custody, even polygamy.
"Well," he said. "Maybe this is all because we aren't built to be monogamous. If we were built to be monogamous, we wouldn't feel attraction to someone else while in a relationship. Everybody, at one point or another, has felt attraction for someone besides their partner. I think anyone who says they haven't is lying."
I agree that it is natural to notice the attractiveness of someone besides your partner. This is different from choosing to dwell on it and certainly different from acting on it. But my conversation with this teacher brought me face to face (once again) with an underlying philosophy that is fundamentally different from my own. The view of humans as animals is something that I can never reconcile with. To say we are simply products of evolution runs against my faith and my experience.
If we weren't built to be monogamous, why the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases? The teen health nurse tells me that there is an epidemic of chlamydia at the high school. Why the emotional havoc left in the wake of broken sexual relationships? Why do I have non-Christian friends ask, "Whatever happened to sex being sacred?" Why have I become more and more convinced that waiting for marriage has saved me heartache and health risk, and given me an abundance of joy?
Although many people in the Bible lived in polygamy, the original design is clear from the direct instructions about marriage given in Genesis and in the New Testament. Deviating from this design brought problems, jealousy and division to many families described in the Bible.
Today I opened my Bible, and found that I am at Corinthians 6. This chapter speaks directly to this: "You say, 'I am allowed to do anything' -- but not everything is good for you . . . You say, 'Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.' ... But you can't say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies . . . Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. Don't you realize that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? ... honour God with your body."
The following chapter, Corinthians 7, gives specific instruction about marriage. I like Corinthians 7 because Paul is very honest about what pieces of advice he feels are "from the Lord," what he feels is his opinion in wisdom, and what he says is just simply his opinion.
God doesn't just say things to spoil our fun. If you believe that God created us, then you would have to believe that he is authorized to write the owner's manual. If you believe that all we are is blobs of cells that happen to function together, than we should act on our evolutionary instincts. Why should urges to kill, to rape, to bully, to have sex be bridled? Where did this sense of justice come from? Why do we look up to people who do the right thing, even at their own cost? What other animal has these layers of thought and depth and spirituality and search for purpose?
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