The following is a guest post by OpenDiary blogger Atheist Under Ur Bed. This is part of an ongoing series that will be posted each Monday. You can read the introduction to this series by clicking here.

Welcome again to Monday School – STILL “The Rational Corrective To All That Nonsense They Tried To Teach You Yesterday!” – and NO pledges required! (But if you want to take a second to silently rededicate yourself to truth, logic, and chocolate chip cookies, I’m certainly not going to expel you.)

Today’s Lesson: Is The Bible Anti-Marriage?

I suppose we all know the conservative Christian mantra by now: All morality flows from God and His Bible, traditional family values are an essential part of that morality, and marriage between a man and a woman lies at the core of every proper family.

For anyone who has grown up in a culture in which this mantra has been aired ad infinitum, it comes as something of a shock to stand back, examine things as objectively as possible, and discover that the Bible doesn’t seem to have the same high regard for marriage that contemporary conservative Christians do.

Consider:

—– The Bible’s God apparently never married or had a wife, yet He quite famously is alleged to have had a son. If marriage is as essential to morality as many Christians say it is, why is God exempt from it? Why is it OK for Him to have a son out of wedlock but bad for the rest of us?

—– That alleged son of God – Jesus – apparently never married, yet he is often presented as a perfect moral being we would do well to emulate. Indeed, the whole “What Would Jesus Do?” movement/bracelet fad is based on the premise that whatever Jesus would do in a given situation is the right thing to do. It seems that anyone contemplating marriage who stops and asks “What would Jesus do?” would end up not marrying.

—– First Corinthians comes close to condemning marriage outright when it says “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife” (7:32-34). The point is underscored when First Corinthians says “”It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (7:1). First Corinthians 7:38 basically says that chastity is better than marriage. Given all these passages, it would appear that in order to follow the Bible’s moral plan as best we can, we must not marry or have sex of any sort. Apparently, real morality demands that the human race be limited to its present membership, then allowed to slowly die out.

—– It is hard to find a wife in the Bible who is depicted as a blessing to her husband rather than a burden or a snare. Eve corrupted Adam. Lust for Bathsheba caused David to send her previous husband on a suicide mission so he could have her for himself. Solomon’s wives allegedly tricked him into worshiping foreign gods. In short, the Bible seems more like a public service announcement against marriage than an advertisement touting its many benefits.

—– The Bible’s conception of marriage is far different than that embraced by most Christians today. The Old Testament says men can have more than one wife, and many of its revered figures had many. According to Charles Panati’s Sacred Origins of Profound Things, polygamy wasn’t banned by Jewish communities until nearly 1000 years after Jesus lived and died (p. 324). The Bible also somewhat famously says that if a man dies, his brother is obliged to impregnate his widow (Deut. 25:5-10). When Onan rebelled against this “holy” decree, God killed him (Gen. 38:6-10). It’s difficult to see how today’s conservative Christians can say they embrace both the Bible and marriage when their conception of marriage is so much different than that of the Bible.

—– Perhaps the holiest woman in the Bible is Mary – and Mary’s child, of course, wasn’t fathered by her husband. Indeed, her husband, Joseph, is a very minor figure in the Bible and has been the source of much amusement to Christians through the ages because of his status as the man cuckolded by God Himself. If the Bible or its God really valued and respected the sanctity of marriage, it is hard to see how that God could have chosen a betrothed woman as the means by which to have a son. God, after all, could have chosen an utterly unattached woman – or created Jesus out of dust (as He allegedly created Adam) or out of a rib (as He allegedly created Eve) or out of nothing at all (as He allegedly created the entire universe). If He actually believed in the sanctity of marriage, why did He choose to have a son in one of the very few ways that’s insulting to that sanctity?

—– The early Christians seem to have taken a rather dim view of marriage. As Panati says, “The early Church fathers of Christianity revered celibacy over marriage, and chastity over copulation, because they believed the end of the world was near… Why breed when all life on earth would soon end?… Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine taught that fulfillment was to be found in chastity….” (p. 327-328). Since many conservative Christians also believe the world will soon end, it is difficult to see why their view of sex and marriage ought to be any different than that of the great early Church fathers.

—– According to Panati, references to matrimony are sparse in the first three centuries of Christianity (p. 334). Marriage didn’t become a holy sacrament of the Catholic Church until medieval times when the social order was disintegrating. As civil authority waned, the Church stepped in (p. 326, 334). If marriage is as holy and essential to morality as modern Christians assert, it is hard to understand why the Church didn’t promote, defend, and guide it from the first.

Bottom line: Marriage may be a wonderful thing but it is extremely difficult to prove it using only the Bible and the early Christians as one’s source.

Footnote: Although many people seem to believe marriage is forever & look forward to being reunited with their spouse in heaven, Jesus explicitly limits marriage to the earthly realm.  Matt 22:30, Mark 12:25, and Luke 20:27-35 make it clear: According to Jesus himself, there’s no marriage in heaven – and apparently no sex, either. And yet Mormons seem to believe in couples being “sealed” together in marriage forever. Which seems just more proof that Christians can reject any claim of Jesus if they want to badly enough….