Pastor, am 44 male from India, married for 14 yrs & have one boy of 15 yrs & girl of 13 yrs. Notice at the end of his question he asks, “Is it a sin to have two families or abandon one?” The questioner is struggling with a devastated relationship with God and in deep consternation as he tries to figure out the horror of his previous choices. I received a letter this week from a man in India who is caught up in serial monogamy. If I pick one above the rest then the others will have no means of support and be reduced to begging in abject poverty. But, I am the sole support for all of my wives and their children. “Should I pick one wife and family over the others?” That is how the Bible says we are to live. Their questions usually sound something like this: They want to do the Christian thing unfortunately, they already have two or more wives, and two or more families and several children from different mothers. Their problem is that they recently became Christians and are now learning that the Bible defines marriage is one man and one woman for a life time. I receive a lot of questions from husbands in West Africa where polygamy is a cultural reality. However, having a series of wives/husbands in succession is quite acceptable in our American culture. We have our own version of polygamy we have several wives/husbands, one after another, after another. Serial monogamy is having more than one wife/husband, just not all at the same time. Serial monogamy is not much different from regular polygamy. I didn’t catch it at the time, but I was seeing serial monogamy played out before my very eyes. He began to blush, probably because wives one and three were making comments loud enough for the people around them to hear. It was obvious that Don now realized that his two earlier wives were sitting behind him. I don’t know what happened to wife number two. Their friendship certainly centered around their comparative misadventures marriages with Don. In the interim wives numbers one and three had become good friends. Wives one and three just walked up the aisle and sat down right behind them. “I see Don Perry sitting with his fourth wife. “Don’t look now,” said Steve, our associate pastor of counseling.
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