Let's talk about polyamory
Christian polamory has been a hot topic in recent days. Here's a passage on the subject I wrote for the book Sex With God: Meditations on the sacred nature of sex in a post-purity-culture world.
Polyamory
Many stories in the Hebrew Scriptures feature men with multiple wives, but Solomon seems to be the most profligate of lovers, as mentioned in the first section of this devotional:
Now king Solomon loved many foreign women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines.
(1 Kings 11:1a, 3a)
Most people are not capable of lavishing love broadly and equitably. None of us are God. But is it possible that some God-image-bearers are gifted with a special capability to engage in deep connection to more than one person, just as some are gifted with special abilities in music, athletics, art, or mathematics?
It’s possible.
After all, God is polyamorous. They love us all with dramatic, yearning, erotic love. Since we are made in their likeness, we have the capability for a similar grand and sweeping love. But that doesn’t mean we should all enter into polygamy or polyamory. We aren’t all equipped to be major league baseball players, or nuclear physicists, or virtuosos on the violin. And very few of us are wired to be able to love multiple partners the way each partner deserves to be loved, emotionally or sexually.
To be truly committed to living and loving as God would have us live and love, we must be honest with ourselves about our capability. Polyamory can’t be entered into simply for sexual variety.
Could God envision a truly loving polyamorous situation?
Yes.
Is it easy to go astray within this possibility?
Very.
The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.
George Bernard Shaw
Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/they) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotional series, the Living in Hope series of books supporting the loved ones of transgender people, The Language of Bodies (Woodhall Press, 2022), and the Rumplepimple adventures.
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