With all the recent talk of biblical marriage, I decided I was living life all wrong. It was time for me to get married. But I wanted to be sure to find my wife the biblical way. First I thought I would be like David and Solomon. After all, I desired to be a man after God’s own heart like David (2 Samuel 5:13), and I liked the idea of having a thousand wives and concubines like Solomon (1 Kings 11:3).  I didn’t know where to put them all, so I made plans to build an addition to my house or buy a second house or even an entire city block.  After reviewing the expenses, I decided it was wise just to get a couple wives like Jacob (Genesis 30:25-26). 

Then I had to figure out how to acquire my wives, so once again I consulted the Bible. I wanted to be sure and do this the biblical way. Abraham had sent his chief servant to a well with a camel to get a wife for his son Isaac (Genesis 24:11). Once I had sold my Honda CR-V and bought a Bactrian camel, I waited outside the Post Falls Starbucks just off of Highway 41. I had two gold nose rings in my pocket ready as offers for marriage. At first, when the traffic stopped for miles around, it seemed to be the success I expected.  My camel was a big hit, especially with the Post Falls police, but not so much with the single women at Starbucks. 

While I was searching the Bible to understand what went wrong, I came across Leviticus 19:19, “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.” The verse was in the same general discourse as Leviticus 18:22, “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman,” so I determined it must certainly be of equal importance. I quickly purged my wardrobe of all those sinful mixed threads, you know, one cotton and one rayon and the like. I was going to be pure from now on. I wanted to be a biblical husband for my new wives. Then I went back to that same Starbucks with my camel. 

After my arrest for public exhibitionism, I had plenty of time to think. I realized I had gotten it all backwards. I had brought the practices of an early civilization into modern society. The correct way to read the Bible was to push contemporary ideas onto ancient Israel.  I should read my own values into the Bible rather than understanding the Bible with help from the church fathers, biblical criticism, and academic scholars. 

Once I got this straight, I read my Bible again and understood I shouldn’t take a wife at all. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:7 that people would do better to be like him. The right view of biblical marriage is to remain single. It is all the married who are the sinners.