4-WWJD: Jesus on Sex, Marriage & Family

In Part 4 I look for what Jesus had to say on some very important, personal, often touchy topics. What important advice does he offer regarding sex, marriage, parenting and family values? How does he address the challenges of divorce, adultery, contraception, homosexuality, and polygamy?

As well, we examine Jesus, the man. Did he have sexual feelings? Was he married? How are Christians to deal with these very human biological and mental forces which drive our lives and can provide us with pleasure, happiness and fulfillment or destroy us completely?

As a young adult, I was told that Jesus has all the answers. Let’s find out.

Christian authors have written volumes on sex, marriage and family, claiming the Bible as their authority, placing Jesus at the forefront. A quick search on amazon.com produces over 10,000 titles offering advice for Christians on these subjects. With so much information available to Christian couples, obviously Jesus have had volumes to say. The inconvenient truth is, in the Gospels there is so much that Jesus did not say about these important questions that Christians leaders are left to fill in the blanks. Because meaningful precepts from Jesus are scant, we find Christian leaders extrapolating bits from the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, referencing the letters of Paul. As I have stated before, in my opinion Paul was an impostor, a fake apostle who never met Jesus, never heard him preach and therefore could only imagine what Jesus might have said on these sensitive topics. In this essay, however, am interested only in what Jesus had to say.

From a Jewish perspective 

It is logical to assume that when Jesus is silent on a topic, having been, born, raised and educated in the religion of Judaism, he would have probably observed Jewish traditions, deferred to Jewish Law (aka the Law of Moses or the “Law”) as dictated by God and forever inscribed in the Torah (aka the first five books of the Christian Old Testament). This will be my default position unless Jesus speaks otherwise.

Let’s scan the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to see exactly what Jesus had to say.

Silent about sexuality

Jesus was suspiciously silent on this very important, driving life force. As a young man in his early thirties, he would have been at his peak of sexuality with a strong libido. Did he have a girfriend? Boyfriend? Was he married? Perhaps he was a virgin, choosing to be celibate. We simply don’t know. But his words offer several disturbing clues which lead to my admittedly “fringe” opinion to follow. 

In praise of eunuchs

Jesus was silent regarding his own sexuality. The only words we have from him in that regard is a strange exaltation of eunuchs, that is, those men who would voluntarily have their testicles clipped in order to dedicate their lives to God without “distractions of the flesh”. in other words, to stop the flow of testosterone thereby suppressing normal sexual desire. When I read his statement it hit me on the side of the head. I wondered why a rabbi such as Jesus, would bring up such a queasy, distasteful subject in public, let alone glorify it in no uncertain terms, especially in the highly prudish society of first century Judea? What‘s next? Is he going to discuss the fine points of enemas? One has to wonder. 

Remember, this is Jesus, the Savior of Mankind, ostensibly God in human form, allegedly speaking. He says:

“For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to accept it, let him receive it.” 

~ Jesus (Matthew 19:12)

I am uncertain why the word “it” is used in the last sentence. Perhaps Jesus means ‘if you have the balls to accept castration, go for it!‘ I don’t know. Where underlined above, did Jesus really mean eunuch in the literal sense of physical castration, or was it simply hyperbole, or possibly a metaphor for abstinence or celibacy? After all, we know Jesus preferred to be mysterious, often speaking in code like a Shaolin monk uttering Confucian analects.

When we examine the entire context of his bizarre statement (bizarre in the sense that a moral philosopher would certainly not recommend the hacking off one’s junk for religious reasons!), we see that Jesus describes three types of eunuchs: Those who were born without testicles, a birth defect no doubt; those who had their balls cut off by other men, either as a punishment or as a prerequisite for employment in certain positions of trust, such as a bed-chamber servant to a king’s harem; and finally those who were so fiercely dedicated to the Lord’s service, they believed taking a sharp knife to one’s genitals without anesthetic was the ultimate way to impress God.

In context, the first two descriptions offered by Jesus appear to be literal. They simply fail the test of metaphor. It follows, then, that the third description would be literal as well. Going to the early koine Greek text of Matthew 19:12, the word used was most often used to formally denote a male which had, at a minimum, his two testicles removed. Yet sometimes this included complete removal of the penis and scrotum as well. Which explains why some early Christian fathers took those words of Jesus literally, including Origen, who, by Jesus’ words, castrated himself for the ‘Glory of God‘. The ultimate Christian extremist! 

I propose that Jesus may have been a eunuch as well, self-castrated in order to avoid any inconvenient sexual urges and to better focus on his urgent ministry without those inconvenient, nagging sexual urges. Why else would he blurt out such a thing? When we look at his behavior and attitudes toward marriage and family, my theory is not as implausible as it may seem.

As time passed, later Bible translators, presumably male, found this paragraph of Jesus glorifying self-mutilation so disturbing that they discarded the word eunuch altogether in the second to last sentence, instead substituting euphemistic phrases. Such is the case with The New Living Bible which replaces “those who have castrated themselves” with the more palatable phrase, “those who have chosen not to marry.”

The New International Version offers another watered down version with, “those who have chosen to live like eunuchs,” implying they were not actually castrated but live as if they were castrated. Inspired by these words from their Lord, the Catholic Church requires priests to behave like eunuchs, taking the oath of celibacy (no sex!) and promising to God never to marry. And their credulous flocks look to these sexually repressed, testosterone charged, virgin prigs for sexual and marital advice? Are you kidding? It would have been far better for untold thousands of raped and sexually abused altar boys whose lives have been destroyed by predator priests if these holy “fathers” had simply been neutered. There’s still time!

Andronegous Jesus?

Back to Jesus. There are other clues about the man which may not be directly supported by scripture but seem to recur in verbal and pictorial renderings of Jesus in Christian culture. Ignoring modern American depictions of Jesus as a thoroughly blue-eyed Caucasian male hippie, I could not help but notice that Jesus is historically portrayed as, well, more than a bit effeminate. Often described as “gentle, meek and mild”, this portrayal of Jesus is anything but a thirty-something macho man with red blood with infused testosterone coursing thick through his veins.

Although there are no physical descriptions of Jesus to be found in the New Testament, five hundred years of Church paintings commissioned during the Medieval period of Western Europe (1000-1500 CE) intentionally illustrate Jesus in the transgender, at times bare-chested, with fingers raised in a delicate, dainty fashion, hips and weight shifted, head cocked peculiarly to one side. This imagery of Jesus suggests estrogen-dominance, symptomatic of an androgynous castrated male. Coincidence? Maybe. It makes one wonder, anyway. 

What about marriage?

Other than author Dan Brown’s salacious fiction presented in The DaVinci Code that Jesus of Nazareth was married to Mary Magdalene, we simply do not know. Considering my eunuch theory, that would be another reason why there is no mention of a girlfriend or wife of Jesus.

Other than reciting Old Testament scripture describing marriage between a man and a woman, Jesus offered no absolute marital advice. Moreso, he seemed to discourage marriage when he said:

“They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead neither marry, nor are given in marriage.” 

~ Jesus (Luke 20:35) 

Translation: If you want to be worthy of going to Heaven when you die, then don’t marry.

Just as he strangely praised eunuchs, Jesus held the chaste and the unmarried in high regard. Independent of Jesus’ anti-sex, anti-marriage attitudes, Paul likewise avoided contact with women, and discouraged sex and marriage, placing such carnal things secondary to a life of celibacy and singleness in devotion to the Lord. That’s one thing the two agreed upon.

It gets even weirder. Jesus even casts out the institution of marriage altogether in the afterlife. 

“For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in Heaven.” 

 ~ Jesus (Mark 12:25; Matthew 22:30) 

Translation: In Heaven there is no need for sex or marriage because, like the angels, everyone is asexual and therefore do not reproduce. Of course.

What about family?

From the very beginning, Christians have hijacked “family values” as if they, through the wisdom of Jesus, have all the answers. Christian political candidates get elected by promising to “restore family values”. Most notably, Focus on the Family founded in 1977 by fundamentalist Christian minister James Dobson, claims imaginary biblical principles to influence social and political change. The organization has produced and sold books, magazines and hundreds of hours of film and audio using Jesus and the Bible as its model for family life. Their website contains a trove of wholesome advice on sex, marriage, parenting and family, and at every opportunity pointing to chapter and verse of the Bible.

A Boolean search on amazon.com returns over 10,000 results for keywords “Christian” and “family”. With enough information to fill the Library of Congress, certainly Jesus offered plenty of advice on parenting with Christian values to inspire such a plethora of information?

Yes and no. Yes, in contrast to his brief but bizarre commentary on castration and marriage, Jesus had more to say about family. But, no, it is not advice we would expect from the perfect god-man that so many Christians look to for their values.

Just as he was pro-castration, anti-sex and anti-marriage, it should be no surprise that Jesus would have a bad attitude toward the end result of marriage and sex: family. To him, family interfered with and distracted from his urgent, apocalyptic ministry.

To follow is a selection of Jesus‘ quotes regarding family that one would never remotely associate with a teacher of family values! As I did, you may find this surprising, if not disturbing.

1. Jesus came to destroy families. He said, “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:35-36, Luke 12:51-53) 
2. Jesus said to abandon family. He encouraged his followers to abandon their homes and families and livelihoods to show their unquestioning devotion to him when he said, “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a  hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” (Matthew 19:29, Mark 10:29-30, Luke 18:29-30) Jesus would have his followers with families suffer untold economic hardship!
3. Jesus lacked empathy for grieving disciples. He was dismissive of, insensitive to those who loved their families. When a disciple’s father had died and he wished to return home to bury him, Jesus displayed a shocking lack of empathy with words you might expect from a narcissist. “And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.” (Matthew 8:21-22, Luke 9:59-62) What a dick.
4. Jesus told his followers to hate their families and to hate themselves. Don’t believe it? It is right there, in print, for anyone to read. Hate is a harsh word, certainly unexpected coming from the lips of the so-called ‘loving Savior‘. To quote Jesus, “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) I imagine modern translations have taken liberties with the Greek word for hate, miseo, morphing it into something less hateful.
5. Jesus insisted that his followers love him more than anyone else, including their families, rejecting those who would not. “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37) 
6. Jesus disrespects fathers. “Call no man your father upon the earth.” (Matthew 23:9) This command all Christians ignore, as do Catholics, when they call their priests ‘father’.

There are several more instances where Jesus chides followers who stood up to his ridiculous demands, refusing to shirk their family responsibilities and returned home. Of course, our loving Jesus condemned them to hell.

Any first year psychology student would find all the above statements from Jesus oozing with narcissism. (Count how many times he says “I”, “me” or “my”.) If Jesus’ messaging sounds familiar, it might be because you have heard similar statements from Jim Jones, David Koresh, L. Ron Hubbard, Warren Jeffs and other cult leaders throughout history.

Woody Allen hit the nail on the head when he said, “[Like Jesus] I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism."

Jesus rejected his own family

But surely even a narcissistic Son of God would not reject his very own family and treat them with such disrespect?! No, that would be in direct opposition to Christian family values. What I found was Jesus did, in fact, set himself up as the perfect (bad) example by repeatedly renouncing his own natural family ties when they potentially stood in the way of his “higher spiritual calling”. Thus, when the twelve-year-old Jesus went missing on a family trip to Jerusalem and his desperate parents found him in the Temple debating rabbis, snapping back like a spoiled brat the boy responded to their anguished parental concern:

“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

~ Jesus (Luke 2:49) 

Maybe this is why Proverbs 13:24 warns, “spare the rod and spoil the child”.

Fast forward to adulthood. Thirty-something Jesus was preaching some crazy stuff. Imagine him standing on a rock, spouting praise for the castrated, telling his audience to abandon and to hate their families, that he was the Messiah, the Son of Man, and that the world was coming to an end any day now. His own brothers heard this and thought he had gone mad. Alarmed, they ran home, grabbed their mother, Mary, and returning to Jesus, attempted an intervention. (Mark 3:21) This only pisses him off, Jesus rebuking his mother and brothers for failing to understand the “divine timing” underlying his ministry. (John 2:4; 7:6-8) So let me get this straight: Mary, the blessed mother of Jesus, thought the Messiah had gone bonkers. Yet the Catholic Church still made her a saint?!

Apologists for Jesus

Apologists unabashedly spin these “difficult” words from Jesus into something completely different, some insisting that he was just trying to over-emphasize an important point about how God must come first in your life. Do so and everything will magically fall into place. Others opine that these seemingly harsh words were only meant for the twelve men that he recruited to serve in his short three-year ministry, after which he did not expect future believers to actually reject their families. After all, that would be so un-Christ like.

Searching the four Gospels I cannot find any words spoken by Jesus or the authors that prove his repeated rejection of family was only temporary, or meant solely for the Twelve, or that once Jesus was gone that everything could return to normal. I find it amazing that these religious pundits always seem to know what Jesus was actually thinking, in spite of biblical evidence to the contrary. Once again, we find apologists “apologizing“ for the bad Jesus.

What about divorce?

Jesus appeared to agree with Jewish tradition where divorce is discouraged but permitted in certain circumstances. When asked about divorce in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus upholds the Jewish party line, reminding the crowd that a man who divorces his wife for any reason other than fornication, he causes her to commit adultery. 

Let’s look at Jesus’ exact words: 

“But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” 

~ Jesus (Matthew 19:9)

Let’s unpack this statement because the implications have serious consequences for wives then and now.

In the first part of his statement, in the Jewish tradition, to “put away” one’s wife means to divorce her. Jesus says that if a husband divorces his wife for any reason other than being unfaithful, she is considered the adulterous party, not the husband! So whether she commits actual adultery or not, either way she is still branded with the scarlet letter! The inference here is that the husband now has the option to have his wife legally executed as dictated by God’s sixth Commandment. Notice how Jesus mentions only divorce for the man, the husband. That is because, under Jewish Law, wives did not have the right to divorce husbands. Hey Christian wives out there, did you miss that one in Ladies Bible Class?

But it gets worse. In the second half of Jesus’ statement, if the woman, now divorced for some reason other than adultery, were to remarry, her new husband would also be branded an adulterer for having done so. So now, technically, the ex-wife and her new husband are both subject to capital punishment for the sin of adultery. Divorce, Jewish style!

Scanning several Protestant apologist websites for commentary on this nonsense, as expected, Jesus’ words are contorted to mean something completely different than what he actually said. As well, his statement is magically made gender neutral as if the law applies equally and fairly to both spouses.

This reminds me of an incident that happened at our very conservative Protestant church when I was a teenager. It caused quite an uproar as it affected a Sunday school friend of mine whose father and mother were members of our church. After a long illness his father died and after some time his mother fell in love and wanted to remarry. Uh oh. It seems the man she loved had been previously divorced.

The minister agreed to marry them, but the church elders (all men) wanted to know the reason for the man’s divorce. They learned that he and his wife had not divorced for the reason of adultery, therefore, some of the eldership did not consider the divorce legitimate as justified by Jesus’ teaching on the subject. Some members cited the apostle Paul who, in direct conflict with Jesus’ teaching, did not allow divorce for any reason, in which case my friend’s widowed mother would be marrying an adulterer in God’s eyes, making her guilty by association. (1 Corinthians 7:10)

Technically, the Jewish Jesus would have allowed the man to remarry, just because he was a man. Either way, Jesus or Paul, the couple was not going to be married in our church. This caused a conflict with the more liberal, more forgiving members of the congregation, among them my parents who had been close friends with the family. As a teenager, I found the whole matter quite scatological. In the end, feelings were hurt, friendships unraveled and the couple chose to leave the church and marry elsewhere. And I lost a church friend.

When it comes to divorce, Christians have always claimed the moral high ground; that God sanctifies marriage, boasting their faith in God keeps couples together, implying that those without a Christ-centered marriage must, therefore, have the highest rate of divorce. But where is the evidence for this claim?

In 2000, The Barna Research Group, a Christian polling company that studies religious trends in America, conducted a national survey on divorce rates among Christian denominations and among the general public, including those without any religious affiliation. The study showed that Christians on the whole divorce 34% of the time in contrast to 25% for the general population (far less than the 50% rate reported by mass media.) To the surprise of many, the group with the lowest rate of divorce at 21% was...drum roll...those filthy, godless atheists and agnostics!

Even more surprising, Christians identifying as Baptist, arguably the most conservative sect, had the highest divorce rate among all the major denominations at 29%! So much for the belief that more Jesus equals less divorce.

Still, that’s not all the survey revealed. “Born again” Christians, those individuals who have converted to Christianity claiming a “personal relationship with the Lord Jesus” had the next highest rate of divorce at 27%.

One reason offered by researchers for the high rate of divorce among born again Christians is that often only one spouse undergoes conversion while the other spouse remains unconvinced, leaving them in a perpetual state of mental and spiritual conflict. The apostle Paul (not Jesus) writes that a believer should not be “yoked” to a non-believer. Such conflict would be amplified if the married convert fell into one of the more extreme, cult-like sects, such as Charismatic or Pentecostal. And worse, once the rebirthed spouse begins tithing sums of the marriage funds to such movements, the problems are exacerbated. Although Paul stated this instruction in the context of choosing a spouse, and not within an existing marriage, Born Agains continue to cite Paul’s words as scriptural permission to “de-yoke” from their unsaved half, making themselves feel better about dumping an unbelieving spouse. They may even extend the “de-yoking” reason to Christian spouses who interpret the scriptures differently or attend different churches.

So much for Father Patrick Peyton’s (1909-1992) axiom that “the family that prays together stays together“. As you can imagine, the survey proved very disturbing to the Evangelical community which promptly levied attacks upon The Barna Group, rejecting the results out of hand without providing any evidence of their own to the contrary. Some Baptist leaders accused the researchers of having been “tricked by Satan”. But get this: The Barna Group is an Evangelical Christian research group! Yes, this survey was conducted by one of their own, an inside job, therefore any anti-religion bias can be excluded as a reason for these unexpected, undesirable results. In its defense, the Barna Group did the right thing and issued a formal statement standing by its results. Ah, the irony!

So which brand of Christianity had the lowest rate of divorce according to the Barna survey? Roman Catholics take the bottom tier at 21% when compared to all. Barna concludes this may be a direct result of the Vatican’s strong Pauline stance on divorce and the severe penalties for violating the covenant ”that which God hath joined together.” 

Paraphrasing the Catholic Catechism on divorce issued by the Vatican, verses 2382-2384, Jesus insisted that it was God’s intention that marriage be indissoluble by any human power or for any reason other than death. [Not true as we learned Jesus allowed for adultery.] Therefore divorce, even if legally obtained, is a grave offense, and couples doing so have broken their contract with God, and therefore forfeit Salvation. [In other words, they risk spending eternity together in Hell.] And if either ex-spouse were to remarry, they would then be “in a situation of public and permanent adultery.” At least the Church now ignores the capital punishment mandate.

This ominous threat from the Church with no way out of marriage is enough for Catholic couples to take their marriage vows seriously and, out of literal fear of eternal damnation, stay married and to find other solutions in a relationship gone bad, such as physical separation as tolerated by the Catholic Church.

Jesus’ general intolerance for divorce with the adultery exception has condemned untold numbers of women and men to a lifetime of misery and domestic violence. Even more egregious, the fake apostle Paul, although claiming to speak for Jesus, jacked it up a notch with total intolerance.

Except for the Catholic Church and those uber religious couples who fear shunning and even excommunication, fortunately most Christians are enlightened, realizing there can be limitations to any relationship. Even with the best of intentions, promises may be broken. Our own humanistic sense of morality understands that to force couples to remain in mentally and physically abusive relationships is, in itself, immoral.

What about adultery?

Jewish Law is clear: it requires capital punishment for the “sin” of adultery as specified in God's Ten Commandments. Yes, the very same Ten Commandments displayed by Christian groups in front of so many courthouses across the Nation. Verily I say unto you, if we were truly a Christian nation, half the members of Congress as well as a good number of Bible-clutching presidents would be sitting on death row! Praise the Lord.

During biblical times and later, “getting stoned” had a different meaning than it does for today’s cannabis crowd. It was the legally preferred method of execution for the crime of losing one’s virginity before marriage, unfaithfulness to a husband as well as other egregious crimes like picking up sticks on the Sabbath. This barbaric, God-sanctioned method of permanent punishment makes firing squad, hanging, electric chair, gassing and lethal injection seem like child’s play. For fornicators and adulterers, stoning was where pious men gathered large rocks and chucked them repeatedly at the accused (usually a woman) until her body was so battered that she eventually lost consciousness and was left to die from internal injuries or brain hemorrhage. Lovely.

Why mostly women? According to jewishvirtuallbrary.com,, a married man having sex with a woman other than his wife is not considered a crime in biblical or later Jewish law. This distinction stems from the economic aspect of Israelite marriage where a wife is the property of the husband who had exclusive sexual access to her. So if she were to stray, this would be a violation of the husband’s right to his property (her body) and therefore punishable by beating, divorce or worse.

Because Jesus was mostly silent about adultery, once again we can assume he would uphold the Jewish Law. Ah, but what about the famous story of Jesus rescuing the adulterous woman from a good stoning? This story is ubiquitous, a favorite example for sermons on forgiveness. I remember it from Sunday school, although I had no idea what the sin of adultery was. As it goes, Jesus and his crew happen upon the stoning about to take place. To the shock of her would-be executioners, Jesus intercedes, and kneeling to the ground, takes a stick and appears to scratch something in the dirt. He looks up at the bloodthirsty crowd, stones at the ready, and says, “Let those among you without sin cast the first stone.” Whoa! These magic words cause the crowd to drop their weapons and disburse. Jesus then tells the naked*, shivering woman to “go, and sin no more”. (John 7:53-8:11).

Suspiciously, to my ears this story does not sound compatible with the Jesus who “did not come to change the Law” as this would have been a direct challenge to God’s commandment. In researching further, I am not the only one who questions the validity of this story. Evidently, it has been debated by New Testament scholars for centuries from every angle imaginable with most now agreeing the story is fake.

Doubt about its authenticity arose from the fact that the story does not appear in any of the over 1400 earliest, and therefore most reliable, Greek manuscripts dating 100-200 years after Jesus’ ministry. Not until 400-500 years later did the story begin to mysteriously appear in Greek texts.

Adding to doubts, the story of Jesus and the adulteress was awkwardly inserted into the Gospel of John, the last gospel to be included in the official canon, and this was sometime after the canon was determined by Emperor Constantine and his bishops at the Council of Trent during the years 1545-1563.

Perhaps the greatest evidence is the other three synoptic gospels, those gospels in general agreement, Matthew, Mark and Luke, conspicuously fail to mention this powerful story of forgiveness, one that certainly would be a defining event during the ministry of Jesus. You would think.

As well, numerous linguistic and New Testament scholars such as The Jesus Seminar and Professor Bart D. Ehrman all agree the passage is a forgery because it breaks noticeably from the literary style of the writer(s) of John and contains vocabulary and references that did not appear in history until after the 200s. As well, newer translations of the Bible contain a footnote regarding this problematic story, which may well be why so many conservative Christian pastors stick with the older King James Version which includes no such inconvenient notation.

I suggest this story was fabricated and inserted into the last gospel perhaps by a sneaky Christian scribe or a Christian leader for one simple reason: the four Gospels are so lacking in moral substance that something had to be done to provide “evidence” that Jesus was indeed a great moral philosopher. In other words, when Jesus fails to meet expectations, make up stuff.

While writing this section on adultery, I recall one of my mother’s favorite Jesus quotes. She would warn me that if you lust after a woman, you have already committed sin in your heart. (Matthew 5:28) This was the first time I realized that only in Christianity (and Orwellian society) can one be convicted for “thought crimes”. Wonderful.

*According to Jewish historians, women accused of adultery were often stripped naked and dragged outside the city gates before stoning to further shame them and as to set an example for other wives who may be tempted to stray.

What about contraception?

Not surprisingly, Jesus had nothing to say about birth control as during his lifetime it did not exist, at least not in the modern sense. We can only assume he would prohibit the practice as it would be counter to God’s commandment to Adam and Eve found in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply”. We also can assume he would agree with God’s precept against a man “spilling his seed” (translation: masturbation or withdrawing from intercourse just prior to ejaculation) because this would deny God of potential believers.

As a boy, I recall an incident on one particular Sunday when visiting the church where my grandparents attended. As usual, I was doodling in my sketch pad during the worship service, paying little attention to the happenings when suddenly I was startled by a loud voice. An older gentleman, standing, was shouting that a couple, which he called out by name, had committed the egregious sin of birth control! (This outburst resulted in a lot of questions from me and awkward answers from my parents.) So how would this pious ass learn such intimate information about this couple? Ah, perhaps he was hiding under the bed!

Mormons, Catholics, Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews discourage contraception and promote large families based on God’s instruction to have lots of unprotected sex. After all, creating large families with many children for the purpose of indoctrination has proven to be the most effective tactic to ensure the survival of one’s faith, especially in today’s world of dwindling new converts and regions where religiosity is in decline. As well, this doctrine has worked well for Muslim Europeans in shifting entire demographics.

What about homosexuality?

With Jesus’ general ambivalence toward heterosexual sex and hostility toward man-woman marriage, one could infer that he, as an observant Jew, would find homosexuality repugnant. Or maybe not so much for the effeminate, androgynous Jesus. Same sex relations was a serious offense against God and, under Jewish Law, punishable by death. Interestingly, though, precepts against homosexuality were directed specifically at males engaging in the sex act. Nothing is said about female homosexuality. Modern Christians who oppose homosexual relationships and marriage, at least for men, are certainly on the side of Holy Scripture. To quote the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, yes, “God hates fags”.

What about polygamy?

The Torah contains multiple references to polygamy, especially among its many holy heroes and kings, including Abraham, David, Esau, Gideon, Jacob, Moses and Saul to name a few. The highly revered Israelite king Solomon reportedly had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Busy man! Fox News opinionist and Roman Catholic, Sean Hannity, used the the Old Testament to defend the infidelity of then presidential candidate, Donald Trump, exclaiming, “King David had five hundred concubines for cryin’ out loud!” (He was mistaking David for Solomon and got the number wrong.) As we now know, Trump was a busy man, too, and proudly so.

In apparent support of multiple marriages, scripture offers specific instructions to husbands that wish to take a second or third wife. It is not known for certain whether polygamy was the norm or the exception among Jews in Jesus’ time, but we do know from Roman historians that even though the Romans found polygamy objectionable, under Roman rule, the conquered occupants of Palestine were permitted to continue the practice. 

The Jewish king, Herod the Great, alive at the time of Jesus’ birth, took multiple wives, following in the footsteps of his Jewish predecessors. Still, Jesus was silent on the debate of monogamy versus polygamy. 

Today, defenders of monogamy have only one weak Biblical reference to stand on. In Genesis 2:24, it states, “therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” That is it, their entire case. Granted, although it does not say explicitly that marriage is to be only “between one man and one woman” as apologists spin it, it seems to be implied. Taken out of context, Christians appear to have made their case. However, this statement read within the complete context of Genesis we find numerous and complex polygamous unions as more the norm rather than the exception. Practically speaking, if God wanted his chosen people to “be fruitful and multiply”, he would have sanctioned polygamy in order to grow their population as quickly as possible. 

Also, as described in the Genesis story of Noah’s ark, God wiped out the entire population of the earth saving only eight Semitic individuals to repopulate the planet. Prolific sexual intercourse with multiple partners, including genetic relatives, would have been necessary to meet the extremely ambitious re-population timeline as set forth in the Bible.

As for the New Testament, Christian apologists try to explain away Jesus’ lack of commentary on the subject stating, without evidence, that by Jesus’ time monogamy was the cultural norm, therefore Jesus did not need to take a stand against polygamy. The fact is, rabbinic authorities did not outlaw the practice until 1,000 years after Jesus! 

In my opinion, because Jesus was generally anti-marriage, it follows that he would probably be anti-plural marriage.

Summary

In this, Part 4 of WWJD, we learned that Jesus was not a fan of sex, marriage and family, to put it mildly. His strange ambivalence on these important topics may have been shaped, and understandably so, if he was a eunuch as I propose. Also, as practicing Jew living in the Iron Age era, and by his own words (or lack thereof) we can assume that he appropriately upheld the male-favored, misogynistic Jewish laws and attitudes. The words attributed to Jesus regarding the triad of sex, marriage and family by the authors of the four Gospels, if spoken today by a person other than Jesus, would be categorically rejected by anyone of average moral character. As well, for any society to act upon his words would no doubt inflict harm on that society.