NOTE: I wasn't sure where to put this. If this topic is too hot for this area, please move it to where it is appropriate.
A child bride is defined by the United Nations as any girl who is married before her 18th birthday. It is considered a Human rights violation. This is because such a girl does not have an adult brain, meaning her sense of self is not fully developed and she lacks many adult cognitive/emotional skills. It is why in many places, these teens cannot consent to sex with adult men. It makes no sense that if they cannot consent to sex, that they can consent to marriage.
The marriage of children to adult men has a long and sordid history. Men marry girls for a variety of reasons:
- They look hot
- Their virginity is intact
- They are easy to control -- THIS is the main one which we shall talk about
It seems like child brides are in the news all the time. We have Roy Moore's obsession and the scandal of Evangelical willingness to vote for him anyhow. We have the FLDS habit of marrying young girls to older men in their polygamous culture. We have the home schooling courtship scandal of fathers marrying off their teen daughters to older men. We have Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty proclaiming on National TV that its better to marry a child because she's easier to boss around--and he doesn't lose any TV sponsorship for saying it.
In the past, child brides have been the norm for several reasons:
1. Children were considered small adults; there was no awareness of different cognitive development stages. It's an argument that people are dumb.
2. People died so very young, sometimes the average death was in the mid 30's. Having children at an early age must have seemed a necessity. Another ignorant argument -- teens die giving birth because their pelvises aren't large enough for the heads.
3. Most cultures in the world, including Christian culture, OUR culture, are Patriarchal, meaning that females are meant to be submissive, so the idea of choosing a child so that they would be more submissive would make sense.
BUT IS THIS THE WAY THAT GOD PLANNED? Is this his ideal? Is this what he wanted from the beginning, or is this the result of sin and needs fixing?
I say that the ideal is as Paul stated: to be submissive one to another. A wife submitting to her husband is balanced out by a husband sacrificing himself for her as Christ sacrificed himself for the church. You cannot have that kind of egalitarian relationship if there is a significant age difference, or an immature mind.
To sum things up, Child Marriage is a human rights violation. It is about control. It is predation. You want a girl who will learn music so she can lead the choir while you pastor? You can have that. You want a girl who will drop her education, bring you beer, take care of the kids and do all the house work? You can have that. You want a woman who gets a degree in education to better home school the kids? You can have that! She will like the TV shows you want to watch. She will cook the foods you want to eat. She will do sex the way you want sex. It's all about you. Predation.
This long introduction brings me to the heart of this post.
The Proto-gospel of James states that Joseph was a widower when he married Mary, who was 12 at that time. This means she was certainly either pre-pubescent or adolescent and he was an older man. Is this historically accurate? I don't think we can know for sure. But two things are certain:
1. This document is based on the oral traditions of Jesus' life
2. It is certainly was second century Christians believed about Mary and Joseph
Now I have heard a gazillion times from Protestants that Mary couldn't have been perpetually virgin because the Bible says that "he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son," and "until" means that they had sex following the birth. The idea here is that it would have been wierd and unnatural and unthinkable for Joseph and Mary to not have sex if they are married.
My question to those Protestants is this: Do you think Joseph was a predator? Because even if he left Mary alone for, say, a half dozen years, it means the marriage would have been "weird, unnatural and unthinkable" in Protestant thinking. How do you deal with this? I realize this is a hard question, and your answer probably won't be short.
