Unholy Prudery

The first time I heard the phrase unholy prudery, I chuckled heartily. Now that to me seems to be quite the oxymoron! Credit must be given to Rushdoony for it. He wrote in Vol. I of "The Institutes of Biblical Law" that "An unholy prudery prevents the church today from reckoning with many laws." He was referring to Lev 20:18 etc, and his 'today' is not our 'today", but the principle remains the same.

Without a doubt, there is an "unholy prudery" that keep the church from dealing with things such as polygamy, incest (Cain's wife, Levirate marriage) slavery, and a host of other things outlined in the bible. With polygamy, they think of the word, and immediately conjure unholy images in their head, and equate it with sexual immorality, when in fact it is a rather clear biblical form of marriage, as equally valid as monogamy.

Truthfully, I feel as though many people are ashamed of the scriptures, because they tend to look at things from todays definitions of good and evil, right and wrong, and thus end up avoiding, if not outright rejecting plain biblical truth, simply because people dont think that way anymore. You can practically see their jaws drop, and hear the gasps for air:

"Egads, your talking about polygamy, and we all know this to be wickedness and sinful, and we have much better things to do with our time than to focus on immorality (like patting each other on the back for protecting each other from plain biblical teaching.)"

Unholy prudery indeed.