Polygamy is the Fruit of Chaos

Thoughts on an Old Perversion that's being resurrected.

Polygamy usually appears when the world is coming undone.

When men die young and women are left unprotected, when famine or war hollow out a nation, it becomes a crude tool to keep the line going. In old agrarian times, strength was measured in hands to work the field and mouths a man could feed. The capable men took on more dependents, not out of lust, but because the world was harsh and order fragile. It was a way to preserve a name and keep families alive.

But what once belonged to desperation has now become the indulgence of decadence. In modern times, polygamy doesn’t emerge from scarcity but from plenty... men with too much comfort, too much autonomy, and too little self-control.

Hierarchy itself isn’t the problem; God built it into the very creation. What’s broken is how men use it.

Polygamy warps hierarchy into self-gratification. The pattern God established was not a man scattering his strength across many women but pouring it into one. Monogamy disciplines and focuses our sex drive towards something stable and wholesome. It binds a man’s authority, provision, and affection to a single covenant: a wife and the children they raise together. That covenantal order builds strong households, and through them, stable civilizations.

Polygamy, by contrast, is what happens when patriarchy is detached from the purpose of God. It is when men still want the privileges of headship without the singleminded commitment that makes it righteous (Pr 5:15-19). It produces rivalry instead of harmony, lust instead of love, confusion instead of order.

Scripture makes that plain. Sarah and Hagar turned against each other. Rachel and Leah fought bitterly for affection and for children. David’s divided household bred intrigue, betrayal, and rebellion. Instead of strengthening nations, it fractured them. Wherever polygamy takes root, it multiplies jealousy, rivalry, and resentment while weakening the authority meant to hold it together.

God’s law anticipated this. “He shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away” (Deut. 17:17). Solomon ignored the warning, and his ruin came not from his enemies but from divided loyalties born of divided loves. From the beginning, the pattern was clear: Adam and Eve… one flesh, one covenant, one household. Jesus reaffirmed that design in Matthew 19, and the apostles carried it forward in the household codes and pastoral qualifications. Monogamy isn’t cultural preference; it’s creational norm. Polygamy might appear in chaos, but it always deepens the chaos.

God’s design is simple and enduring: one man, one woman, one covenant… strong enough to build households that stand and kingdoms that last.

Polygamy offers no solution for modern America. We aren’t a nation of widows or war-torn refugees. There are sufficient men for women, and women for men. There’s no social necessity behind this new fascination with multiple wives. What we’re seeing is moral decay baptized in Christianese.

The men pushing it aren’t rescuing anyone. They’re indulging appetites trained by pornography and self-gratification. They’ve learned to crave novelty and call it freedom. The idea of chastity, loyalty, and lifelong devotion feels foreign to them, so instead of repentance they rename their lust “biblical.” They quote Abraham and Jacob but ignore the misery polygamy brought into those men’s homes.

It isn’t biblical masculinity driving this; it’s rebellion disguised as religion.

True headship disciplines desire and directs it toward one woman in lifelong covenant. Anything else isn’t strength; it’s slavery to appetite.

Polygamy doesn’t build households; it breaks them. It isn’t a mark of virility but of rot. And the men who defend it sound like every other kind of pervert trying to baptize his vice. Whether it’s the groomer reading to children in a library or the polygamous “patriarch” boasting on a podcast, the pattern is the same: sin wants company. They call it a return to order, but it’s just old-fashioned rebellion.

The first polygamist in Scripture sets the tone for all who follow. Lamech, descendant of Cain, stands as the amplification of his murderous ancestor. He is the prototype of corrupt masculinity: arrogant, violent, and hungry for domination. His taking of multiple wives isn’t a sign of strength but of excess. The text links his polygamy directly to his boast of violence: “I have killed a man for wounding me.” Dominion without self-restraint becomes tyranny.

That same spirit runs through most cases of polygamy today. Behind the veneer of “restoring biblical order” is a man driven by pride, power, and lust. A man who wants to rule with few limits, to possess without covenantal discipline. Again, it’s not masculine headship; it’s a distortion of it.

Lamech’s legacy shows what happens when male authority is divorced from righteousness: it becomes cruel, manipulative, and destructive. Godly patriarchy is covenantal and protective; ungodly patriarchy is exploitative. Polygamy has always belonged to the latter.

This new wave of polygamy grows best in isolation. It thrives among men who live without real community or correction. They’ve traded the church for comment sections and brotherhood for followers. In the fog of self-curation, no one tells them the truth. They’d rather be admired than known.

When a man cuts himself off from people who can confront him, he begins to rot. Without confession, without oversight, without friends who can call his bluff, his soul collapses in on itself. The cure is still the same: belong to a church, confess your sins, and stay close enough for someone to rebuke you.

These men want something from sex that it can never give. It isn’t intimacy they’re after. It’s transcendence. They hope pleasure will make them whole. That’s why so many are sexual addicts. They’ll sleep with their wives multiple times in a day and still crawl back to pornography by nightfall. They imagine a second or third woman will fix what’s missing. But what’s missing isn’t women; it’s wholeness. They’re reaching for God and grabbing flesh instead.

They say they want power, but really they just want to stop feeling weak. Polygamy won’t cure that. It gives the illusion of rule while it hollows them out. They’re perverted men chasing shadows of glory. The house divides, the heart follows, and eventually the noise fades. All that’s left is the echo of their own foolishness.

Godly patriarchy isn’t about multiplying wives; it’s about establishing a God-fearing household from which all of society springs. It is the means by which legacy and stability are built.

Polygamy, like feminism, is a cancerous lie. It promises freedom and fulfillment but robs you of joy. The better way is simple: marry a godly member of the opposite sex while you’re still young, have a lot of fruitful sex, delight in the children God gives you, and commit yourself to the lifelong work of building an intergenerational, biblical household. That’s where real strength and happiness are found.