Big Love

How is a husband supposed to respond to his wife telling him across the kitchen counter she can understand the attraction of polygamy? Cautiously, would be my advice.

The statement emerged from a conversation we were having about the new HBO series Big Love, centring on the life of a man and his three wives living in a suburb of Salt Lake City. Bill Paxton stars as Bill Hendrickson, a former fundamentalist Mormon cult member who is now making his way as a businessman outside the confines of the compound he grew up in. His three wives run an integrated family spread over three adjacent homes, methodically booking his time each week as he works to bring in the money.

Each episode begins with a dream-sequence opener showing Bill smiling with each of his wives, and the three joining together in a happy circle – a reflection of the bliss polygamy is supposed to represent for the husband. After all, says common wisdom, what man wouldn’t want three beautiful women? But the producers are well aware of the realities of marriage and the titles show cracks forming in the ice on which the characters stand and a fog of confusion rising between them. A household based on three sets of competing filial and parental responsibilities is unlikely to be a happy one. One of the funniest moments is when a harried Bill checks his voicemail and is informed by a calm female voice, “You have 16 new messages.”
Big Love is likely to be a dark horse in this year’s ratings, developing a solid following at the fringe of Australian viewing patterns. It is the latest in a growing list of HBO productions including The Sopranos and Six Feet Under where strange family structures have been used to display the fundamentals of successful relationships – and all strike a chord with modern audiences. Back to my kitchen conversation…

My wife could see how many women would reject the idea of sharing a husband but still long for the support a multi-mother household like the Hendricksons’ offers. That extra pair of hands, that advice in uncharted waters, that ever-present shoulder to cry on is appealing to modern mothers struggling in increasingly fractured urban societies.

What Big Love offers under the guise of polygamy are actually the Bible-backed benefits of feminine community. It begins when women choose to sacrifice some personal independence in order to create a role for other experienced women in their families. It could arise from the heart of a women’s Bible study group or a deliberately cultivated closeness between daughter and mother or mother-in-law. Whatever the setting, feminine community provides older women the opportunity to not only help bear the daily burdens but to pass on those clues on keeping a family together that amount to training younger women “… to love their husbands and children.” (Titus 2:4) But how can we benefit or bless if we don’t first decide to make room for other women in our lives?

Big Love has other benefits for Christians because of how it forces us to think theologically. Polygamy is not an easy topic. The Bible is replete with patriarchs who were also polygamists. Major players like Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon with whom God inaugurated and confirmed his covenant, were at least practical if not active polygamists. But though the Bible contains many object lessons as to the trouble that arises from such arrangements, it stops short of explicitly condemning the people involved. Yet the Bible is not silent on its opposition to other relational arrangements like homosexuality or intermarriage with unbelievers. I believe the reasons are because in the first instance practices like gay marriage represent a more fundamental rebellion against God’s created order of ‘one man, one woman’ than polygamy represents. In the second, intermarriage between believers and unbelievers places our devotion to God after our domestic bliss. But these great polygamists who we study made no such mistake. Scripture is a testimony to God showing mercy with all manner of human failings, so long as they don’t displace a heart that is devoted to him.

Big Love can be read as more than a commentary on the realistic complications of polygamy. It also has much to say about the likely success of any divided heart. Just as Bill is unlikely to achieve any lasting domestic happiness so long as he attempts to divide God’s ‘one flesh’ between three, so those of us with more conforming marriages are unlikely to find any peace in a relationship that makes God anything less than its first choice.

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