Que After Dark – The Blog

Que After Dark | Author Que

Categories: Relationships | Personal Growth | Spirituality | Human Behavior

Wait a Damn Minute…

So apparently, there’s a pastor with two wives, and people have lost their damn minds.

Before anybody starts clutching their pearls, reaching for their Bible, or preparing a three-page comment explaining why this man is going straight to hell, can we talk about something? Because I wasn’t even planning to discuss religion, but when I came across this story, my mind went somewhere completely different from where the conversation seemed to be going.

Everybody was so focused on this pastor having two wives that I started paying attention to the people arguing about it. Some were absolutely convinced that what he was doing was wrong, while others were defending his decision. And what made the entire situation even more interesting was that people on both sides were referring to the same Bible to support their arguments.

One Bible. Two interpretations. One pastor. Two wives.

Ain’t that some shit?

Before I say more, let me make something clear. I don’t know this man, his wives, or what agreements they have within their household. I’m not interested in figuring out how he manages two marriages, and I’m damn sure not volunteering to investigate what goes on in their bedroom. That’s between the people involved, and quite frankly, I have enough going on in my own life without trying to supervise somebody else’s.

What caught my attention wasn’t necessarily his decision to have two wives. It was how quickly people became certain that their understanding of the situation was the only correct one.

And that made me wonder how much of what we believe is based on our own understanding and how much is simply what we’ve been taught to believe.

Same Bible, Different Interpretations

There are men in the Bible who had more than one wife. Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon…..to name a few. At the same time, there are passages that people interpret as supporting marriage between one man and one woman, especially when discussing the qualifications of religious leaders.

The fact that something happened in the Bible doesn’t automatically mean it was being recommended. I understand that. But I also understand why someone might read those accounts and begin questioning whether the rules they’ve been taught are as straightforward as they’ve always believed.

Two people can read the exact same material, study it, and walk away with completely different understandings. Each person may sincerely believe they’ve reached the correct conclusion, yet somehow the other person is automatically considered confused, rebellious, or simply wrong.

But how do we determine who’s right?

I think about how we learn our beliefs in the first place. As children, we generally don’t sit around researching historical context, comparing interpretations, or examining whether the adults teaching us have considered different perspectives. We listen, we learn, and we accept much of what we’re told because the people teaching us are the people we trust. Eventually, those teachings become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as something we learned and begin experiencing them as something we’ve always known to be true.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that process. We all have to learn from somebody. The problem begins when we become adults who are unwilling to examine what we’ve learned, especially when new information or different experiences challenge our understanding.

And I don’t believe this applies only to religion. We do the same thing with relationships, careers, parenting, friendships, and practically every other area of our lives. We inherit ideas about what is normal, acceptable, successful, and respectable, then sometimes spend years measuring ourselves and everybody else against those ideas without stopping to ask whether they actually make sense.

What I find particularly interesting is how uncomfortable people can become when someone questions an interpretation they’ve accepted for years. Instead of becoming curious about why another person reached a different conclusion, we sometimes become defensive, almost as if considering another perspective would somehow weaken our own beliefs.

But if something is genuinely true, shouldn’t it be able to withstand a question?

Everybody Wants Freedom Until Somebody Else Uses Theirs

This is where the conversation becomes bigger than one pastor and his household, because I’ve noticed something about how we talk about freedom.

We love the idea of being able to live our lives the way we choose. We want to pursue careers that make us happy, leave relationships that no longer align with who we’re becoming, raise our children according to our own values, and make decisions without everybody feeling entitled to an explanation.

We want people to understand that our lives belong to us, even when our decisions don’t make sense to them.

But isn’t it interesting how quickly that understanding can disappear when somebody else makes a decision we wouldn’t personally make?

We can spend years feeling trapped by other people’s expectations, wishing we had the courage to stop living for their approval, only to turn around and criticize somebody who has decided to do exactly that. And I’m not talking about people who are questioning whether someone is being harmed, manipulated, or deceived. Those are legitimate concerns. I’m talking about the discomfort that comes simply from seeing someone live outside the expectations we’ve been taught to accept.

Sometimes I wonder whether we genuinely want freedom or whether we just want permission to make the choices we’ve already decided are acceptable.

Because there’s a difference.

If I want the freedom to live my life without somebody else controlling my decisions, I have to recognize that other people are entitled to that same freedom, even when their choices look absolutely nothing like mine.

That doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. It doesn’t mean I have to participate, support, or pretend to understand something that doesn’t align with my personal values. It simply means recognizing that my disagreement doesn’t automatically give me authority over somebody else’s life.

And that’s something I think we struggle with more than we’re willing to admit.

We can respect someone’s right to choose without making their choice our own. We can believe a particular lifestyle wouldn’t work for us without declaring that it shouldn’t work for anybody else. And we can have strong personal convictions without treating every different perspective as an attack against them.

If three informed, consenting adults have freely decided to build a life together, and nobody is being manipulated, deceived, or harmed, why am I supposed to be personally offended?

I don’t have to live in their house, sleep in their bed, or help pay their bills. Hell, I’m not even trying to figure out who’s responsible for cooking dinner.

And perhaps that’s what makes this conversation worth having. The pastor’s choices might be unusual to some people, but the reactions reveal something about how we understand freedom, individuality, and the boundaries between our personal beliefs and other people’s decisions.

Freedom, Accountability, and Knowing the Damn Difference

I can already hear somebody saying, “But Que, he’s a pastor!”

And that’s a fair point.

Being a pastor introduces another responsibility because he’s not simply making private decisions about his personal life. He’s also publicly representing and teaching a particular understanding of religious beliefs. If people believe his actions contradict what he teaches, they have every right to question that.

In fact, I think questioning people who hold positions of influence is healthy. Nobody should be placed so high on a pedestal that their words or actions become immune to examination.

But I also believe we need to understand the difference between accountability and control.

Accountability is asking someone to explain how their actions align with the responsibilities and standards they’ve publicly accepted. Control is believing someone should have to make their personal decisions according to our preferences simply because we’re uncomfortable with their choices.

Sometimes those two things overlap, which is why we have to be willing to examine the circumstances rather than automatically assuming every criticism is judgment or every unconventional decision is an act of courage.

And let’s be clear about something else. Just because someone claims to be exercising personal freedom doesn’t automatically mean their choices are healthy, ethical, or harmless. We still have to consider honesty, consent, responsibility, and the impact our decisions have on other people.

But once those considerations have been examined, I think we have to ask ourselves whether we’re challenging a genuine concern or simply struggling with the fact that somebody isn’t living according to the rules we’ve accepted for ourselves.

Because there’s a difference between saying, “I don’t agree with what you’re doing,” and saying, “You shouldn’t be allowed to do it because I don’t agree.”

And if we’re going to demand the freedom to make our own decisions, shouldn’t we be willing to recognize that difference when discussing somebody else’s?

Who Told Us That Different Means Wrong?

The more I think about this situation, the more I realize that the pastor’s marriages are almost secondary to the conversation I’m actually interested in having.

What fascinates me is how easily we confuse what is familiar with what is right.

Most of us grew up surrounded by ideas about how life was supposed to look. We learned what successful people do, what respectable relationships look like, how children should behave, what women and men are supposed to contribute, and which decisions would make our families proud or disappointed.

Those lessons become part of our understanding of the world, and many of them can be useful. They provide structure, guidance, and a sense of belonging. But they can also become limitations when we assume that the way we were taught is the only reasonable way to live.

I know what it’s like to reach a point where I had to examine beliefs that once felt completely settled in my mind. And one of the things I’ve learned is that questioning something doesn’t automatically mean rejecting everything associated with it. Sometimes questioning is simply an acknowledgment that there might be more to understand than what we were originally given.

That’s also why I’m careful about assuming someone is wrong simply because their perspective differs from mine. They might have information I haven’t considered, experiences I haven’t lived, or an understanding that challenges my own. And of course, they might also be mistaken. Both possibilities deserve consideration.

The same applies to me.

I’ve had beliefs change as I’ve grown, learned, and experienced life differently. Things that once seemed completely unreasonable eventually made sense when I had a better understanding of them. Other things I once accepted without question became harder to defend after I started examining them more closely.

That doesn’t mean every new idea is automatically better than an old one. Sometimes our original beliefs hold up under examination, and sometimes they don’t.

The important part, at least for me, is being willing to find out.

Because if the only reason I believe something is that somebody told me to believe it, then I have to wonder whether I’ve truly developed my own understanding or simply become comfortable repeating somebody else’s.

And that is a much bigger conversation than whether a pastor should have one wife or two.

A Little More From Que

The older I get, the more I appreciate the freedom to think for myself, and I’m beginning to understand just how much responsibility comes with that freedom.

It’s easy to say we want to live authentically and make our own decisions. What’s harder is accepting that other people are entitled to do the same, especially when their choices challenge something we feel strongly about.

And I don’t think we always recognize when we’re doing it.

Sometimes we criticize people because we genuinely believe they’re making harmful decisions. Other times, if we’re willing to examine ourselves, we may discover that their choices have simply made us uncomfortable because they’re doing something we were taught never to consider.

I think discernment requires us to know the difference.

I also believe there is something spiritually meaningful about developing our own understanding rather than spending our lives depending entirely on somebody else to tell us what to think. That doesn’t mean rejecting guidance or assuming we know everything. It means recognizing that our personal growth requires participation.

We have to be willing to learn, question, reconsider, and take responsibility for the beliefs that influence the way we live.

It’s one of the ideas I explore in The Fck Them Theory*. We spend so much of our lives being conditioned by expectations, becoming attached to approval, and struggling to separate what we genuinely want from what we’ve been taught to want. Eventually, if we’re willing, we begin examining those influences and deciding what still aligns with the people we’re becoming.

And sometimes that process changes our understanding of things we once believed would never change.

That’s not necessarily a failure of faith, character, or conviction. Sometimes it’s simply evidence that we’re willing to continue learning.

I don’t know whether this pastor’s interpretation is correct. I haven’t examined every theological argument surrounding his situation, and I’m not going to pretend I have the authority to settle a debate that has existed for generations.

What I do know is that I don’t want to become so attached to being right that I lose the ability to consider another perspective.

Because there’s a difference between having convictions and being unwilling to learn.

And if there’s one thing I’ve come to value about personal evolution, it’s knowing that I can hold strong beliefs without assuming my understanding is complete.

Perhaps that’s what this entire situation has reminded me.

Two people can look at the same information and see completely different things. That doesn’t automatically mean both interpretations are equally accurate, but it should encourage us to examine how we reached our own conclusions before declaring everybody else wrong.

And when I think about that, I can’t help but wonder how many arguments we could approach differently if understanding became more important than winning.

What’s Your Perspective?

So now I’m curious about what everybody else thinks, and I’m not necessarily asking whether you agree with this pastor having two wives.

I’m more interested in what his situation reveals about us.

How much of what we believe comes from our own examination, and how much have we accepted because it was passed down to us? When someone interprets something differently, are we willing to understand how they reached that conclusion, or do we immediately start defending what we already believe?

And perhaps the biggest question of all is whether we can respect somebody else’s freedom without feeling obligated to agree with the choices they make.

I don’t expect everybody to have the same answers. Hell, I wouldn’t want that anyway. Different perspectives are what make these conversations interesting, especially when we’re willing to listen instead of simply preparing our next argument.

If this conversation made you think, leave a like, share it with somebody who enjoys questioning the usual way of looking at things, and bring your perspective to the table.

Let’s talk this shit out in the comments.

And if you’re navigating your own journey of self-discovery, questioning expectations, or simply needing a judgment-free space to express what’s on your mind, Que Listens through BlanQ Canvas offers an opportunity to be heard without somebody trying to tell you how to live. It’s a listening space, not therapy, because sometimes we don’t need another person giving us instructions. Sometimes we just need room to hear ourselves think.

Keep your spirit bright and your boundaries tight,
Protect your peace with all your might.
And if bullshit comes knocking tonight,
Yell, “FUCK THAT SHIT!! And to all a goodnight!”

— Author Que