The sin of incest has been in the headlines a lot recently because of several high profile cases and arrests. Topping those headlines has been the Josef Fritzl case in Austria, a case which stunned the world because of the severity of the abuse suffered by Fritzl’s daughter. There is also the case of the brutality of a 64-yr.-old man in Rome who sexually abused his daughter for 25 years and taught his son to sexually abuse his sister and his own four daughters. Then there was the news report this week about Stacey Lannert in Missouri who was freed from prison after she served 18 years for killing her father because it is believed her father sexually assaulted her repeatedly. And as if that isn’t enough, the government of Romania is considering the legalization of incest between consenting adult relatives.
Its definition and defilements
What exactly is incest? According to God as he stated to Moses and the children of Israel, it is sexual relations with someone who is near kin to the individual (Leviticus 18:6). God then proceeds to give specifics about the types of relationships he considers incestuous. Incest, by God’s definition, is having sex with a parent or stepparent or parent-in-law (Leviticus 18:8, 20:11, 14; Deuteronomy 27:20, 23; 1 Corinthians 5:1), with one’s sibling or step sibling or sibling-in-law (Leviticus 18:9, 11, 16, 20:17, 21; Deuteronomy 27:22), with one’s child or stepchild or child-in-law (Leviticus 18:15, 17, 20:12), with a grandchild or step-grandchild (Leviticus 18:10, 17), with a grandparent or step-grandparent (Leviticus 18:10, 17), with a blood uncle or aunt or uncle/aunt by marriage (Leviticus 18:13-14, 20:19-20), and therefore, by default, with a niece or nephew by blood or by marriage.
It is partially because of these sexual defilements that God punished the heathen nations who were against Israel, for he states, “Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.” [Leviticus 18:24]
I suspect that incidents of incest are higher than we imagine because of the shame that the victims of it feel and since there is such shame about it, especially since many are victimized during childhood, it rarely gets reported. I feel sorry for the children involved but I feel no pity for consenting adults who willingly enter such ungodly relationships.
Because God knows and wants what’s best for us, he gave these commandments against incest with severe punishments for violation of the commandments. Those who are child victims of incest have been shown to have severe psychological problems, according to Kathryn Brohl and Kathryn Hagans who authored the 1991 book “Pockets of Craziness: Examining Suspected Incest.” Victims have been known to have addictive behaviors to drugs, alcohol, and sex; they often have anxiety attacks; they suffer from depression that can lead to suicidal tendencies because they blame themselves; they exhibit dissociation behavior because of denial that can lead to memory lapses or lengthy periods of zoning out; they can also suffer flashbacks, compulsive behavior (like eating disorders, constantly cleaning, or cutting), mood swings, hallucinations, and abnormal phobias.
God intended sex to fulfill two purposes–1) for procreation between a husband and wife, and 2) as a way for the husband and wife to become one physically, emotionally, and spiritually as they provide pleasure for each other. Using a child in one’s family to fulfill one’s ungodly lust is against God’s will and is evil. God structured the family so that the weaker individuals in the family could be protected by those who are stronger. Incest against a child violates this trust and fosters confusion and defiles the family structure. Since God is not the author of confusion and is the God of purity, we can conclude incest is of the devil and is the result of man’s sinful nature. I’m thankful that we live in a country where those who are victims of this behavior can get help. This link to the Office of Victims of Crime under the U.S. Dept. of Justice lists organizations that can help you if you have been victimized by a family member.
As for incestuous relationships between two consenting adults who are close relatives, Richard Conniff published an article in Discover magazine in 2003 noting that:
“The great hazard of inbreeding is that it can result in the unmasking of deleterious recessives, to use the clinical language of geneticists. Each of us carries an unknown number of genes—an individual typically has between five and seven—capable of killing our children or grandchildren. These so-called lethal recessives are associated with diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia.
Most lethal genes never get expressed unless we inherit the recessive form of the gene from both our mother and father. But when both parents come from the same gene pool, their children are more likely to inherit two recessives.”
This truth is also verified by Debra Lieberman of the University of Hawaii in an article at MSNBC. She states:
“‘Close genetic relatives run the risk of having offspring that have a reduced chance of surviving ..’
While Lieberman cautioned it’s never plain when it comes to genetics, she offered a simplified example to illustrate the risks associated with incest.
‘Let’s say you get a bad gene, which scientists call deleterious, from your mom. But your dad’s copy of the same gene functions normally. The good version acts like a backup, effectively preventing disease the bad gene might have caused. ‘
But having a kid with your sibling, she explained, drastically increases the chances of getting two copies of the deleterious gene as compared to reproducing with someone outside of your family.
‘Each of you would have a copy of that bad gene, so there’s a good chance your kid won’t have a normal copy to work with,’ she said. Multiply that by any other deleterious genes sprinkled among an estimated 50,000 active genes in humans, she explained, and there are bound to be some life-shortening problems.”
Although Lieberman is an evolutionary psychologist who attributes this repulsion against incest to natural selection, I attribute it to God’s making it clear to us through what he has written in the Bible and through his placing some of his likes and dislikes in us when he created us. If we rely on natural selection as an explanation, this overlooks the fact that well-known and advanced societies of old like the Egyptians, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans practiced incest as if it were normal because they seared their consciences against God.
Why did God flip-flop on incest?
Many critics of the Bible point out that in the beginning God was okay with incest but later outlawed it when Moses came along. It seems like this is what God did, but a closer look at scripture with an understanding of genetics reveals something different. The website God Said, Man Said highlights the genetic fact that if the parents have a healthy gene pool, their offspring will also have a healthy gene pool. Adam and Eve had such a gene pool and that being the case, their offspring could easily intermarry for many generations before the gene pool would become compromised and degraded. Since Adam and Eve had to populate the Earth through the intermarriage of their offspring, God did not have a problem with incest in the Earth’s early years because genes were much more pure then than they were by the time Moses’ generation arrived. As the generations passed and mankind and their genes became more corrupted due to environmental and other influences, God had had enough of the evil that incest brought about and instituted laws to protect mankind from himself.
The article at God Said, Man Said goes on to quote Drs. Henry Morris and Martin Clark from their book “The Bible Has the Answer” (2001) as follows:
“In later generations, brother-sister marriages would come to be recognized as genetically dangerous and would be prohibited as incest.’ Not only the Bible but also most other legal codes refuse to sanction marriages of close relatives. The scientific reason for this restriction is that children of such marriages are more likely to be deformed or sickly or moronic than those of other marriages. The genetic basis for this probability is that inherited mutant genes, producing such unwholesome characteristics, are more likely to find expression in the children if they are carried by both parents.
However, there were no mutant genes in the genetic systems of Adam and Eve, as these had come directly from the creative hand of God Himself. Thus no genetic harm could have resulted had Cain or some other son of Adam married his sister. In fact, it would undoubtedly have taken many generations before enough genetic mutations (which are random, and therefore harmful, changes in the highly ordered structure of the germ cell, brought about by penetration of the cell by shortwave-length radiation or some other destructive agent) could have accumulated in the human race to make such marriages of close relatives genetically harmful.
The Bible is thus always consistent, not only with its own statements, but also with all known facts of science.”
Bible critics often attack God as being contradictory when he brings about such necessary changes. As God says, “For I am the LORD, I do not change,” [Malachi 3:6]. God’s character and nature do not change, but as explained at www.answersingenesis.org God has emotions and reserves the right to respond as he deems necessary to man’s actions since he created mankind. Since he is righteous and just and loves the truth but hates evil, he responds favorably to situations and people who are in his will and unfavorably to situations and people that go against his will.
When God created man, he intended for man to have continual fellowship with him and to be welcomed in the Garden of Eden. Then man changed and embraced sin, so since man broke God’s righteous contract, God changed his end of the agreement and kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden as punishment for their sin. Then mankind spread throughout the Earth to become more and more sinful, so since man chose evil, God had to change his response to mankind by destroying all but eight people with a worldwide flood. Then Noah and his family re-populated the Earth and mankind was doing okay until a later generation established a one-world government that sought to exalt itself to god status by building a tower to heaven. So God changed his policy of allowing mankind to speak in one language by causing various tribes to speak in languages other tribes couldn’t understand and scattering man to different continents, and so on and so on… These changes that God, as the supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe, brings about show us that change is not contradictory as God-hating critics would have us believe.
Therefore, since God has established incest as being wrong and harmful, it is in the best interest of any society to be against it and fight against it when it arises.
–posted by Harry A. Gaylord–
