Two different SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) tribal assignments, first to the Chácobo and then, twenty-eight years later, to the Mikasuki living in South Florida,  provided me the opportunity to discover there existed two types of marriages and two types of nuclear families in the world.
 

First, there was the covenantal marriage.  It was manifested in the "one flesh" principle of husband-wife (Genesis 2:24).  Secondly, there were functional marriages, marriages which served a specific function or need.  Because their specific functions were selected by SOCIAL EXISTENCE in the world, they did not "accord with Christ" (Col. 2:8).  Nevertheless, each type was protected by the Rule of Exogamy. 

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​Besides two kinds of marriages, there existed two types of nuclear family structures, the covenantal and the functional. What made the covenantal family different from the functional family type is that the creation of a functional family necessitates a restructuring of the nuclear family,  the replacing of a covenantal relationship with a biological.  

Thus, whenever a society rejects the covenantal "one-flesh" principle of husband-wife designed to maximize freedom and human creativity, it has only one option.  It must restructure the nuclear family and replace the covenantal "one-flesh" principle of husband-wife with a biological "one flesh" principle. 

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For example, submitting to the material pressures of the Amazon Rainforest, the Chácobo replaced the covenantal dyad of husband-wife with the biological dyad of mother-daughter.  It was selected to satisfy their need for manioc beer. 

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After discovering that the Chácobo had restructured the nuclear family by replacing the husband-wife dyad with that of mother-daughter, and that the function of marriage was to obtain a food supplier,  I was surprised to discover that the dominant dyad for the Mikasuki was sister-sister.  The function of marriage in this case was to obtain a sperm donor who produce children for this wife's "family."  

 

Both function-based societies had rejected the Ideal and had restructured the nuclear family by replacing the covenantal with the biological. 

 

Now secular academia, including contextualizing missiologist-anthropologists, reject the idea that such a restructuring of the nuclear family violates a Law of God.  But Chácobo sages of an other era would strongly disagree. I discovered these sages had created satire condemning a functional family structure which was opposed to husband-wife intimacy

 

Pressured by ecological features of the Amazonian Rainforest, their ancestors made the mother-daughter dyad the dominant dyad of the nuclear family. But, unless the meanings of marriage and family  had been structured in the unconscious mind and brought to consciousness by being "triggered" in an adverse social situation, these sages of another era would not have been able to create satire condemning the Chácobo definitions of marriage and family. 

 

Nevertheless, for the materialist, no marriage serves a  covenantal purpose, only a specific function. For example, as king of Judah, "Jehoshaphat had great wealth and honor, and he allied himself with Ahab by marriage"(II Chron 18:1). In his desire for peace, Jehoshaphat arrange to have his son marry the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. Its function was to create an alliance based on common interests and mutual benefits. After his death, the functional marriage which allied  Judah to Israel eventually led Judah to sin by turning to Baal worship.

 

Throughout history, functional marriages have been the rule rather than the exception. Marriage between royal families was often a way to secure and strengthen an alliance between two monarchs. The same holds true for families of great wealth.  

 

Now functional marriages among tribal societies is the rule, not the exception. Marriage for the Chácobo served a function.  Its function was to gain a food supplier for the household-of-five.  Its function was very different from that of the Mikasuki (Miccosukee) of South Florida, the Yaminahua of Peru, the villages of Northern India, and the tribes of central Northwest Amazon of Colombia and Brazil.

 

Only where Christianity has spread is marriage viewed as the purposeful uniting of two individuals who will share a common life. Jesus made this clear when he declared: "But when God made the world, ‘he made people male and female.’ ‘That is why a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. And the two people will become one.’ So they are no longer two, but one. God has joined them together, so no one should separate them" (Mark 10:6-9). The fixed point of reference is:"What God has joined together, no one should separate." Functional marriages alway separate what God has "joined together." 

 

Besides marriages serving different functions, whatever that function is, it necessitates a rearranging of the internal structure of the nuclear family. The dominant dyad in the Mikasuki family was that of sister-sister, for the Chácobo, it was mother-daughter; for the Yaminahua, it was father-daughter; for the Trobriand Islanders, it was brother-sister, and for the tribes  of central Northwest Amazon, it was brother-brother.  

 

In each case, the nuclear family had been internally structured to functionally satisfy a perceived need. Then each society sinfully used the Rule of Exogamy to protect the type of functional family type it had created. 

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The Rule of Exogamy

The rule of exogamy is important in the field of missiology because, as anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss correctly pointed out, "Exogamy provides the only means of maintaining the group as a group." 

 

So the question that demands an answer becomes: What kind of family should the Rule of Exogamy protect and maintain?  The kind of "family" which serves a specific function and suppresses husband-wife intimacy and human freedom, or, the kind of "family" that serves no function and supports the covenantal "one-flesh" principle of husband-wife and maximizes human freedom and creativity? 

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In this regard, it is proposed that the purpose of Rule of Exogamy from the Creator's perspective  is to protect the integrity of the nuclear family in which “The juridical competence to make a decision belongs to the husband of the conjugal bond."  In other words, any restructuring of the family will not only weaken the conjugal bond, it will produce a new family type, a deviant type which will be protected by the Rule of Exogamy.

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Convictions

1. Rejecting the idea that "the [nuclear] family is the simplest and smallest unit of society and the real foundation of culture" means one must also deny the existence of concepts of marriage and family to which are attached Divine meanings. Such meanings are fixed and constant. 

2. The existence of Divine meanings implies there exists in the unconscious mind a Universal Lexicon containing concepts like marriage and family whose inherent meanings can be "triggered" and brought to consciousness in a socio-linguistic situation. 

3. If such culture-free information had not been structured in the unconscious mind, there would not exist Chácobo satire condemning the their definitions of marriage and family, definitions which which were shaped by SOCIAL EXISTENCE and which belonged to the Chácobo.

4. Christian philosopher Gordon Clark was correct when he wrote: "Since man was created in the image of God, he has an innate idea of God [as well as of marriage and family].  It is not necessary, indeed it is not possible, for a blank mind to abstract a concept of God [nor of marriage and family] from sensory experiences."  

5. Because the Rule of Exogamy can be used to protect a definition of the family which "belongs to the people," then it is incumbent upon every missionary to attempt to understand, to some degree, what kind of family the Rule of Exogamy is protecting. 

6. The intended purpose of the unlearned rule of exogamy, from a theistic perspective, is to protect the nuclear family as a divine institution and the covenantal meaning of marriage.

7. Language, thought, and the psychic unity of man implies the existence of semantic universals and the existence of a Universal Meaning Maker.       ​