Just a follow up to my recent post with this same basic title. Since the Miss California brouhaha began some weeks ago, I'm afraid that my concerns about moral incongruities in the Christian community have been provided more (frankly unwanted) support.
This young lady has had more embarassing details emerge about her moral inconsistencies, but that is the lesser of my concerns (while this woman's moral issues are a serious matter between her and God, I feel in my bones no sense of self-righteous indignation or condemnation toward this woman. After all, I realize that any of us can become a mass and mess of spiritual inconsistencies).
What is more to my point is the ongoing confusing outrage over the abuse this woman has received from the liberal/gay world, with no corresponding outrage over the immorality of brazen immodesty and the mental and spiritual adultery it causes. My concern is mostly with the way that the Church has defined "bad sins" in terms of what others are doing (to paraphrase Jerry Bridges) rather than in terms of what God calls bad.
Somehow we have decided that homosexual marriage is really bad, while all the other ways that marriage has been wrongly defined and violated are not quite so bad. Christians scream out against gay marriage but then violate and dishonor marriage in a hundred other ways themselves. Ask yourself: Am I as opposed to other forms of unbiblical marriage as I am to gay marriage?
Let me state my thoughts in this way. As one commenter on this blog put it, rightly tweaking/improving a phrase I had used in my post, we're straining out camels while swallowing camels. Let us beware how we fight against one false view of marriage (gay marriage) while we tolerate with hardly a whisper of outrage other false views of, and attitudes toward marriage that have done far more damage to the sacred institution than gay marriage ever will do.
What is marriage? As I read various conservative family focused statements defining marriage here's the kind of phrasing I find: "Marriage is a social unit bringing together male and female." Or, marriage is "a union of one man and one woman".
Folks: that is not an adequate understanding of marriage. Marriage is not just a union of one man and one woman; it is a covenanted relationship between the same man and the same woman for life. The failure to define marriage in this fully biblical way has contributed far more to the breakdown of this sacred instituion than gay marriage has ever done or ever will do.
When the same man and the same woman do not covenant to stay emotionally, mentally, and physically faithful in impassioned, affectionate, spiritually invigorated and kingdom-committed union with each other so long as both shall live, marriage has been redefined and desecrated. The damage done by infidelity to this God-ordained marriage ideal by straight people far surpasses any damage ever done by gays.
Yet I have been around long enough to know that Christians consistently fail to live by this ideal, and seem to accept without much sorrow or criticism those who do the same, and yet rise up in indignation when they perceive that "the gays want to destroy marriage."
Think of it this way: Are we as concerned when people who have been unbiblically divorced and remarried (a social evil far more common and destructive to marriage than gay unions will ever be) receive special legal privileges (like tax breaks because they're married) as we are when gays want to be married so they can receive those same privileges and breaks? I think not.
Is my question valid? And is my assessment accurate? What am I missing?
O that we could see our glaring inconsistencies as well as the world does! May all who are married or ever hope to be, settle for nothing less than doing their part to pursue a passionate, faithful, mentally and physically pure, life-long covenanted union. Then we will at least be consistent as we have to oppose gay marriage (which we do).
One hundred Christian couples passionately committed to Christian marriage as biblically defined will do far more for the cause of marriage in our society than one thousand Christian couples who protest gay unions while simultaneously falling far short of that ideal.
At least that's my take on it for now. I'm open to input.
Hello Tim, interesting remarks... Here's a little input.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Gay marriage worries me so much in terms of how it may ruin the institution of marriage. You are right to point out that we have done enough damage to it ourselves.
Throughout Scripture, there is a condemnation of homosexuality, and a sense in which it stirs the wrath of God and brings quick and severe judgment. And this, while at the same time we read of men with multiple wives, adulteries, fornications, etc. But somehow with a certain divine patience (not without punishment) towards these other sexual sins.
St. Thomas argues that human sexuality has a generative end. Marriage is the institution in which this "generative sex" is expressed. It is an integral part of the definition and meaning of marriage. It is an essential part of the very purpose of marriage.
In same sex unions, there is no possibility of generation. A same sex union is a grave corruption of the order of nature established by God. Following this line of thinking, and this classic understanding of marriage, two people of the same sex are not even capable of "marriage."
Homosexuality mocks the revealed law of both Scripture and nature.
If one follows this Thomistic line of thought, however, and applies the principle, then "spilling one's seed" as young men sometimes do before marriage, and also birth control within marriage, are also unnatural, and sinful.
Most Evangelicals (or Catholics) aren't willing to extend the principle this far. But according to this line of thought, the same principle which condemns same-sex marriage also challenges the use of contraception within marriage.
Well, I have rambled my way into a very different (and very controversial) area. There is so much that could be said here-- but I should be cleaning the gutters and getting a hair-cut on my day off!
I know this wasn't the original intent of your post, but I'd like to add something to Peter's birth control comments:
ReplyDeleteI tend to look at birth control and most other available medications of various types to be gifts of God--things that we are allowed to have because we desire to be good stewards, chemically balanced, without pain, etc. God in His grace extends them to us.
However, we all know of families who have gone the birth control route in an effort to be good stewards (of their finances--of their marriage even!) and have gotten pregnant anyway. If God wants a couple to have a child, no medication can thwart His will!
My friend and I recently had a discussion on why God hates divorce. Her pastor had said that God hates it because it makes us unhappy. We were both dissatisfied with that answer. All we could keep coming back to was that "marriage is a divine institution" is all well and good, but we have to figure out why it was instituted in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThe ultimate purpose of marriage is to illustrate Christ. It's all about God and His relationship with us, and anything that perverts or distorts that is wrong. Christ is the bridegroom, the church is the bride, and any time that there are two brides or two bridegrooms (or one bridegroom and two brides, even) there is a problem with the picture. And more than just the actors, there is a relationship that is to be in place between a married couple (Eph. 5). When that relationship is missing, marriage is wrongly depicted, and Christ is dishonored. It's a high standard, but since when has the church not been called to hold a high standard? To be quite honest, as a single woman looking at the vast majority of Christ-dishonoring, self-seeking marriages around me, I often feel giddy with relief that I am not married.
I also feel a certain sort of sympathy for the gay couples that want to be married. I imagine it must be extremely frustrating for them to be told by a whiny, self-seeking, hypocritical and immoral bunch of people that marriage is only for men and women. It's no wonder they are angry.
Thanks Tim, you give an excellent response to my somewhat carelessly written comment. I especially appreciate points 1 and 2.
ReplyDeleteAs to the third point, I think Natural Law clearly argues in favor of having both aspects (generative and unitive) in tact. I know there are very few who agree.
Raising children is one of God's chief ways of sanctifying us. I might be missing something, but I've never understood why evangelicals don't wrestle more with the issue of contraception.
The creation of life in the womb, the giving of a soul... these seem like such unique aspects of our experience here; unlike other areas of life where we may exercise preference and free will. It has always felt like an area where we have needed to trust a Wisdom higher than our own.
Brooke: Thank you for your comment too. I understand your point of view, and the pressures of life that bear down on young families who simply want to do the right and reasonable thing.
As you may imagine (from what I've just written), it's a stretch for me to view birth control medications as a "gift from God", but you know what? I've been wrong about issues before! And I do not claim to speak for God... just sharing my convictions.
I will say one more thing... by way of encouragement. God is able! He is faithful! He is supremely capable of meeting our needs as we look to Him and trust in Him. He has amazed us with His timely provision for our family, and neither Theresa or I have any regrets about giving Him free reign in the area of family size.
Wow, Jenn... nice picture you've chosen for your profile. Please remind me not to disagree with anything you write!
ReplyDeleteTremendously important stuff folks! In this discussion on birth control I have often found myself in the awkward spot of having to allow something (because I think the Bible does) that I think most people are abusing.
ReplyDeleteI do see birth control as an aspect of the cultural mandate in Gen.1 in which God allows and even commands humans to bring nature under its dominion, and I have seen no compelling biblical reason (I am still open to being convinced otherwise) to exclude a godly Biblical values-guided management of child birth (whether by natural or by artificial, non-abortive birth control methods) from that mandate.
Of course, I say that very much aware that there are many wrong reasons to use birth control: selfish pursuit of personal freedom from heavy responsibility; a desire to pursue career (I refer to both men and women in that desire) over the joy and responsibility of being fruitful and multiplying; an unwillingness to give up luxuries and toys and financial comforts for the greater blessing and good of having as many children as possible; the failure to see children as a vital component of God's next generation plan for this world; etc.
As best I can tell, the number of children per family can only be decided by each couple, as they honestly and humbly take all kingdom and family resource factors of time, age, energy, money, and other responsibilties into account. Of course I factor in with joy the overruling sovereign purposes of God--who loves to spring surprises on us--in determining that number, as others have noted.
That said, I agree with Peter that families can certainly afford (financially) more children than they might think, so long as they live by biblical values rather than worldly ones.
In all this I speak as a man who takes the command to be fruitful and multiply both seriously and quite literally. While I wouldn't want to say this at all dogmatically, I'm not sure that this command has been obeyed fully unless a husband and wife through their offspring have actually increased the number of people that will be on the earth after they are gone.
All that said, I have never seen sufficient biblical reason to say that birth control is never legit.
But as commenters have said, we digress from the original intent of the post, though not without profit.
So let me sum up with this final thought: I believe that the only marriage that is a biblical marriage is one that is a covenanted relationship between the same man and the same woman for life; a marriage which is impassioned with love and affection as is the relationship between Christ and the Church, which relationship marriage is intended to portray; a marriage which issues finally in as many physical and spiritual offspring as the couple can possibly produce.
That about says it for now.
"To be quite honest, as a single woman looking at the vast majority of Christ-dishonoring, self-seeking marriages around me, I often feel giddy with relief that I am not married."
ReplyDeleteJen, do you mean marriages in the church or outside the church? Do you mean in your personal experience of marriages from people you know, or marriages in the media?
"Jen, do you mean marriages in the church or outside the church? Do you mean in your personal experience of marriages from people you know, or marriages in the media?"
ReplyDeleteI mean people that I know inside the church at large. I am seeing a lot of college friends and a lot of people that I grew up with get married, and they're all "Christians," and they have no idea of Christ being the center of their marriages. When I'm told at a Christian gathering by a Christian woman that she and her husband get along so well because they can sit in separate rooms and watch separate TV shows and know that they love each other, and all the Christians around (nearly all of whom were married) think that that's a wonderful demonstration of Christian love, I have a hard time desiring any part of that. There's got to be more to marriage than finding someone compatible to watch TV with. Pastor Tim's definition of marriage is lost, at least in some of the circles I run in.