The "Gaystapo" is on the march. We're where we are thanks to years of rampant relativism, the gospel of "follow your heart," postmodernism, and Christianoid defection and/or timidity. Any day we may find it knocking at the door of our church, no matter where we are. That this is just one tentacle on an octopus of rebellion against God is beside our point, which (as is my wont here) is very focused.
I mean to pose to you the question I find surprisingly absent from the blogs I'd expect to take lead on it:
what language do we need to put in our church Constitutions
to proof us (to any degree) against lawsuits?
I don't ask in the interest of evading all persecution. I think that's coming, and Christians shouldn't be surprised. But I would sure like to spare churches the waste of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours each frivolous lawsuit, even the "successful" ones, always mean.
So here's what I want from you:
Not just "I think" and "we probably oughta" and "gee I don't know."
But either (A) link us to an online Constitution that actually has included such language, or (B) refer us to an online article giving useful and specific direction, or (C) transcribe for us what your church's constitution has included.
We're being told we'd better prepare, we'd better put in in our Constitutions. Probably so. Using what words?
This topic is vital to faithful churches across the land. So let's see what we can do, to serve local churches of Christ.
Contribute if you have it to give, or get out the word.
UPDATE: m'man Denny Burk, who has been doing some first-rate, very helpful writing in these areas, has responded with pointers to very helpful resources. If Denny's blog isn't a regular stop for you, I commend you make it so.
OK - we are back for part two of this conversation. A couple of things from yesterday:
To the concern that this is a hypothetical conversation, and especially that the "Not-LGBT" guy is too nice, sometimes it matters how you approach someone. I'm not saying every exchange like this (especially on the internet) will turn out this reasonable and Socratic, but I'll bet if you worked on your delivery you could get at least half-way through this exchange with a real person.
To the concern that the "Not-LGBT" guy isn't engaging hard enough, maybe. We haven't gotten to the back half (more like back third) of the conversation, but the conversations this exchange were based on demonstrated one thing to me personally: the other side doesn't think they have a lot to justify. Their answers tend to be rather terse, and their willingness to say more than a little to defend their position is not very robust. What that says to me as a person listening is that they don't really think they have a great argument -- they just feel a certain way and they don't want anyone taking away that feeling.
Last time we covered the definition and cause of marriage. Today we cover a secular/legal argument.
Play nice.
Not-LGBT: It still bothers me that you think gay people shouldn't have the same rights as straight people.
FT: I see. What if I told you that I think it's unfair to single people that they don't have access to those benefits, either? In other words, what's the reason these benefits are not merely a universal benefit of citizenship -- if they are somehow "rights"?
Not-LGBT: [thinks for a minute] Well, married people are in a different circumstance than single people. Being married is not the same as being single. I think you said it someplace -- Marriage has a "special meaning."
FT: Huh. I didn't actually say that -- U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker actually said that when he ruled against Prop 8 in California. But do you believe that -- that there's a "special meaning" in marriage?
Not-LGBT: Yes. [thinks about it again] Yes I do think that.
FT: So it's different than, for example, people who only live together for a very long time.
Not-LGBT: Yes.
FT: But it's a right? See: I think you're confused about what you mean to say. What I think you mean to say --
Not-LGBT: No. What I mean to say is this: because marriage has special meaning, and it gives special benefits to people, the law has the responsibility to give it to whoever wants it. There's no reason to deny it to two people who love each other.
The Law shouldn't decide who gets special benefits and who doesn't. There should be equal treatment under the law.
FT: Well, then I'm stumped.
Not-LGBT: You mean you agree? You give up?
FT: No, I mean I have no idea what you're trying to accomplish. See: when we started, I thought that the problem was that you didn't understand the men and women were different. Well: that's not true. You know they are different because you wouldn't marry a man, only a woman -- and you know that seeing it that way is not like racism because the differences between men and women are real, not imaginary or ideological.
But you're committed to the idea that any two people are the moral and legal equivalent of two married people -- if they want to be. Is it because two is a magic number?
Not-LGBT: No. Stop. Don't even go there.
FT: Go where?
Not-LGBT: Polygamy. Just stop it -- nobody is saying polygamy is a great idea, but even if they were, I'm ready to accept that at face value. I'm ready to say that two is not a magic number. You can't scare me into thinking that somehow gay marriage is a bad idea because maybe I can't imagine other kinds of marriages that might make somebody else happy.
FT: I see: not that there's anything wrong with that. right. No, actually -- I'm still stuck on one. I'm still stuck on the idea that somehow the government has the charter to keep special privileges away from citizens. Two people can have those benefits; you just said maybe 3 or 4 or 5 or some number "x" people could marry up in any permutation of men and women. But it sounds to me like the people getting unequal treatment is single people -- people like yourself.
Why can't you have all those privileges? What's the government have against you?
Not-LGBT: Well, I'm not married. I choose not to be married right now. If I would choose to be married, those other benefits would be an incentive to seal the deal. If I had any doubts, the tax benefits, and the inheritance benefits, and the employment benefit, um, benefits -- they could help me overcome my doubt that I was doing the right thing.
FT: What? The "right thing?" Listen: that's not on your list of objectives here in affirming that any two people are the moral equivalent of a man and a woman joined in marriage. There's a whole list of right things you're walking past to get right here to suddenly claim it's the "right thing" to do anything.
Not-LGBT: Well, it would be an incentive -- you can see that, right? That it's an incentive to do something.
FT: Look -- you have to stop teasing me, OK? Because if that's what you really really mean now, you have to simply change your mind and go back to traditional marriage.
Let me spell it all out for you. We already talked about the fact that heterosexuality is not like racism -- it's a fact, not an ideology or merely a feeling. It's the kind of fact that has a basis in biology, in the way humankind are made, male and female. So marriage is fundamentally a necessary conclusion, a function of the biological facts. To that end, it's not even really how two people feel about each other because feelings can change and then change back again. That is actually the "special meaning" of marriage -- that's where we cross over into this half of the discussion. Because even you can admit that the government has a stake in that kind of marriage, and in seeing that stake the government can make incentives to make marriage better than, well, anything else two people can legally get involved with.
If the Government doesn't have that kind of charter, then it's absurd to say that the government has the charter to license drivers, or to issue permits for guns, or to enforce any laws -- because what is law enforcement if its not a system of incentives and disincentives? If the government can't choose how to encourage what's in the best interest of the country -- that is, the general welfare of the citizens -- how can it claim the authority to punish anyone for doing the wrong thing?
Not-LGBT: Wow. You're forgetting Justice now? To win an argument?
FT: Nope.
Not-LGBT: Nope? That's it - just "nope?"
FT: No, I was just going to open my Bible to Romans 1-2-3 so we can talk about Justice so you can understand what my real objections are here -- what my purpose is in trying to reason with you through your very confused state of thinking. Do you want to talk about Justice? Let's start in Romans 1, and talk about what the basis of Justice is ...
First things first: Pack a Lunch, and I am out of the office today -- in Toronto actually for a conference for work. I have a love/hate relation with Toronto (having grown up in Rochester), and I hope I can at least get out for a bite at someplace fantastic in this multi-cultural city.
Before any of the traditional nay-sayers start frowning at this post, it is an adaptation of a couple of conversations I have had in the last 2 weeks, and then some feedback from the most popular blogger at this site (which always has been, and always will be, DJP). This is not a hypothetical straw man: this is the guy you talk to when someone says, "I'm not gay, but sure: let them have marriage."
I am the other guy.
I am hesitant to keep the comments open because I will not have time to play hall monitor today, but at the same time this post deserves comments. What I am going to do is put the comments on moderation so you can have your say, and then wait for them to get approved when I have 20 minutes to comb through the carnage.
Play nice.
FT: Dude -- let me ask you a serious question. If I told you that there is no difference between saying, "Marriage is meant to be a union between a man and a woman," and "marriage is meant to be a union between two people," would you say that I'm being sane and reasonable, or that I am being unreasonable and illogical?
Not-LGBT: Sounds reasonable to me.
FT: Then why is anyone trying to eliminate the first definition for the sake of the second definition? That is: the objective of the current push is to say that the first is wrong – too restrictive -- and the second is right. Why?
Not-LGBT: That's not at all true. The second is inclusive of the first where the first is exclusive of the second. Because one is right doesn't mean the other has to be wrong.
FT: Dude: that's false. While it is true that under the second it doesn't matter if the two people are parts-compatable or parts-identical, the second demands that the first not be the definition of marriage. If the first statement means the same thing as the second statement, no one should have their ideological rainbows in a knot -- they should just marry under the existing definition and move on.
But: what is at stake is that the first is not the same as the second -- and that the second makes the first obsolete, or that the first makes the second impossible.
Not-LGBT: [thinks for a moment] Would you agree that the phrase "All men are created equal" includes women? For a long time it didn't but now it’s generally accepted that it does. So why didn't the founding fathers allow women to vote? If they intended them to be equal wouldn't they have given them equal rights?
What I'm saying is the meaning behind laws and definitions change over time with society.
FT: The idea that indiscriminate moral change is just a market force and should be welcomed is utterly fatuous.
Are you personally married, Dude?
Not-LGBT: No, I am not.
FT: Since you are not married, let's test your thesis on you: you can marry any person. What if it turns out some fellow at work decides you're the right man for him -- would you accept his proposal? Would you be interested?
Not-LGBT: No, but that would be my choice. There are several women I wouldn't accept a proposal from either.
FT: Dude: but no men, right? If all people are interchangeable, why are there no men possible on your list?
Not-LGBT: If I loved him then I would accept, I guess. You're reaching here Frank, I've answered all of your points and now you're making fatuous suppositions. We'll likely never agree (on a lot of things) but let's not be foolish about it.
FT: I’m not reaching in the least.
Let's remember that the point in contention here is this:
If I told you that there is no difference between saying, "Marriage is meant to be a union between a man and a woman," and "marriage is meant to be a union between two people," would you say that I'm being sane and reasonable, or that I am being unreasonable and illogical?
It's your contention that to say that marriage is simply to be "between any two people" is utterly interchangeable with "between a man and a woman". But your clarification is this: not for you personally. You wouldn't accept "any person."
Not-LGBT: Ok – sure. But let’s not forget choice. I'm free to choose who I love and who makes me happy. Having a right doesn't mean you must exercise it or be opposed to it.
FT: I would say, without any reservation, that whenever what I do requires "my choice" to be justified, that I am probably going the wrong way.
Look: let me help you out here. What if I said, "I want to be the pastor of a confessionally-centered church, but if someone else wants to be the pastor of a gas station or a strip club, it's a big world -- a big tent. Live and let live, I say."
You should be right to say, "Well, wait: being the pastor of a Strip Club sounds awesome. Why won't you do that?"
It sounds less than straightforward to say at that point, "well, that's just a matter of preference." In fact, it sounds like you're trying to hide something.
Not-LGBT: No. I reject that. You're putting words in everyone's mouth now.
FT: I'm willing to say, "maybe." Maybe I'm putting words in your mouth. But you're a young fellow -- maybe you feel like you have a lot of time. What if you're 40 and you don't find the right person of the opposite sex? What if you're 60? Would you rather die without a spouse than take a spouse of a the same sex?
You know: I'm asking because you say there's no difference between same-sex unions and marriage. If there's no difference in theory, in general, why is there a difference for you personally?
Not-LGBT: Because it is my choice. I already did say, btw, that if I loved the other guy, I would marry him. Listen: nobody can force me to marry someone ... nobody can force me to marry someone I don't care for. Just because I don't care for someone doesn't mean I hate them.
FT: True enough -- but you are mixing classes now. Your attempt to fix the problem here says that somehow the chemistry might just be wrong, given the million variables possible between two people -- you're not a bigot if you fall in love with Rachel and not Leah.
Not-LGBT: Exactly. That's exactly what I mean.
FT: I might say, "I think you are forgetting that, for you personally, we're not talking about the million variables in the chemistry between two people: you have eliminated a class of people in spite of your affirmation that people are people." The only reason I won't say that is the reason you paused when you said, "Listen: nobody can force me to marry someone ..." You were going to say, "someone ugly, or smelly, or who couldn't cook," or something along that line of thinking. But you realized that saying that really says, "for me, being gay is like being ugly." You knew you couldn't say that and still maintain that any ol' two people can unite and form a marriage. You personally are not just looking for the right person. You personally are looking for the right woman.
Think of it this way: If you were to say, "marriage is meant to be a union between two people" but then add the qualifier, "except when I think about me personally; I will only marry a person of the correct race," what is that? If you told me that you would never consider marrying a person who was something other than you idea of racially-fit for marriage to you, how would that sound? No number of "not that there's anything wrong with thats" would escape the howling objections of 10,000 angry anti-racists.
Not-LGBT: No. [Thinks a minute] No. Because heterosexuality is not the same thing as racism.
FT: What? Wait a minute -- make sure you mean what you say here, because this is critical. This may be the place where you solve the problem forever. What do you mean by that?
Not-LGBT: Heterosexuality is not the same thing as racism. Racism ... racism isn't fair. It's bad.
FT: Why is racism bad?
Not-LGBT: Because it is. It means people hate each other. I don't hate homosexuals if I'm heterosexual. Just because I prefer women sexually doesn't mean I hate men.
FT: That's it. That's exactly right. The dictionary says "racism" is "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others." In "racism," is the superiority of one kind over all others real, or imagined? Does it have a basis in fact?
Not-LGBT: [Thinks for a minute] No. If racism is false, saying one kind is better than another is false. It's an ideology, a lie.
[Thinks for a minute] So wait: you're saying marriage is based on some kind of fact and not based on some kind of preference?
FT: Yes. I am in fact saying that. I am saying that the institution of marriage is based on the fact that there are two sexes in our kind, and that they are intentionally, inherently, on-purpose compatible. You know this: you can't avoid it. It is not anything like racism to say that you hope to find a woman to marry, and will not even consider a man.
This, for what it's worth, is why advocating for marriage -- one man, one woman, one flesh, not to be torn asunder -- is not any kind of homophobia. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, and everything to do with the way our kind is made.
You know that marriage isn't for any two people because you personally want your marriage to be with a woman. You know it's not any kind of sexism or racism or homophobia to say that the marriage for you is as a man to a woman, and inconceivable otherwise. And here's the thing: that's why marriage exists in every single culture in the world: because the obvious, default setting is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of establishing the basic, self-propagating social unit. It's a fact that pre-exists all laws.
Not-LGBT: But you are forgetting something: gay people don't feel the same way. Their feelings tell them that they should be paired with someone of the same sex.
FT: I agree that their feelings tell them that - but you're changing the subject again. Heterosexuality is not a feeling, but a fact, and marriage is based on the fact of heterosexuality. Having different feelings doesn't change that.
Not-LGBT: As you say here at your blog, "Aha!"
Now you're saying that Homosexuality is not a fact. That, my friend, is the problem.
FT: Well, maybe for your point: not mine. I am completely willing to say that Homosexuality is a fact -- but such a fact has nothing to do with marriage. I'm not saying Homosexuality isn't a fact: I'm saying that whatever biological fact causes Homosexuality, it's not the biological fact that stands behind marriage and for which purpose marriage is established.
Did you know? There is a problem with marriage in the West. It seems to me that some people are surprised by this -- that somehow marriage is in its death-throws in the English-speaking world and in all nations which can look back to the Greco-Roman civilization for their roots. I mean: they are surprised enough that they have finally started to write about it in any way resembling a defense of marriage.
Here's how we know they are serious: they have pulled out the common idiom they know how to speak in best to make their point(s). That is: the language of Business Administration. Maybe its because these fellows all spend a lot of time in airports, and those bookstores are littered with books for business travelers, and these fellows have read one too many of these books, but it seems to have damaged their vocabulary and their approach to solving problems.
Successful entrepreneurs are generally defined by three core qualities. The first is a powerful desire to improve the world in some way. The second is opportunity recognition—when faced with obstacles, entrepreneurs try to think of new and different ways of doing things that open up new opportunities for success. And the third is just plain, old-fashioned guts—but you can call it "risk tolerance" and "perseverance" if you prefer. When faced with both a threat and an opportunity, most people prioritize avoiding the threat; entrepreneurs prioritize the opportunity, even if that means risk and discomfort.
Now, this bit of advice comes from a fellow who wrote a book about the so-called "Joy of Calvinism." This makes it all the more bizarre that the article reads like an updated paraphrase of Finney more than the advice of a Spurgeon or a Machen or a Lloyd-Jones. What that doesn't mean, by the way, is that everything he says is right out of bounds. For example, when he says this:
[Our opponents'] power comes from the falsehood of their descriptions. They win people's loyalty and belief to their worldview by creating fantasy worlds that are more enjoyable (in the short term) than the real one. These include not only the overtly pornographic and selfish fantasies—although those have played a critical role, and not just with men—but the more mundane ones as well. Twisting our softer sentiments has been as important as exploiting raw lusts.
That's completely true enough. But then he says stuff like this:
This will require constructive efforts that describe how sex transcendently, metaphysically bonds husbands and wives in beautiful ways. (Note: it's not marriage that supernaturally bonds a couple, it's sex; that will be a key distinction for the new language to bring out.) It will also involve describing the monstrosity of divorce and the tragic suffering of disordered desire. And it will involve satire that exposes the conventions that maintain the fantasy world.
Which is patently awful. Even if it is passably true, it's so unbelievably adolescent that I wonder how someone who is grown up can write it and not be ashamed of himself for talking that way. But in order to say that, I have to offer the alternative, so we'll start there today and work backwards into the larger picture of taking back the narrative and high-ground of the topic of marriage.
Look here: what this fellow has done is gotten it backwards. He thinks that sex is the thing and marriage is incidental -- he says it flat out: "it's not marriage that supernaturally bonds a couple, it's sex." Of course: the Scripture says, "the two shall become one flesh," right? When Jesus describes marriage, he refuses to leave that part out -- because it is part of the oldest definition of marriage relevant to his point in saying so. It's from the beginning of all things. But let's think about this: Jesus puts the "leave" before the "cleave." That is: something happens prior to the "cleaving" which is best described as the "leaving." To say that the "leaving" isn't the transcendent part, the metaphysical part, is to overlook Jesus' point about divorce.
This poor fellow has missed this entirely. See: in Genesis, Eve is taken from Adam as his own flesh, and she comes into this world as "bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." That is: they are One prior to being sexually united because of their origin, not because of their later connubial bliss. Something about Woman is made for Man, and Man is exclusively for Woman -- prior to sex.
Trying to jump the gun here, like a fearless entrepreneur, only makes you a third-rate pornographer. It misses the point that when Man and Woman become Man and Wife, it is not that they are recognizing what sex has done for them: it is that they are now prepared for something more than simple friendship, and can make sex what it ought to be -- a gift, and a grace, and a sign of obedience in mankind's dominion over all things.
So when this author, publishing at the Gospel Coalition web site, says this:
Does this mean leaving behind the Bible, philosophy, and law? God forbid! It only means we stop trying to make any of those the centerpiece and organizing theme of the movement. First, define the movement in terms of a new description of sexuality—one that does not require familiarity with the Bible, philosophy, and law to understand. Then rightly relate each of those things to the movement.
One wonders who checked his credentials. One wonders how he is coalescing with the Gospel, or when.
Now, before I bring this post home, the nose-out-of-joint presupp in the back row, still sore from the lashing from a month ago, is posting to his facebook wall, "Turk just Presupp'd and he doesn't even know it -- and he contradicted everything he said about Abortion here when he talked about Marriage."
Well: no. What Turk has just done is point out that abandoning the narrative which is the Gospel narrative is utterly self-defeating and shoddy. I'm still the guy who wrote this as a plain secular case for why society needs marriage, and who points to this piece by Sam Schulman as the show-stopping non-religious argument for traditional marriage. I still think that Romans 1 gives the unbeliever plenty of evidence in nature to know the difference between right and wrong. But: Marriage isn't simply a contract, and it's not merely a matter of vocation and therefore civil justice. When we allow it to be only that, we have given up the entire Gospel narrative in the one institution which all people find themselves called to in one way or another. We give up the part built into us which knows we must leave and cleave, and to be fruitful -- the way the church is fruitful in Christ, and Christ loves the church.
And this, to be as specific as possible, is why business school language about entrepreneurs and strategy all fail, all further run us down the wrong road and teach the world the wrong thing about the complementarian vision of God in humankind, made male and female: it's not just a contract, or even a covenant to be arbitrated by the heirs of Moses. It's a grace of God built into our kind, made in his image, and part of our charge to be in dominion over all the earth. It is literally the means God set forth so that this world could be very good, and live happily every after.
There's no business plan that is adequate for promoting that vision. But there is a Gospel, and a Savior, and a Church, and when God is gracious, there are families who are really living as if these things are true.
Well, now what? What should we do about it since everyone is ready to concede that the happiness of everyone is what we're really trying to achieve, and we can practically see paradise by the Google Analytics dashboard light?
And seriously: we've been trying to close the barn door here since 2008, but now that all the animals are in the highway getting hit by delivery trucks some corners have discovered the problem. Go ahead and show them how to close the barn door, but we better also be ready to run the chickens and the horses back in before we make a bunker out of something intended to be a bountiful harbor.
Yes, I know you have seen this video either at Desiring God or at TGC. That doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it again. Prior to the bombshell announcement last week here at TeamPyro, we were talking about what an appropriate secular definition of "marriage" was in order to sort of find our way to the place where we could understand what those demanding "same-sex marriage" were asking us for. Look: let's be serious. I am perfectly willing to concede that when we start talking about homosexuality, the LBGT people listening probably hear something like this. Confessing that, or admitting that, or otherwise coming to terms with that frankly doesn't cost us anything. It probably actually improves us by being able to walk 10 feet in the other guy's shoes.
But let's also be fair: the other side ought to be willing to demonstrate what they say they expect from us. That is: if they want us to understand what we sound like to them, they have to at least ask themselves, "I wonder what we sound like to the other side?" It's naive at least to demand someone hurdle the empathy barrier because they object to your demands, but in making your demands you have no intention of even facing good manners -- let alone demonstrate empathy.
But alert reader "Peter" found the previous thread and asked the astute question, "It is unclear to me why you need a definition of marriage. I am also unclear whether you are looking for a legal, sociological, or poetical definition. Cannot homosexuals just say they want the same 'rights and privileges' that the institution of marriage currently provides to heterosexual couples?"
The answer, frankly, is "no."
If I told Peter that all I really want from life is all the "rights and privileges" of a handicapped person so that I can park in their spaces, would my demand seem at all out of scope? See: the law plainly distinguishes between everyone else and the class of people who qualify for handicapped privileges in every parking lot in America. It's not a constitutional crisis to say that everyone is not created equal, and giving a privilege to those for whom the parking places are designated is not the moral equivalent of racism.
"Well," Peter may retort, "that's because federal law has adopted a standard of equal access for public accommodations (ADA title III), and under that standard we 'must comply with basic nondiscrimination requirements that prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment.' The same-sex advocate is asking for the same thing: access, and an end to segregation and unequal treatment." That is: they want a leg-up to level the playing field because in some way, the default state would be to leave them out.
There are three reasons this is probably unwise for Peter to go this way:
1. The assumption has to be that the ones being so-called "segregated" are in some way are "[people] who [have] a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities." If the advocates for same-sex marriage want to establish the problem as a "disability," that's a new one on me. It would change the way this discussion plays out immediately. Of course they do not see themselves this way, and I'm not asking them to. But I am asking them to see that there is at least one major way in which definitions matter: they qualify the reason(s) for special privileges.
2. It should be noted that married is not a right per se, but a privilege. That is: if you are an intolerable cretin or a serial adulterer, the law recognizes that you are unfit for marriage. If you are even infertile, the law recognizes that another person may see that as an insurmountable obstacle to being married to you. You do not have a right to be married if you are unqualified or disqualified for marriage. If this ever becomes untrue, I suspect that we won't have to worry about whether or not same-sex marriage is a question anymore. If the state becomes the one to arbitrate who marries whom and whether it stays in force, I'll bet a lot of people will fight for the right to stay single forever.
3. There's more to it than the law. See: the problem here which the advocates for same-sex marriage simply gloss over is that "rights and privileges" is a fairly-callow way to view the institution. In fact, most days "rights and privileges" don't enter into it at all.
As Johnny Depp isclever enough to point out, "Marriage is really from soul to soul, heart to heart. You don't need somebody to say, okay you're married." At least, until you don't want to be anymore. Let's say, instead, that we adopt the brief definition provided by commenter Luke Wolford, who cites Living Sociologically by Renzetti and Curran. He says the secular defition of marriage is given thus:
"Marriage: a socially approved union of two or more people in which each is expected to fulfill specific economic, sexual, and caregiving obligations and responsibilities."
What sort of proposal do you think this sort of arrangement would generate? We covered that last time, but there aren't a lot of Romantic Comedies which would spring forth from this understanding of marriage. In fact, I doubt there would be a lot of dour, duty-to-the-state sort of marriages if this is all that the institution ought to mean.
Marrying Ian meant that I was signing on to things that I donʼt think I ever wouldʼve chosen for myself — working my whole life, having a husband who canʼt be left alone, managing his caregivers, remembering to get the oil changed, advocating for medical care, balancing checkbooks, and on. The practical costs felt huge, and those didnʼt even touch on the emotional and spiritual battles that I would face.
But in light of all the practicals, and emotionals, it was so very simple: we love each other. And we love God. And we believe He is a sovereign and loving God who rules all things.
Our pastor who married us, Mark Altrogge, was with us on the day that our marriage was approved by a local judge. Because of Ian’s condition, the courts had to decide that it was in his best interest to be married. Mark said that he’ll never forget the words of the judge who approved our marriage license: “You two exemplify what love is all about. I believe that marriage will not only benefit you both but our community, and hope that everyone in this city could see your love for one another.”
This is why the definitions matter, and why, frankly, the law cannot hand this over to anyone. It is outside of the law's purview. It is not about the generation of "rights and privileges," but about the way loves works -- which is a surrendering of rights in order to serve and to save another person.
The rest, I think, is best left to the comments. Mind your manners.
So last week I asked for a secular definition of marriage which actually helped us understand what the advocates of Gay Marriage are looking for. It was an honest question because I had in my back pocket this essay by Richard Waghorn, which is a weird twin cousin of this essay by the ineffable Sam Schulman.
But we did happen to come up with, I think, the best possible secular definition of marriage via twitter. It's found at TheFreeDictionary.com, and it goes like this:
Marriage
socially sanctioned union that reproduces the family. In all societies the choice of partners is generally guided by rules of exogamy (the obligation to marry outside a group); some societies also have rules of endogamy (the obligation to marry within a group). These rules may be prescriptive or, as in the case of the incest taboo, proscriptive; they generally apply to kinship groups such as clan or lineage; residential groups; and social groups such as the ethnic group, caste, or class.
Marriage is usually heterosexual and entails exclusive rights and duties of sexual performance, but there are instructive exceptions. For example, Nayar women of India would ritually marry men of a superior caste, have numerous lovers, and bear legitimate children. Among the Dahomey of West Africa, one woman could marry another; the first woman would be the legal "father" of the children (by other men) of the second. These examples highlight the functions of marriage to reproduce both a domestic division of labor and social relationships between different groups. Such functions are served even by the more common type of marriage, the union of one or more men with one or more women.
In most societies men and women are valued for their different roles in the household economy. Marriage therefore often occasions other economic exchanges. If a woman's labor is highly valued, a man may be required to offer valuable goods (bride-price) or his own labor (bride-service) to his wife's family. If a man's labor is more highly valued, the bride's family may offer goods (dowry) to the husband or his family.
Marriage as a Societal Bond
In many societies marriage links not just nuclear families but larger social formations as well. Some endogamous societies are divided into different exogamous groups (such as clans or lineages): Men form alliances through the exchange of women, and the social organization regulates these alliances through marriage rules. In some cases, two men from different groups exchange sisters for brides. Other instances involve an adult man marrying the young or infant daughter of another man; sexual relations would be deferred for many years, but the two men will have formed a strong bond. Marriages are often arranged by the families through the services of a matchmaker or go-between, and commence with a ritual celebration, or wedding. Some cultures practice trial marriage; the couple lives together before deciding whether they should marry. Society generally prescribes where newlywed couples should live: In patrilocal cultures, they live with or near the husband's family; in matrilocal ones, with or near the wife's family. Under neolocal residence, the couple establishes their own household.
Although marriage tends to be regarded in many places as a permanent tie, divorce is allowed in most modern societies. The causes of divorce vary, but adultery, desertion, infertility, failure to provide the necessities of life, mistreatment, and incompatibility are the most common. Civil unions are now permitted in Western countries, but for nearly a thousand years marriage in the Western world was a religious contract. The Christian church undertook its supervision in the 9th cent., when newlywed couples instituted the practice of coming to the church door to have their union blessed by the priest. Eventually the church regulated marriage through canon law. In contemporary N Europe marriage has lost some of importance, especially as social legislation has emphasized assuring equal financial benefits and legal standing to children born to unwed parents.
Forms of Marriage
Monogamy (the union of one wife to one husband) is the prevalent form almost everywhere. Polygyny (or polygamy; having several wives at one time), however, has been a prerogative in many societies (see harem). It is commonly found where the value of women's labor is high and may be practiced as a way of acquiring allies: A man may cement his bonds with several other men by marrying their sisters or daughters. Polyandry (having several husbands at one time) is rare, having occurred infrequently in Tibetan society, among the Marquesas of Polynesia, and among certain hill tribes in India. People who enjoy only a marginal subsistence may practice polyandry as a way of limiting births. It is also practiced where brothers must work together to sustain one household; they share one wife. The custom of marrying a widow to her late husband's brother is known as levirate marriage and was common among the ancient Hebrews. In sororate marriages a widower marries his deceased (or barren) wife's sister. The levirate and the sororate occur in societies where marriage is seen to create an alliance between groups; the deceased spouse's group has a duty to provide a new spouse to the widow or widower, thereby preserving the alliance. In recent years many gay-rights groups have sought official recognition of same-sex couples that would be comparable to marriage.
And here's my point in bringing that up: I want you to ponder this definition deeply, and think about it as if it was the only definition of marriage you had ever known. Think about it as if this was the definition behind the law of the land, and as if it was the reason people actually got married in the first place.
Now fire up your imagination for a second. Imagine you are at dinner with some other person, and you've been thinking about this for a long time. As the waiter leaves with your order of eats for the evening, you clench up a little, and then screw your courage to the sticking place. You take a deep breath and you begin, "What I really want is to avoid incest, and embrace endogamy. I want some rights and duties regarding sexual intercourse and property, and to establish a nominal division of labor. I want a visible household economy. And you seem like exactly the right person to do that with, at least for now. Will you marry me?"
Is there anyone who would really say that, or really want that?
Consider that, and I'll register part 3 next week to tie this all together.
Yes: fine. We will beat you to death with this topic.
I enjoyed the last two weeks' discussion so well that I wanted to do it again on a related topic -- a very closely related topic. What I wanted to do was to compare and contrast the generic, secular view of monogamy and marriage to the Christian view of monogamy and marriage -- starting today with the secular view of marriage as exemplified by one video or essay by a secular person making the case for secular marriage.
Except -- get this -- I couldn't find one. I can't find any examples of people from the secular side of the map making the case for marriage in a way that, frankly, didn't seem like a parody.
So here's the deal: in the comments today, I am taking suggestions -- and only suggestions -- for the best in class for essays by secular writers which make the case of secular marriage. Post your link like this:
<a href="http://url.com">Essay or Book Title Here</a> by Author Name.
Type that in the comments with your link suggestion, and it will become a live link. All negative comments will be deleted. All caterwauling will be deleted. All spam, of course, will be deleted. TUAD's comments will be deleted preemptively because I just don't have that kind of patience this week. Mind your manners.
If we can find any secular cases for marriage, we'll talk about that. If we can't, we'll talk about that. This week: ball's in your court.
UPDATED: After 5 comments, I realized that my request is not clear enough. The title of this post is "The Case for Gay Marriage." Let me put it bluntly: there is no credible religious case for gay marriage. That means that somehow, the secular definition of "marriage" excludes (at least) the necessity that the people involved in any specific marriage need to be in male/female alignment.
I'm looking for the secular argument that makes marriage into the arrangement which the advocates for gay marriage are advocating for -- that is, what it is so that anyone would actually want to do that.
The resources listed so far (8:00 AM central time) are stellar. Please think about the topic and add your suggestions.
Last week, I put up two videos to compare and contrast -- with the requirement that the readers of this blog (somehow watching videos has now made you "readers"; nice work, internet), find something good to say about both videos. These are the videos right here, for reference:
First, from John Piper:
Second, from Tim Keller:
Before we get to the red meat here (such as it is -- I think it's not what most people would say that it is), let me say that the one thing I expected absolutely happened, and that is that some people couldn't find anything edifying in the work of people whom they have decided (for right or wrong) to abhor. That should be instructive as a stand-alone point without any further deep-diving into the content of these two videos, but it won't be -- because they will all hide behind DJP's lack of enthusiasm toward the Keller video [which is not motivated by a pre-condition of disdain] and say, "see? Even someone with good intentions toward Keller ought to have a hard time finding good things in this video. Ergo, Keller should [insert denunciation of Keller here]."
That, of course, also speaks for itself.
So here's the thing: what's the point of contrasting these videos at all? Why do it? The first reason is found here, in an old post by me on the subject both of these videos are treating. Both of these videos are wildly successful at overcoming the question of guilt by association which true Christians face at the hands of violent and moralistic posers. Whatever you may think about the approach of both these videos, they both understand that the real person of Jesus has to speak to the real person of the sinner in order for the real sin to be made clear and the real reconciliation to take place.
The reason that is important is that we don't live in the 1920's anymore when people, as debased as they were, at least knew that there was a difference between men and women which ought to be in some way understood as necessary. The topic is homosexuality and public life. See it plainly: this is not about the right to privacy, and to do what you will behind closed doors, but about how one sort of lifestyle must be treated publicly, by all people, as dictated by the law. It is frankly never going to go away until Christ returns or Western Civilization goes the way of the Medo-Persian Empire. This arrangement and all the permutations of it now created by "science" (a topic for another day) are stuck with us, and we must learn how to speak to it and speak to the people who believe in it as dearly as they believe in happiness.
That said, let me first offer my very small and incidental critique of the Piper video out of the way. Dr. Piper's video is plainly made to speak to those who are believers, or those who think they want to be believers, and therefore uses the Bible in a way which, it seems to me, that only believers can receive. Here's what I mean by that: it's irrefutable that Dr. Piper spells out the essential case for the sinfulness of homosexuality in completely-certain terms, and does a fatherly job of saying these things graciously and seriously. He takes the listener from the provocative basic case to the right and true applications of those things -- but he puts every argument up on the theological shelf (except maybe one -- the part about self and sex) where the unbeliever, it seems to me, can't reach it.
Now, I say that guardedly because it also seems to me that this video is intended for believers who are trying to reason through this issue and not, as the Keller video is, a presentation to a hostile audience. We say things in Sunday school which are intended for a different kind of people than the average person you might sit next to on the airplane, or find at the NYU or Columbia Student Center. So the approach is warranted, and it is not a shortcoming as much as it is a feature of the context of the video.
That said, the context of the Keller video is much different. He's not speaking to believers at all -- regardless of what some of them might present as a self-identification. He's speaking directly to the lost, and fielding their questions about our faith and our beliefs about God. So as a primary virtue of this video, let's be honest: he's got a platform here that nobody at TeamPyro is likely to ever get. Additionally, his host is plainly interested in Dr. Keller as an example of the Christian faith -- not just a religious person or someone with a with moral opinions or good advice. And let's face it: this fellow hosting puts the issue on the table plainly: is homosexuality a sin?
From that perspective, Keller says some really great things in this video:
The definition of Love is to give yourself up for people who are actually opposing you, actually your enemies.
Is homosexuality a sin? Yes.
Is it the only sin? No.
Greed is a more-insidious sin because it is harder to identify -- but it tells us about how sin works. "What sends you to hell is your own self-righteousness."
Gay people have a different view of sexuality (vs. the Bible) in the same way that the Hindu has a different view of who or what God is -- these are the same sort of thing.
And the reason these are great things to say is that they take the assumptions of the lost people listening and turn them completely inside-out, pointing them back at their own lives and moral standards to see what they ought to see -- namely: some truth about themselves.
That's what's good about this video.
What's really, deeply disappointing is the real failure of Dr. Keller to get seriously biblical on this subject. For example, when he reasons, "I think it's unavoidable ... that you read the Bible and the Bible has reservations, the Bible says homosexuality is not God's original design for sexuality," he doesn't really connect to what God explicitly says about this sin. He does himself a disservice in speaking to the question he was asked because what he then says sounds more like his opinion and his assessment rather than something objective and therefore compelling.
Let's face it: the question David Eisenbach asked was not, "what is the moral reasoning behind Christians decrying homosexuality?" It in fact was, "Is there really condemnation by God for those who are homosexuals?" And the right answer -- which Keller kinda gives -- is "Yes, and no." Yes: clinging to any sin rather than to Christ will get you to Hell. No: Christ forgives the repentant, the forlorn, those who are broken by their own brokenness before God. In all seriousness, this is the glaring difference between the Piper video and the Keller video: Piper makes it absolutely clear that we are not just dysfunctional or that we fail to thrive when we do things God has "reservations" about. He makes it clear we are headed toward a judgment by God because we have done wrong to God.
Worse still, I think, is that Keller says this: "Will greed send you to hell? No. What sends you to hell is self-righteousness, thinking that you can be your own Savior and Lord. What sends you to Heaven is getting a connection to Christ because you realize you're a sinner and you need intervention from outside. That's why it's very misleading even to say, 'homosexuality is a sin,' because all kinds of things are sins ... which nonbelievers hear as, 'if you're Gay you're going to hell for being Gay."
That statement, it seems to me, does far worse damage than bold-face vilification of gay people -- because it misses the point about sin. What the Bible says, plainly, is that we are sinners because we want what we want, and out of our hearts comes all manner of things which show we are sinners. The Law and its prohibitions really tell us more about what we are by comparison than saying, "geez, you're not going to thrive." We do the things we want to do because of who we are. As Piper so eloquently put it in his video, "In other words, if you know that it's wrong, and you say, 'I don't care that its wrong, I don't care what God says, I am doing this anyway,' that's an indication that you're not going into the Kingdom of Heaven," and then, "the idol that you have is yourself."
Lastly, making this only about sin as a diagnosis of a failure to thrive forgets this biblical truth: all kinds of people thrive. One complaint from the Old Testament of Israel to God is, "hey: where is your justice? Why do those who scoff at you and hate you do so well in this life?" It's disingenuous to say that sin is about God's assessment of what will allow us to thrive when eventually we have to account for the problem of evil and the problem that in every case, and relating to all kinds of sin, people who are guilty seem to also get away with it and do pretty good.
So there you have it. There are some other things I could say here which would line out other faults I perceive in this video, but this is already longer that you can read during coffee break.
So should we now start campaigning for Pastor Keller's trial at the next session of his presbytery and see to it that he is removed from leadership? Is that really the answer we're looking for here -- to drum out the guy who is encountering unbelievers and giving them some sort of grain of truth when they ask him hard questions? Because while I will be the first one to say I think Keller did not deliver the actual Gospel in this video, he did deliver some of the fundamental truths necessary for the Gospel to people who probably actually heard them for the first time -- and by "heard" I mean, "listened, and had to think again about what they were hearing."
If we had to draw lessons here, one of them ought to be about us -- those of us who are not getting invited to the Veritas forum to speak to unbelievers. What we ought to ask ourselves is this: how come Paul and Tim Keller get invited to their respective versions of the Aeropagus, but we are stuck here on our blogs? One self-congratulatory answer is that there is woe to us when everybody thinks we're fine fellows -- and I think that answer can be undone by thinking about Keller's implication of self-righteousness. Another answer is this: maybe we are people who haven't mastered love of neighbor even though we know it's the second greatest commandment.
What I think we have to do with this video is not to tear it to shreds and walk away satisfied with our own apologetic Kung Fu: I think we have to read it for what it does well, and then do better. We should seek the chance to do what was done here, and then do it better.
That is: unless we don't care about lost people as much as Keller does.
When I ran into these older videos last week, I knew I would be blogging about them this week because of the topical nature of the subjects they cover. What I did not remember (saying I did not know this would be false, but I always hope for the best) is that Satan controls my scheduled work load, and when I have a great blogging subject like this I wind up having more work than 5 people can accomplish, and my blogging takes a back seat.
So here's the deal: This is the first of a 2-part post. Today I'm posting two videos by well-respected men speaking on the same subject, and here's my ground-rule for keeping the comments open: you must find all the good things from these videos this week -- because there is something good in both of these videos. Negative comments will simply be deleted without any warning or recourse. Next week we'll talk about whether or not one of these videos is better than the other, and in what way, and what the other video can teach us both from a positive example and from its shortcomings.
First of all, I intended to write a review of a documentary which is coming out later this month which I received from one of the subjects of that film. The film is called Holy Rollers: the True Story of Card Counting Christians, and it's quite a challenging review to write because the right thing to do is to judge the movie for what it is rather than what it is not, and I'm still working on that.
But in the midst of trying to do justice to a movie about a topic which I find radically incongruous, I ran into this story coming out of Florida. Apparently, ... um, here's how the Associated Press put it:
A custody battle in Florida between two lesbians could fuel the growing national debate over the definition of motherhood. ...
The women, now in their 30s and known in court papers only by their initials, were both law enforcement officers in Florida. One partner donated an egg that was fertilized and implanted in the other. That woman gave birth in 2004, nine years into their relationship.
But the Brevard County couple separated two years later, and the birth mother eventually left Florida with the child without telling her former lover. The woman who donated the egg and calls herself the biological mother finally tracked them down in Australia with the help of a private detective.
Their fight over the now 8-year-old girl is before the state Supreme Court, which has not announced whether it will consider the case. A trial judge ruled for the birth mother and said the biological mother has no parental rights under state law, adding he hoped his decision would be overturned.
The 5th District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach obliged, siding with the biological mother and saying both women have parental rights.
Let me make something clear before we get into the tall grass over there: there is something unrelentingly-sad about this story even in the sparse way the AP puts it. There's something unambiguously-melancholy in the phrase "their relationship." There's something soul-aching in the phrase "separated two years later." There's something morally unmerciful about the clinical way the child involved here is described as having been brought into the world -- as if it was a fortuitous science experiment. And that this has all turned out to be a fight in court over what the law ought to do about it … it's numbing. It makes you want to turn off your humanity so you can ignore it.
So as a consequence of this, the state of Florida is now trying to re-read and re-write its entire civil code of justice to decipher the rights of two women and how to, as the article says in a sort of Dickensian way, "come to grips with what is best for the child."
I'm having a hard time seeing "best" as a word which can even come into this discussion. What is unmitigatedly best for a child is that it come into this world as the fruit of a covenant between two people -- that a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, as it has become rather quaint to say. But instead we have a world in which we do what we think is right in our own eyes, and any ol' two people (three actually, since the father here is only a contributor to a test tube who, frankly, has no skin in the game) can have a child and then decide that they can simply "separate two years later" with no shame which lawyers can't fix up for them.
some people would say that telling kids that being gay is a sin, or getting married is a sin or whatever – that in itself is incredibly destructive and damaging, in a country where seven states now have legalized it.
You know: he thinks what he has said here is an absurdity. That is: to say gay marriage is "a sin" is completely inhuman and more damaging than, for example, what is happening in Florida.
Because consider the example I started with here. In this example, two people made some sort of agreement to live together, and even decided to have a child together. And when they decided it didn't work out, they parted ways. If our response here is that it's just unnatural that this is two women rather than one man, one woman, the other side wonders how we can keep a straight face (pun intended).
In this view -- that is, Morgan's view -- this happens all the time to one man, one woman. In their view, straight people don't even bother to get married anymore -- and when they do, they have an equal chance to break up as not break up without regard to whether there are children involved or any other objective measure. So why not just let anyone who wants to roll those dice roll the dice? They want ...
... now get this, please, because it is actually the point ...
They just want to be happy.
But here's the other thing: the really crazy thing here is that they -- that is, the other side -- know this is not what ought to be. Even if they can't define the real issues here, they know that a child ought not to be somehow without parents. And they know, frankly, that everything I said in the first paragraph after the AP citation is tragic and heart-rendering and makes less of those who are involved. It ruins them -- a fact we can see in everything from pop music to pop literature to the way they dramatize their lives in movies and theater and TV.
What we do not disagree with them about is the human toll involved when families are ill-defined, and ill-made, and ill-kept, and ill-maintained, and torn asunder. What they cannot bear, it seems to me, is to admit that we agree with them that families ought to be a refuge from whims of emotionalism, and personal caprice, and selfishness, and so on. We agree that what ought to happen is that a marriage ought to be formed, and something happen there that is not a matter of law but of something greater than the law, and as a consequence of that union, that one flesh, a family is made -- both as a beginning and as it grows through the birth of children.
And that is the real tragedy of the story here from the AP: how it seeks to imitate what a family ought to be, and how deeply it fails in that regard. And in the end, it is also a parable of how far those involved are willing to wander from the truth and into what seems right in their own eyes by forcing the Law to do things for them which, if they are honest, they were unable and unwilling to do for themselves.
Is it really a matter of how many American States issue a legal verdict that this sort of thing ought to be legal and be called "marriage"? Does that actually improve what has happened here, and what happens thousands of times every year? Or does it simply make a bad system of reasoning and living worse by giving permission to people to do it more often?
That's the root of it: what else will we permit? How far will we go to show that in fact we do not have to let a man to leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two to become one flesh, in order to have a marriage and a family? At what point are we actually destroying this thing we think we are longing for?
And then where is the refuge from our own work? That is: how do we get out from under the way we have made the world, doing the things we want to do, and suffering for it because what we want is at the same time somehow apparently-necessary to us and so utterly futile and broken?
If all the things I want to do I cannot do, and all the things I should not want I do with gusto, how terribly faulty, flimsy, forlorn, gloomy, hapless, hopeless, and hurting am I?
And who can save me -- the law? Look at how good the law is doing in Florida. I think the law probably can't come to grips with what is best for the child. The law can't even figure out who the mother of this child is. How can it decide -- let alone create and nurture -- what a family ought to be?
In the earliest periods of Roman history, Marriage meant that a married woman would be subjugated by her husband, but that custom had died out by the 1st century, in favor of Free Marriage which did not grant a husband any rights over his wife or have any changing effect on a woman's status. With this, the reasons for any divorce became irrelevant. Either spouse could leave a marriage at any point.
This was the state of things into the second century -- as the Christian church entered the ancient world. At that time, the Christians had no political power, no economic power, and were seen as weird and irrational atheists because they only worshipped one god. They had nothing -- no publishing houses, no televisions networks, no newspapers, no blogs. They had absolutely no advantages in the society in general.
In our view, that means the game is over. I think our view of it is deeply influenced by our own prosperity and our own good standing in the culture, but if we had no legislative recourse and no way to make movies about what we say we believe, we would see the problem of helping our culture rethink, refine and restore the institution of marriage as completely without hope.
Yet, the Christians in the –pre-christian west didn’t see it that way at all. We have a great way to document this. There’s a manuscript of a letter from a fellow who calls himself “Mathetes” to his friend “Diognetus”. This letter was written some time between 130 AD and 200 AD – plainly, safely, in the middle of the second century. Mathetes says he is writing his letter for a specific reason to his friend:
Excellent Diognetus: I see you are very eager to learn the way of worshipping God prevalent among the Christians. You have very carefully and earnestly asked questions concerning them: … what sort of relationships they have among themselves, and why this way of worshipping has come now rather than much sooner into the world. I am happy to encourage your questions, and I pray to God, because he enables us both to speak and to hear: allow me to speak so that, above all, you are encouraged and enlightened; and allow you to hear, so that I shall have no cause of regret for having done so.
Mathetes is trying to tell his friend about these disenfranchised Christians. As the primary exhibit of making this report to his friend, Mathetes says this (paraphrased):
These Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, or common customs. They don’t have their own cities, they don’t have their own language, and they don’t lead a lifestyle which is peculiar or spectacular. They haven’t developed a new philosophy invented by very smart men; they don’t proclaim themselves to be the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, living in Greek and barbarian cities without preference, according to their lot in life, they follow the customs of the people who live where they live in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct. But they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life.
So they live in each country, but they live there as sojourners, travellers passing through. As citizens, they do what all citizens do, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They live their time on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.
They obey the written laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are insignificant and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life.
This view of life, but specifically of familial relationships, and especially of marriage, was a massive innovation from the Greco-Roman concepts and laws. And that the Christians held fast to them in spite of slander and persecution was even of greater importance – because it spoke to, as Methetes said, a striking method of life. They did not live in compliance to the law – their vision of what was right was not because the law set the standard. Their vision was not lived out because they were seeking to change the law – because they saw themselves as people who were strangers, foreigners in a land that they did not belong to. Their vision of life was completely apart from and above the Law.
Ultimately, Mathetes tells Diognetus why they live above the law:
As I said, what they believe is no mere earthly invention, nor is it a merely-human system of opinion, which they have decided to preserve. God Almighty Himself, the Creator of all things though invisible, has sent from heaven, and placed among men, a man who is the truth. He is the holy and incomprehensible Word, and He has firmly established Him in their hearts. One might have imagined, God might send a servant, or angel, or ruler, or any one of those who is influential in Earthly affairs, or one of with supernatural majesty and authority, but He did not. …
As a king sends his son, who is also a king, so He sent this man. He sent this man as a man among men, and as God among men, and as a savior to men. He came seeking to persuade, not to compel us; for oppression has no place in the character of God. He sent Him to call us, not as an avenger of justice to incarcerate us. He sent Him to love us, not as judging us – even though He will yet send Him to judge us, and who shall endure His appearing?
But when our wickedness was fully grown, it had been clearly shown that its reward ought to be punishment and death, and was impending over us. God had before appointed for that time to come. But God did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us because he manifested His own kindness and power, the one love of God, for men. Instead He showed great long-suffering, and then He took upon Him the burden of our iniquities.
He gave His own Son as a ransom for us. He gave the holy One for transgressors. He gave the blameless One for the wicked. He gave the righteous One for the unrighteous many, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those that are mortal. For what else was capable of covering our sins other than His righteousness? By what other way was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable work! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!
Does that sound familiar to anyone? Does it strike a chord? See: for Methetes, the Christians were people who weren’t concerned about making the Law acceptable to themselves – or worse, to make other people acceptable by the force of Law. Methetes believed that the Christians had something greater in mind than the law – They had the very Gospel in mind.
And this is the view which, in spite of the very uncertain economic and political environment of the next 15 centuries of Western Civilization, became the common view of marriage. That is, it is not merely a social construct or advantage, but an utterly spiritual endeavor which is rightly and primarily ruled by the church because of its deep meaning. While we may disagree with it, we can grant that the Catholic Church’s high view of marriage as a “sacrament” which has a greater demand on the two people involved than only a contract arbitrated by law can have is an easy mistake to make when we listen to how Jesus describes marriage as built into the very fabric of creation.
Now, more or less, this is the home stretch of my talk, and I have an answer here for the problem we’re considering which the readers of my blog will recognize immediately, but it will need to be unpacked. And it goes back to this argument of “have you not read,” or “God has said.”
The question for us today is the same as the question the Pharisees asked Jesus 2000 years ago: “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?" That is: “Should we define marriage for our culture through the law?” We know that society needs marriage. And the definition of marriage we own in the West is the Christian definition – regardless of the arguments of those who want to change that.
But let me say it simply and seriously now: improving the Law is not going to improve the shoddy and shameful slanders against the conservative Christian definition of marriage, or against the institution of marriage in our culture.
There is a myth that the rate of divorce inside the church is the same as it is outside the church – the Barna Group perpetuates this myth all the time. The truth is not quite that incriminating: a 2002 study by Larson and Swyers published in “Marriage, Health and the Professions” and cited in the National Review in 2006 spells it out that couples who attended church as often as once a month had divorce rates less than half of that of couples who attended church once a year or less.
Jesus has a definition of Marriage, and Society needs that kind of marriage – if for nothing else than stability and continuity. But does the Church need Marriage? Can the church abandon marriage to the culture and still be the sort of thing Jesus intended?
I think the answer, quite frankly, is no: the church must again bring marriage to society in a way that is greater than the Law. You see: marriage is a necessary way in which the church brings the Gospel to Culture – and in this case, the Gospel is actually the solution to culture.
This is why our argument for marriage, our apologetic for this union, is not merely an evolutionary argument which says that because there are two sexes, marriage is for two sexes only. Our argument rests not on the brute fact that men and women exist and seem to have the equivalent of matching Lego parts, but on the matter that God has actually said something about this.
This is why Jesus’ appeal, “have you not read,” is so shocking, so offensive: it is not merely that God has made things a certain way, but that he has given us a very extensive exposition of the union. While the first description of this is in Genesis, which is where Jesus points the Pharisees, the Old Testament apex of the image is in Hosea – where a man takes a wife not only for himself, but for the purpose of redeeming God’s people. And in that marriage, the question of adultery is utterly unquestionable: Hosea has married an adulteress. She is utterly beneath him. In fact, she leaves him for her former life. But God says something else here: love in marriage is a picture of God’s love for those who abandon him, and cheat on him for other means of satisfaction.
This is the point: God says it. That is: he makes it clear with words that this is what he means by it. Jesus sums it up briefly in his response to the Pharisees, but that question of “one flesh” comes up again as Paul instructs the church in Ephesus:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, … that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
And to the wives he said:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Now let me ask you: how can this be translated into a Law when it is in fact utterly the woof and weave of the Gospel? It cannot be translated into Law. Trying to do so makes it something which human people cannot do. You cannot legislate the humility this takes. You cannot legislate the priorities this requires. You cannot legislate the profound intimacy this creates. You cannot legislate the love at the very heart of this relationship which God wrote into the very creation of our kind.
Listen to me now as I close up:
The church needs marriage because it is a necessary part of God’s order in creation.
You know: society knows it needs this because this is how human kind not only carries on but flourishes. Marriage externally shows itself to be a good thing even when considered in the most superficial and materialistic ways.
But there is something the church knows which is not disclosed in mere creation. It is only disclosed by God’s Special revelation, and specifically and particularly in marriage. If we overlook that, or find that to be somehow second-rate in favor of other means, we will have made a Gospel fail – we will have given up something God made for the purpose of demonstrating His plan for all things.
If we think we can preach the Gospel and not use this example to preach it for reals, we’re kidding ourselves about how we understand what God is doing in and through the Gospel.
The church needs marriage because broken people need to be sanctified and to learn the meaning of sacrifice and love.
This is certainly not the least reason – this is the “for reals” of the Gospel. Look: nobody ever married a perfect person. My wife certainly didn’t – I confess it. But think about this, as told by Tim Keller in a recent RELEVANT Magazine essay:
The reason that marriage is so painful and yet wonderful is because it is a reflection of the Gospel, which is painful and wonderful at once. The Gospel is—we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe, and at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.
The hard times of marriage drive us to experience more of this transforming love of God. But a good marriage will also be a place where we experience more of this kind of transforming love at a human level.
The church needs marriage to fully and rightly demonstrate the Gospel to society
I mentioned this right at the beginning of the talk: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” This is what the church needs to demonstrate to Society, and society needs the example because it frankly cannot come from anywhere else, The message of the Gospel can only come from the church because we are the only ones entrusted with it, and we must deliver it through Gospel perfect example of marriage.
Is marriage the only way we send this message? Absolutely not. But consider the question we are asking today: what do we do about sexual confusion? What do we do about our society where the norm is quickly becoming illegitimacy and an knee-jerk retreat to divorce when things get hard? What do we do to show people what virtue is rather than beat them down over their failings when ours are frankly no less visible or obvious?
If our concern is whether or not our culture understands the right roles of men and women under God’s design and authority, the solution to the culture is the Gospel – as wrapped up in the design of marriage. Missing this, and setting our hope on the transforming power of the Law rather than on the work of Christ in the message of the Gospel, is never going to achieve what we intend to achieve.
If the church was serious about this kind of love – which is Christ’s kind of love, first and foremost demonstrated on the Cross for a specific bride in order to make her holy and spotless before God – it wouldn’t abide a social Gospel of nondescript good will or idiotic exhortations about “your best life now”. Listen: often in marriage, you are not on the receiving end of good things but are in fact in the middle of hard doings. And if you expect that your marriage should be about satisfying you instead of sanctifying someone else through sacrifice, you will want to end your marriage in short order – kids and social appearances out the window. And let’s be honest: since divorce in the church looks like divorce in the world – that is, we do it for all the same reasons – I suspect we think of “marriage” in the same way the world does. So when the world simply wants to make the law look like what we are actually practicing, we have to look in the mirror and admit to ourselves that we are to blame for what the world thinks of marriage.
There’s one last thing I want to tell you, which is critical to taking action if we understand that we will teach the world what marriage out to be. Paul said it to Timothy: “All who seek to lead a Godly life will be persecuted.” We should expect that if we are committed to marriage, it will be hard work. It will be hard to be a man who is literally giving up his life for the sake of his wife, for the sake of her nurturing and care. It will be hard to be a woman who looks to her husband as the one who will do anything, no matter what the consequences, to care for her as if she was his own body. But the benefit for you, for your marriage and family, for your church, and for society, is wrapped up by God in the very order of things. Have you not read: he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.'
If you can hear Him say that today, don’t harden your hearts against it. Trust him that he did what is good for you, and believe it.
My thanks for your time today, and may God richly bless you.
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