With the expected passage of the homosexual "marriage" bill new challenges and opportunities appear before us. One challenge and opportunity will be for the Christian community to become more self-conscious and self-actualised. It is a challenge and opportunity we hope the Christian community and Christian churches accept with joy.
The world of Unbelief has its view of marriage--which is that in the final analysis, "marriage" is a meaningless construct. It is a wilful arrangement that exists if one or two (or more) people will it to be so. But the concept is thus inflated to where marriage has no meaning any longer. What is marriage in the Brave New World? Nothing really. If a man and his cat believe themselves to be married, so be it. Who in the world of Unbelief could reject it, in principle or conscientiously. Imagine the exchange between the prudish self-righteous, priggish Unbeliever and the degenerate who wishes to live in a relationship of bestiality. The exchange would run something like this:
Prudish Unbeliever: "Marriage is a relationship and arrangement that is restricted to humans. Only human beings can be married."
Degenerate: "Says who? I have rights. I have a special loving relationship with my cat--far more faithful than any relationship with another human being. Why can't my special relationship be recognised as a marriage? It's just prejudice to deny my love, my wishes--and the rights of my cat."
The point is that the Prudish Unbeliever has no grounds, principles, arguments, or rationale to defend his position. Long ago the Prudish Unbeliever adopted amorality as his ethical compass. So he cannot resist the degenerate. After all the cat is willing. No authority can be appealed to. The only recourse is to a majority vote in the parliament.
The above exchange may be extreme (at present); the implications may take a couple of generations to work through to a "legalisation" of bestiality, or polygamy, or polandry, or pederasty--but eventually they will. The upshot is that marriage as an institution is now meaningless, dead, and buried in the eyes of Unbelief. All that remains is personal taste, on the one hand, and what society priggishly finds unacceptable for the moment, on the other.
The Christian, however, is different. His calling, loyalty, and oaths are to the Living God. The Church is the society of the redeemed, and thinks alike on these matters. The Church is the Bride of Christ; it is the society of those whose calling, loyalty, and oaths are to the Living God. Therefore, the Church and Christians will want to maintain strictly the biblical rules, law, privileges, benefits, power, influence, and joys of biblical marriage--complete with oaths, vows, and requirements of lifelong fidelity.
To do this properly and officially churches will need to set up their own marriage registries, certificates of marriage, licenses to marry and so forth. Churches will need to maintain not only the biblical forms, but the biblical oaths and language that exclusively belong to biblical marriage. We will need to speak of "Christian marriage" in contrast to Unbelieving marriage. The two are now radically different in principle. Our language needs to make this clear. As the Church does so, it will continue to offer a powerful testimony to the world of the glory and goodness of the Saviour and of His redeeming work.
We see how necessary and pressing and what a wonderful opportunity this will present to witness to the world as we "come out from among them and be separate" as state (Unbelieving) marriage licenses, contracts and so forth are altered to accommodate homosexual "marriage". This, from the NZ Herald:
The words "bride" and "bridegroom" will disappear from official marriage forms if Parliament votes, as expected, on Wednesday to legalise same-sex marriages. A departmental briefing paper to the select committee that considered the bill said marriage forms would have to be changed if it passed. "This includes, for example, changing the headings on the notice-of-intended-marriage form to allow for parties of the same sex (i.e. removing headings of bride and bridegroom)," the paper said.Churches now have the opportunity and the need to develop their own marriage licenses and their own marriage certificates. They will need to maintain their own marriage registers. Smart churches and Christian groups will develop national databases of Christian births, deaths, and marriages.
The bill would also replace the words "husband" and "wife" in 14 other acts with gender-neutral terms including "spouse", "married couple" and "any two people (of any sex) who are married". Internal Affairs spokesman Michael Mead said the department was waiting "for the outcome of the legislative process" before deciding on revised wording for the forms. Canada's marriage application form uses the terms "applicant" and "joint applicant".
As for Christians participating in the state register of marriages, why bother? The state's concept of marriage and the laws reflecting that concept are become so inclusive as to be of no significance or meaning. So why bother getting married in the form that the state requires? The wider social implications are virtually negligible now anyway. Passports? Names? Welfare? Employment? Taxation? Inheritance? Long ago these societal constructs have accommodated unmarried people, common law marriages, and serial monogamists: they have removed any particular privileges that historically belonged to the institution of Christian marriage.
For two decades now it has been "camp" in business circles to speak of "partners" when describing relationships between two adults, rather than husband, wife, or spouse. Invitations to social activities or functions gradually changed to read, "Mr Bill Smith and partner" or "Ms Alice Jones and partner". This small shift reflected a watershed of change in the institution of marriage itself in our culture.
We Christians will want to demur: we will need to become more particular in our language and conventions. We need to speak once again, deliberately and carefully, of "husband", "wife", "spouse", and "our children" or "my child" in our public discourse and social conventions. Whilst the circumstances that produced it are sad, the trainwreck of current marriage Unbelief has spawned provides a wonderful opportunity to live and testify to our Lord and His Word about marriage.
This testimony will be inevitably potent because men and women are still made in God's image and part of that image leads to a general yearning to be in a marriage--just as God created us to be from the beginning. As the darkness gathers, the light of the City of God upon the hill will shine more brightly.
2 comments:
This is an excellent post and so true. In response to this and an email I received from Family First's Bob McCoskrie, and how NZ politicians had committed an act of cultural vandalism, I replied to that email with the following which I think is relevant to this post.
I agree with you (Bob)that marriage is now a meaningless concept. But only so far as the State is concerned. What the State now views as marriage is not a marriage at all; never will be in so far as marriage is God given. As a God given, God defined relationship between a man and a woman the State can never take that away.
What the supporters of this bill have failed to see is their own huge self deception. They think they now have marriage for same sex partners. But no such thing exists. They have a State sanctioned same sex union but so what? - it's still not marriage as ordained by God.
Even if such a union were to be sanctioned by some churches it wouldn't make it marriage on God's terms. The Church can also be in error and outside the will of God. Sadly, not all that the Church does is necessarily of God. That being the case, a Church sanctioned same sex union is no different from a State sanctioned one: it is not marriage. The consequences for the Church however are far different than the State; for those of us in the Church have a responsibility to God that the State does not.
If one accepts the above then marriage is not defined by culture or what is perceived as natural. Those are relative terms open to interpretation and change based on societies' ever changing idea of what is natural and culturally obvious. So, the politicians have not "reject(ed) the obvious cultural and natural character of marriage" that's a relative definition based on ones' own values. That being so, people are then free to pick and choose their definitions, which is precisely what they have done.
In doing so what the politicians have done is reject the Biblical view of marriage. Why would we expect those, who don't know Christ as their Lord and saviour, to hold to a Biblical world view of marriage? Let those in the Church uphold that, for that's our task: to be salt and light in this world and to call people out of their deception and into truth.
Without realising it the politicians have strengthened the separation of Church and State and that can only be good for the churches mission in today's world.
As a foster parent of two children, and one who has cared for six children in CYF care, I agree entirely that the status of the care & protection of children, who are not borne to those in marriage relationships has been dangerously reduced. Especially for those that come into the care of the state. They are very definitely seen, and increasingly so, as an adult right, like property, and not as a gift of God as a Christian would with their Biblical world view.
I also agree with you that this is not about equality if that is defined as sameness. We must recognise differences and where there is strength through our being able to complement one another in relationships by offering different things. Where we are all the same is in the eyes of God: for there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, we are all one in Christ Jesus Galatians 3:28. But this only relates to our relationship with Christ in regards to salvation. Elsewhere in scripture there is plenty of distinction between various groupings of people: husbands and wives, elders, slaves and masters, Jews and Gentiles, parents and children.
Thanks, Blair. Appreciate your sharing this with us.
JT
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