Marriage is a social institution

“What right do members of society have to enforce a particular view of marriage on other members of society?” This is one of the essential questions raised by Nate Dellinger in this thoughtful article. I’m going to write a post shortly to the gay community, apologizing for any miscommunicated hate. I don’t hate them, I love them with Christ’s love (or at least aspire to). However, in this post I will show that the thoughtful gay-community-loving Christian can still and should still simultaneously disagree with their being married under the laws of our country. If that’s impossible, tell me how after you’ve followed this train of thought:

The issue is the definition of marriage.

The role of government is to uphold the individual rights of citizens. If some members of society say, “Only we get cookies,” the Bill of Rights says, “No, we all share the cookies.” The homosexual community appeals to the government that they are being treated unfairly, and their right of equality is being violated. However, the homosexual marriage debate is not ultimately about rights—it is about the definition of marriage. Here’s why: if we assume that “marriage” is something that only characterizes the union of a man and a woman, then two men do not have the right of marriage, so no right is being withheld from them. However, if marriage happens between any two consenting adults, then I would be the first to say that their rights are being deprived. Thus the debate is one of definitions, not of rights, because our definitions define our rights.

At this point, Nate and many of my fellow Christians affirm that the Biblical God exists and that marriage is truly only the union between man and woman. However, they ask, “What right does the government have to enforce this view on others?” By way of clarification, the government is not the real issue, per se. The law of the land has neither authority nor ability to affect society’s presuppositions; it simply reflects them. Our democratic government was ingeniously designed to resist a “mind of its own”, an independent will—rather, it is just the mouth of the people to govern themselves. The U.S. government simply formalizes and protects the “marriage” that society recognizes. Therefore, the question quickly becomes “What right do members of society have to enforce a particular view of marriage on other members of society?” My answer is that members of society have not only the right, but the responsibility, to respectfully yet wholeheartedly advocate for the definition of marriage that they espouse, because marriage is a social matter, and they are members of society. I have four points.

1. Marriage is a social institution.

This foundational part of humanity is not just between the two individuals. As newlyweds admit when they say “you marry the family,” marriages are not made in vacuums. Marriage is a social construct in which two members of a society not only grant privileged status to each other, but are granted a privileged and protected status by their community. The benefits include laws protecting tax benefits, property rights, adoption and childrearing rights, medical decisions, legal action against adultery, etc. And above all these, they receive the dignity of public approval and affirmation. Is a marriage that is not recognized by anyone but the couple really a marriage? If you answer yes, I bet you are appealing to some sort of “in the eyes of God” argument (which is unavailable to a pro-gay perspective); otherwise, what is different from simply living together out of wedlock? There is a significant part of the essence of marriage that is intertwined with, defined by, and protected by the larger context of people surrounding that marriage, including you, me, and that guy over there.

It is these social facets of marriage that the gay community is asking for. Of course no one has the right to interfere with two people’s relationship, but they gay community is not asking to be allowed to have a relationship (they already have that)—they are asking for equal treatment in the public sphere, equal adoption laws, equal tax privileges, the dignity of society’s approval. All of those things are precisely the parts of marriage that have to do with society.

Nate compares withholding marriage from some individuals to making laws forbidding people to have extramarital sex, get drunk, etc., but that’s not the right comparison. The comparison would be granting tax breaks or special rights to people because they have had sex, or because they have gotten drunk a lot. I don’t believe we have such laws. It’s one thing to avoid taking legal action toward a potentially destructive private behavior; it’s another thing to recognize such a behavior as an institution which society honors with privileges and rights.

2. Marriage is human, not just Christian.

Nate draws a line between several of the Ten Commandments that seem to be a part of natural law (“You shall not kill” etc.) and those which seem to be only for Israel, therefore not necessarily for America (“You shall have no other gods before me”). He says that if we are not willing to force the Mosaic law onto our citizens, neither should we be willing to force a definition of marriage on them. However, how we treat marriage and how we treat the laws of the Old Testament are two different things.

Why? Marriage was created not under the Mosaic covenant, but under the perfect natural order of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1-3). There are three things that God gives man before his Fall: life, language and marriage. Marriage is profoundly linked to what it means to be human. Marriage should be treated differently from later moral covenants because it, unlike them, has applied to all of us since the beginning. (Most Bible scholars release New Covenant believers from the laws of the Mosaic covenant anyway.) Romans 1 and Matthew 19 further support the point that the Bible regards marriage as a part of the God-created natural order.

If one doesn’t accept the Bible as authority, we can still tell from a brief glance at history that marriage is a core part of being human. Virtually every society, civilization, and people group that has ever existed has practiced marriage. Granted, there are some varying details, such as polygamy, but it’s clear that marriages are the core building blocks of human culture, both biologically (we all came from a man and a woman’s union) and culturally (we are all profoundly influenced by the home environment in which we were raised). Marriage is not a convention, it is a pervasive facet of humanity. Can you show me any culture that doesn’t have some form of marriage? (Odd short-lived commune experiments do not count.)

3. Society inevitably holds some definition of marriage.

Since marriage is social institution, society inevitably does enforce a view of it. Men cannot marry trees. Take a game of baseball for example: say the umpire yells “Strike!” on a high ball and the batter asks him, “Why did you give me a strike, Ump? It was too high.” The umpire replies, “Oh, I don’t look at whether the ball is inside the strike zone, I just shout out calls.” Is he really umpiring? Neither can society declare something to be a marriage without having some view of what that means. The question, therefore, is not “Does society have the right to enforce a view of marriage?” but “Since society by definition enforces a view of marriage, is this society enforcing a view of marriage in line with its true definition or not?” Is the cultural umpire of the United States calling marriage pitches accurately?

4 .We are (part of) society.

There is no neutral gear here—some set of standards will guide our country. We have the privilege and duty as members of society to take part in directing our course. The most beautiful truth of our free country is that, as citizen, I have a right and responsibility to speak up about what I think marriage should be. Society is the sum of its members. Society is not “them,” it’s “us.” We the people! Each person must contribute his/her voice and vote to shape the nation as he/she thinks it ought to be. Collectively, our voices become the will of the people. This is the beauty of America, the freedom that has been fought for since the Magna Carta. This means that gay rights activists are justified in calling all of us to the definition of marriage they think our society should have, and the same is true for heterosexual marriage activists.

There you have it. The train of thought in summary: The right for gays to marry is about the definition of marriage. The definition of marriage is the business of every member of society, because marriage is a social convention common to all humans. Society must have some definition of marriage because marriage is upheld and, in a sense, created by society’s consent. The definition that society has for marriage is the sum of the views of its members. And society’s members include you and me. Therefore, what right do we have to publicly fight for the definitions underlying the foundation of our society? I ask instead, what right do we have not to?

Bigger questions

A Response to Lauren and Nate on Abortion and Gay Marriage

I spent the last weekend wrestling with some very good comments I received by Lauren, Nate and others from my Open Letter to Christians Concerning the Presidential Election. I am grateful to them for the thoughtful responses that made me really think twice about things. I offer the following response in hopes that it will be as helpful/challenging/insightful as their thoughts were to me. If you prefer, here is a PDF form of the article:

On Abortion

My friend Lauren says, “Economic stability, especially for the lower and middle class, is what’s going to reduce abortions.” She says that fewer abortions happen by “reducing unwanted pregnancies, and unwanted pregnancies are reduced by providing women and girls with educational [sex ed] and economic opportunities.” This is true, but I think it is a red herring, not the real issue.

I totally agree that sex ed can help reduce unwanted pregnancies. No cultural event short of the Second Coming will totally halt illicit sex, so I am in favor of teaching safe sex to the young and undereducated. That is, providing that real alternatives to sexually active lifestyles are presented, and the dangers of sexual activity are discussed. (I don’t think that sexual activity should be merely assumed, but presented as a choice.) Yet, however well sex ed may be taught, some unwanted pregnancies will persist. The question is, what to do with these?

As for economic stability, yes, poor socioeconomic conditions increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies. However, I think it impossible to argue that people who are economically stable and well educated will not have any unwanted pregnancies, and therefore will not want to get abortions. Rich people sometimes want to get abortions too. What do we do with these cases?

So we agree that it is good to work to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. But the real sticky question is, what do you do with those pregnancies that are still unwanted?

Before answering this, let me take down a pair of straw men. Lauren defended that pro-choice people don’t “support abortion”—they think there should be less abortions. I never meant to communicate otherwise. I don’t think that pro-choice people are happy when babies die—they simply see the woman’s choice as more important. And on the other hand, some people assume that pro-life people don’t care about the women who get abortions. I confess that I, for one, usually don’t show enough gentleness toward the difficult, sometimes harrowing personal situations surrounding abortion decisions. I admit that I need to do more to help them and show that I care. However, the pro-life position does care about the women; it’s just that they see the baby’s life as more important.

So the right course of action in those pregnancies that are unwanted depends on which is more valuable: the woman’s choice or the life of the baby? This question in turn depends on whether it is really a baby, a person—or simply a fetus, a nonperson. The issue of abortion thus depends on how we define personhood, which follows from the worldview that we are looking through.

From a humanist or materialist worldview, a human being becomes a person when it reaches some point of self-awareness or sentience, or when it is able to feel a certain amount of pain, or by some other subjective standard determined by a judge or by popular vote. So no one can say exactly when a fetus becomes a person. The definition is wishy-washy. (I once had a friend who thought that infanticide was permissible until around age two.) A “possible-person” or a “pre-person” has less rights than a full person, so, under a materialist view, the adult mother’s right to choose naturally trumps the rights of the “baby” prior to a certain point. A materialist has to support the right of the woman to choose.

From a Christian worldview, a human being is a person from the moment of conception. In fact, it is really a person before conception (but I suppose it would be difficult to kill someone prior to their conception). Consider the following scriptures.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13-19)

God gives identity to human beings even before they come into physical existence, and it is he who forms them in the womb. If we believe this, then the thing we abort is a person whom God has ordained and known and named and begun himself to shape. Thus human life takes on sacredness. That child is God’s as much as it is the woman’s. It is more than a person; it is a son or daughter of God. Therefore, it seems to me, the Bible allows no other position than that fetuses in the womb are persons, and are thus entitled to the right of life. If the unborn are entitled to the right of life, yet unable to defend their lives themselves, then it is the responsibility of our government to make laws protecting that right.

Lauren says that Roe v. Wade did not increase the number of abortions—it just gave safer options to women who would have gone to drastic measures anyway. She mentions some uncited research. I’m curious about the degree of conclusiveness that this research can reach as to whether legalizing abortion did not in any way increase the number of abortions. As she says, abortions were not documented before, so how can we know for sure? Someone close to me has had two abortions. She told me recently, “I probably wouldn’t have had those abortions if they were illegal. I was scared, but I don’t think I would have gone looking for ways to do it. You don’t think through things like that when you’re pregnant, you’re just scared.” I’ll admit that, possibly, a very significant number of people found ways to have abortions when they were illegal, but I question whether legality doesn’t have a significant curbing effect for many women. And if that curbing effect is all the law can produce, it is nonetheless worth making the law.

Ultimately, I think the solution to abortion is both to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and also to advocate for the lives of the most defenseless children in our society. This is about helping mothers and saving their babies. It’s an issue of social justice as important as any—they are “invisible children” too.

On Gay Marriage

The other hot topic about which I received excellent replies is the legalization of homosexual marriage. Lauren makes the point that opposing gay marriage communicates hatred to gays. Both Lauren and Nate argue that, as far as the government is concerned, marriage is merely a social contract, and the law should be blind to any moral or religious dimensions of marriage. I will respond to these two points below.

1. Opposing gay marriage communicates hatred

Lauren says that vocalizing a political stance in opposition to gay marriage makes the gay community feel like Christians hate them. Saying that gay marriage is wrong “alienates people when I’m supposed to love them….It automatically throws up barriers to loving and serving a community that is in desperate need of love and truth.”

First, I want to admit that I’m not very good at loving the gay community. Neither are most evangelicals (n.b. I apply the label to myself with certain reservations). I want to change that. Making some of my first gay friends at GMU during the last two years has been very enlightening. I totally agree that Christians need to stop sending the vibe that homosexuals are heinous, beyond-redemption perverts who are single-handedly responsible for the moral demise of our country. We need to develop bridges of communication and friendship. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors.

But if gays are indeed a community “in desperate need of love and truth,” as Lauren says, then loving them while tip-toeing around the truth they desperately need is no love at all. The gospel first empathizes and identifies with your brokenness until you can admit “I have a problem.” Then it says, “Jesus is the answer to your problem.” This is the gospel for every one of us guys who has had a problem with porn, and every couple who is living together, so a gay couple is not exempt. When Jesus hung out with tax collectors, he explained it by saying, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but a sick.” I feel that the homosexual political agenda (maybe not all gays themselves) is asking me to agree that “nothing is wrong.” Well, nothing is more wrong with you than with me, but that is still a lot of wrong. If I hold the Christian worldview, it is the most hateful thing I can do to smile and nod when gays say that they’re “born this way and they don’t need to change.” It is the most loving thing I can do to embody the tension between truth and love that exists in the gospel. Living this tension will probably make enemies with many conservatives, and it won’t be enough for gays who want exoneration from any moral standard other than “being true to their hearts.” But I feel like that is the line God has called his people to walk in our culture today.

2. The government has no right to define marriage

The second thrust of Lauren’s argument about gay marriage is that the government should not be concerned with any sanctity of marriage. “Marriage” to the government is simply a social contract that “ensures joint property rights, right to decide medical care issues, etc.” Any so-called sanctity is only within the walls of the church. (I presume she means like how the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches “recognize” marriages.) This connects with Nate’s point that the purview of the government is to interfere with someone’s freedom only if it violates someone else’s. The U.S. is not Israel, he observes. It is not built to enforce Christian mores, but to tolerate the maximum number of mores. Lauren and Nate essentially agree that the government should be blind to all but the economic and social privileges due to any two people who are willing to enter into a contract of life cooperation.

This is the point I almost agreed with. I agreed with it for most of the weekend; I kept thinking about it while helping to paint my parents’ house. I annoyed my wife by playing devil’s advocate with both positions back and forth. Our government was built on the right of every man to the “pursuit of happiness”. What right does it have to define what may or may not make him happy? Isn’t that counter to the heart of the American experiment? As Nate implied when he referred to the “red scare,” if people want to be communists, they are allowed. Likewise, if people want to be gay, they are entitled to all the rights otherwise due to them by the government—including the privileges conveyed by marriage laws.

This reasoning, however, makes an assumption. It assumes that the authority exercised by the civil government is derived solely from the consent of the citizens, and that there is no greater authority than those citizens themselves. Is there a greater authority?

The Declaration of Independence says that authority of the government is derived from the rights that “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle” to man. It holds the these truths to be self-evident: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” The authority that our government exercises is derived from the combination of the “consent of the governed” and the Laws of Nature. Without the laws of nature, I suppose we would have a simple majority rule—whatever the majority of people voted on at any one time, would be right. An appeal to individual rights in the Natural Law gives minorities a voice, protects the marginalized and powerless, and forms the foundation of social justice. Crucially, such the Natural Law cannot be divided from a Lawmaker, God, since no rule exists without an authority enforcing it with proper jurisdiction.

Furthermore, if the standards of the Creator were revealed to us in ways other than Natural Law, then these revelations too would hold sway, just as the Natural Law does. Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845), then Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, captures this perfectly:

“the Law of Nature…lies at the foundation of all others laws, and constitutes the first step in the science of jurisprudence…” but, “the law of nature has a higher sanction, as it stands supported and illustrated by revelation. Christianity, while with many minds it acquires authority from its coincidences with the law of nature, as deduced from reason, has added strength and dignity to the latter by its positive declarations….Thus Christianity becomes, not merely an auxiliary, but a guide to the law of nature, establishing its conclusions, removing its doubts, and elevating its precepts. (A Discourse Pronounced Upon the Inauguration of the Author)

Therefore, if government is built on the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of Nature descend from God, the Lawmaker, and if Christianity is the revelation of God, then the principles of Christianity ought to inform and constrain the principles of civil law.

If we accept that God is the ultimate sovereign, then we must believe that governmental strata that steward his authority must be structured to acknowledge the sovereignty of God.

It just so happens that the authority to which government answers has defined marriage. God has painted a pretty clear picture in his word about homosexuality and marriage. He calls homosexuality wrong and unnatural, while urging that marriage be kept holy (1 Corinthians 6:9, Jude 1:5-6, Romans 1:24-27, Leviticus 18:22, etc.). I won’t get into this in detail because I don’t think we disagree about what the Bible says on this topic.

If homosexual marriage thus violates Divine Law, which informs the Natural Law, and if right civil statutes derive their authority by conformance to the Natural Law, then civil homosexual marriage also violates right civil statues. It is the obligation of good citizens who have a Christian worldview to vote for representatives who will create right civil statues that adhere to the Divine law.

What is ultimate, democracy or deity? We are faced in our culture with the tacit elimination of God’s authority in the public sphere. The humanist believes that people’s freedom is limited by nothing but their desires. The Christian believes that people’s freedom is limited by God’s laws. And we gladly fight to keep the knee of our country knelt before God. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

Bringing Change

The questions of abortion and gay marriage summon deeper questions. Who defines personhood? Who has sovereignty over man? These questions lead us down to the bedrock of worldviews. Do we believe that God exists? Do we believe all of His implications, in all the spheres of life? Are we willing to stand up for these beliefs?

I will end by discussing one of Nate’s points. He says that making laws against a certain immoral practice will not stop the practice from happening. Legislation will not bring about change. He says, “I don’t think we can charge people with being moral when they don’t understand the real reason why it’s needed. Christ produces morality and fruit, and not vice-versa.” I admit that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the ultimate change in hearts, but this is not a reason to abdicate our seat at the cultural roundtable. In fact, quite the opposite. We are Christ’s representatives. If he is to get into people’s hearts, it will be through us—through our speaking the truth in love. (And in love is crucial.) We need to be like Christ, unswerving in his condemnation of sin in the Jewish culture, yet recklessly compassionate in his dealings with the broken, sinful Jews. As I said regarding abortion, this is the tension we are called to walk as believers. We need to fearlessly advocate toward a culture that honors and obeys God, while loving and being a part of a culture that isn’t there yet. We may never see direct fruit of our efforts, but by God’s grace, they will not be in vain.

“Love is love, and family is family”

Last night I saw a TV preview for a new show by the producers of Glee. The show, The New Normal, features a grandmother, mother and daughter, and a gay couple. The mother needs money to support her daughter’s future, and the men, who want a family of their own, are paying to have her be their surrogate. The grandmother seems more morally traditional and has problems with the gay couple, which are ridiculed as outdated and “racist” by a woman in the preview. One pivotal line of the preview is when the gay men ask the mother if she’s really okay with having the baby for them. She responds with a smile, “Love is love, and family is family.”

Let’s unpack that statement. It’s a tautology, a statement that is circular in reasoning and is thus always true under any possible circumstances. Often, tautologies are simply meaningless. For example, Polonious’ line in Hamlet, “Mad call I it; for, to define true madness, What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?” Another fun example is the following limerick:

There once was a fellow from Perth
Who was born on the day of his birth.
He got married, they say,
On his wife’s wedding day,
And he died when he quitted the earth.

Although tautologies are often quite uninformative, they can be used to imply another meaning quite effectively. For example, “I’ll get there when I get there,” is used to challenge someone who is hurrying the speaker to arrive somewhere faster. “It is what it is” is used to calm someone who is unhappy with the way things are going. And “I am who I am” communicates that I cannot change, usually when a change in my behavior has been suggested. Therefore, tautology can be a rhetorical device that defuses expectations or outside influences on the meaning of a phrase by defining the phrase with itself.

Now let’s go back to the statement “Love is love” for a moment. What the mother was saying to the gay man is, “I am okay with your homosexual love, because no outside influences have the right to impose their definitions or expectations on what you have with your husband, and belie its being called love. Nothing defines love except love itself.”

Nothing defines love except love. It is self-existent. Is that true? For those that espouse belief in YHWH, the God of the Bible, it is not. Love is defined not as a self-existent phenomenon or experience, but by Him.

God is love. (1 John 4:8)

If God defines love, then what he says about it matters. Suffice it to say, for now, that God’s message throughout the Bible is pretty clear that love, in the romantic (eros) sense, is reserved for the protected santcum of marriage.

Which takes us to the second statement: “Family is family”. Is family as good as it can get in whatever form it may take? Is family a self-existent self-affirming bond that can happen between any people? In a sense of the word, yes, “family” simply means the people you are committed to in phileo love, who you do life with. I think of the 90’s sitcom Full House, where widowed father Danny Tanner enlists his brother-in-law and his best friend to help raise his three daughters. Close, unique family bonds of love existed in that house. But that’s not the sense of “family” that The New Normal means; the show is grasping for more ground with the word. It’s talking about a core family, the kind that blossoms crucially from marriage and eros love. In fact, I believe we could use “marriage” as a synonym for what they mean. The woman says to the gay man, in essence, “I am okay with your homosexual family (marriage), because no outside influences have the right to impose their definitions and expectations on the kind of relationship you have with your partner. Whenever two people decide to be family, they are lawfully family, because nothing defines family except family itself.”

Nothing defines family except the people in the family. “Two mutually consenting adults.” Is this true? Not if you believe in the God of the Bible. The family/marriage was instituted by God and defined by Him.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him… And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man… Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18-24)

When two people enter marriage, they enter a state designed and instituted by God. In the Garden of Eden, God designed woman especially for man. Indeed, God brought the woman to the man Himself. “Therefore a man shall leave…” means that the enduring human institution of marriage is based on this act of God in the Garden. God created family between a man and a woman, for special purposes, not only for compatibility and complementation, but also for reproduction (which cannot be naturally replicated by other adaptations of the family), and beyond even that, for the analogous manifestation of his love-relationship to his people, the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33). God Himself “joins together” what no man can separate (Matthew 19:4-9). God is intimately involved in this union; it does not just have to do with two willing partners.

So, are the ideals of love and family subject to any outside definition? We are faced with a choice: Either we submit our definitions of love and family to God, believing him to be the wellspring of wisdom, whose laws are for our good, or we submit God to our definitions of love and family, making love and family ultimate, making them good and right whenever the heart invokes them. “God [according to concept of him that is compatible with my interests] would never say something like that. He wants us all to be happy.”

What then will reign in our hearts with the self-evident force of tautology? For my part, I prefer to say with joy, “God is God, and his definitions are his definitions.”

Men and Marriage: responsibility

These are some notes I took from Mark Driscoll’s sermon Men and Marriage.

The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is of the church. This is not a topic for debate. We cannot sit around and vote and agree that we will, after all, allow husbands to be the heads of your families. The husband is the head. Is, not should be. Christ is the head of the church, and no God-fearing church votes on that. We get into trouble when we take what God states as fact and decide on its appropriateness or whether it should be the case.
Being the head does not mean being the boss. The two are extremely different.
As the head of my family, I am in a very significant way responsible for them. The essence of masculinity is responsibility. You can drive a truck and shoot guns and abuse your wife, and not be a man. You can drive a hybrid, and lose thumb wrestling challenges, much less cage fights, but love your wife and kids and take responsibility for them. That’s manhood.
Jesus modeled radical responsibility: he took responsibility for error that was not his fault. His bride (the Church) messed up, it was her fault, but he stepped up and took responsibility and paid the price for her. That’s manhood. I’d never thought of it that way. (And what a high calling for me!)
“Woman is the glory of man.” What does this scripture mean? It means that my wife is the reflection of my affection. As MW says, “Your wife will be what you make her.” The leadership of a man, if done right, has an immense ability to cultivate and “flourish” (Driscoll’s word) the spiritual and personal well-being of his wife. Equally, his lack of leadership has the ability to destroy it or let it atrophy by neglect.
The takeaway: I need to model spiritual leadership – praying for and with my family, calling them to follow me as I follow Christ. I need to be concerned about the well being of my wife, knowing that, although my family are their own responsibilities, they are also my responsibility, because I am the head of my family.

Can committed love be wrong?

Can committed love be wrong? Isn’t betrayal, or lack of commitment, or abuse that which makes any relationship bad? What’s wrong if consenting individuals both want something and stick with it? How can a single-minded, deed-seeded devotion to someone be a bad thing?

Levels of love
Love can be appropriate or inappropriate. For example, a man’s love for a woman is good, but if it causes him to neglect all of his other friendships, it is disproportionate. The good thing (love) can become a bad thing (obsession). Therefore, all of our loves must be properly ranked. I must love the most important persons in my life the most, and the less important, less. When a married couple begins to dote on their children so much that soccer games, school plays, and extracurriculars leave no time for romance or personal time, a love that ought to be subordinate (their care for their children) becomes insubordinate. Such dynamics often cause strained and/or broken marriages, which are ultimately destructive to the children anyway. Getting our loves out of order means both the over-elevated ones and the under-elevated ones are damaged.

God must be at the ultimate top of our love rankings. He wants to sit on the throne of our affections. All loves properly subordinated under our love for God become good things, and all loves that compete with or demote our absolute surrender to and pursuit of our First Love become bad loves. So, for any love, we must ask, “Do I love God more than this love, and is it submitted to my love for God?” If so, it is probably legitimate. If not, watch out. You might have an idol.

Furthermore, those loves that are most in danger of supplanting our love for God (being idols) are those that are the best natural loves. They fall high in the natural order of affections, and are thus easier to swap with the #1 spot. Among these include love for a spouse, love for one’s children, love of doing good works of ministry and service, and love and admiration for someone who is not a right candidate for that given level of love.

Love and obedience
How are we to love God? One way that we love God is to obey him. This concept is pervasive in scripture. One example is 1 John 5:3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” Obedience doesn’t mean that we slavishly obey, without genuine willingness — that would be outward obedience, but not inward, voluntary obedience. The love-producing obedience is the one that says, “I really want to do X, but I value you more, God, and I have reason to believe you don’t like X, so, for your sake, I’m not going to do it.” What that shows is that you value God more than X, which loves him. (I think, in a sense, all material things were created so we would have things over which to prefer God.) So, obedience is decisions to act against desire X, and according to the desire to please God. That’s self sacrifice. That’s real, meaty, hard-but-good love.

It is possible for a strong, natural, good love to collide with a commandment of God. The most powerful example of this, I think, is when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Literally kill him with a knife. “What? God, what are you thinking. That’s murder of a family member. That’s wrong.” We think that is wrong, of course, because the love for a child or wife is perhaps the highest love available on earth, and to desecrate it in such a heinous way rattles the moral senses. But there is one love that does still outrank this love. God must rein on the throne of our affections. God was testing Abraham, “Is your love for me more sacred and committed than even your love for your son?” Abraham passed the test, and God stayed his hand, providing a ram as the sacrifice instead. Therefore, since we love God by obeying his commands, and since the love of God must trump every other love, even the highest human love must surrender to divine command. Otherwise, we make an idol out of whomever we shunned God for, and our relationships both with that person and with God will become poisoned by a wrong ranking of loves.

Revelation
We must believe that the Bible actually contains divine revelation. It is not man-made wisdom, but God-made wisdom communicated to man. The Bible claims that about itself (2 Peter 1:16-20, 2 Timothy 3:16). If we challenge this, we must throw out all the happy teachings of Jesus too. If the document has been tampered with, let us be consistent. We cannot have our cake and eat it too; we cannot cherry-pick what we like and don’t like from a holy book because it “makes sense.” Holy books should not make complete sense, if they are really holy books. Advice columns make complete sense. So, I am assuming that what we have in the Bible is trustworthy enough to go to as a source for God’s communication to man, both blessings and curses, both promises and commands.

Now, having established the facts above about love, obedience and revelation, we are ready to look at the text of the Bible. Here are some verses that talk about homosexuality.

If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

Homosexuality shares very bad company in the passage. Parallel acts also described as “detestable” include adultery, incest and bestiality. Even in the New Testament, homosexuality shares very bad company.

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

…law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted. (1 Timothy 1:9-11)

Homosexuality is depicted as immoral. Some argue for a concept of the Bible in which the moral laws against homosexuality were constructed by some mysterious religious leaders (who usually The New Testament explains this in terms of a deviation from human nature (not, notably, from cultural mores).

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (Romans 1:24-27)

Homosexuality is here said to be the result of buying into lies, impure, dishonorable, unnatural, indecent, and erroneous. Geez. What should we do with this?

Sacrificial servanthood (the man’s role)

My last post discussed the concept of “respect” in man-woman relationships, as motivated by men’s heart-needs. Perhaps, to provide balance, it behooves me to mention the high duty of the man, which in some sense precedes or exceeds the duty of the woman. For that I will return to two points I made and unpack the masculine side of the coin.

Servanthood
First, I pointed out that greatness/leadership/influence is attained, in God’s economy, through servanthood. This is a great inversion of the world’s system, where might often makes right. In contrast, Christ “made himself nothing” before he was “exalted above every name” (Philippians 2:5-10). I used this principle to demonstrate that a woman living a lifestyle of service for her man is living an exceedingly noble, influential and “great” lifestyle in God’s eyes. However, the principle extends further to this:

Since men are supposed to be the chief leaders of their wives and families, they must therefore be the chief servants.

The remarkable inversion of this heavenly principle means that the call is stronger on the man than on the woman to place himself in an “under” position. He is to serve and care for his wife, valuing her welfare and happiness above his own. The woman and the man are in a dance where her servanthood is constantly mirrored and fueled by his servant leadership. This is captured in the language of 1 Peter 3:7, where men are called to “understand” and “honor” their wives. A man’s leadership must not be directed by his own preferences, to the disregard of the woman’s feelings, opinions and rights; rather, these must be his chief concern. I have on good feminine authority that it becomes a lot easier to submit to a man who is doing this right.

Initiating, like Christ
I discussed the need for both partners to give freely and without the demand for reciprocation. There are times where, empowered by the sacrificial love of God in Christ, we must be the first one to give up our “rights in this situation.” I suggest that, just as servanthood actually bears more on the man, so does this call to initiate. The reason is that, in a marriage, men have the role analogous to Christ Himself, and it was Christ who initiated love to mankind. Think for a moment about the dishonor and disgrace that Christ endured during his Passion. Contemplate the ultimate price the Father paid in severing relationship with his only begotten. Now consider how little we love him in return–not nearly as much as we ought. We are the adulterous bride of Ezekiel 16 and the Book of Hosea. Nevertheless, his relentless mercy in the face of an entire lack of reciprocation leads us to repentance.

And then, we are called to love our wives like that. What the heck.

So there is absolutely, absolutely no room in this healthy relationship model we are talking about for a man with the attitude that makes demands of his wife on the basis of her obligation to submit. Why? Because this is breaking the rule of initiation – a man with this attitude is forgetting that his wife’s submission is to be motivated by her receiving love and service from him. And if the situation is locked up (with insufficient care coming from him and insufficient respect coming from her), since he’s playing Christ, the tie goes to him. He has to start the process by relinquishing his right to have her submit in “this area” and proactively valuing her regardless.

This will demand all of a man’s courage and strength, but I believe men were given strength for the very purpose of making hard moves to protect and cherish their wives. If we have greater strength, then we have greater responsibility to get to the altar of self sacrifice before our wives.

The only kind of love worthy of submission
So, Christian men, let us love our wives with the ferocious devotion for their welfare, sincere desire to understand their hearts, high honor for their opinions, and above all, the willingness to serve them and step out in self-sacrifice. That kind of love alone deems us worthy of the trust and submission of women who are “heirs with us of the grace of life.”

A philosophy of marriage

“If two people love each other and are committed to each other, then why do they have to be formally married?

I am getting married. Why have I chosen to do this?

I would see no reason why my chosen path were better than a personal, heartfelt commitment, if I did not believe certain presuppositions, namely: (1) Marriage is a spiritual union over which God has agency and authority. (2) The church exercises this authority. (3) Marriage is also a function of the culture/community.

First, if marriage is nothing but a social contract between two consenting adults, then indeed God or the church has no right to meddle. But I think marriage is something more. Jesus’ teaching on marriage is centered around his discourse with the Pharisees, as recorded in Matthew 19.

And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” He answered, “Have you not read that 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’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Jesus presupposes here that when marriage happens, God fuses the two people together with a “divine welding device.” When two people are married, their commitment to each other is only one aspect of what happens. They do not only join themselves — God also joins them. There is a spiritual significance and sacredness to being married. It is not “being official” like two people dating.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for people who have consummated their love before being married. Have they already been “married in the eyes of God”, as some put it? I think this might be true. The Mosaic law is interesting: the remedy for a rape scandal was for the man to marry the girl. On an personal aspect, I have been told by people close to me that a little piece of one’s soul is left with every person he/she has been intimate with. In contrast, I suppose there can be no union sweeter than that of two virgins, who can give each other their whole and unadulterated affection. The point is simply this: God acts in marriage to bind together two souls, and because of this divine action, marriage is sacred.

“Why would they need to be married by the church?”

At this point in our philosophy, a monogamous yet not officially married couple would be perfectly fine. I am getting officially married by an ordained pastor (although not physically in my church). Why have I chosen this, not as optional but as essential?

The first premise is simply that, since marriage is sacred, I desire to receive God’s blessing. I can think of no better example than in Braveheart. After William Wallace has secretly married Murron and she has been killed by the English because of it, he approaches her father at her funeral and kneels, head low, before him. The man, who had never given blessing of the marriage, extends his hand, trembling. He almost withdraws it, but finally, with a release of spirit, places it on William’s head. What he gave William there was his blessing on the marriage, and with it his forgiveness for the tragedy. The bittersweetness we feel in that scene is derived from the value of paternal blessing and sanction of marriage–a sanction most important to receive from our heavenly father.

The answer to why the church has to sanction marriage is that the church has been instituted by God with the authority and responsibility to vicariously administer his divine blessing on marriage. I do not believe that God’s authority is in any way limited to the channel of the church, but his people are called the Body of Christ, and God has chosen to work in the world through us (both an honor and a weight). We are given the image of servants managing the assets of the master until his return. A young lad could not easily say that he was serving the master in his absence while evading and undermining the trusted servant whom the master had given charge. Therefore, acknowledging God’s preferred means of communicating his blessing, is essential for those seeking the blessing of God to seek the blessing of the church, unless they are in such a place where there is no church (as in certain Middle Eastern countries, for instance).

I will add a note of comparatively less importance, about why it is fitting to have family and friends at a wedding, or at least, as has been the traditional bottom-line, witnesses. Inasmuch as marriage is primarily an institution given by God, it is also a function of culture, community, and clan. The idea that, having risen to adulthood, two individuals are entirely independent of their relatives, is quite a western idea. Many cultures in the world think of everyone as connected; they see themselves not as individuals, but as inextricable representatives and members of their families and communities–and I think there is some truth to that. My fiancee has said, “You know, when we get married, you’ll be a Gorenflo [her mother’s side].” I have acquiesced. Try as you might, you marry a family, not just an individual. Especially in the wedding ceremony, there is a process of “leaving” as well as “cleaving,” and it seems sad to ignore the sacrifice of the parents in giving their child away to form another family unit, focusing only on the new family unit. I imagine I would want a better sense of closure if I never attended the wedding of my daughter–if I could never take her down the isle, look her man in the face with an eye of understanding and trust, and dance with her one final time. As much as a wedding is essentially about the bride and groom, it is not just about them. No couple is an island.

So that’s why I’m getting married the way I am, as far as I can think of it right now. I’d love dialog on this–comment or email me if you like.

Staying in love

I’ve listened to a great series of podcasts this week. From North Point Ministries’ Andy Stanley.

Some notes:

Love is a verb that you do, not a noun that you feel. If that’s true then “I don’t love her anymore” has a drastically different meaning!

I am supposed to model Jesus’ love to her. That means really considering/treating Beth as more important than me, even if she’s not necessarily objectively more important.

When I bump against Beth and bad “beads” tumble out, it may be partly because of her behavior, but it’s also because there were bad beads in me all along! There are two parts to a negative emotion: what she’s doing and what’s in me. She’s not producing them; she’s not responsible – she’s just eliciting the depravity of my heart. I need to understand what’s in me, the junk I’ve brought into the relationship.

“Above all else, guard your heart” – pay attention, ward off bad guys. Name the emotions I’m feeling. “I’m frustrated” doesn’t cut it. If I name a negative emotion it loses its power. Then, when appropriate, tell my spouse. “When you do this, it makes me feel like this.”

The proper response to someone sharing their emotions is “Thank you for telling me!” followed by [ …silence… ]. Do not retaliate with indignation. No one wants to make their loved one experience negative emotions.

The secret to a healthy marriage is not sharing realistic expectations of each other. In fact, there will always be gaps between our expectations and the reality of what Beth lives up to. The key is what we put in those gaps. We can believe the best or assume the worst. Believing the best says “Oh, they must be really tied up today”; assuming the worst says, “They don’t care about me, they never initiate communication.” People in healthy marriages have unrealistically good “illusions” of each other, they rank their spouse as being better in areas that that person himself/herself ranks lower. I must believe the best about Beth. That’s not irresponsible. Four words go together to communicate this point in 1 Corinthians 13:7: “love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things”