Reflections on Marriage: Part 1

Having been recently married myself I am now basically an expert on marriage. Well maybe that's not true but I still have some thoughts about protecting the value of marriage in this country and as a Christian.

With the recent election much has been made over the issue of Same-Sex Marriage. Is it right? Do we as a culture still value traditional marriage? Does keeping marriage as one man and one woman deny rights to people? And the answers to these questions are as varried as the people who hold them. And the outlash against those of us who feel strongly about marriage and its value is outrageous, and I agree we should stand in support of those who fight for truth. But I have a different approach. The sanctity of marriage does not see its greatest threat in the issue of gay marriage but rather in far more destructive adversaries. Divorce and infidelity

In a day and age when it is assumed that your first marriage will fail, pre-numptual agreements, and when it is not uncommon to have had two or three spouses before you are in a long term marriage, or for one or both parties to have had an extramarital affair, two people of the same sex wanting to get married is the least of our worries. The undermining of marriage started long before the culture started to fight for gay marriage. I think kids growing up thinking there is nothing wrong in making and breaking a covenant with a person as easily as we make decisions about what to wear is a far greater danger to our way of life than growing up with the question of marrying a boy or a girl. On top of this, those of us who are Christians are notorious for picking on certain pet sins yet completely unwilling to look in the mirror and notice our own short commings. Just this past sunday a prominant church in Dallas was presented with a sermon on why it is not okay to be gay. Now unless I missed something and the congregation of this church has an underground homosexual population what is the purpose of preaching that message? In fact a far better sin to preach against is greed and glutony. But we always like to look out when dealing with sin.

Now as a way of thinking about a solution to this problem of divorce and a lock of sanctity in marriage in our culture and in our churches I want to take a look at the way in which Christ dealt with people his culture. I believe there are lessons to be learned and demands made on our lives that we MUST follow. But that is to come.