Proclaimer Blog
What is marriage?
That’s the title of a book I’m reading at the moment, written by three American academics (Girgis, Anderson and George, pub. by Encounter Books, subtitle: Man and Woman: A Defense). It’s my current ‘train book’ on my commute home. They defend the traditional view of marriage from an entirely secular viewpoint. Christians will therefore conclude that there is a lot more about marriage that can and should be said from Scripture. Nevertheless I’ve found it helpful. In particular it’s helped me get clearer on one particular question: exactly why is it that legislating for same-sex marriage will change marriage for everyone else? That point has been made by C4M and others, and I’ve felt myself agreeing with it without exactly being certain why. Maybe you have been ahead of me on this, but I couldn’t quite answer to my own satisfaction those who retorted: how does granting marriage to a few thousand gay couples in reality threaten what marriage is for the heterosexual majority?
The authors helped me on this by spelling out that legislation for same-sex marriage will likely lead in due course to the definition of marriage being settled by that which opposite-sex and same-sex marriages have in common. And that cannot amount to anything more than emotional union with the presumption of some (undefined) sexual activity. The key thing that this removes from both the legal and commonly assumed definitions from marriage is any remaining trace of the fundamental and organic relationship of marriage to children.
Here’s what this made me think about preaching and pastoring on marriage. I wonder if in the past I have focused my preaching and pastoring too much on marriage as ‘emotional union with sexual activity’ and too little on marriage as fundamentally and organically about children and their socialisation and (supremely) their upbringing in the faith? If that’s right then perhaps I was unwittingly influenced too much by our secular society’s undue focus, which has been growing over decades, on the ‘personal fulfilment/satisfaction’ aspects of marriage. The Lord can use even our society’s drifts into foolishness and sin to bring us new light on his good gifts and how to teach them in proper biblical proportion.