Category Archives: Marriage

Gender by design

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bride and groomYesterday, I mentioned some of the affirmations about marriage that I presented in a sermon on Sunday. I want to take a few days to unpack some of these ideas.

To begin the list, I decided to start with what Jesus began with when talking about marriage:

““Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’”

(Matthew 19:4)

Affirmation #1: God created mankind as male and female.

God created gender. He created two of them, male and female. That’s the basic building block of marriage: the intentionality of a two-gendered humanity.

We live in an age where that statement comes into question. Many would scoff at the idea of God creating anything. Others take a rather deistic approach, seeing that God created things a certain way, but our world has evolved beyond that. Many in the church today take a dualistic approach to human sexuality, seeing gender more as a barrier to be overcome than a part of divine design.

But if we’re going to speak of marriage as Jesus did, then it’s right for us to begin with this basic statement: God created males and females. Two sexes. On purpose. By design.

We aren’t male and female because evolution so dictated. Our chromosomes don’t differ from one another because of the random happenings of a mindless universe. We were made by God, made to be male, made to be female. That’s stated in the very first chapter of the Bible and reinforced by the Word Made Flesh when he was living among us.

Affirmation #1: God created mankind as male and female.

Photo by Rachel James

Ten Affirmations About Marriage

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weddingOur theme this fall in our bilingual group at church is “My Family, Part Of God’s Family.” On Sunday, I did something that I rarely do. The sermon wasn’t based around certain biblical texts; it was a series of declarations about my beliefs on marriage. Here are the ten things I mentioned:

  1. God created mankind as male and female. Gender is not an accident nor a product of evolution. It is divine design.
  2. God created marriage. This is not a human invention.
  3. Marriage is a spiritual act. God takes two people and makes them one. It’s much more than “a piece of paper.”
  4. Marriage is a covenant, with God as witness. This is much more serious than mere affirmations or promises. We take vows before the Lord. That can get lost amidst the flowers, fancy clothes, and wedding cake.
  5. Christian marriage and civil marriage are not the same. They often occur at the same time in this country, but they aren’t the same. That’s why the government doesn’t involve the church in divorces. Much of the political wrangling about marriage has to do with property rights, not spiritual realities. No judge can tell the church what is and what isn’t marriage.
  6. Living together without marriage is outside of God’s plan. Sexual relations should occur within a marriage or not at all.
  7. Gay marriage is not Christian marriage. Jesus spoke of marriage as being between a man and a woman. We have no right to change that definition.
  8. Failure to respect our marriage vows is an offense to God. We don’t just “cheat on our spouse.” We offend our maker.
  9. God hates divorce. God loves divorced people.
  10. Our church needs strong, healthy marriages. We must not be governed by mistakes we’ve made in the past. We must teach the truth to our generation and those to come.

I’ll talk some more about these in the days to come. What would you add to the list? What would you change?

God loves divorced people

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weddingThe church needs to send a resounding message to our communities: God loves divorced people.

That message needs to be accompanied by an equally strong message: God hates divorce.

It’s really hard to communicate either message without weakening the other. It’s a delicate balance, but one we have to find. We have to be able to tell people that have gone through a divorce that life has not ended, that God has not given up on them, that they are still valuable and important in our church communities.

At the same time, we need to let our young people know that divorce is an extreme measure, one to be taken only when all other avenues have been explored, all other remedies have proven insufficient.

So how do we do that? How do we denounce divorce without villanizing those who have suffered the trauma of divorce? How do we keep our children from considering divorce as an option without making divorced people feel like second class citizens?

Part of my concern about this comes from something that happened over 10 years ago. I was teaching the high school class at our church and asked them to think about what their lives might be like in 10 years. One very spiritual young man said, “Ten years? I’ll probably be married. I may even be divorced by then!” As I thought about it, I realized that his parents were divorced. One set of grandparents was divorced. He had at least one aunt and uncle that had divorced. To him, that was a natural part of life.

What do you suggest? What should our teaching be? How do we oppose divorce while supporting those who have been through it?

 

image courtesy morguefile.com

How we live out submission and leadership in our marriage

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weddingEvery congregation should have the right to work out their ways of living out the Christian faith. I firmly believe that. No one can come from Belgium and tell believers in Bolivia how to take the Lord’s Supper. Or in the case of what we’ve been discussing, how to put into practice the Bible’s teachings about men and women.

In the same way, I believe every marriage is different. Yet I think every marriage is strongest when the husband is making an effort to be the spiritual leader of his family.

So what does that look like in real life? I can only answer in our case. Carolina and I have been married for 25 years. Yesterday I was trying to analyze our decision-making process and checked with Carolina to see if I was remembering right. I asked her if she could remember a time when I put my foot down and decreed what the final decision was. She almost laughed and said no. We make our decisions together. I can’t imagine doing it differently.

But she feels that I am the spiritual leader and that I should be. I see that leadership played out in many ways. I once heard Glenn Owen, in a Herald of Truth workshop, say that Ephesians 5 tells us that when sacrifices are to be made, it’s the dad that is to make them. That has stuck with me and been one of the guiding principles of how I seek to lead my family. I think leadership is about setting a spiritual tone to the things that we do, about ensuring that we are on the right spiritual path.

It also means that my wife looks to me for spiritual guidance. Don’t get me wrong… Carolina is a very strong person spiritually. You can view her testimony on the Hope For Life website and note that quickly. But she doesn’t want to lead her husband. She wants to know that she can count on me to move us toward spirituality, rather than having to drag me in that direction.

In practice, I would guess that our marriage looks a lot like those who feel that Ephesians 5 stops in verse 21. But the difference is the attitude with which we approach it: I with an attitude of sacrificial leadership, Carolina with an attitude of submission… submission out of strength, not out of weakness.

Divorce court in church?

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weddingIn reaction to my suggestion about divorce yesterday, I got some interesting pushback on Facebook. Since it was in a closed group, I’ll refrain from making direct quotes or naming the source. But this person said that, while my idea was nice in theory, divorce involves too many issues (property, issues with children, inheritance) that require legal enforceability.

At first I said, “Let the judges of this world sort out the property issues, etc.” But then I added, “Although I think Paul might have said let the church deal with those issues too. (1 Corinthians 6).”

Later I admitted that this man was absolutely right. And I think the church needs to be willing to address those issues as well.

Let me say, I think that the divorce rate in the church would plummet if couples thought they had to go before their Christian peers to request a divorce. And I hope that, in many cases, church leaders could help the couples resolve their problems, staving off a divorce.

In the few cases that would remain, I think the Bible tells us that we are better off having spiritual men judge such issues than to leave it to non-believers. We’re not used to dealing with such issues in the church, but in the ancient world that’s exactly what elders did. (“elders” in the sense commonly used back then, not just the church office) The church eldership was modeled off the concept of elders who served as civic leaders and judges. (See Ruth 4 for an example of that)

Obviously, this only works with Christians who value their Christianity more than their possessions, their rights, etc. It would require that both parties be committed to following the leading of the church leadership.

Is it ever going to happen in the U.S.? Seems doubtful. But it seems to me to be a spiritual approach to a spiritual problem.