When Christians work through the state
apparatus to establish laws that enforce marriage as a legalized civil union
between a man and a woman, what is most provocative is that Christians only
destroy the sacrality of marriage as rooted in ecclesial allegiance.
*******
Among the
various issues of social ethics that pervade and hold captive the church’s
imaginative and contemplative theo-political activities, few issues have given
the church so much grief as the issue of homosexuality. Despite the fact that the majority of God’s
Word is concerned with economic justice, and despite the fact that very little
attention in God’s Word is given to homosexuality, which is but one manifestation of sexual immorality, the church seems to have magnified what is
Scripturally a relatively small issue into an issue of grandiose dimensions
whose effects threaten to destabilize the fabric of society. Though the reasons for the church’s concern
with this issue would certainly prove an interesting history to tell, what is
of greater concern is what the overemphasis on homosexuality, especially in
relation to marriage, reveals about the church’s relationship with the state,
and its ignorance in relation to the true nature of Christian marriage.
Now, when I say
“ignorance,” I do not use it in the same manner as social liberals, as a
pejorative term meant to criticize social conservatives for “burying their
heads in the sand.” Much to the
contrary, when I say “ignorance,” I mean to accuse specifically the church of
not having a proper understanding of what marriage actually is. Even more, I mean to accuse the church of not
understanding homosexuality and the extent to which the Kingdom of God should
be the political entity to which Christian loyalty is conformed.
The fact and manner by which the church preoccupies itself with homosexual behavior indicates that the
church has an inaccurate understanding of what homosexuality represents as
sin. Contrary to the practice of many Christians today, the Apostle Paul, when he spoke of homosexual behavior, did not do so, on the one hand, to
teach social conduct, or, on the other hand, to offer judgment. Rather, Paul intended to offer a diagnosis. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because
of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations
for unnatural ones. In the same way the
men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for
one another. Men committed shameful acts
with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore,
just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God
gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done
(Romans 1:24-28).
According to Richard B. Hays, Paul here offers a “diagnosis of the disordered human condition: he adduces the fact of widespread homosexual
behavior as evidence that human beings are indeed in rebellion against their
Creator.”[1] In this scenario, homosexuality is not that
which provokes the wrath of God; rather, such behavior is a consequence of
idolatry. God “gives over” to their unnatural desires those who
refuse to believe the Truth. Homosexuality, then, does not constitute the
fundamental sin of human rebellion. To
the contrary, as Hays indicates, “The fundamental human sin is the refusal to
honor God and give God thanks.”[2] Homosexuality is not in any way a degrading
disease that afflicts “society,” but it is instead a symptom of a much more
deeply rooted and fundamental condition of human brokenness.
*******
Hay’s exposition
of homosexuality must stir in us an important question: If God gives people over to unnatural
desire—homosexual desire being one among many such desires—does it seem likely
that a ban on same-sex marriage would stop God giving over to homosexual desire
those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served
created things rather than the Creator?”
I think the answer must be: No.
To think that coercive laws of the state, which can only affect the body, could ever change the
heart is a mistaken assumption. Though
the intent behind the drive to enforce “biblical” marriage via the governing
apparatus is doubtless a result of a desire for the good, such a desire is
ultimately a disordered pursuit of the good.
The desire to
uphold "biblical" marriage—which may be put more accurately in this context as a civil contract
legally binding the assets of a heterosexual pair enforceable as the sole
prerogative of the state’s courts—represents a disordered desire on behalf of
Christians for several reasons.
Firstly, by
using the government as the chief apparatus for determining and defining
marriage, marriage automatically ceases to be a sacrament of Christian worship
and it instead becomes a sacrament of the state. That the church has yielded the authority to
define marriage to the state is indication that the church has already lost the
“battle” for marriage.
Secondly, that
the church wishes to enforce marriage as a legal contract between a man and a woman,
having to do with the unification of monetary and proprietary assets, is
indication that the church does not know what marriage actually is meant to
represent. If marriage is only this sort
of legal contract, then why not allow a pair of men, or a pair women, to partake
in this sort of contract? People can
legally have sex outside of marriage (that fact we cannot deny), but God forbid
that a same-sex couple have the same legal benefits afforded to a married
heterosexual couple! Imagine, for a
moment, two women who might wish to be married.
Suppose also that these women have not and do not intend to engage in
homosexual acts. These two women only
desire to have the benefits that come with marriage—i.e. shared finances,
hospital visits, etc. Why should these
two not be married? Marriage as defined
by the state has nothing to do with sexual behavior, and yet the church
mistakenly thinks that enforcing heterosexual marriage will enforce
heterosexual sex.
Thirdly, while
the church places an inordinate amount of attention on same-sex marriage, it
neglects to deal with issues of infidelity between heterosexual couples, with
pornography, with sex out of wedlock, with male promiscuity in relation to teen
pregnancy, etc. Let us consider with a hint of self-criticism the following question: What does more to
unhinge the stability of society, faithful gay couples who raise adopted
children or unfaithful straight couples who cast their biological children to a roller-coaster ride of domestic disharmony? If we want to preserve the sanctity of marriage, we need to first deal with the plank of rampant divorce in the church's eye before we turn to the world to remove the spec of same-sex marriage in its eye.
*******
In relation to
the above three problems with the way Christians go about lobbying against
homosexual marriage, there are a number ways that the church can begin setting itself
aright.
In relation to
the first, the church needs to stop viewing marriage through the lens of state
authority. The church needs to return to
an ecclesial model of formative allegiance whereby our affections and our
loyalty belong solely to Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Marriage must be reasserted as a sacrament of
Christian worship, on par with the sacraments of baptism and communion. This means that the church must reclaim
marriage for its own. It further means
that the church must stop viewing itself as the “conscience” of the state; for
the church is rather its own polis with its own mission and God-ordained
political role to play in the world. In
the words of Stanley Hauerwas: “What it
means to be the church is to be a group of people called out of the world, and
back into the world, to embody the hope of the Kingdom of God.”[3] Using the state to enforce heterosexual
marriage is like using the state to enforce baptism as only constituted as full
immersion or like using the state to regulate communion—in short it is a
farcicality.
In relation to
the second, the church needs to remember the proper signification of the holy
sacrament of marriage. Whether you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, you will doubtless resonate with
the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding marriage: That marriage is an expression of Christ’s
unconditional and unbreakable relationship with His church.[4] As the Apostle Paul directs:
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands,
love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to
make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to
present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any
other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their
wives as their own bodies. He who loves
his wife loves himself. After all, no
one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as
Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking
about Christ and the church. However,
each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must
respect her husband (Ephesians 5:22-33).
Marriage, thus,
is a “divine mystery” whereby a man and a woman “become one flesh,” and this
mystery is correlative with Christ’s uniting with his church.
From this model we can glean a number of
important components that are to comprise marriage: 1) Marriage is to be monogamous. Just as the church has only one Christ, so
does Christ have only one church. In the
same manner, so does a woman join herself to only one man, and so does a man
join himself to only one woman. 2) Marriage
is to be between a man and a woman. The
church is not Christ, nor is Christ the church, and yet both are unified. In the same manner, the woman is not the man,
nor is the man the woman, yet both become one.
This mystery of becoming “one flesh” where there were two cannot be
properly signified through same-sex marriage, for as Paul states, in reference
to Genesis 2:24: “‘For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will
become one flesh.’” 3) Marriage as
“divine mystery” cannot be upheld by the law, at least not by the law in our
modern age. Let us ask ourselves: Is a “divine mystery” legally definable?
There are, of
course, other elements of Christian marriage that we must also consider: 4) Marriage is undertaken, not for the
purpose of having biological children; rather it is undertaken to prevent the
husband and wife from succumbing to sexual immorality by engaging in sex
outside of love for, and thanksgiving to, God.
Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 7 that married men and women should not
deprive each other of sex, but to the contrary, the man and the woman should
yield their own bodies to the other so as to give Satan no opportunity to make
them stumble. Marriage, in the context
of the church, is the making sacred of a natural desire, it is that which takes
lustful bodily desire and turns this desire into a sacramental relationship
reflective of the unbounded and vulnerable love between Christ and the church. 5) Marriage is not to be regarded as a
covenant whereby human happiness and flourishing is made complete; the opposite
is very much true. Paul notes in 1
Corinthians 7:32-35:
I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.
But, as Paul
further notes in verses 36-38:
If anyone is worried that he might not be acting honorably toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if his passions are too strong and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married. But the man who has settled the matter in his own mind, who is under no compulsion but has control over his own will, and who has made up his mind not to marry the virgin—this man also does the right thing. So then, he who marries the virgin does right, but he who does not marry her does better.
In light of
Paul’s words, it is not marriage that is the ultimate good in a life dedicated
to service to God. Singleness is the
superior to marriage, for if one is single, one is always ready to serve the
Lord. Meanwhile, those who are married
are limited in their ability to serve God. Of course, marriage is not bad; Paul is not condemning marriage. Nevertheless, even though marriage is good,
singleness is best. A proper
understanding of Christian marriage cannot be had without this understanding
that marriage is not to be treated as an expectation of all
Christians. As Hauerwas notes: “If everybody has to marry, then marriage is
a terrible burden. But the church does
not believe that everybody has to marry.”[5] It has been the tradition of the church, rather, to uphold the sanctity of both marriage and virginity. As it states in the Catholic Catechism:
Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social. From the very beginning of the Church there have been men and women who have renounced the great good of marriage to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, to be intent on the things of the Lord, to seek to please him, and to go out to meet the Bridegroom who is coming. Christ himself has invited certain persons to follow him in this way of life, of which he remains the model:
"For
there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have
been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves
eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him
receive it."
Virginity
for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is an unfolding of baptismal grace, a
powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent
expectation of his return, a sign which also recalls that marriage is a reality
of this present age which is passing away.
Both
the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the Kingdom of God come from the
Lord himself. It is he who gives them
meaning and grants them the grace which is indispensable for living them out in
conformity with his will. Esteem of
virginity for the sake of the kingdom and the Christian understanding of
marriage are inseparable, and they reinforce each other.[6]
Matrimony and
virginity are both sacramental in their value, and they both are acts of
worship. The one functions as a living
representation of Christ’s relationship with the church, and the other “a
powerful sign of the supremacy of the bond with Christ and of the ardent
expectation of his return.” We cannot
set aright our conception of marriage in the church, and we cannot begin to move
away from pagan conceptions of the culmination of human flourishing as manifest
in “finding the one,” until we have reclaimed the essence of both marriage and
singleness as valid lifestyles, each with a holy signification and function in
the worship of the Body.
Finally, in
relation to the third problem with the current response of the church to
same-sex marriage, the solution is rather straightforward though simultaneously
difficult. Same-sex marriage, in several
respects, is easily highjack-able, and has been high jacked, by the media. Same-sex marriage is such a visible issue that
it is hard for the church to avoid the temptation of getting wrapped up in
contentious dialogue. Nevertheless, the
church must avoid this temptation, for in the presence of more prescient and
immediately at hand issues, the church has failed in its response as per the
distraction of the issue of whether the state should permit same-sex couples to
enter into a particular sort of legal contract.
Where is the church’s unified response to the plight of the homeless,
the widows, the orphans, the unborn, and all others who are helpless to help
themselves? Moreover, where is the
church in the fight against the fundamental sin of human rebellion against God? This latter question relates directly to the
root cause of what we see manifested as sexual immorality, infidelity,
debauchery, and all other mistaken desires.
One cannot hope to successfully deal with homosexuality without first
tackling the deeper issue of idolatry.
*******
Much of the
information in this post will likely strike either a chord or a nerve in those
reading it. It will either resonate with
or rub up against certain people’s preconceived notions of marriage and the
debate surrounding same-sex marriage. However, here at the end of this exploration and pursuit of a deeper understanding
of Christian marriage as a sacrament of worship separate from the pagan variety enforced by
the state, we still have many questions.
But the point of this exposition has not been to answer every possible
question, but to help Christians to view this issue in a new way in order to
facilitate new sorts of questions and a new space for dialogue. One thing, however, is certain: as Christians pursue a Christian response to
the treatment of marriage by the non-Christian world, we must do so with a Christ-like
love that welcomes the imago dei in the sinner while concurrently disavowing
the fundamental rebellion of fallen humanity.
[1] Hays.
The Moral Vision of the New
Testament. 388.
[2] Ibid.
388.
[3] Hauerwas.
“Abortion, Theologically Understood.”
Lifewatch. <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>
[4] Catechism
of the Catholic Church. Part
II: The Celebration of the Christian
Mystery. Section II: The Seven Sacraments of the Church. Chapter III:
The Sacraments at the Service of Communion. Article VII:
The Sacrament of Matrimony.
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm>
[5] Hauerwas.
“Abortion, Theologically Understood.”
Lifewatch. <http://www.lifewatch.org/abortion.html>
[6] Catechism
of the Catholic Church. Part II:
The Celebration of the Christian Mystery. Section II:
The Seven Sacraments of the Church.
Chapter III: The Sacraments at
the Service of Communion. Article
VII: The Sacrament of Matrimony.
<http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a7.htm>
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